Young Rory Weal does seem to have rather more idealistic reasons for joining the Labour Party in the Lower Sixth than I had. People who have known me a long time maintain that I was never a youthful idealist, nor indeed youthful in anything else apart from the everlasting springtime that is my countenance.
However, do not be too taken in. The boy had clearly been picked out and trained up, because that is what they do. They had dressed him up as a SpAd, even complete with a red tie over a white shirt, although someone really should have told him to straighten that tie.
And he repeatedly referred to the Government as "Tory-led", a form of dog-whistling in which only the apparatchiki ever engage. So, while I have no doubt that he believed every word of that speech and that he had indeed contributed a great deal of information to it, nevertheless it was equally obvious that he himself had not written it.
He should go far.
It seems from the press that he also referred to the government as 'right-wing', which it certainly isn't.
ReplyDeleteNice boy. Physically attractive, politically less so.
He's from Kent, so he won't be a governor of both his old primary school and his old comprehensive school before he has left university. More idealistic reasons, as you say.
ReplyDeleteHe's from Kent, so he won't be at a comprehensive school.
ReplyDeleteOh come on! Young politicos such as that are all achingly on message, and it's well known that "Tory led govt" is a key attack line (it's all over the media) and shadow cabinet ministers say it all the time. All the guy was doing was repeating faithfully what he's heard. Like all the young Toriy boys do. It doesn't follow at all it was written for him
ReplyDelete"Young politicos such as that are all achingly on message"
ReplyDeleteI wasn't...
And dare I say it, that's why you didn't get very far
ReplyDeleteOh, I got a lot more out of them than they ever got out of me.
ReplyDeleteI would have had a District Council seat as well, but instead they gave the nomination to the then MP's then office boy (who failed to be elected, taking a local elder statesman down with him), so that he could use the seat as a base from which to make himself his boss's successor.
But it didn't quite work out. On all sorts of levels...