Of Cameron and Class

Peter Hitchens writes:

Mr Cameron and I are reasonably civil to each other when we meet - though he has called me a 'maniac' at a Tory gathering in an Oxfordshire church, and bellowed sarcastically at me as our bikes whizzed past each other in Kensington Gardens (his exact words were "Very fair programme!" a response to my Channel Four study of him. Alas, there wasn't time to stop and point out that a) it wasn't meant to be fair and b) he turned down my repeated requests for an interview).

I suspect that if he were not leader of the Tory Party we would get on just fine, if we ever had any reason to meet.

For my lower-upper-middle-class, suburban, minor public school background is probably about as remote from his Etonian, Bullingdon milieu as it's possible to get.

Our class system builds its highest barriers not between aristocracy and farmworker, who tend to get on quite well, or even between businessman and wageslave, who barely meet, but between different, but close, grades of the middle class, who snub and mock each other mercilessly.

I think the Etonian view of politics, in which they regard themselves as entitled to govern, and willing to do practically anything for office, has a lot to do with the bottomless cynicism of the Cameroon project.

The Tory Party would guillotine the Queen and give Gibraltar to Spain, if they thought it would get them into office. If not, they wouldn't.

They wouldn't expect any hard feelings either way. Look at the way they betrayed Zimbabwe into the hands of Robert Mugabe, and the way they abandoned the House of Lords.

The rest of us are bit more concerned about the country.

Anthony Blair, whom I knew slightly before he was famous, was much more at my sort of level, which (I must admit) is one of the many reasons I found it so hilariously absurd when he became leader of the Labour Party and worrying when he became Prime Minister.

He's virtually impossible to dislike, but easy to scorn.

Speak for yourself on that last point, Peter. Easy to scorn, yes...