When it was announced that Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox are to share use of Chevening, a lavish grace-and-favour country house, Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, described the scenario as “a bit like Brexit Towers”.
Delighted by the comparison, the Daily Mail ran news of the house share under the headline: “Brexit Towers!”
I find this odd. The story is that some people are going to share a house. British culture is not short of great sitcoms about people sharing a house. Off the top of my head, I think of Rising Damp, Father Ted, Man About the House, Spaced, Game On, The Young Ones, The Liver Birds, Not Going Out, Men Behaving Badly and Peep Show. Those are just the ones I can do without googling.
And that’s not counting the family ones. You might think of Bless This House, My Family, Only Fools and Horses, Steptoe and Son, Till Death Us Do Part, Butterflies or Bread.
But no, Tim Farron chose to base his joke on Fawlty Towers, which might actually be the only sitcom in history that isn’t about people sharing a house. Wait, I tell a lie, he could have made it Brexitadder.
I don’t mean to give Tim Farron a hard time. God knows, by the next election, he could be leading the only party one could conceivably vote for; I’d love to believe he’s the intelligent captain of a kindly, stable crew of like-minded fellows. So, best not to look too closely at how his brain works – just like it’s best, aged seven, not to ask too many questions about the tooth fairy’s modus operandi. Better to just hope and hum, I find.
Besides, he was on the right track. You can see why his mind went to sitcom. Amid all the depressing, bleak and scary news stories of recent weeks, the idea of those three warhorses sharing a stable is hilarious.
It’s amusing to think of Liam Fox sharing a house with anyone. As political scandals go, his history with young lodger Adam Werritty is arguably the funniest. I’m not sure why; perhaps because it was so essentially harmless. Perhaps because it seemed so human and vulnerable. Perhaps just because of the name “Werrity”.
Anyway, it was funny and forever after there is something comical about the idea of Liam Fox sharing a house.
And he’s sharing with Boris Johnson. It’s funny to think of Boris Johnson doing anything. Particularly being foreign secretary. He only is foreign secretary because that’s what Theresa May calculated would most annoy Michael Gove. That’s very funny.
David Davis, I sense, is an angry fellow. He voted against the repeal of Section 28. He likes the death penalty. These are the instincts of a really angry man. The idea of a really angry man being forced to live with colleagues is funny. And one of those colleagues is Boris Johnson. Brexitadder indeed.
But joking aside (insofar as one can put joking aside in this deeply comic scenario), I am hugely in favour of this house share. I hope it’s the first of many brilliant moves from the new PM. No doubt this is a deliberate plan to help her cabinet understand the emotional pressures of the housing crisis.
It is quite normal, now, to find oneself lumbered with flatmates at the age of 54. Few can afford not to be.
The referendum vote has shown that the electorate is sick of a gilded elite living unrecognisable lives; these three men were quick to play on that rage. Mrs May is merely helping them get even closer to the level playing field they proffered. “Count yourselves lucky,” she probably told the trembling trio. “I should have made you move back in with your parents.”
You might say that sharing a 115-room mansion will not accurately recreate the problems of overcrowded housing. I say: you underestimate the size of Boris Johnson’s personality. It could fill eight bathrooms by itself. Other people’s stuff everywhere? Don’t worry: the place could have 4,000 rooms and Boris Johnson’s pants could still be strewn on the floor of all of them.
Is there anything more that Mrs May could do to help these men experience the problems of living in modern Britain? Why, sure!
She could take their jobs away, put them at the bottom of a waiting list to see a doctor, fill the upper floors of the house with knife-wielding Romanians who don’t speak a word of English yet always seem able to jump the queue for anything, then explain how this is actually terribly good for the health of the economy.
Alternatively, she could oblige them to take Romanian citizenship themselves, then invite them to pour their blood and sweat into doing the best job they can on a zero-hours contract while being sworn and spat at by racists on their way there.
Something Chevening has always lacked, as far as I’m aware, is an Isis flag in an upstairs window, a drunkard shouting rape threats on the doorstep and a skinhead breeding pit bulls in the basement. All these things could be introduced, in the name of narrowing the inexcusable gap between normality and a gilded elite. The Brexiteers do hate that gap! I’m sure they’d welcome the developments with open arms.
■ Speaking of housing problems, I’d like to thank Thomas Jennings and London Zoo for the generosity they recently showed to Doorstep, a homeless charity near where I live in London. The worse the housing crisis gets, the less time there is to think about anything except immediate emergencies of food and safety. But children need treats as well. Hurray for the zoo, and thanks.
