THE MAN WHO WOULD BE DAVE

At the Funeral this Wednesday for Mrs Thatcher Mr Cameron, The Prime Minister will be delivering a biblical reading,[1] all the time knowing in his heart that the woman that he is eulogising despised him.[2] As her shadow falls over the contemporary political scene he is also aware that old wounds have been re-opened and as the followers of the Thatcher Cult look around for a human sacrifice, he is aware that he is falling increasingly into their sights. The man who has never won an election must stand in the shadows of the vitriolic ideologue who won three.
It is all such a long way from huskies in the Antarctic, hug a hoodie and “call me Dave.” He must sigh and look back on those days with increasing fondness; simpler happier times, when his enemy was Gordon Brown and an increasingly unpopular Labour Party. Now he has to confront, not a flesh and blood political opponent, but a myth, with the added impediment of not appearing to fight.
The days when he could appear in soft focus and speak in broadly liberal tones are gone. It was always an affectation, putting away the Etonian top hat, the Bullingdon club[3] membership card and aristocratic connections; he could be ‘Dave,’ your neighbour from across the street. It was a pose that was always going to be difficult to keep up, though he believed it essential if the Tories were to continue to detoxify the brand.
Now the ‘Nasty Party,’ is back; the mask slips with his ‘welfare reforms’ and he stands in the pulpit, no longer Dave, but the despised politician Cameron, living in the shadow of the Thatcher myth, hostage to his own right wing, in his heart of hearts he knows that no politician can do battle with a myth, he is doomed to fail; ‘No longer glad confident morning again!’

Another person is being buried on Wednesday, it is Dave. I can’t say he’ll be much missed.


[1] Perhaps I could suggest Isaiah 13:11  ‘I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless.’
 
[2] Though he need not take this too much to heart, she despised the majority of her predecessors, and all those who followed her into the office, and held the majority of her cabinet in contempt. With the modesty that so characterised her premiership she felt that in reality she was the only one truly up to the job.
[3] The Bullingdon Club is a socially exclusive student dining club  at Oxford University Oxford University, without any permanent rooms, infamous for its members' wealth and destructive binges. Membership is by invitation only, and prohibitively expensive for most, given the need to pay for the uniform, dinners and damages.




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