Luck Be a Tory Tonight
Whatever part competence, judgement and vision play in a premiership, the factors of timing and luck should never be underestimated. Robert Walpole emerged from the chaos of the South Sea Bubble and sold himself as the only man capable of steering Britain out of economic turbulence; Churchill’s decade-long tirade against Nazi Germany bore fruit when the nation saw him as far more equipped to deal with Hitler than Chamberlain; Macmillan exploited the disaster of Suez; Wilson exploited the damage of Profumo; Thatcher benefitted from the Winter of Discontent; and Blair capitalised on sleaze. The quality of one’s opponents also figures in how a Prime Minister performs both at the polling booth and PMQs. Heath was up against wily old Wilson for the full ten years of his term as Tory leader, and only managed to win one of their four electoral battles; Thatcher faced three of Labour’s least challenging head boys in Callaghan, Foot and Kinnock; Blair never broke sweat when confronted by Major, Hague, IDS and Howard.
David Cameron is one Prime Minister that luck seems to have especially singled out for special treatment. From his election as Conservative leader in 2005, few within or without his party gave him much hope. Many senior Tories suspected he was all surface/no substance, that his privileged background was too great a break with his grammar-school graduate predecessors and a throwback to the Old Etonian school of Toryism; they thought he was too closely modelled on Blair to convince either the electorate or party activists out in the Shires, that he seemed too focused on gimmicks to court favour – remember him hugging a hoodie in a desperate attempt to refute posh-boy accusations or cycling to the Commons and sledging with huskies to emphasise his Green credentials?
When ‘Call me Dave’ had his inaugural opportunity to show the country what he was made of, however, timing appeared to be on his side. The 2010 General Election was the first held after the financial crash of 2008 and with Dave’s role model having sailed off into the profitable sunset of Middle East peace-brokering and after-dinner speaking, he was up against the man many held responsible for the perilous state of the nation during his decade as Chancellor, Gordon Brown. Brown’s efforts at coming across as just-an-ordinary-bloke were even more toe-curling than Cameron’s; the dour Scotsman forcing a pained smile for ‘the kids’ on YouTube or committing endless public gaffes that eventually culminated in Bigoted Woman-Gate were testament to his utter ineptitude at mastering PR in a 24-hour media age that seemed to prize this aspect of the job higher than ever before.
Yet, come the first-ever TV leader’s debate, Cameron fluffed his big chance and was upstaged by an unexpected show-stealing performance from Nick Clegg. The inconclusive result of the Election, when Dave couldn’t even comprehensively trounce a PM as incompetent as Brown, vindicated the belief of his critics that he wasn’t up to the job; that he then had to call on the Lib Dems to shore up his fragile administration, something that would leave his hands tied by compromise for five years, was seen as further proof of his weakness as a leader. And it didn’t take long before Cameron’s judgement at No.10 came into question, particularly with regards to the company he kept.
The appointment of ex-News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his Director of Propaganda – sorry, Communications – raised a few eyebrows, providing one of the Digger’s former top dogs with a £140,000-a-year mega-Spad position at the heart of Cameron’s Camelot. Already tarred with the hacking brush, rumours of Coulson’s role at News International’s dirty tricks department soon resurfaced along with fresh hacking allegations and he quit his Downing Street post after barely six months in the job. Coulson’s dubious presence at No.10 shone an unflattering light on the so-called Chipping Norton set, an elite clique of media movers and shakers who happened to be Dave’s neighbours and dinner party regulars. Prominent members of this network included ‘Top Gear’ gobshite Jeremy Clarkson, Blur bassist and celebrity cheese-maker Alex James, and heir apparent to the Murdoch hot-seat, Rebekah Brooks.
When the Hacking Scandal broke in the summer of 2011, the PM was implicated by association and sought to distance himself from embarrassing revelations of horseback jaunts and text messages sent to Brooks that were revealed when she was in the dock. Despite Ed Miliband momentarily having the upper hand over Cameron in the Commons during the height of the affair, Dave somehow survived. A slow upturn in the economy and the failure of Labour to take full advantage of the unpopularity of the Coalition enabled him to ride out the storm. The prospect of Dave addressing the nation and declaring ‘I have never been a quitter’ before falling on his sword was something that was never going to happen, regardless of the best efforts of the conspiracy king, Billy ‘Wanker Watson’ Bunter. Four years on from Hack Gate, Brooks is back on the Murdoch payroll and Cameron is still Prime Minister.
