David Cameron is like a hollow Easter egg, with no bag of sweets inside. He’s nothing. He’s no one

Written By: - Date published: 7:43 pm, April 26th, 2010 - 31 comments
Categories: International, uk politics - Tags: ,

An oldie but a goodie opinion piece on David Cameron by Guardian columnist Charlie Booker. It was written three years ago, but arguably more relevant now with Cameron poised to take 10 Downing St. Also, one can’t but help make comparisons with John Key. Enjoy!

David Cameron is an idiot. A simpering, say-anything, dough-faced, preposterous waddling idiot with a feeble, insincere voice and an irritating tendency to squat near the top of opinion polls. I don’t like him. And I’ve got a terrible feeling he’ll be prime minister one day. Brrr.

These are unthinking snap judgments, based on little more than his media profile – but since he appears to consist of little more than a media profile designed to appeal to unthinking snap judgments, that seems fair enough. On that basis, let’s stick to gut instincts, shall we?

There is nothing to him. He is like a hollow Easter egg with no bag of sweets inside. Cameron will say absolutely anything if he thinks it might get him elected. If a shock poll was published saying 99% of the British public were enthusiastic paedophiles, he would drive through the streets in an open-top bus surrounded by the Mini Pops. He’s nothing. He’s no one.

It’s notoriously tricky to find out much about his past, in the same way that Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt found it tricky to find out much about the serial killer John Doe in the movie Se7en. He’d managed to erase his entire existence, even slicing the skin off his fingers to avoid leaving prints. Ever seen a close-up of Cameron’s fingertips? Of course not. Think about it.

The apparently self-penned bio on Cameron’s website begins, “I was born in October 1966,” and then leaps straight forward to 2001, missing out the decades he spent as a guffawing, top-hatted toff in between. The infamous photo of Dave posing alongside his posho chums from the Bullingdon Club in an expensive royal blue tailcoat is one of the few clues we have. It looks like precisely the sort of photo a detective might end up studying in a murder mystery, one where a group of friends accidentally killed a prostitute during a drunken, stormy night, and collaborated on a cover-up. I’m not saying the Bullingdon boys kill prostitutes. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised. And that’s his fault, not mine. He’s gone out of his way not to mention his blue-blooded carousing, because he knows it would make the average citizen puke themselves into a coma, and one side-effect of this is that he seems shifty and suspicious.

Every time I look at Cameron, I’m reminded of video-game characters: not the loveable, spiky ones like Sonic or Mario, but the bland, generic dead-eyed avatars you can “create” for use in a tennis game or a tedious Tolkienesque adventure. You start with a bald clone, then add features drawn from a limited palette – eye colour, one of three noses, an optional goatee beard and so on – and invariably end up with an eerily characterless zombie straight out of the boardgame Guess Who?. Simulated choice, as opposed to genuine variety. It is easy to build a Cameron lookalike. Just simulate the smuggest estate agent you can think of. Or some interchangeable braying twit in a rugby shirt, ruining a local pub just by being there. Easy.

Naturally, I’m biased. I’ve instinctively hated the Tories since birth. If there was an election tomorrow, and the only two choices were the Nazis or the Tories, I’d vote Tory with an extremely heavy heart. In descending order of vehemence, my objections to the Tory species stem from a) everything they do, b) everything they say, c) everything they stand for, d) how they look, e) their stupid names and f) the noises I imagine they make in bed. I once overheard two posh people – almost certainly Tories – having sex in a hotel room. It was grim. The woman kept saying, “Fuck me, Gerald,” in a cut-glass accent, which was funny, but Gerald himself soon wiped the grin off my face with his grunting, which wasn’t really grunting at all, but instead consisted of the words “oh” and “ah” crisply orated aloud, like Sir Laurence Olivier reading dialogue off a card at an early rehearsal. I didn’t stick around long enough to hear the climax, but I imagine the words “gosh”, “crumbs”, and “crikey” probably put in an appearance.

