The Daily Mail tomorrow starts its serialisation of a new book entitled “Call me Dave”, written by the Tory peer Lord Ashcroft and Isobel Oakeshot. It is all about our prime minister, David “Call me Dave” Cameron. The Big Story tonight is that Dave allegedly once put his penis in a dead pig’s mouth as part of some posh initiation ceremony and routinely took drugs. But there is something that concerns me much more: the suggestion that Cameron is a compassionate politician.
I am not particularly concerned where the Cameron penis has been – it’s his penis and he can do what he likes with it, within the law, that is (a pig’s mouth would not be my first preference but you can insert your own joke here) – but this is the bit that really gets me: “The book offers a deeply moving account of the PM’s love for his disabled son, and how caring for Ivan turned him into a compassionate politician.” I have absolutely no doubt that Cameron loved his disabled son and my heart genuinely went out to him when the boy died, but how can anyone possibly suggest that this utterly tragic event made him compassionate. If that was true, then why did his government introduce the Bedroom Tax? Why has he allowed Iain Duncan Smith persecute the sick and disabled, to the extent that many of them have taken their own lives? Why is he about to announce that free school meals are to be scrapped for young children, despite all the evidence that this hugely benefits the poor and vulnerable? How did he find it in his psyche to slash spending on mental health services? Why has he stood by and watched as over one million people, most of whom are in work, have been forced to use food banks? Why has he slashed tax credits for the working poor? I am just scratching the surface here with Dave’s so called compassion. There is much more.
The penis story, as well as all manner of allegations of drug use, may well be a load of old tosh for all I know. Frankly, I am not remotely interested. Despite his best efforts to the contrary, there have been occasions when Cameron has come across as a real human being. He looks the part, he speaks well in a crisis, he can be quite funny in a self-deprecating way and sometimes you think to yourself, yes, he might be posh but he does get it. But only sometimes. Most times, I see him for what he is. Just another cynical politician who is in it to win it but only for himself. For everyone else, he either doesn’t give a toss or he is isolated and insulated from the sometimes grim lives led by others.
I heard Cameron speaking in the election campaign about how much he loved the NHS because of how it had looked after his son, but that hasn’t stopped him flogging it off to his friends, starving it of funds, cutting the pay of NHS professionals and allowing an A&E crisis to happen on his watch. It is not a clear message. I love you but I hate what you stand for.
If Dave wants to be remembered as a compassionate politician, he will need to be compassionate to everyone, not just members of his own family. No one can doubt the compassion he has for his own family but it’s very difficult to believe he has any compassion for anyone else. As someone who worshipped Margaret Thatcher, Cameron has continued her poisonous “greed is good” legacy at the expense of those who have little or nothing. A politician he is, compassionate he isn’t, but how could he be? He’s a Tory.