Dave’s poor judgement where Coulson and (especially) Brooks were concerned was probably spared more critical scrutiny by the fact that he hadn’t been the first PM to be in thrall to the Pre-Raphaelite Cruella; Tony Blair was arguably even closer to her, so Cameron’s unwise intimacy was hardly unique. Ed Miliband’s inability to maintain the brief popularity that came with his exploitation of Dave’s ill-advised circle of friends also assisted his opponent’s recovery once the dust had settled. Even the disgruntled Tories flocking to UKIP in the run-up to this year’s General Election didn’t do any real damage come polling day, nor did Cameron’s endorsement of issues such as gay marriage, which divided his party like few subjects other than Europe in his first term.
And now we have the embarrassing indignity of ritualistic university larks – whether true or porkies – making headlines following the serialisation of Lord Ashcroft’s biography of the PM. The Daily Mail may distrust Dave, but not as much as they distrusted Miliband and certainly not as much as they despise Corbyn. And, in many respects, this is the continuous luck of the draw as far as Cameron is concerned. Osborne, Boris and May might be jostling for the job once Dave decides to vacate No.10 before completing a second term, but will they share the same fortunate conditions that have enabled Cameron to cling to power – a weak opposition, a favourable economic climate, an apathetic electorate?
Other than being accused of paedophilic tendencies, it’s hard to see what could cause Cameron to leave office prematurely. He seems able to withstand any criticism, any revelation and any error of judgement because, outside of a handful of adolescent Corbyn groupies, nobody appears to be that bothered. A shrug of the collective shoulders seems the most apt response to a PM who excels in modest mediocrity and admits he’s not a deeply ideological person. So, he once allegedly stuck his honourable member in the orifice of a dead pig? Unless necrophiliac bestiality is reclassified as a historical sex crime, there’s no real reason why even that shouldn’t wash over him. Each era gets the leader it deserves.
Petunia Winegum
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September 24, 2015 at 9:14 am -
I’d like to see your analysis extended to Cameron’s choices of ministers. His cabinet contains some fairly incompetent chancers and a few who, in a now long ago age of probity, would perhaps have had their collars felt.
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September 24, 2015 at 9:25 am -
I do like the Boar Back Mountain photoshop.
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September 24, 2015 at 10:21 am -
I stumbled upon that one and decided to use it once I’d recovered my composure. Whoever put it together deserves a medal.
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September 24, 2015 at 10:41 am -
Whoever put it together deserves a medallion
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September 24, 2015 at 1:00 pm -
You just trotter them out, don’t you.
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September 24, 2015 at 9:30 am -
Great analysis PW. I too love the photoshop.
“Whether true or porkies” – That’s naughty…but very good-
September 24, 2015 at 10:21 am -
Yes, couldn’t resist slipping that one in!
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September 24, 2015 at 11:51 am -
That’s the same problem Cameron had with the pig, allegedly.
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September 24, 2015 at 4:02 pm -
Naughty, but nice…
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September 24, 2015 at 9:34 am -
Yes, he does seem to have the luck of the devil – Corbyn may prove to be just such another.
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September 24, 2015 at 9:39 am -
Re the pic-Germans have a saying “Ich glaub, mein Schwein pfeift!” lit “I believe my pig is whistling” which means something like ‘ blow me down’ (perhaps ‘blow me’ is an unfortunate choice of phrase considering which porcine orifice he …)
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September 24, 2015 at 9:52 am -
I think Cameron has learned on the job and become a moderately competent manager, which is probably what is needed nowadays. He is certainly less bad than Blair-Brown.
His policy of putting our money into support for refugees in camps in Jordan and Lebanon, rather than encouraging wholesale migration here, seems to me much better than Merkel’s.
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September 24, 2015 at 10:13 am -
I agree about Cameron’s migrant policy being a better one than Merkel’s. It does seem odd how little the media reported it until they were pretty much forced to, though. It also seems odd how little reporting there is from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, and from the North African sources of migrants. You’d think the likes of the BBC would like to investigate the root causes. They’re usually quick enough to parachute Kate Adie or Jon Simpson into war zones; why not this time?. Maybe it’s an Elf-n-Safety issue….
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September 24, 2015 at 11:53 am -
Come, come, Engineer – you know the BBC will only report it if they’ve been told by Unite or the EU to do it, t’was ever thus.
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September 24, 2015 at 12:29 pm -
I agree about Cameron’s migrant policy being a better one than Merkel’s.
As do I, at least financially if not morally, but I still think we are all missing something about Merkel’s . Someone here last night mentioned Syrian Oil and I have a sneaking suspicion there could be something to that. As much as all the evidence points to Merkel reacting to the rather noble desire of her electorate to help the refugees, I can’t help thinking she must have an agenda that goes far beyond simple mothering instinct. Like or loath her, and I am not a fan, she is to the EU what Harry is to Spooks (if Cameron would be her Ruth we might ‘get’ somewhere).
