Cameron & Ashcroft
Today’s allegations in the Mail are completely tedious in almost all aspects yet are interesting in one.
Frankly if you’ve gone this long thinking that David Cameron had any shred of humanity there’s no helping you. The 2010–15 Con-Dem coalition was plenty vicious and immediately after winning a majority in May the first thing the Tories did was to screw over deaf and blind people starting work. The day after the vote. These people have no shame and are solely concerned with the interests of their class.
Which is what makes this interesting. Billionaire tax-dodger Michael Ashcroft, the Tories’ former top donor, and the class-warriors at the Mail know full well that their interests are best served by a Tory government. Ashcroft may well feel snubbed at not getting a cabinet job but with £1 billion in the bank there’s plenty he could to do keep himself occupied.
I think this attack on Cameron is meant to make his replacement as Tory leader more palatable. None of the top Tories seem human and they must know it. Boris “three jobs” Johnson, for instance, is known to have been a member of the Bullingdon Club and has admitted taking drugs. (He’s also quite a vicious rightwinger with a tendency to get nasty when challenged, but let’s stick to perceptions.) By painting Cameron as a complete degenerate — a drug-addled ultra-posh pervert who hates ordinary folk — suddenly Johnson (or whichever pretender) seems a lot more acceptable.
Ashcroft’s co-author Isabel Oakeshott made clear to the BBC that publishing the book after the election was done to protect the party. Again: this tax-dodging billionaire knows exactly who his mates are and wants them to stay in charge. It’s just that Cameron’s through and the Tories are suddenly faced with a Labour Party led by a decent human being with decent policies.
Bumping off Cameron and replacing him with someone who’s not seen to be a disgusting pervert who despises the working class (the bigger challenge) is — along with the continuing barrage of media lies against Jeremy Corbyn — the only way to challenge that.