Government Affairs Blog

The Dumb Waiting

BBC Four is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the first plays by Harold Pinter.  In the West End, “The Dumb Waiter” has a short run at the Trafalgar Studio - http://www.trafalgar-studios.co.uk/.  If you haven’t seen the play it is well worth it.  An early Pinter, it is an hour long and tells the tale of two nervous hit men trapped together in close proximity who are waiting for instructions.  The tension of their love-hate relationship is increased as they realise that the “instructions” may lead to one of them being the next hit. 

They fill the time with idle speculation.  In this play, and other early works, Pinter’s influences are clear to see: Samuel Beckett; Franz Kafka; and the argot of the East End villain. 

Already political commentators have described the Chancellor’s journey to Number 10 as “Waiting for Gordon”.  For those without an interest in theatre this is a take on the Beckett masterpiece “Waiting for Godot”. 

But perhaps there is another version of the political saga: “The Dumb Waiting”. 

While journalists and public affairs consultants wait for the Chancellor to become Prime Minister they attempt to second guess the future.  This blog should declare an interest here, especially after the recent recommendations of The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) on social media - http://www.cipr.co.uk/socialmedia/ - that suggests transparency is a vital part of blogging.  Last year this blog speculated on who might become the next Chancellor in “No Darling, it is Balls”.  The title of the piece though was a bit of a poker “tell”.  Frankly, speculation can be just that, speculation. 

The probable truth is that even Gordon Brown doesn’t know who will be in his Cabinet.  Presumably he has given it some thought but he doesn’t know who will accept what job or how things will change in the next few months.  Events, as Harold Macmillan warned, get in the way. 

So perhaps it is better to be patience and wait and see.  Otherwise, we will return to the two men who are trapped in close proximity to each other, who are totally dependent on each other, who once liked each other but now no longer do; both men waiting for someone to make a move.  Or you could go and see Pinter’s “The Dumb Waiter”.