Can you imagine Caul Me Dave doing a Xmas TV speech with a broken arse/hips and not on painkillers?
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September 24, 2015 at 1:24 pm -
Not sure that oil has anything to do with it. There’d world oversupply at the moment; The Saudis decided to open the taps and flood the market to try and undercut American shale gas production. It doesn’t seem to be working, but the Saudis show no signs of slowing output. It could be that with many other fields being developed around the world, they’ve decided to cash in while they can; they know their dominance of the market is over, and OPEC is no longer the world force it was.
So – no, it ain’t to do with oil.
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September 24, 2015 at 2:05 pm -
So – no, it ain’t to do with oil.
You well be right, like I said all I have to go on is a sneaking suspicion. But i think you might be underestimating just how ‘canny’ Merkel is. Unlike our own dear ‘am I pleased to see you Pepper or is that just a sausage in my pocket’ ,Merkel (and German politicians in general) tend to think in decades not days. I know I praise Merkel’s having gotten German through Austerity but the seeds of her success were actually laid by her Labour predecessor who brought in Tory style Universal Benefit…much to his own political cost and against every socialist bone in his body and socialist in his party. Imagine JC winning the next election and appointing IDS as Minister For Poor People… I was quite shocked when I went over to Germany a few years ago and discovered there were now Food Banks, something that would have been truly unimaginable in the 90s. People didn’t starve in ‘my’ Germnay, not in a country where the Unemployed were allowed to refuse any job that paid below their social status (such was German Law in the 80s). There was a famous Ian Fleming quote about Japanese Politicians thinking ‘will this benefit Japan in a hundred years time?’, (that’s paraphrased heavily and from memory) . Germans don’t think that far ahead but certainly further than May 2019….
I don’t know how much energy Germany gets from Putin this days but I doubt Merkel considers relying on the largess of Russia a sensible long term energy policy…nor will whoever succeeds him be likely to be any more ‘reliable’. But in ,say, 15 years time when the newly formed Federal Republic Syria is handing out contracts for their Oil Wells and to rebuild their entire country’s infrastructure , they will no doubt recall St.Angela and how she opened her land and heart to them in their darkest hour. Of course they will end up giving the Oil contracts to the US, that’s the law but Germany will cream off everything else.
I seem to vaguely remember one of the ‘Arab Spring’ nations darkly hinting that those western countires that didn’t ‘help’ should not expect a slice of any cake that might follow….
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September 24, 2015 at 10:05 am -
The current ‘revelations’ by Ashcroft reflect as much on him as on Cameron. There seem to have been a few people in a position to have a fair idea of the truth saying that Ashcroft is wrong about his porcine stories, and people close to General Richards saying that Ashcroft has twisted Richards’ opinions and words into something they are not. Maybe that’s all a put-up by the Tory spin machine, but somehow the reports have the quiet ring of substance to them; the benefit of the doubt is going to Cameron because it appears that Ashcroft is having a silly petulant spat about not getting a top job in the government; why he thinks the general population would put up with a non-dom in such a position after the last decade or so’s political history of non-doms reflects rather poorly on Ashcroft’s judgement.
Prime Ministers can survive some quite serious bad publicity whilst the public think they’re doing a reasonable job – Teflon Tony was even interviewed by Police about his alleged sale of peerages whilst he was still in Number 10 – and survived, for example.
What will topple Call Me Dave? Hard to say, because in general he’s doing a fairish job (I’d put it no higher). There’s lots of things going on, though – maybe the EU referendum might not go quite how he plans it, or the Northern Ireland situation might deteriorate. We’ll only find out when we find out.
Events, dear boy, events.
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September 24, 2015 at 12:02 pm -
Your summary of PM Cameron is sound – he’s no star, being quite devoid of principles or direction, but he’s certainly proved better than would be expected of any of the alternatives. The least-bad option, in practice.
I suspect his ‘quit this term’ statement was in anticipation of the Referendum result, either way. If it’s GET OUT, then he disagrees strongly with that stance so can’t live with it: if it’s STAY IN, then whoever is PM thereafter will become utterly impotent in the face of the EU’s gleeful reaction with a deluge of unstoppable anti-UK measures, so let someone else carry that political can.
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September 24, 2015 at 10:55 am -
Thanks for the summary of premiership incumbents.
The admission attributed to Geo W Bush – “When I was young and stupid, I was young and stupid.” sums up, what is so far, mere tittle-tattle.
