The media induced skimmity ride has become one of our cultural exports

Today there are elections in the United Kingdom – council elections in England and elections for the regional assemblies in Scotland and Wales. Because these are fixed date elections it seems as if the campaigning has been going on forever. This is one of my favourite newspaper headlines from the campaign – it was printed in the Daily Telegraph (which doesn’t usually feature sex scandals).

Yet again a politician has been caught “romping” with young girls. This time it’s Angus MacNeil, a Scottish Nationalist MP (for a Westminster seat) who “romped” with two teenage girls, but told the newspapers he was “too drunk to have sex”. Ironically Angus MacNeil is the MP who accused Tony Blair of corruption in the “cash for honours” scandal and presumably believes in the highest standards of behaviour in public life.

This is a piffling little sex scandal and doesn’t really compare with the David Mellor sex scandal of 1992 when he appeared at his garden gate supported by his wife and children (and in-laws I think) denying everything, until fresh revelations made it clear he was a liar. The garden gate episode has entered the popular imagination and has more recently been satirised on the comedy show Little Britain. I think people enjoyed the David Mellor downfall because he was so incredibly arrogant and self-obsessed.

In the interests of party political fairness, both New Labour and the Liberal Democrats have also had regular sex scandals.

Thomas Hardy in The Mayor of Casterbridge records the old custom of the “Skimmity Ride” where effigies of people caught misbehaving were paraded through a town or village on a donkey, accompanied by an impromptu orchestra playing music on kitchen utensils (beating kettles and trays with spoons etc). Excited onlookers would jeer and yell insults as the procession went past. Finally the effigies were hanged and burned.

In a small community this sort of public humiliation would have been devastating. For the targets of a skimmity ride there would be no going back. Unlike today when no sooner do you get rid of a disgraced politician he pops back up again in the government (or in David Mellor’s case you can hear his nauseating voice on Classic FM).

The 1989 Billy Joel song We Didn’t Start The Fire refers to “British politicians sex” (specifically the 1963 Profumo Affair), indicating that the media induced skimmity ride has become one of our cultural exports.