Well, the left know what was happening

Everyone I've spoken to liked the opening ceremony for the London Olympics, even if they thought parts of it a bit weird. They thought it quirky and humorous. Even the Daily Mail readers thought it a great moment for Britain.

I didn't like it. These ceremonies are directed at answering questions like "who are we?" and "where are we going?" and they have some power in influencing how people think about such issues. And the opening ceremony did present an arc of British history, one culminating in various left-wing causes of the twentieth century and then finally the modern urban liberal lifestyle.

Inevitably, you then had various rank and file Britons talking about how it captured the essence of British values and culture - which is a pity, as the modern urban liberal lifestyle seems soulless and denatured to me.

Anyway, you can be accused of injecting politics into something people take to be fun, which puts critics on the back foot. But now various figures on the left are expressing delight in how much the opening ceremony featured left-wing causes, which makes it harder to run with the "it's all apolitical fun" line:

Some Labour politicians struggled to contain their glee about the ceremony’s message, congratulating Mr Boyle for ‘smuggling in wonderfully progressive socialist sentiments’.

Carl Sergeant, a minister in the Welsh government, took to Twitter to describe Friday’s opening ceremony as ‘the best Labour Party political broadcast I’ve seen in a while’.

Taunting David Cameron, he added: ‘Working class history, multicultural, NHS, CND, gay kissing. Well done, comrade Boyle! Bet Dave is wriggling!’

The supposedly conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson couldn't see this. He thought it a great patriotic display:

London’s Tory Mayor Boris Johnson dismissed his comments, saying: ‘People say it was all leftie stuff. That is nonsense. I’m a Conservative and I had hot tears of patriotic pride from the beginning. I was blubbing like Andy Murray.’

Which prompted this response:

But Labour MP Paul Flynn said: ‘Boris has been spewing wild meaningless superlatives hoping to obliterate the eloquent messages of Danny Boyle on NHS, CND, and the futility of war.

Wonderfully progressive socialist sentiments and ideas were smuggled into the opening romp. The Tory Olympic twosome were tricked into praising the Trojan horse.’