Straights, fixers, or maddies: which is Keir, Albo and the Don?
‘All politicians, irrespective of place or time in history, come in one of three categories: Straights, Fixers or Maddies,’ once quipped Tony Benn. To which group does a new generation of world leaders belong?
Tony is my favourite politician. No, I don’t mean Tony Abbott or Tony Blair. I’m talking about Tony Benn, the viscount who renounced his title to become a working class hero in UK politics, the conscience of the Labour Party and the bane of his near namesake in Number 10.
You’ve met Benn before on this page and each year I return to examine and update the political theory he vouchsafed me 20 years ago: “All politicians, irrespective of place or time in history, come in one of three categories: Straights, Fixers or Maddies.”
Applied to British PMs, the Straights include John Major, Harold Wilson, Ted Heath and perhaps the new bloke Keir Starmer. The Fixers (and note, they don’t always succeed at fixing – more often than not they’re wreckers) include Tony Blair and David Cameron. The Maddies – those who, for good or ill, change things? Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Boris Johnson.
In the rapidly accelerating roll-call of Australian PMs, Menzies was the great Fixer. Curtin and Chifley? Straights. I would also include Whitlam here – because of his formal attitudes to political rules and regulations.
Maddies? That maddening opportunist Malcolm Fraser. And Tony Abbott – they don’t call him the “Mad Monk” for nothing. But the Maddies’ Maddie is surely Scott Morrison, the religious nutter with multiple ministry disorder.
Albanese? He’s a Straight – not a great Fixer. Howard, the PM who wanted to look Straight, broke things as a Fixer and, in company with Maddie George W Bush, did some of the maddest things in modern history. Rudd? Straight. Gillard and Turnbull? Faulty Fixers. Keating? Labor’s greatest Maddie – who when thus described in this column rang me purring with pleasure.
In America FDR was a great Fixer. Nixon? The Fixer who went mad. Reagan? He looked like a Straight but was actually an ultra-Maddie. George HW Bush – a Straight. Gerald Ford? An inept Straight. Bill Clinton? A sleazy Fixer. Obama? A Fixer who disappointed.
Trump and Vance are in a weird category all of their own. Donald’s the fake-gold standard in Maddies. Biden was a broken Fixer, now updated by Harris (a Fixer) and Walz (who’s seemingly a Straight).
Stalin was a Maddie. Gorbachev was a Fixer who broke the USSR into pieces – for which Russians never forgave him. Particularly Putin, who’s determined to Make Russia Great Again. The latest Moscow Maddie.
All three of Tony Benn’s categories have their merits. It’s good to have incorruptible Straights, while there is much needing a Fixer’s repairs. And from time to time we can benefit from the Maddies. They don’t always get along. Weeks after moving in, Sir Keir Starmer removed a portrait of Thatcher from No 10 Downing Street. The new Prime Minister reportedly found the artwork “unsettling”.
So where to put Benn on his spectrum? He believed politics should be straighter, the better to fix things. So he was probably mad. Among my favourite Benn quotes: “It’s the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you’re mad, then there’s a pause... and then you can’t find anyone to disagree.”
Dedicated to Tony Benn, 1925 to 2014.
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