Observations on moustaches
Often politicians are described as "bare-faced" (as in "bare-faced liar"). It's true. There are pitifully few moustaches in the Commons today. I can think of just 15; none is in the cabinet.
Peter Mandelson had a Village People moustache back in the 1980s. The Hartlepool MP fired up his Philips Ladyshave, mowed the thing off - and his ministerial career duly failed. Ditto Stephen Byers.
Hitler and the emperor Hirohito in-jured the cause, as did that trimmer Lloyd George. The late and very right-wing Tory MP Sir Gerald Nabarro was a waxed menace. Enoch Powell, whose moustache would be copied by numerous traffic wardens, was not an entirely positive thing either.
Respectable London has long been suspicious of moustaches. At the start of the 20th century, Regent Street drapers were forbidden them. The Bank of England banned moustaches "during working hours". But a moustache is a daring device. It bristles bloody-mindedness.
Moustaches have not flourished in British politics since Eden and Macmillan. Edward Heath preferred his men smooth and Margaret Thatcher was pogonophobic. To remain in her favour, John Selwyn Gummer had to tear off his whiskers as fast as a quick-change actor removing his Velcro trousers.
Tony Blair has been no more enthusiastic. Geoff Hoon might not have become Defence Secretary had he kept his Frank Zappa. Another minister who visited the shearers was Elliot Morley, stuck in the mud at Agriculture since 1997.
Malcolm Chisholm, ex-Edinburgh North & Leith, had a gingery ferret of a 'tache. First he quit the Labour front bench, then the Commons altogether, taking his brush with him. In 2001 we also lost West Brom's Peter Snape, whose moustache would twitch when he got wind of good gossip. Alan Meale took his John Ketley muzzer to a ministry but became entangled (a moustache wearer should know better) in some minor scandal. The moustache of Alan Whitehead also lost its job in the government.
Mark Todd (Lab, Derbyshire South) used to have an El Macho, and Ian Davidson (Lab/Co-op, Glasgow Pollok) a soup-strainer. Both men dispensed with them, to their and our diminishment.
Alan Bennett, in Forty Years On (1968), writes: "Everywhere one looks, decadence. I saw a bishop with a moustache the other day." In the Commons, the people who still wear moustaches are actually rather good, if obscure, eggs.
Decent David Drew (Lab/Co-op, Stroud) and stout Jeff Ennis (Lab, Barnsley East & Mexborough) could be junior functionaries in the Mexican government. Here they go uncherished. The moustache of George Howarth (Lab, Knowsley North & Sefton East) lends him the air of an Edwardian cut-throat. George Galloway (Ind, Glasgow Kelvin) has a mini-Walesa, beautifully cologned. Tom Cox (Lab, Tooting) sports a Neville Chamberlain. Keith Simpson (Con, Norfolk Mid) brandishes a military model, as you'd expect from a former Sandhurst instructor, while Elfyn Llwyd (Pl Cymru, Meirionnydd Nant Conwy) could pass for one of the Welsh rugby XV circa 1975.
The Conservatives are weakened by the suspicion that not all their young men could grow a moustache. Bottles of Baby Bio, soonest, please, to Gregory Barker (Bexhill) and Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon). Elsewhere we have not a single musketeer, Fu Manchu or waxed Poirot.
Politicians spend their lives trying to catch the public's attention. They could do so in a trice (well, three months) if they only let their upper lips throw up a good wicket of cress. The one hero is Viscount Thurso, a Lib Dem MP. Some say he looks like Lord Lucan. I see a stronger resemblance to Toy Story's imperiously 'tached Mr Potato Head, than which there is no greater compliment.
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