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If you’re seeking a good old British farce, look
no further than Liz Truss’s memoirs
Tim Adams
Have you heard the one about the missing Ocado
delivery at Downing Street? It’s side-splitting stuff
Sat 13 Apr
2024 15.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/13/lizz-truss-book-farce-swim-england-tim-adams
British
public life often tends toward sitcom, and you imagine that once the
catastrophic economic fallout of her time in office has faded – in a generation
or two’s time – Liz Truss’s 40-odd days in Downing Street might yet be viewed
in those terms. Certainly, that seems the legacy she most craves.
The first
extracts from her farcical book, Ten Years to Save the West, reveal it to be
written with all those gifts for “Accidental Partridge” that she displayed in
office (key quote: “For too long, the political debate has been dominated by
how we distribute a limited economic pie. Instead, we need to grow the pie so
that everyone gets a bigger slice.”). Her memoir’s most immediately memorable
scenes are ready-made for canned laughter. There’s the one in which she spent
her few days in power itching because of an outbreak of fleas in the prime
ministerial apartment (a parting gift, she half-implies, of the Johnsons’ dog,
Dilyn); the one in which her promise to the nation of “delivery, delivery,
delivery” falls at the first hurdle of a missing Ocado order; the one in which
she finds the fridge full of protein shakes labelled “Raab”, from her
power-hungry colleague; and the one in which she struggles to get a mobile
phone signal on a call with the US secretary of state and has to hang out of an
upstairs window to hear about the invasion of Ukraine. There will never be a
second season.
The Royal
Navy, desperate for recruits, has apparently, done away with the longstanding
requirement of candidates to be able to swim. In light of recent figures from
Swim England, the change of policy is no doubt pragmatic. For many kids, gone
are those shivery afternoons spent diving for bricks or blowing up pyjamas to
make a float.
It remains
a government commitment that “by the end of primary school, all children should
be able to swim at least 25 metres unaided, using a range of strokes”, but
largely because of decreased funding and access, and a shortage of teachers,
about one in three children leave school without those skills.
You are
reminded that one of the first things that the coalition government did on
arrival in office in 2010 was to cancel Gordon Brown’s £130m plan for “free
swimming” at public baths for all under-16s and over-60s – one of the pledges
for a 2012 Olympic legacy. Not to worry, though. In future, it is suggested,
rather than be thrown in at the deep end to complete a mandatory Royal Navy
swimming test, hopeful applicants will be able to “self-declare” proficiency.
It has a
simple premise: “Every spring, fish migrate upstream in search of places to
spawn. They swim through the centre of the city of Utrecht. Unfortunately, the
boat lock is closed during spring. You can help the fish.”
Assistance
is quite straightforward, though it requires a degree of patience. There is a
camera livestreaming in the murky depths of the river, and every time a
frustrated-looking fish appears in view, eyeing the camera, you press a bell on
screen to alert the lock keeper in Utrecht to open a little door and allow it
to follow its instincts upriver. It is the slowest of all video games. Needless
to say, I am hooked.
Tim Adams is an Observer columnist
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