Another similar story is commonly attributed to Lyndon B. Johnson. Apparently he wanted to circulate a rumor attacking his opponent in a Texas election. LBJ, it’s said, wanted to spread the story that his opponent liked to have sex with barnyard animals. One of LBJ’s aides pointed out “We can’t prove he’s a pig f—-r.”
“I know that,” replied Johnson. “I just want to hear him deny it.” -
September 24, 2015 at 11:46 am -
A thought provoking essay, Petunia. My only possible quibble is the last sentence – Each era gets the leader it deserves.
Era or electorate?
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September 24, 2015 at 12:09 pm -
Bit of both, I think. But he does seem very symptomatic of the era in which we live.
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September 24, 2015 at 12:35 pm -
Which is not at all a bad era in Britain. Of course there are problems but compared to most past periods, things are muddling along quite well.
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September 24, 2015 at 5:46 pm -
Same argument applies to the television we get – in that case, the ‘selectorate’ vote with their remotes, so we get lots of X Factor, Strictly and Eastenders, we don’t get lots of prime-time World In Action, Horizon, This Week, Panorama etc. these days. And as the ‘selectors’ move further and further down-market, the food-chain of television follows them in a desperate downhill scramble for their limited attention-span viewing-figures.
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September 24, 2015 at 12:46 pm -
No mention of FPTP then which ensured that prize prat Cameron got the No 1 job on 24 % of the electorate ?
“Each era gets the leader it deserves.” A meaningless statement if ever there was one .-
September 24, 2015 at 1:01 pm -
Can you think of a leader more representative of such a vacuous, shallow and superficial culture as this one than Cameron?
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September 24, 2015 at 2:10 pm -
That’s a trick question isn’t it?
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September 24, 2015 at 1:54 pm -
The Electorate had an opportunity to change the voting system in 2011 and decided stick with FPTP.
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September 24, 2015 at 4:33 pm -
Curious that both the expenses scandal and Hackgate were actually nulabour created corruption but the boydavid and the Tories ended up smeared by them far more than nulabour. There was a very good docudrama starring Brian Cox as George the speaker, which demonstrated how the Blair Witch Project explicitly promoted MP’s to claim big, but not ask for pay-rises so that the nulabour Parliaments looked frugal.
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September 24, 2015 at 5:33 pm -
I really don’t see how expenses is a party political scandal. I really am sick of btl comments in British newspapers (of all hues) where commentators just can’t let go of their political commitments. The other side are always wrong and always the ones what did it. The reason expenses grew is because MPs themselves didn’t want to be seen to vote for their own payrises because the papers wouldn’t stop harping on about it. It was always a matter for the House as a whole and not something that can be pinned on Labour. The very low or nonexistent rises go well back into the Major years.
Anyway, Moor I am glad to see you are in favour of payrises for MPs because we do need them if we are going to attract a better class of politician than the current lot.
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September 24, 2015 at 6:01 pm -
Thatcher says she pushed through pay-rises in the teeth of internal party opposition because the Wilson/Heath years had held them back for ‘political’ reasons. She blames Wilson mostly of course.
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September 24, 2015 at 5:27 pm -
Cameron hasn’t had luck, the Telegraph, Times and DM would support pretty much anyone who is a Conservative PM (while away from the main pages the columnists still excoriate them for not being freemarket or anti-Europe enough). In fact, even a dead pig would have an easy ride as Conservative PM. I think Petunia is being far too sure about Cameron’s future success. Remember nobody back in January would have predicted Cameron as PM of a majority government in the autumn.
My reading of why he won was that many people who might have been expected to vote Labour just didn’t turn out. Miliband wasn’t offering a sufficiently different set of policies to the Conservatives (whose spending commitments Balls had signed up to!). Corbyn might well lose votes in some quarters for Labour but even the most prejudiced observer has to note that in his first week as leader 62,000 people have joined the Labour Party. There are only 47,000 UKIP and 67,000 Green members total! That is A LOT of enthusiasm and if he can turn that into campaigners on the ground in the next election it will turn into a lot of votes. Of course, he has a mountain to climb against a press that is united against him (with the sole exception perhaps of the Independent; even the Guardian loathes him) but he is a man who really has had some luck and I would bet against his winning in 2020.
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September 24, 2015 at 6:57 pm -
“My reading of why he won was that many people who might have been expected to vote Labour just didn’t turn out.”……..You are misinformed, say what you like about Milliband he actually increased the liebour vote by about 1%.
As to camoron, long may he continue his “leadership” of managed decline, he is the best recruiter for alternative parties SNP and UKIP. The limpdems are done, liebour are headed for a major schism, it will be interesting to see where those voters flee to.
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