Yes, politics really is a rollercoaster
Rollercoasters are springing up all round, literally and metaphorically.
In these uncertain times, there are lots of ups and downs. Rollercoasters are springing up all around – both metaphorical and actual. Donald Trump’s sweeping policy making has been a gift for many cartoonists, depicting the graph of declining stock markets as a downward journey on a big dipper. It’s not just the humourists. A columnist on the sober Financial Times proposed this week that this is “Starmer’s opportunity to ride the Trump rollercoaster”.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister was on hand to hail the announcement of the new multi-million pound Universal Studios amusement park in England with an “iconic rollercoaster” as a central feature. Some 28,000 new jobs are anticipated in the Bedford area and, with leaden wit, Sir Keir Starmer commented: “people told me government would be a rollercoaster, but I don’t think this is what they meant…”
Politicians tend to reach for fairground comparisons when describing their experiences. As the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke remarked, “politics is a rollercoaster”. Few however have gone as far as Ed Davey whose photo-opportunity for the Liberal Democrat election manifesto last year took place on the new Hyperia ride at Thorpe Park.
Rollercoasters are not an American invention. The first was an ice slide in Russia which Catherine the Great liked so much, she had wheels fitted to her sled for summer use. The French followed with wooden fairground attractions. The US got into the picture in 1870 when a Pennsylvanian mining company turned freewheeling downward rides in its working cars into a popular attraction, soon named “The Switchback”.
By the turn of the century, there were hundreds of rides across the US. Attractions at Coney Island alone included “The Mystic Screw”, “Cannon Coaster”, and “Flip Flop”. Many were housed in the elegant “Steeple Chase Pavilion” which also contained a downhill steeplechase rollercoaster in which punters rode iron horses. Almost inevitably, the Trump family played an ignominious role in this particular piece of Big Apple folk history. Fifty years ago, Donald’s father, Fred Trump, had the pavilion demolished to make way for a low-cost housing development, “Trump Village”.
In truth, Coney Island and rollercoasters based on wooden structures had been going out of fashion since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In England, a belated tragedy in which five were killed in an accident on a wooden ride in 1972 also effectively put an end to Battersea Park’s role as a pleasure garden.
As professor Hannah Fry reports in the latest enthralling episode of The Secret Genius of Modern Life, out this week on BBC2, Walt Disney inaugurated the new era of rollercoasters which continues to this day. Disney ordered his “imagineers” to design and build a rollercoaster in a matter of months for the “Matterhorn” in the original Disneyland in California. For speed, they opted to make it out of steel rather than wood, for both the superstructure and the tracks.
This innovation opened the way to much greater speeds, which in turn made it possible for rollercoaster cars to perform a full 360 degree loop - with the passengers kept on board upside down thanks to g-forces and body restraints. Vehicles were kept on the track by a multiple wheel design – one as usual on the track, one underneath and a third horizontally ensuring continued contact.
A typical rollercoaster, like Hyperia, patronised by both Ed Davey and Hannah Fry, is up to 150 feet high with a track of around a kilometre long. The train weighs ten tonnes and travels at speeds of up to 80 miles an hour. On a busy working day, it will make hundreds of circuits carrying 2,000 passengers an hour.
“Falcon’s Flight” currently under construction in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is intended to travel as fast as 150mph.
A ride may be scary but it is safe. According to the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, only one passenger in 15.5 million rides will be seriously injured. A death has been recorded only once in 170 million rides. Passenger stress is greatest just as the journey begins and it is very rare for anyone to be sick during the ride.
In spite of these reassurance, rollercoaster rides as metaphors are usually frightening. A famous campaign ad for Walter Mondale when he was running against Ronald Reagan’s re-election featured pictures of a lurching ride with the tag line “America, it’s time to get off the rollercoaster before it’s too late”. The voters thought otherwise. Reagan went on to carry 49 out of 50 states.
Republicans produced their own version of the rollercoaster attack ad last summer -focussing on the economy. “The Biden-Harris economy elicits the same feelings you get when you look at a rickety, broken-down rollercoaster: nausea, fear, and dread,” Spokesman Kaelan Dorr explained on behalf of MAGA Inc., the pro-Trump political action committee which commissioned it.
Days later, the cartoonist Barry Blitt drew a more positive spin for the Democrats in his cover for the August 26 issue, of The New Yorker magazine. The picture showed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris heading upwards at the start of their rollercoaster ride. “It looks like things are going the Democrats’ way,” Blitt said then. “But who knows what twists and turns lurk right around the corner.” Nothing good for Biden and Harris it turned out once gravity took over. Blitt may be cheered that his fellow artists are currently making use of the bumpy downward rollercoaster journey for their depictions of Trumpanomics.
Although I am not a theme park pleasure-seeker I have ridden the Blackpool Big One and the worst of Chessington numerous times in search of a political metaphor and a spectacular piece-to-camera. Some of my efforts may still be available on YouTube.
My tip - whether you fancy a ride or not - is that they are lot less thrilling and/or terrifying the second or third time around, once you know what is going to happen. There is no way that I would board one of those popular rides which take place in total darkness.
The Spring public holidays are traditionally when amusement parks come to life again. There will be many people out this weekend riding rollercoasters. They are fine examples of engineering and technological innovation – all for the sake of humans having fun. If they had never existed I am sure that political and economic gloomsters would have been forced to invent them. What better amusing illustration of jerky decline could there be?