The natural party of Gandhi and Geldof
First, Mr Letwin became the first prominent politician since Mr Benn publicly to advocate redistribution of wealth. Then it was announced that Bob Geldof would advise the Conservatives about world poverty. Then Mr Cameron, in his New Year message to his country, invoked, with approval, Gandhi.
Mr Cameron pronounced: ‘As Gandhi said, “We must become the change we want to see in the world.”’ This is threatening to get out of hand. Plenty of us understand the game that Mr Cameron is playing, and think he has no choice but to play it. He disagrees with those on the Right who say that many of the voters who stayed out of the polling booths on the last two general election days were true Conservatives who abstained because the party was not right-wing enough. None of the three books about the 2005 election which I have so far read — there have been at least two others — confirms this.
People stayed at home for other reasons. Either they thought that the results were not in doubt and that there was no point in voting. Or there was a more ‘sociological’ explanation: the old blue-collar base of the mass electorate no longer exists, its last service to the country being to move at successive elections from Labour to Margaret Thatcher. Voting has since become a mainly middle-class activity. The middle class secure in the knowledge that union abuse of power and excessive inflation have, thanks to Mrs Thatcher, been beaten can afford to go through a liberal phase. They do not realise that the only possible definition of the redistribution of wealth is to tax the better-off and give the proceeds in one form or another to those defined as the poor. When pressed, Mr Letwin will deny it. He will say that the money will come from ‘growth’ or ‘cutting waste’ in which case it is not redistribution but simple distribution. Mr Letwin’s explanation will reinforce the middle-class assumption that his redistribution just means making the poor the beneficiaries of some unspecified source of money.
Concerning Sir Bob, the middle class assumes that his heart is in the right place. They are rather hazy about Gandhi. But there was a film about him a while ago. Disguised as Sir Ben Kingsley, he looked poor, so his heart was probably in the right place too. Looking at this incurious, unquestioning electorate, Mr Cameron assumes that for the time being anything that looks Conservative has no chance of being popular, and he is probably right. The Conservatives have had similar periods in their history, and were returned to office.
Still, wealth redistribution, Sir Bob and Gandhi are probably unnecessary to the Cameron grand strategy. The middle class will continue to like Mr Cameron without them. And this unlikely trio could cause the Conservatives trouble eventually. There could be an embarrassing coming-together of Sir Bob and Mr Letwin. Some rock concert could be addressed along the lines of: ‘Ollie Letwin and me — we wanna redistribute focking wealth, y’ smug middle-class bastards.’ Sir Bob’s choice of language puts one in mind of a story about the late Queen Mother when she was Queen, during the war. She was visiting a wounded airman in hospital. ‘I got shot up over the Channel by a Fokker,’ he told her. ‘Had to bale out into the drink. I was lucky. I looked up and saw the sky was full of other Fokkers.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ the Queen replied. ‘I and my husband the King entirely share your view of the Germans. But what kind of plane shot you down. A Messerschmitt, or what?’ Today’s middle class could in the end prove less tolerant than that Queen. But whatever happens, Conservative columnists will be found to write that Mr Cameron’s latest gesture towards centrist or indeed left-wing opinion is consistent with Conservative policy. Great Conservatives of the past will be invoked. Such journalists are doing so already. ‘Bob Geldof is very much in the tradition of Disraeli or Bolingbroke. Something of a troublemaker. Never an Establishment man.’ And Gandhi? What was it Churchill, campaigning from the Conservative backbenches against the India Act, said about him? Something like: ‘A half-naked fakir’ who presumed ‘to treat with the King–Emperor’. Gandhi was not in favour of India becoming a modern economy. He wanted the people to practise simple crafts in their villages. This seems to be taking Mr Cameron’s environmentalism rather far. Certainly, Gandhi would disapprove of the India of today.
How, then, did he get into Mr Cameron’s New Year message? We can imagine the Cameroon inner circle discussing his suitability.
George Osborne: ‘Brilliant. The Gandhi is the best Tandoori in the whole Notting Hill area. It would be a great way of showing that we want more immigration.’ Mr Gove: ‘I meant Gandhi the politician.’ Mr Cameron: ‘Yeah, the one who went around in public in a loincloth, naked from the waist up.’ Mr Osborne: ‘I didn’t know Mrs Gandhi was like that. Are there any pictures?’ Mr Letwin: ‘The one Michael has in mind was a man.’ Mr Osborne: ‘Well, we can’t have everything. Let’s shove him in. Then one of those hacks will say that he was just like Disraeli or Bowling-alley.’ Mr Letwin: ‘You mean Bolingbroke, George.’ Mr Osborne: ‘Do I? He sounds useful too. We could explain, or one of our columnists could, that this Gandhi was the precursor of Dave’s relaxed dress code. Gandhi too would not always have worn a tie. So Dave’s in a Tory tradition, and so is Gandhi.’ Mr Cameron: ‘Gandhi wore hardly anything. How far do you want me to go, George?’ So Gandhi got into a Conservative New Year message. Who would have thought it in the 1930s, or for many years afterwards? Even a Labour minister, responsible for India, put him in prison. That was Lord Stansgate, Mr Benn’s father, and grandfather of the present pillar of overseas aid, Hilary Benn. But Sir Bob will find Gandhi a welcome colleague in Mr Cameron’s new team. Nearly everyone expects Sir Bob to fall out with Mr Cameron sooner or later, and announce that this Tory is not really serious about helping the world’s poor. But not before he tells a rock concert, ‘It’s a pleasure to work with this half-naked fockir.’
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