No ties, please, we’re Tory!
Cameron & Osborne have launched a takeover bid for the venerable but long-ailing retailer, the Conservative party. The bid will apparently be vigorously contested.
The Conservative party’s more aged shareholders are opposed. But so are quite a few younger MPs, including plenty from the new intake, who at first glance might have been for the bid. It seems, among politicians, generations do not invariably vote for one another. Seeking some idea of Cameron & Osborne’s ‘corporate vision’, I visited the firm’s showcase Notting Hill branch.
By chance, it happened that my visit coincided with a tour of inspection from the two heads of the firm themselves no less. There, examining merchandise, customers but above all staff, were Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne. Seeking to pass myself off as a mere customer, I hovered as close as possible to the two business legends in the hope of overhearing their less inhibited exchanges. I picked up both of them amusingly referring to the Conservative party’s senior staff as ‘boring old bedblockers’ whose continued presence in the party, Mr Cameron said, had restored his faith in euthanasia.
Both Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne seemed to know their Notting Hill staff by name. Seeing me hovering in menswear, Mr Osborne snapped, ‘I think this gentleman would like to be served, Boris.’ I asked the latter if I could see some ties. This genial salesman explained that to help Conservatives who might appear on television, C&O did not sell ties. ‘What I meant,’ I explained, ‘was that I would like to see your ties to the Conservative party.’ Mr Cameron overheard. ‘I’ll handle this, Boris,’ he announced, with an air of command. ‘Well, sir,’ he explained to me, ‘company policy is to have no ties to the Conservative party. We just want to take it over. We see the Conservative party as having a problem with its brand. Customers think it’s full of Conservatives. I realise that that’s unfair to it. There are plenty of people in the Conservative party who do their best to make it clear to their customers that they have nothing to do with the Conservatives, but how else were they to find safe seats having failed to jump on the Blair bandwagon in the mid-1990s?’ ‘Er, people like whom?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ he replied, ‘like me, for instance. No one thinks I’m a Tory. I’m so nice and liberal. Admittedly, there’s a bit of a problem with George. Some customers seem to think he’s Tory Boy. That’s jolly hard on him. He can’t help his face or, rather, the expression that sometimes turns up on it. But there’s nothing that a few beatings from Gordon Brown couldn’t wipe off his clock.’ This caused me to observe, ‘The experts say that the economy won’t be all that marvellous in the near future. So what if Mr Osborne hands out a few beatings to Mr Brown?’ Mr Cameron replied, ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Neither has anyone else except, of course, George.’ I changed the subject by asking whether the Notting Hill branch sold tax cuts and, if so, could I see one? ‘Ah, you’ll want our Mr Letwin,’ Mr Cameron said. ‘Boris, call Mr Letwin over, will you?’ This Mr Letwin arrived and showed me a tax cut.
‘Do you have a bigger one?’ I asked.
Mr Letwin: ‘This is the biggest we do, sir.’ Me: ‘But it’s tiny. It’s the same one you were selling in the election. No one noticed it then.’ Mr Letwin: ‘Exactly. It’s a modernised tax cut, sir. Unobtrusive. It’s designed to fit on to the middle ground. In that way, we will not need so many Conservative votes. Liberal Democrat votes will do.’ I seemed to remember that in the election the Liberal Democrats did not do as well against the Conservatives as they had expected, and that the Liberal Democrats’ taxation proposals might have had something to do with it. But these top C&O people seemed to know their business. In any case, I was beginning to gain the impression that I was not one of Cameron & Osborne’s target customers, which impression was reinforced by Mr Osborne’s asking Mr Letwin what he was doing wasting the firm’s time on a loser like me. Mr Osborne shouted, ‘Get it into your head, Ollie, we can no longer be the nasty party!’ I fled.
Then, in the Mail on Sunday, I read an account of Mr Osborne’s membership, at Oxford, of the Bullingdon: ‘A violent drinking club, notorious for its brawling and wanton vandalism of pubs and restaurants. .. . banned from meeting within a 15-mile radius of Oxford after one debauched night out where members smashed 500 windows.’ The article mentioned another night when the group visited L’Ortolan, a Michelinstarred restaurant where the bizarre spectacle was watched by comedian Lenny Henry, who lived nearby and was a regular at the restaurant. According to one account, some of the group were rude to the black television star.
The paper presumably asked Mr Osborne to comment, because he strenuously denied any rudeness to Mr Henry. It was the only aspect of the article which Mr Osborne denied. It seems that causing trouble for some restaurant which a load of plebeian Latin waiters relied on for their living was one thing. But politically incorrect rudeness to a black celebrity was a serious accusation against a shadow chancellor trying to make the Conservative party acceptable to the civilised. What would the party’s future be without these modernisers?
Concerning that Notting Hill set, a geographical-social observation: some of those connected with it seem to have become worried about being thus identified. The set has become the object of opposition and, as far as one understands it, modernisation is designed to avoid opposition at all costs. ‘I don’t even live in Notting Hill,’ one of the set assured me. ‘I live in Bayswater.’ But, like the Oxford movement, the Bloomsbury group and the late 1950s Gaitskellite Frognal set of Labour modernisers, the Notting Hill set is a social, not a geographical, idea. It suggests a certain type of person and way of life. If Mr Cameron or one of the other politicians linked to it becomes a successful Tory leader, many of those worried about being likewise linked will be only too pleased to emphasise their early membership. Their present worry is that the set might be becoming unpopular or on the losing side in the present leadership struggle. But, above all, set members who deny its existence spoil the fun.
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