‘This Time Next Year, Rodney’

Polly Toynbee, for once getting it close to right in The Grauniad’s CiF.

My Comment:

In one way, it will be sad to see the last episode of 'Only Fools and Labour Voters'. But it hasn't been the same since the wide-boy con-tricks and dodgy dealings of Del-Boy Blair no longer seem so effective after he left the show. Since Del-Boy Blair left his hapless sidekick Rodney Brown in change of the business, even the wheels are starting to fall off the Reliant Robin Labour Party they managed to keep on the road by bodging it up as 'New Labour'.

Trouble is Rodney Brown, despite his GCEs is not half the salesman Del-Boy Blair was. Rodney Brown doesn’t have the knack for flogging the dodgy goods that seemed to look so good when Del-Boy Blair first toted them around as policies, and told us all that after the next election ‘we’d all be millionaires’.

The thing is we all wanted to believe and were longing for a Labour victory after so long in the wilderness. So Del-Boy Blair’s promises and special deals seemed so beguiling…. That is until we good them home and unwrapped them and everything fell apart in our hands. Everything from Iraq through the NHS and right down to that deal of a lifetime he offered us in the electoral marketplace with his beguiling cries of ‘education, education, education!’ and ‘Tough on the causes of crime!’ and all our other top political comedy moments. Even when Del-Boy Blair fell through the open bar of the F1 tobacco funding scandal, everyone regarded his straight-faced ‘I’m a pretty straight kinda guy’ quote as one of the more endearing of his high comedy moments.

Trouble is, though, Rodney Brown – even though he was always just getting Del-Boy Blair out of trouble and knew he could – given the chance – run the business – Tony’s Independent Trading – better, Del-Boy Blair was always there claiming credit for the good things and blaming Rodney for the cock-ups. We all rooted for the underdog Rodney then, of course as the script wanted us too, and we too thought the business would be better run as a serious concern without all the showmanship, con-artistry and spin.

Trouble is – as Rodney Brown – has now revealed there never was a real serious business beneath all the surface fluff, it was – all of it, the whole ‘New Labour’ scam – a massive con trick perpetrated by Del-Boy Blair that even fooled his own sidekick Rodney Brown.