Hitchens on Cameron (part three)

Hitchens starts with the cricket-team-and travelling-reserves that makes up the Old Etonian contingent of the Tory Front Bench. He suggests that Cameron is already thinking of burying this disproportionate presence, at least until an election is out of the way.

Then on to the failure of Cameron’s (i.e. Steve Hilton’s) “A-list”. He makes a telling point that, by promoting the potential candidates acceptable to London Metrosexuals, the Tories were actually reducing the diversity and depth of talent available. He also points out that, despite his stated support for women candidates, Cameron remains a member of White’s, which is still unisex.

So Hitchens then addresses what he calls Cameron’s “character transplant”, as evidenced by:

1. The photo-opportunity with huskies. This is contrasted with George Monbiot relating his “dismal experience” at the Tory Conference, which he found “as lively as a catacomb”. When Hitchens puts to Michael Gove the contrast between Cameron’s famous windmill, and his previous description of windfarms as “gigantic birdblenders”, Gove says this proves Cameron’s “great sense of humour”.
2. The “hug-a-hoodie” moment. This, argues Hitchens, at one stroke destroyed the Tory reputation for toughness on crime. Again, he contrasts what is acceptable at “the fashionable dinner tables of London” with the reality of life in Rockferry, Merseyside. He calls in aid no less than Frank Field, who makes a telling point that, by deserting the path of rightness, the Cameroon Tories are leaving positions open to “extremist parties defending law and justice”.

Norman Tebbit is set up to repeat his usual dislike of Cameron’s reformism, and we are moving into the peroration.

Hitchens states his essential thesis: that the Tory Party has been captured by an “ambitious cabal” possessed of “remarkably flexible views”, and this amounts to a wholesale “abandonment of party principles”.

Gove attempts to defend Cameroonery: it has “modernised the party”; modern Toryism is cautious and small-scale, committed to free enterprise and support for the family.

Hitchens is implacable in his end-note, quoting Richard Neville’s “inch of difference”. If there is only “an inch of difference” between the two main parties, then “that is where we all live”. If there is no difference, there is no choice; and when there is no choice, there is no liberty. It was worth sitting through for that dictum alone.

All this is Malcolm’s unaided and instant reading. Others may have seen something different.
However, to Malcolm, this was an involving and important piece of television. It was refreshing to see a Daily Mail rightist like Hitchens underscoring every prejudice that lefty Malcolm has about the Cameroonies.

It will be interesting to see how tomorrow’s reviewers treat the programme. Malcolm suspects it will have come too close to the bone for many. Doubtless, the egregious snake-like Steve Hilton, “the shadow leader of the opposition” and Cameron’s “Rasputin” will already have greased the relevant wheels. So expect few squeaks.

Hitchens on Cameron (part two)

It gets better.

Hitchens opens up some new ground: how Michael Howard delayed his departure to allow Cameron to establish a presence; and the significance of Steve Hilton, another PR slug, as Cameron’s Svengali.

Hitchens attributes Cameron’s progress, against the flow of Toryism, to his “membership of the media class”.

The segment closed with the promise that the third part would address Cameron’s need to reform “the elderly unloved besat that is the Tory Party”.

Hitchens on Cameron (so far)

At the end of Act One, we haven’t learned much new (though the interviewees are interesting choices). The episode at the Oxford tailors was quite delightfully hootable.

Then, the cruncher. First ad up: Volkswagen Golf, with the sound-track: They call me the great pretender. Superb!

Worth the click

Anyone who has not yet been there should take the trouble to go to Nick Robinson latest blog-entry, A close encounter.

Malcolm has never been a great fan of Robinson’s analyses, but this one works. The two anecdotes — the lift and the two-ton Cortina — are instructive of how far we have come, and why today is important for the “legacy”.

Triples all round, and a large orange-juice for “the Doctor”.

“Aarggh!” said the dictionary elf.

A tense moment when Malcolm reached page 9 of this morning’s Times (and, yes, it’s also on the web edition):

Soldiers on destress leave in Cyprus ‘beat up taxi driver’

Now there’s a sub-editor who should receive a kicking worse than the one afforded today’s duty elf.

What, apart from its ownership, is wrong with The Times these days? Where have the standards gone? Eny fule kno (see footnote) that the line could easily contain the necessary hyphen through a simple edit: “Soldiers de-stressing in Cyprus ‘beat up taxi driver’ “. This achieves the same in a handful-fewer characters. Alternatively, in the print edition, a slight cropping of the accompanying (and not particularly helpful) photograph would have allowed the use of that single extra character.

Malcolm noticed that the Catalans have a similar problem, neatly solved, with the ambiguous use of double-l. An example is the Estadi Olímpic de Montjuïc in Barcelona, which was later renamed for Lluis Companys, and is now the home of RCD Espanyol. It is, of course, also the venue for Wednesday’s Euro 2008 qualifier between up-the-road Andorra and crap England. The double-l in Lluis Companys’ name is deliberate. To reach the ground, many attenders will cross Avenguda del Paral.lel, the street at the foot of the Montjuïc, or use the El Paral.lel Metro station at the foot of the funicular. Notice in all of that the precise use of punctuation, helpfully indicating pronunciation. So the Catalans have solved a problem with the simple use of a stop.

Aside from that, Malcolm hopes that any lefty on that visit will take the time to recall just why Lluis Companys deserves to be commemorated. He was President of the Catalan Generalitat and therefore regarded as leader of the 1934 Catalan rising against the centre-right (and clericist) Second Republic. For that he received 30 years in quod. He was released when the Popular Front took power in 1936, and was Minister for the Navy. Significantly, he was the instigator of the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, bringing POUM and CNT together in an (uneasy) alliance. The full horror was yet to come …

After Franco’s victory, Companys took refuge in France. In due course, he was hoovered up by the Nazis; and in September 1940 was shipped back to Spain, along with Juan Péiro of CNT and the socialist Julián Zugazagoitia. Companys was executed in Montjuïc Castle.

Malcolm, the cataloguer-elf notes, has well-thumbed copies of Hugh Thomas, and Gerald Brenan besides the new-comer Antony Beever.

“Yes, indeed”, says Malcom, and proudly points out original Left Book Club editions of Spain in Revolt (Harry Gannes and Theodore Repard, Gollancz, 1936) and Spanish Testament (Arthur Koestler, “with an Introduction by the Duchess of Atholl”, Gollancz 1937).

And now the footnote.

Malcolm believes this much-used phrase is from Molesworth (now, delightfully, on line). What is staggering, however, is the price-tag here. More sensibly, go here.

Malcolm has a chortle:

The elves have had it easy of late. Even on his return, Malcolm was quiescent. However, things are stirring.

There was a snort of mirth as the on-line edition of the Washington Post arrived in his in-box, in particular the opening paragraph of a story by Michael D. Shear:

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a self-made billionaire, has told friends more than once that his definition of good financial planning is making sure the check to the undertaker bounces when it’s finally time to go.

Bloomberg, it should be recalled, is the 44th in the Forbes American rich list (and 94th in the world).

As for the rest of the article, suggesting that Bloomberg is looking to nominate himself as an independent candidate for the 2008 Republican election, at a personal cost of $500M, Malcolm mutters, “Norfolk enchants”. Appropriately, Malcolm notes, Bloomberg’s denial (or non-denial denial) was issued by:

Stu Loeser, Bloomberg’s press secretary.

The elves eye each other, and speculate on these cryptic comments.