Tonight, the BBC are showing the London Olympics Opening Ceremony in it’s entirety. But I dont think I can bear to watch it. I well recall the night in 2012, when we all sat, cynically quipping about those first tremulous, bizarre moments, nervously wondering if Danny Boyle had lost the plot. Would Britain come over as a laughing stock to the rest of the watching world? Then gradually, settling into it’s sprawling, unpredictable but feel-good eccentricity, before finally surrendering all our qualms, as one audacious, touching, triumphant set peice, followed another. On and on for 150 minutes..
A few weeks later, when George Osborne got booed at the Paralympics, it felt that maybe the country really was ready to start reclaiming the divisive Tory narrative that had dragged us down into a strivers vs skivers, neighbour against neighbour, race-to -the-bottom.
We had had enough now surely, of all their ‘difficult decisions’, ‘necessary austerity’ and disabled-bashing..?
And here we are, 8 years on and three more times the country has voted Tory. The next chapter, the next tableau, were Boyle to update the ceremony, would include a tubby blonde bloke and his thin mate in a beany hat, driving a clown car with arrow labelled ‘ to Barnard Castle! carrying placards – Stay Alert; Prepare for the Worst. Followed by a Track and Trace Team Dance Formation, doing a thumb-twiddling routine, then a float full of silent, solemn people, titled: The Grenfell Enquiry. Next, a living statue of Edward Colston being pulled along on a cart by by two socially distanced thuggy looking blokes in Union Jack face-masks, and a plane above, trailing a White Lives Matter banner. And lastly, the Brexit Bus with 150 million a week for the NHS on one side, and Worst Numbers of Deaths From Covid in the World, on the other..
So yeah, I dont know if I can bear to look back, to when, for 2 and half hours, it really felt like we might possibly just turn this around. .
The Mark Hurst Blog 