And here is why that’s relevant: Cameron almost certainly says “crikey” at the vital moment. Go on, picture it. Right now, in your mind’s eye. You know it’s true. If nothing else in this puerile one-sided hatchet job has convinced you, that’s reason enough not to elect him, right there.

In summary, then: he is a idiot. But you knew that anyway. In fact the only reason I have written this is because it is going to be printed in a newspaper, which means his advisers will have to photocopy it and include it in some official internal press file, where it will sit alongside all the unnecessarily positive coverage he has generated for himself. It gives me a pathetic, childish, self-indulgent thrill, and in today’s world of cookie-cutter choicelessness, that’s as good as it gets. So nyahh nyahh, Dave, you fair-weather, upper-crust guff-cloud. Nyahh nyahh.

Ignopedia
Continuing our uniquely unreliable interactive user-driven knowledge resource

The Conservative party
The Conservative party is an eternally irritating force for wrong that appeals exclusively to bigots, toffs, money-minded machine men, faded entertainers and selfish, grasping simpletons who were born with some essential part of their soul missing. None of history’s truly historical figures has been a Tory, apart from the ones that were, and they only did it by mistake. To reach a more advanced stage of intellectual evolution, humankind must first eradicate the “Tory instinct” from the brain – which is why mother nature is gradually making them less sexy with each passing generation. The final Tory is doomed to spend his or her life masturbating alone on a hillside, which, let’s face it, is the way things were supposed to be all along.

31 comments on “David Cameron is like a hollow Easter egg, with no bag of sweets inside. He’s nothing. He’s no one ”

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  1. Rex Widerstrom 1
    26 April 2010 at 8:07 pm

    Ummm… yeah… I see you even quoted the bit where Brooker calls his piece a:

    puerile one-sided hatchet job

    yet your reaction to it is rather like that of the Tories he overheard in the hotel: an orgasmic “Crikey!” and a reprint as though it’s an in-depth analysis.

    Brooker’s a brilliant, hilarious curmudgeon (the type of person Paul Henry wishes he could be). But don’t try to pretend that anything he writes is grounded in fact.

    I love the line

    but since he appears to consist of little more than a media profile designed to appeal to unthinking snap judgments, that seems fair enough

    So true of virtually any politician nowadays. I just wish Brooker would turn his attention to Gordon Brown… something like "just imagine a dour Scottish undertaker measuring you up and assessing how much gilt he can charge you for on your coffin. Or someone that's found out their best friend has run off with their wife… and now they'll have to train a new grouse retriever" maybe.

  2. Captain Rehab 2
    26 April 2010 at 8:54 pm

    OMFG! Farrar is the last Tory!!!

  3. mickysavage 3
    26 April 2010 at 9:37 pm

    You are right about the comparisons with John Key. You could do a search and replace of Cameron and Key and Britain and NZ and get a pretty accurate analysis.

    I wonder if they use the same public relations firm?

    • Bright Red 3.1
      27 April 2010 at 10:26 am

      Yup, Crosby-Textor is big with the Tories.

    • Rharn 3.2
      4 May 2010 at 10:47 am

      The connection between Cameron and Key is Lord Ashcroft. I’ve long believed that it is Ashcroft who is Key’s ‘political’ minder.

  4. TightyRighty 4
    26 April 2010 at 9:38 pm

    you know when a team has lost? when even it’s biggest cheerleaders can find nothing good to say about it, and can only try drag the opponent down to the same level of hell they must be living in.

    • Michael Foxglove 4.1
      26 April 2010 at 9:58 pm

      TightyRighty – You never answered my question in Saturday’s post about whether you think individuals have the right to choose and publicise their own ideologies? But you Tories really don’t like it when your own prejudices conflict with your pretend principles, do you?

      • TightyRighty 4.1.1
        26 April 2010 at 10:55 pm

        sorry missed it. people do have the choice. thats the beautiful thing about democracy supported by capitalism. it enables a surplus to allow idiots to try and hold true to the flawed ideology of the left.

