All the furore over David Cameron’s Flasham routines at question time in the House of Commons ignores the fact that the Prime Minister’s first claim to fame was his ability to write punchy one-line political put downs.
And despite criticism of his bullying manner and chauvinistic use of Michael Winner’s jibe “Calm down, dear, calm down” against the Labour MP Angela Eagle, it is quite apparent that Cameron cannot resist putting the boot in and raising a laugh.
His latest rebuke to Ed Miliband, telling House that the Opposition leader’s disastrous prediction of a Labour fight back in Scotland “rather reminds me of Eddie the Eagle” (11.5.2010), was the kind of taunt he used to conjure up twenty years ago when helping to shore up his embattled Conservative predecessor John Major.
Cameron’s ability to think up amusing asides is strengthened by his ability to deliver them with aplomb. But he does need to temper the baying, aggressive tone which he has adopted of late and re-engage the self-deprecating manner which he deployed so astutely when fighting for the leadership of the Conservative Party.
Cameron has admitted that he is easily riled by the noise and abuse which he has to put up with when answering Prime Minister’s questions. “When I became Leader of the Opposition I said it was going to be different...I conceded defeat over ending Punch and Judy politics years...I have failed, I admit that...But I have to forget the noise of people shouting at me and concentrate on the argument”.
Nonetheless he insisted in an interview with John Humphrys (Today, 3.5.2011) that he still thought MPs should show “a sense of humour” and enjoy the “odd humorous aside”. However, there is a dividing line between a jokey put-down and remarks which offend women because of their sexist and patronising nature.
Cameron has only himself to blame if he needlessly fuels the “Tory Toff” image and allows Miliband to characterise the Prime Minister as Flashman, the bullying cad from Tom Brown’s Schooldays.
Cameron’s winning ways in being able to shelter behind self-deprecating one-liners stood him in good stead when he was campaigning for the leadership. Barbed comments about having been to Eton and Oxford were rebutted with easy-going political repartee:
“Yes, I know I have this terrible CV...Conservatives judge people on their merits, not from where you come from but where you are going to, so that should apply to Old Etonians as well as everybody else”.
Cameron started work for the Conservative Party’s research department in 1988 at the impressionable age of twenty-two, straight from Brasenose College with a first in politics, philosophy and economics, and he made his mark identifying punchy responses which could be fed to John Major when he was up against the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock at question time.
Much of Cameron’s time was spent reading the texts of speeches and interviews given by Labour politicians as he hunted for embarrassing quotes or slip-ups which could be used when attacking the Opposition. By scanning the papers each week he was able to work out the likely questions and then had to ‘think of killer facts and snappy one-liners”.
Sketch writers praised Major’s deployment of “timely anti-Labour ammunition” and Cameron was soon identified as the “extremely ambitious politico” who had become the Prime Minister’s “razor-sharp script man”.
Given that he was up against such a fleet-of-foot politician, John Humphrys should have polished up his knowledge of the alternative vote system to avoid the risk of tripping himself up when he interviewing Cameron ahead of the May referendum.
When Humphrys made not one but two mistakes, Cameron was ready with some unbeatable one-liners: “I find this staggering. You are the lead broadcaster of the BBC and you do not understand the alternative vote...you think our system isn’t used anywhere else in the world... you have got to change your briefer, John, you must change your briefer”.
Cameron knew just how to hit below the belt by suggesting that the Today presenter was too grand to do his own research and was simply reading out questions drawn up by a briefer who had also not bothered to get to grips with the subject.
12.5.2011 END.