Rule of the Nice

I’m not going to get involved in this debate about the effectiveness of aid that’s broken out since hairy Bob assumed the stump and started making pronouncements. It’s a classic of misdirection.

Because, you see, while folk are arguing about whether the money goes to kiddies or kleptocrats, the Geldof-Curtis Central Leadership Group are planning a coup.

I met a nice lady in town who tipped me the wink. We were standing at the Tram station when she leaned over my paper and said: “It’s disgusting.”

“What’s disgusting?”

“Africa. It’s disgusting. Something needs to be done.”

She leaned closer. I smelled lavender water. “Bob knows. Bob’s going to do something.”

Then she went into Debenhams. Yes, Debenhams, I thought. Exactly the place to plan a coup, in the coffee shop, with other nice ladies. Village halls, too. And community facilities, where people gather after dark to do civic things – civic things they don’t like to boast about. Secrecy is essential. I bet the Women’s Institute are in on it, too. And the Methodists. And the National Trust.

Now consider this:

Speaking in Southampton, Geldof urged British boat owners to form a mass flotilla and cross the Channel to pick up French supporters of the anti-poverty campaign on 3 July – the day after the first Live 8 concerts.

“What we are asking people to do is not recreate D-Day, but recreate Dunkirk, which is one of the great national legends of our country where normal people got in their boats to rescue our soldiers, 380,000 of them, who were surrounded and came back to fight another day,” he said.

“The Prince must emulate both the fox and the lion” Machiavelli said. Here we see foxy Bob dissimulating like a master. It’s not Dunkirk he has in mind. Every Catholic child learns that the great Armada of 1588 and its crusade to restore the true faith was betrayed by the apostate Queen Elizabeth. Now another armada is coming, and from a Catholic country too.

And consider this million nice person march to the G8. It’s right out of the Mao playbook. Go to the countryside to make revolution, Mao told the Red Guards. And bombard the headquarters. Of course, by countryside he didn’t mean a place with quite so many golf courses as Gleneagles. But these aren’t Red Guards we’re talking about. These are Nice Guards. They will bombard the headquarters with cake. Stale cake, because otherwise it would be a waste of Marks & Spencer’s finest.

But no, there will be no blood spilled in the nice coup. In fact, there won’t be anything spilled because people will bring high quality thermos flasks with integral cups. And if anything is spilled, deposed world leaders will be forced to clean it up with wet wipes before they are exiled to their bedrooms to think about what they’ve done. Think very hard.

So what can we expect from the new regime? Obviously, Africa will be fed, very probably by Jamie Oliver. The West will lead the way in Knowledge, so happy munchkins across Asia will be overjoyed to ram screwdrivers through their frontal lobes and then use them to assemble things for us – things like thermos flasks with integral cups. The Middle East will be a sea of waving purple fingers. The Vicar of Dibley will be the Foreign Secretary. How the world will laugh at her engaging line in self-deprecatory chocolate related fat female vicar humour!

Everything will be nice.

You have been warned.