The Politician of the Year Award
In the first award this year there was a clear winner so far ahead of his rivals for this prestigious gong that the also-rans need not even be mentioned. Indeed, this man has single-handedly dragged the face of the tangerine-tinted celebrity out of the doorway of Chinawhites, and dragged it straight into the halls of European government in Brussels. Yes, this year’s award for Politician of the Year goes to the one and only Robert Kilroy-Silk.
Like your average B-list celebrity, Kilroy seems to be constantly on television but nobody seems to know why. With his daily talk show stolen away from him the orange one has nevertheless made a gallant effort to remain on our screens, remoulding himself as the celebrity face of Ukip, before falling out with the party after an audatious attempt to become leader. And that is why the carrot-faced phoney, whose constant ranting is based on about as much reality as his skin colour, was the undoubted winner of our first award.
The award for Political Correctness Gone Mad
Looking at the title of this award the panel of judges were hard pushed to avert their gaze away from the winner of the previous award. However, a quick look back at the year gone by and a whole host of worthy nominees came to mind. First on the list is a former compatriot of Kilroy’s at Ukip. Godfrey Bloom, Ukip MEP for Yorkshire and The Humber region, impressed the panel with his faultless display of political incorrectness this year when he stated that ‘no self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age.’ In years gone past this gem may have won him the award but this years winner proved just too strong.
Another contender who didn’t quite make the incredibly high standard set by this year’s winner was the charming Mrs Ann Winterton, MP for Congleton. The Chesire MP, not averse to a bit of harmless racist banter, once ‘joking’ that Pakistanis were ‘10 a penny in the UK’, topped even her usual levels of offensiveness with a crass joke about the death of 20 Chinese cocklers at Morecombe Bay in February.
But alas the winner this year, with a slightly more genuine Mediterranean tan than our previous award winner, is the Italian European Commission candidate Rocco Buttiglione. Unlike his fellow contenders, Buttiglione won not so much for what he said as for what he represents and for how his beliefs and his unwillingness to rescind them led to utter chaos in the European parliament. Buttiglione’s ability to offend multiple groups, most notably calling homosexuality a sin, caused such outrage in Brussels it forced a reshuffle in Jose Manuel Barroso’s first commission.
Oxygen Thief of the Year Award
With 650 sitting MPs there’s simply not enough time or column inches to mention all the contenders for this award, however we have managed to narrow the field down to a select few. A perennial favourite for this award, who always manages to clog up the airwaves, is the Reverend Ian Paisley MP, whose vocabulary this year seemed to contract daily only leaving the words ‘never’ and ‘republican murderers’ to come out of his mouth.
But Belfast’s finest windbag loses out this year after an impressive display by the eventual winner Oliver Letwin. In February the Shadow Chancellor vowed to radically change the way the Treasury tax and spends, cutting taxes and increasing efficiency. However, Letwin neglected to explain quite how he was going to do this and ,in actual fact, the predicted cuts in government spending under this new streamlined Tory government would only be 2.3 per cent over six years.
But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, after all this is the man who made promises about public expenditure cuts which everybody knew to be impossible and was sent into virtual hiding by William Hague until polling day in 2001. But this year his ramblings have hit new heights. Letwin can bang on about an issue for hours with complete and utter conviction and sincerity. However, when you manage to get a word in edgeways and ask him to explain his argument with facts, his previously forthright tone goes all mushy as he tries to flesh out his grand plans.
So congratulations to the old Etonian for following in the great Tory tradition of proving that a smart suit, posh voice and exemplary education doesn’t always produce a clever and coherent politician. Unfortunately for the second time in the evening the winner was unable to personally pick up his award. In another piece of overzealous cost-cutting, Letwin had forgotten to budget for the taxi fare to the awards ceremony and had to get the bus.
The Political Party of the Year Award
The panel could have quite justifiably given this award to the Conservatives and gone and had a cup of tea. But being the fair objective-minded panellists they are, the Progress awards team endeavoured to find even crazier groups from which to pick a winner. The shortlist was full of the weird and wonderful including the Fancy Dress Party, the No Candidate Deserves My Vote Party, and Adam Lyal’s Witchery Tour Party.
However, after hours of tortured deliberation the panel finally came up with a winner, the Church of the Militant Elvis Party. With such a close run category it was always going to take something special to sway the judges and it was the Elvis Party’s statement that swung it: ‘We believe that Presley is still alive and is now a sixty eight year old leftwing revolutionary committed to over throwing the capitalist system which turned him into a fat media joke. We also believe he is in Baghdad at the moment.’
The Award for Best Early Day Motion
Like the previous award there were oodles of contenders for this category. An early day motion is basically a colloquial term for a notice of motion given by a Member of Parliament for which no date has been fixed for debate; there is as a result very little prospect of these motions being debated. With little prospect of any progression beyond the proposal stage motions are often towards the tenuous end of parliamentary business and this year’s entries more than highlighted this fact. The runners up in this category were an interesting bunch including a call for a debate on National Tree Week; a debate on Dog and Cat Fur; a debate on electric shock training collars for dogs, ‘ouch’; and a debate of measuring a pint of beer.
But the winner this year centered on an issue at the very heart of government, an issue which transcends party political lines and affects the day-to-day lives of our nations representatives. Yes this year’s winner of the award for silliest early day motion goes to Linda Perham MP for her Early Day Motion for a debate on the sale of bananas in the palace of Westminster. In fact after delving a little deeper we found that the motion actually pertained to the very worthy cause of getting fairly traded bananas onto the shelves at Westminster eateries but nevertheless, the sight of an Early Day Motion on the sale of bananas in Westminster conjured up all kinds of thoughts amongst the panel of judges making it this year’s favourite Early Day Motion.