So much older then

After this year’s party conference season, David Cameron must think he’s got the next election in the bag. Blair’s emotional farewell was very nice if you like that sort of thing (Goodnight, and I love you all!), but it inevitably left both of the frontrunners to succeed him looking even more dour and forbidding than they do normally. Both Brown and John Reid are looking old these days – their only consolation is that Ming Campbell looks even older. And enter Cameron, who’s 39 and looks 19, promising to let sunshine win the day. Who could resist?

Well, quite a few of us could, but that’s by the way. Cameron’s youth, eloquence and vacuity will carry him a long way, unfortunately – and the greatest of these is youth. Watching Ming Campbell on stage at the Lib Dem conference, I was more than ever mystified by the operation that put him at the head of the party – surely the weirdest and most counter-productive leadership change since the inexplicable ascent of Iain Duncan Chance. Cynical, traitorous and inept I could understand, but putting up an OAP against Brown and Cameron just looks stupid.

Or is this, as Peter Preston suggested in today’s Graun, a British hangup? Or rather – more interestingly – a British political hangup? Have a look at the following list:

Silvio Berlusconi
Gordon Brown
George W. Bush
George Bush senior
Ming Campbell
Jacques Chirac
Joan Collins
Clint Eastwood
Des Lynam
Angela Merkel
Nicholas Parsons
Romano Prodi

Now, without googling, fill in the blank:

Ming Campbell is the ____th oldest person in this list

The answer is….

8. Brown and Merkel are in their fifties; Dubya is 60 and Des 64. But Berlusconi, Prodi and Chirac are all older than Campbell, as indeed are Joan Collins and Clint Eastwood. The oldest person on the list is Nicholas Parsons – at 83, he’s a year older than Bush senior.

Of course, it could be argued that you wouldn’t actually want Nicholas Parsons running the country (or, indeed, Clint Eastwood). But the contrast between politics and showbusiness is telling: Des Lynam is practically Ming’s contemporary, but he looks twenty years younger. British politicians seem to have got the worst of both worlds: not only has the tyranny of youth and beauty has deprived us of ordinary-looking middle-aged hacks like Wilson or Callaghan; older politicians aren’t allowed to fake it by pretending they’ve kept their looks or even to grow old gracefully (what’s known as the Blake Carrington Get-Out). If you’re over 60 you’re old, and if you’re old you’re ridiculous.

It would be nice to think that our next Prime Minister would disprove all of this; perhaps we could have a spud-faced middle-aged bloke, 60 or pushing 60, grey-haired or bald, with no regard for glamour and not much for grooming. Just as long as it’s not this one.