The Return of The Dish-faced Faineant
Heaven Knows WE’RE Miserable Now
That was the big news this week. Not even Suella‘s strangely spoon-magnified face having its smirk temporarily displaced by being fired, followed by the most hilariously bilious, ranting “I’m not bitter” letter. Notice I don’t call it a resignation letter. You don’t get to write one of those when you’ve been fired. The only sadness is that she wasn’t fired out of a massive fucking cannon into the English Channel, arcing like a comet, burning through the air over the heads of people huddled in dinghies on the crossing.
Nor was it her replacement, James Cleverly, and his suspiciously styled beard.
No, the big political news was the casual amble back into government of David Cameron, the “captain of the great ship” who, back in 2016, steered it right into the Brexit iceberg, then toddled off whistling a jaunty little tune in the first available lifeboat to let all the underlings deal with the subsequent mess.
Now apparently, the poor chap is “a bit bored” and fancies something to do, so of course he’s been appointed Foreign Secretary by Rishi Sunak. The usual suspects in the press were pretty much coming in their pants about the theatre of the big reveal because none of them saw it coming. Sadly, all too few of them stopped to consider what that says about the state of the modern Tory party that Sunak could see absolutely no one up to the job, and had to drag this political corpse out of the grave to confound the circling Westminster vultures. On Monday, Cameron will assume a place in the Lords as Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton¹. Surprising it may be, but reading the room is not Rishi’s strong point. Cameron is not popular. In the frothing maelstrom of the mad as a fish Tory right, he is seen as not being a true believer. There isn’t really a moderate Parliamentary Tory party to talk about, so it’s hard to know what those hypothetical MPs would make of him now. But outside, out in the actual country, reaction wasn’t what you might call enthusiastic. It’s hard to call it a master stroke when reaction has varied between incredulous laughter, contempt, and (lots of) swearing.
Before those same lobby hacks get too caught up in all the psychodrama of the ongoing Titanic musical deckchairs they may wish to consider that this week, the Cumbrian coroner wrote to the DWP expressing serious concerns about the Universal Credit regime, and its all too heavy human cost. And then they might care to ask themselves whence came the foundations for this kind of dehumanising, and literally lethal, policy. Or rather, they might ask themselves from whom it came. David Cameron, and his partner in crime/Chancellor (delete as appropriate), George Osborne, were the original architects of an ideological programme of austerity that has, over thirteen years, done quite horrific damage to every corner of public life. It is a programme that has eroded every part of the social contract that has held together so much of what many of us thought made this country civilised. It has exposed an increasingly insular, narrow and inward-looking political class to power at a time when we have needed precisely the opposite. It has resulted in crumbling public services, eye-watering social and economic inequality, and a way of doing politics that seems to think that the law or due process is a minor inconvenience to the predations of the powerful and the privileged. But not content with grinding the heel of his doubtless elegantly handstitched shoes into the throats of the poorest and most vulnerable, he also managed to poison the well that feeds the political underpinnings of the United Kingdom during the Scottish Independence referendum (remember that, all those years ago?).
And then, and then … 2016.
There is little in his time as Prime Minster that sticks in the mind as positive², but so much that marks him as an abject failure. Worse yet, he created the conditions for the frankly lunatic wing of his own party to hi-jack it, and impose economic sanctions on its own nation. What did he do? He shuffled away to a comfortable consequence-free retirement, which showed that his judgement hadn’t improved all that much there either (see Greensill).
This is the man that Sunak has brought back into the tent. Apparently, there are suggestions of “unfinished business”, and a man who supposedly wants to be remembered for more than starting the process that led to the Charge of the Shite Brigade over the Brexit cliff. Cameron’s major political failure was indeed Brexit, but all the failures piling up around it make for pitiful reading. His appointment shows a lack of energy, a lack of talent, a lack of ideas, and a lack of will. But it’s the cosy entitlement of his popping back for a peerage to do a job he’d “quite fancied” at some point, whether he was good enough to do it or not³, that really sticks in the craw. Leadership and statecraft in the modern world are not hobbies, nor are they the fallback of the idle wealthy to play at when they tire of the golf course, and the lecture circuit. But they are seemingly the leaders we are lumbered with for now.
¹ Because of course he fucking will. Where else could it have been?
² Civil Partnerships, perhaps.
³ q.v. Johnson, the man who got to be the “World King” he’d always wanted to be, only for everyone to realise (even if he didn’t) that he was utterly fucking useless at it, to our collective cost. There’s Eton amd its bulletproof “can-do” confidence for you.
