Miliband and Cameron are too boring for fiction, says Irvine Welsh
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Version 0 of 1. David Cameron and Ed Miliband could never be characters in a novel because they are “drabness personified”, according to the novelist Irvine Welsh. The author of the cult hit Trainspotting told the Guardian that the political leaders “are too boring for fiction … They’re ‘blanding out’ everything that could possibly be offensive.” He said that principles in politics have been replaced by “polls and focus groups … the achievement of power for its own end”. Part of the problem, he said, is that politicians have become out of touch because they rarely encounter ordinary people. “Politicians are so … detested, they don’t actually walk amongst people now.” Harold Wilson, Labour prime minister in the 1960s and 1970s, relished chatting to people when walking between Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament, he said: “Now they’ve got a car and security all the way. They’ve probably got a tunnel underneath. They have all these stage-managed events and it’s only reported when it goes wrong – when a real person breaks through and asks a question.” He contrasted today’s politicians with those from the past: “People like Tony Benn were interesting. They had views … Enoch Powell, despite his politics, was an interesting guy who had a view and put it out on the line … Michael Foot was a real character. “How can you be inspired by Cameron and Miliband? These guys are just drabness personified.” Welsh is not himself often accused of drabness. He made his name with his 1993 debut novel, Trainspotting, which depicted the drink- and drug-addled underbelly of 1980s Edinburgh, drawing on his early life on a council estate. Adapted by Danny Boyle into a film starring Ewan McGregor, the book has sold more than a million copies in the UK alone. Welsh’s other novels include Filth, which in 2013 was adapted into a film starring James McAvoy as a flawed Edinburgh policeman. Welsh’s latest novel, A Decent Ride, will be published by Jonathan Cape on 16 April. It confronts with “pitch-black humour” what Welsh said were society’s last taboos: incest and necrophilia . Welsh said he does not believe in censorship – but is wary of offending individuals. “It’s a good manners thing. If you’re going to do something that’s going to cause offence to people, you’re always going to get a reaction.” What is it we’re trying to save? A moribund, corrupt, paedophile establishment He lives most of the year in America, in “a modest house” in Chicago, but he keeps his Edinburgh flat, and his closest friends are from his youth. Regularly visiting Scotland, he is dismayed by the deprivation within communities in which he grew up. “It’s not so much deteriorated as stagnated,” he said. While part of Leith has become gentrified, other areas have suffered. There are no votes for rightwing politicians in such places, he said, while “politicians of the left don’t come from those communities any more, so there’s no real interface with them. They’re people from … middle-class homes.” He added: “It makes me angry that people … in this country have just been completely shafted. What makes me more annoyed is the propaganda that everything is OK.” With his heart in Scotland, he believes that a fear of the unknown drove people to vote against breaking up the union: “What is it we’re trying to save? … [A] moribund, corrupt … paedophile establishment … What happens when you get any kind of entrenched power is that it just becomes kind of corrupt and self-serving.” The best people do not enter politics, he said, because it is “very much a class thing”, needing money and connections: “You look at these three leaders … None of them could do a [proper] job.” Guardian Live event Between the lines: Irvine Welsh and Jesse Armstrong on Tuesday 21 April 2015, 7pm-8.30pm, at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London. Irvine Welsh will be touring the UK in advance of the release of his new book. |