    • Armchair Critic 4.2
      26 April 2010 at 10:07 pm

      Funny that. Some of the nicest things that National’s staunchest advocates have had to say recently is “well, at least they are still high in the polls”.
      But I’m sure that’s not what you were meaning. So tell me, what’s the best thing about John Key, TR?

      • Michael Foxglove 4.2.1
        26 April 2010 at 10:20 pm

        Yeah TR – We’re all waiting with baited breath to hear your favourite thing about John Key. (And don’t give us ‘he’s not Helen’ crap – we’re looking for substance brother!)

      • Armchair Critic 4.2.2
        26 April 2010 at 10:34 pm

        C’mon TR, tick tock, tick tock. Surely it can’t take that long to come up with something.
        I don’t want a full list of (both?) good things, just the one best thing about JK. Could it take much more than a sentence or two?

        • TightyRighty 4.2.2.1
          26 April 2010 at 11:05 pm

          do you think i sit here, waiting with baited breath for someone to take a crack at me? I have a life, you should try living one too.

          anyway, what is something i think Prime Minister Key is doing well.

          Slashing wasteful spending in the public service and redirecting it to front line services. he could go further though. oh wait, another $2 billion. yes please.

          enabling the country to get on with living, rather than being subservient to the wishes of the state. to make up for nine years of wasted opportunities, that we are still paying for.

          pressing ahead with a raise in consumption tax to replace income tax. thereby encouraging saving and investment.

          being a fantastic leader. I love it when he smiles and waves and the crowds go wild. i can see all the pinkos gnashing their teeth in frustration. imagining that only they know the truth, and that everyone else is stupid. that cracks me up no end.

          now what has gordon brown, the silly scottish arse hole (remember, this is the man who “ended boom and bust”), done that makes him better than Cameron?

          edit: sorry forgot to add, it shouldn’t be that hard to number the things that makes brown better than cameron. he also saved the world, even if he does say so himself.
          OMFG
          ROFLCAKES

          • Armchair Critic 4.2.2.1.1
            26 April 2010 at 11:11 pm

            do you think i sit here, waiting with baited breath for someone to take a crack at me?
            I try to think about you as little as possible.
            You did a great job of dispelling the rumour that rightys have no sense of humour, that list is hilarious.

            • TightyRighty 4.2.2.1.1.1
              26 April 2010 at 11:18 pm

              wow, you really smashed that one out of the park.

              having two time tagged comments from you half an hour apart showing increasing impatience, and then being right there to pounce when i do comment might suggest that you think about me more than you claim.

              Have you got abandonment issues? feeling let down by left wing ideology?

              • Galeandra …
                26 April 2010 at 11:26 pm

                No, allured by the fishy smell of your baited breath.

              • Armchair Critic …
                26 April 2010 at 11:30 pm

                Yeah, ta. And you just did a pretty good job of demonstrating that you are just sitting around waiting for someone to have a crack at you.
                On reflection I’m guessing were you serious with that list? So here goes…
                You mean like slashing wasteful spending that doesn’t exist?
                You mean getting on with living by telling us what not to wear, where not to drive and not bothering us with trivialities like voting in local body elections?
                You mean suppressing the economy by transferring the spending of those on fixed incomes from out of the pockets of small businesses (like mine) and into their own coffers by raising consumption taxes. You support taxes increases? You must love Labour, then.
                Fantastic leader? The f*cker couldn’t lead a dog. Blingish makes him look like a sock puppet.
                Who cares about Gordon Brown? Not me.
                Tell you one thing about JK, he’s still pretty popular in the polls.

              • TightyRighty …
                27 April 2010 at 8:16 am

                jesus galeandra, plants eat more shit than anything. so i wouldn’t be commenting on my breath.

                Armchair, you’re in a small business are you? it must be some shady, cash only business, dependent on the elderly if you care about a minor gst increase. should you suffer because you can’t adjust, I’m not crying. it’s not an increase in tax over all, labour has promised that when they are in power, this is changing the recipe of the tax base. donkey.

