It didn’t occur to Cameron that White Van Man might be trying to pat him on the back
Ah, the chaos there must have been on Planet Cameron every time that Dylan Jones was due for another chat. The editor of GQ writing a book about their man. Which anecdotes to tell? Which to leave out? The tension! The half-drunk Innocent smoothies! The halfsmoked Marlboro Lights! He’s not Piers Morgan, but nobody wants to drop a Clegg.
Flunkies in panic. ‘Samantha being a Goth! That’s got to go in! It’s edgy, it’s funny, it suggests you might have pulled a wild one. Grrr! And that teenage stuff about meeting Mick Jagger. Very humble, very Blair. And also, ooh I know, Dave, how about that time when that bloke in the white van tried to knock you off your bike? It’s the Broken Society, innit? Your big thing. Thugs! Hoodies! That geezer wanted you dead!’ Etc. ‘I slowed down and sort of pulled in behind a line of parked cars,’ is how the latter appears, as only one of, presumably, many thrilling bicycling stories in Jones’s Cameron on Cameron. ‘As this van drove by this hand came out and just bashed me in the back, with the aim of pushing me in front of the car. Luckily I managed to put the brakes on.’ It’s a good story. And bang on spec, too. The streetwise Tory. He gets around, green, but he knows it’s dodgy out there. It’s the Broken Society. Can he fix it? Yes he can.
The thing is, I wonder if there hasn’t been a misunderstanding. For I, too, have bicycling anecdotes. Here’s one. It was 13 years ago, and I was sluicing through Cambridge on my way to a lecture. Speeding down Silver Street, with my flares flapping and my ponytail streaming in the wind (for I used to be almost as cool as Mr Cameron’s wife), I caught sight of my friend Adam. He was shambling happily down the pavement in the opposite direction, reading a book.
Being, now I think about it, possibly a bit of an arsehole, I decided it would be funny to kick the book from Adam’s hand. So I sped up a little, put the weight of the bike one way and the weight of my body the other. Then, as I passed, I straightened my knee. Like a ninja.
Although not a very good ninja. I’m not sure exactly what I hit, because when I asked Adam later he was inclined to be a little shirty. It was either his belly or somewhere below. Either way, when I looked back over my shoulder he was lying on the pavement, bent double in bewildered pain, with no idea who, or what, or why. Even by then, I was ten metres ahead. Fifteen metres, 20 metres. I was moving fast, I couldn’t stop. This was in the days before mobile phones. If I hadn’t come clean, hours later, he would never have known it was me.
Reader, this is not a confession. I did not nearly kill David Cameron. But I find myself wondering, over and over, about the man who did. I wonder if he meant to. I wonder if he even knows. And, most importantly, I wonder what it says about David Cameron, that he does not appear to have considered, even for a moment, that maybe White Van Man wasn’t trying to bash him in the back at all. Maybe he was trying to pat him on it.
White Van Man is a hard man to categorise. In west London, where Cameron was, he could be anyone. He could be Barry or Kev, shifting produce down to the market. Or he could be Crispin or Jez, moving house with Lenny, who is probably Australian. At times, I have been White Van Man. You probably have, too. Even my wife has been White Van Man. We are White Van Everyman.
Of course, he’s usually a certain type of Everyman, as widespread as Vannish tourism may be. He smokes fags, and they aren’t Marlboro Lights. He has tattoos, although they aren’t as chic and discrete as the one on Samantha’s ankle. He’s probably a bit loud, a bit noisy, a bit sexist, a bit prone to obesity and a bit binge-drinky, too. He’s an Everyman, but he’s not the Everyman that Cameron is after. He’s not an aspirational Blue Eggshell Everyman. He’s not fussed about having a nice little deli on his corner. And he doesn’t recycle. He can’t be arsed.
White Van Man voted for Thatcher, because she gave him a reason to own a van, and she gave Johnny Foreigner what for, and she was doing something about them bloody unions, too. White Van Man voted for Blair because by now he was bit richer, and because New Labour had somehow tapped into his burgeoning sense of civic pride in the Spice Girls, and football, and having an All Bar One on every markettown high street.
There has to be some reason, aside from the hopelessness of Gordon Brown, for White Van Man to vote for David Cameron. It should be the Broken Society, but I don’t think that’s going to work. You see, I’ve a hunch that David Cameron thinks White Van Man is the Broken Society. And that’s why it didn’t occur to him that White Van Man might just be patting him on the back. Because maybe, as far as David Cameron is concerned, there is absolutely no reason for White Van Man to want to.
White Van Man to White Dog Man. Or rather, Tintin. You may heard how, on the Continent, an adult, updated version of the adventures of Hergé’s famous boy reporter-detective has been withdrawn from shelves. According to the estate of Georges Remi, who was to Hergé what Eric Blair was to George Orwell, The Pink Lotus ‘perverted the essence of the personality’ of Tintin himself. In it, we apparently see Tintin as an older, unhappy, unethical tabloid hack; a borderline alcoholic and a womaniser.
This does, indeed, pervert the essence of his personality. The Tintin I loved was inseparable from a bearded sea captain, and always carrying around his tiny hound. They spent their life gallivanting around the globe, and were seemingly unhappy in the constraining embrace of home. Their only female friend is a blowsy opera singer, but they prefer the company of professors, butlers, and a pair of chaps called Thompson and Thomson who, despite being unrelated, wore the same clothes, had the same moustache, and were never seen apart. Hack, maybe. Alcoholic, possibly. Womaniser, no.
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