The term "displaced discourse" has been used in media studies to identify certain tendencies, notably in television and the popular press, whereby a narrowly focused preoccupation, for instance with the private lives of celebrities, displaces wider coverage of changing social values. However, in this post I want to use the term more loosely to describe the displacement of significant issues in favour of less important and sometimes trivial public discourse. Yesterday's House of Commons exchange between the Labour MP, and former minister, Angela Eagle and Prime Minister David Cameron is a good example of this.
Ms Eagle was challenging the Government's proposed changes to the National Health Service when she was told my Mr Cameron to "Calm down, dear...and listen to the doctor". The doctor in question was in fact the PM's medical colleague Dr Howard Stoat, although it should be noted that Mr Cameron has a tendency to adopt the manner of a hospital doctor on his rounds when going about the country on political business. "Calm down, dear" was, of course, a reference to a well-known Michael Winner television advertisement for an insurance company. Although it is also the kind of thing a doctor might have said to a colleague or patient in the "Carry On" series.
The Labour front bench team were not amused. Deputy party leader Harriet Harman called upon Mr Cameron to apologise for the patronising and sexist remark, forgetting that her predecessor, the now Lord Prescott, had caused similar offense to a French female minister with an apparently male chauvinist comment. Whilst I agree that the PM was behaving in a patronising way to Ms Eagle, and possibly being sexist to boot, neither feminism nor the national sense of humour were advanced during New Labour's time in office, and Ms Eagle, for whom I have some respect, was made to look more foolish by the reaction of her colleagues to Mr Cameron's jest than she was by being told to "Calm down, dear".
So what was yesterday's frisson in the House of Commons really all about? The situation was almost certainly aggravated because Angela Eagle is a lesbian, who, according to Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts had been shouting at the PM like a "tattooed stevedore". If Ms Eagle was indeed doing this, I can indeed sympathise with her, for what woman wouldn't have occasion to feel angry from time to time with someone as smug and privileged as Mr Cameron. I've felt a strong urge to punch such men in the face myself, especially when they have a grinning side-kick like Nick Clegg. Yet equally I find myself with little truck for privileged and smug women like Harriet Harman and her New Labour sisterhood.
For in reality, there isn't much difference between the social values of the Coalition Government and the previous administration. Indeed I would credit Tony Blair rather more than David Cameron with creating the conditions for tomorrow's Royal Wedding between Prince William and "Kate the Commoner", and I'm most surprised that the Blairs - and the Browns for that matter - haven't been invited. Not very correct form Ma'am, if you don't mind me saying so ! Perhaps it is this exclusion from "the wedding of the century" - only Ed Miliband and his partner are going - which has made the Labour front benches so tetchy. If so, my advice is simply this: "Calm down dears, it's only a commercial !"
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