You Couldn't Ask For A Clearer One

Peter Hitchens writes:

I am surprised to see David Cameron personally getting involved in the row about whether Gordon Brown grabs people by the lapels and snarls: ‘They're trying to get me!’ (How deeply unoriginal, if so. Does anyone, even Mr Brown, actually talk like this?) Mr Cameron is calling grandly for an 'inquiry', as if Mr Brown had started a war, though he knows perfectly well that the allegations don't merit anything of the kind. He is also - as usual - calling for a general election which he knows perfectly well is already under way. What does this mean? Will we have a choice between swearing and non-swearing, lapel-grabbing and non-lapel-grabbing politicians? Does the party divide encompass this issue? When did that happen? How will it be phrased? I look forward to the paragraph in the Tory manifesto, and the instant sackings of all who breach the new code. Honestly.

What's really surprising is his direct involvement in a distinctly second-grade matter. Leaders of the Opposition usually float above cat-fights of this kind, leaving them to underlings who don't have to worry about gravitas and grandeur. What will happen if someone summons up the wit to ask Mr Cameron the following question: ‘Have you ever sworn at a subordinate? Have you ever kicked or hit the furniture in frustration?’

I imagine, even now, that someone with connections to the Labour machine is trawling among former and present colleagues for any rumours about Mr Cameron's behaviour towards underlings. Will some anti-Bullying helpline discover that it has had complaints against a senior Tory or two? It's a risk I wouldn't have taken, in his shoes - because if we're in the business of unsupported and anonymous allegations (and we are) there's no real certainty of what might now be said.

As for me, the whole thing makes me want to lie down in a darkened room with a cold compress, and weep. Is this what politics has come to? If Mr Brown were a good Prime Minister, his personal behaviour would be overlooked. If he is a bad Prime Minister, then it is his failings in the job - and the political reasons for them - that need to be discussed.

But we can't take that route because politics are dead in this country. Mr Cameron can't attack Mr Brown on any major policy, because he agrees with Mr Brown.

Worse, the public have been invited to loathe Gordon Brown, in the hope that his strong negative charisma will make up for David Cameron's lack of true star quality, and waft the Tories into office even though nobody much fancies them.

New readers should note here that I criticised Mr Brown, as a politician and as a Chancellor, when it was virtually taboo to do so, and when the (now Tory) Sun newspaper was at his feet, polishing his toecaps with its tongue. Mr Brown, apart from being rude and dismissive to me at press conferences, has never spoken to me, and I have been given good reason to believe that he is not willing to be in the same room as me. So I am not a defender of him as a politician, and I am not in any way his friend.

But I think the wave of personalised loathing directed against him is ridiculous and faintly sinister. No human being could be that bad, and my guess has always been that those who now rave and rage against him as if he were evil incarnate were those who were fooled by Mr Blair, and are now angry with themselves for being fooled. So they take it out on Mr Brown. There's another element, even more dispiriting. In this soap opera culture, there are people who would rather have a Prime Minister who can't read than a Prime Minister who can't smile. So they preferred Mr Blair to Mr Brown.

Then there's the other thing. These revelations, if they have any political effect at all, will damage Labour and help the Tories. Yet the journalist involved, Andrew Rawnsley, is famously sympathetic to New Labour. If you wanted confirmation of my contention - that David Cameron's Tories are the reincarnation of Blairism - you couldn't ask for a clearer one.