For all we know, Ed Miliband is still absolutely furious. Last week, when Tory defence secretary Michael Fallon zinged that Ed “stabbed his own brother in the back to become Labour leader,” he threw down the gauntlet. A bit of mudslinging is to be expected in the runup to a general election, but bringing family into it? And saying something that might actually be a bit true? Gloves off. It’s go time.
But Ed didn’t blow his top. He didn’t, as most of us would, march round to Fallon’s house and take a rounders bat to his favourite gnome. He did nothing. he might have silently fumed, imagining a retaliatory bag of dog excrement roaring with flames on Fallon’s doorstep, but what could he do? He’s trapped in a system in which trash talk is done with no fear of consequence. So Ed retorted with some half-hearted something-or-other about “deceit and lies” and moved on. It was a typically milquetoast Westminster conflict resolution with zero appreciation of drama, payoff or pizzazz. It was rubbish.
Three cheers then, for Janek Żyliński, a man who may just have sown the seeds of political revolution. The London-based son of a Polish war hero, and a purported prince, Żyliński, like many, took umbrage with Ukip’s ongoing negative portrayal of migrants. Only he wasn’t going to stand for it any more. “I’ve had enough of the discrimination against Polish people in this country,” he said in an online statement. “The most idiotic example I’ve heard of has been Nigel Farage blaming migrants for traffic jams on the M40.”
Żyliński put forward a novel suggestion of how to satisfactorily resolve the issue: “Enough is enough, Mr Farage. So what I’d like to do is to challenge you to a duel. I’d like us to meet in Hyde Park one morning, with our swords, and resolve this matter”. Farage, blithering coward that he is, chose to decline the offer, opting instead to flee to Clacton for a meeting with a Hungarian immigrant that was so awkward it could actually boil bones. He should have duelled. It would have been less painful.
Whether entirely serious or not – it’s “not”, by the way – Żyliński may have hit on something. In the runup to the election, insults like Fallon’s will be hurled. It’s inevitable. Insults are what make elections work. Only yesterday, Boris Johnson – considered by many to be an epic, patronising tosser – branded Tony Blair an “epic, patronising tosser.” Most likely, the targets of the pre-election jibes in the coming weeks will do what Miliband was forced to do: shrug them off in public, wibble something bland about “sticking to the issues”, and then retreat to their homes to bawl into their pillows. But Żyliński has shown that this isn’t the only way. Politicians don’t have to brush off the trash talk, sometimes, they can demand actions that will speak louder than words. Duels.
Obviously, duelling to the death is not the future of political debate. First, carrying a whopping great sword through Hyde Park is fairly illegal, as is skewering someone with it, even if that person happens to be Farage. Second, even without swords, a fist fight to the bitter end between Miliband and Fallon would take around 1,000 years. It would be an endless back-and-forth of clammy open-palmed slaps, with the loser eventually being determined by who’d packed the fewest sandwiches and therefore succumbed to malnutrition first.
No, violence isn’t the answer. It never is. But there are other ways. Ed dealt with Fallon’s dig about David professionally, and that’s fine. But he would have won the election then and there if, on camera, he’d glowered, unbuttoned his cuffs, and demanded that Fallon attend a furious spudgun showdown behind the bins of the Muswell Hill Pizza Express. Or a shirtless towel-flicking free-for-all at dawn atop Mam Tor in Castleton. Or a brutal paintball war inside an abandoned RAF hangar. Two men enter. One man leaves with slightly fewer welts than the other. All televised.
When a line’s been crossed, politicians need a method of settling scores definitively and with dignity, otherwise they’ll eventually all go insane. Duelling is the obvious answer. Like Żyliński, besmirched politicians should be able to say “That’s it. I’ve had enough. Let’s settle this like champions”. Not only would it be good for them personally and psychologically, the electorate would see their human frailty, their emotions, their willingness to take a stand for what’s right. It could be how all political disputes are settled. Balls and Osborne hurling dodgeballs at one another until one is irreparably winded. The Trident yea-or-nay settled via the medium of joust. The election itself conducted in an explosive seven-way Royal Rumble contest, no holds barred, last one standing wins. Drama. Payoff. Pizzazz. The cockle-warming thwack of folded steel chair across cranium. The future of politics is here, and it is Thunderdome. And it’s all thanks to Żyliński, a man who had simply had enough of Ukip’s nonsense; the pioneer prince of this second, thrilling wave of British politics. Thank you, Mr Żyliński. You may very well be a hero.
