“We can’t go on like this”, but we did, and it got worse. David Cameron is a cheap imitation of Benjamin Disraeli, a man whom David Willetts models himself on mysteriously. The problem is that ‘Call me Disraeli’ Dave shares none of the best of him, and possibly in fact the worst of him.
As a young man, Disraeli was disreputable, a dandy, a scoundrel and had dodgy friends. There’s a notion in politics that you can tell a person by the company he keeps – as Kevin Maguire opined, you wouldn’t want ‘to be in it together’ with somebody arrested for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Cameron has a rich heritage of people whom the media might label as “dodgy buddies”, including Peter Cruddas, Andy Coulson, Rebekah Brooks, Chris Huhne and Adam Werrity, to name just a few, and all innocent until proven guilty (if at all.) We’ve of course been here before with a sense of corruption of sleaze. “A corrupt parliament; an unprincipled government; an economy sinking under a mountain of debt – and a people enraged” is the description to be found within in “Rural Rides”, which the radical journalist William Cobbett began writing in 1822 and published in 1830 portrayed a country groaning under the twin burdens of debt and sleaze. Of course, this government which wished to cure the deficit and impose swingeing cuts has actually seen the deficit and borrowing explode during this year because of the complete lack of growth (itself a direct result of the throttling of infrastructure investment in the UK). Cameron has attempted to articulate an argument that whilst these activities are immoral as such no laws cover them, which is clearly an argument which he has had to abort as we have very strong laws on phone hacking and criminal fraud. One is mindful of the Disraeli quotation, “”When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.”
The Tories needed a story to tell with Disraeli, as they had not won an election for two decades. The best narrative that David Cameron could write is ‘The Big Society’, but with the departure of Steve Hilton, Andy Coulson, and Nat Wei, this is effectively dead. This is a narrative which has so many relaunches any further attempt to explain the concept would now be seen as a sick joke. The deficit narrative has also run into the buffers, with most sage economists now predicting that as a direct result of the Coalition’s policies the UK cannot expect to experience growth in GDP until 2018 at the earliest. If you had to identify the most spectacular failing of Cameron’s Britain, however, it is arguably how ‘one nation Toryism’ has been an overwhelming failure. This is not only a country which is not at ease with itself – it is reputed that many people on council estates in Paisley have never heard of Cameron – but we have a capital city in England, London, which has social, cultural and ideological rock-solid partitions. This is partly because the City has allowed itself to award itself massive bonuses, while the sick, disabled and disadvantages feel that they are picking up the cost of the City’s ‘mistakes’. The term ‘one nation Toryism’ derives indirectly from one of Disraeli’s political novels, “Sybil, or The Two Nations” in which he described Britain as “Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets: the rich and the poor.” Cameron has tried to embark on a policy of ‘divide-and-rule’, but has ended up with a situation of ‘divide-and-unable-to-rule’ as a result of a sense of ‘it’s hurting and it’s not working’ – as Owen Jones pointed out in NetrootsUK last week this is a Government which has pitched the disabled against the non-disabled, the rich against the poor, the old against the young, those on benefits against those without, unemployed against those in work – the list just goes on, but it is entirely reminiscent of how Thatcher began to lose the popular support of Britain in the late 1980s, by picking off various areas of society which hated her policies.
Disraeli was able to put together a government programme to outmanoeuvre Gladstone, succeeding triumphantly in making Liberals look small and insignificant. Maybe Nick Clegg will make a comeback – never say never? He was also ‘master of the putdown’ – while these days we have to make do with the Michael Winner-esque ‘Calm down dear’ to Angela Eagle, which reeks of obnoxious arrogant élitist Bullingdon ‘Flashman behaviour’, Disraeli was able to demonstrate some elegance. For example, in response to a man who asked Disraeli “What is the difference between a misfortune and a calamity?” cited in Wilfrid Meynell, Benjamin Disraeli: An Unconventional Biography (1903), p. 146, Disraeli said, “If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune; and if anybody pulled him out, that, I suppose, would be a calamity.” According to Peter Oborne, written at the time of the Coalition discussions, Disraeli was able to act with immense political audacity for example, “in 1867, he trumped the timid proposals of Gladstone’s Liberal party by unveiling his much more radical proposals for voter enfranchisement through the Second Reform Act”.
In this Olympic year, David Cameron would like to capture ‘a national mood’, but the national mood is one that which strongly resents a failed economic policy culminating in a recession and Cameron’s perceived affiliation with corrupt crony corporatilist Britain. It was Disraeli who grasped that ‘jingoism’ – an explosive cocktail of popular patriotism and imperial expansionism – could win new voters among newly enfranchised groups such as artisans, skilled workers and shopkeepers: the Essex Men of the Victorian era, or the Andy Coulsons of the modern era. Cameron is obviously totally unable to pursue an expansionist foreign policy, not least as he cannot afford an army, but Disraeli is commonly viewed as the great pro-active imperialist who hoped to unite the classes under the banner of Empire. Such an attitude might be possibly seen as justified in the light of his glorious rhetoric, exemplified in the Manchester and Crystal Palace speeches of 1872. It is only fitting that images of Cameron at the Wimbledon final are beamed around the world by the Tory-led BBC; certainly makes a nice change of detailed coverage of the riots.
The economic fortunes of Britain worsened under Disraeli, and there was no resolution to the war in Afghanistan. Sound familiar? Disraeli was concerned also about Russia’s advance into Turkistan and Samarkand, which had led to British involvement in Afghanistan. Disraeli pressed British authorities in India to secure a defense against Russian expansion into Afghanistan. Eventually, the British decided where Afghanistan’s borders would be – borders that would, in fact, eventually be recognised by the Russians and remain into the 21st century. In summary, all of this is tragic and pitiful. Rest assured Cameron will be going into the history books, not least for having dismantled the National Health Service, shutting the libraries, taking disabled citizens off their benefits, and overseeing a disastrous economic policy. It has also succeeded in possibly surpassing the immoral repugnant nature of Thatcher’s government. You’re right David – “we can’t go on like this”. May 8th 2015 can’t come soon enough for me.