                I’m in a small business too, we are expecting a minor surge in demand, and then business as normal. but we work our asses off making sure we can reach a wider market and create more demand for our goods. so no panic in my part, and in fact, neither are my customers worried. once again, if your business sucks, fail, capitalism at work. it’s beautiful.

                if you are a small business owner, and you don’t think there is wasteful government spending, then you are either a) blind, b) stupid, or c) running a cash only business that manages to ignore most of the red tape that law abiding business must comply with.

                can i please have an example of what the national government has told us not to wear, or where not to drive? I must have missed these articles of nanny statism, and won’t be happy if it has happened. do you live in canterbury? do you do regular business in canterbury inside and outside of christchurch? or is it because you read some left wing blogs, you REALLY understand the situation at Ecan, and that gives you license to comment from your la-z-boy?

                peasant

          • RedBack 4.2.2.1.2
            27 April 2010 at 12:10 am

            So TR you would subscribe to the theory that was held by Dave Cameron to let the banks simply fail. Along with it would go billions of pounds of ordinary folks savings. Peoples houses would’ve been lost on an unimaginable scale. Unemployment would’ve skyrocketed. The pound would’ve been devalued overnight and to top it all off the UK would’ve more than likley had to have gone cap in hand to the personification of evil that is the IMF. Please tell me in what way would David Cameron’s course of action (or more like inaction) have benefited the UK economy? Plus lay off the racial insults. Argue yes. But Gordon Brown being Scottish has nothing to do with his abilities as PM of the UK.
            Also what you call wasteful spending other people call their livliehoods and with it the ability to clothe and feed their families. Its a bit inconvienent for your argument (whatever that is) when you think about it like that isn’t it.

            • TightyRighty 4.2.2.1.2.1
              27 April 2010 at 8:35 am

              i’ll answer your second question first. If the state is so inefficient that whole livelihoods rely on the state sector wasting the money people who really work earn, then no, i don’t think it inconvenient for my argument. it just shows that your argument is weak, and that the state is inefficient for the delivery of services and for the reallocation of wealth. and proves that the nine years of labour were years of wasted opportunities.

              I have no problem with the banks failing. they should have been allowed to fail. i have said this time and time again. i don’t like the regulation the left all wanted, and wasn’t particularly impressed by bank bonuses either. so they should have failed. the system would have carried on. times would be tough, in britain, but that is just how it goes sometimes.

              I think it could be said, that they haven’t learnt anything from the disaster. except that they can bank recklessly and the government will be there to bail them out.

              the pound has devalued, Britain is not far away from going cap in hand to the IMF. Labour won’t allow anyone to identify the public spending that needs to be slashed to be slashed to reduce government borrowing, as they can’t balance the books, as they have created an army of state dependent morons. and that was the fiscal fools plan of action. remember, he “saved the world”.

              everything said about David Cameron is hypothetical, like what the NZ labour party would do here if it was in power. however, the fiscal fools plans are very close to NZ labour, so we know what could have happened here. and i thank gawd the electorate saw that coming and tipped them out.

              • RedBack …
                27 April 2010 at 9:54 pm

                Yep. Times are tough here in the UK at the moment. But when times are tough the last thing you want to do is pull substantial cashflow to those parts of the civil service that are going to support those who have lost their jobs in the public sector and private sector. Otherwise what do you think will happen to those people?
                With regards to bailing out the banking sector: So you would sit quite comfortably on your bum while 100,000’s of people lost their jobs and claim “oh well thats their tough luck, not my problem”. It actually is your problem. Less people employed equals less revenue for the tax system. Less money for the health service, education, police, fire fighters, teachers etc… to put it simply it would be a social meltdown of catastrophic proportions. Plus here in the UK and it would be the same in NZ there are alot of firms now that rely on govermnment contracts. Those would dry up and there would be the knock on effect to the private sector compounding the unemployment rates even further. That really doesn’t sound like a great uptopia does it.

          • Maynard J 4.2.2.1.3
            27 April 2010 at 9:04 am

            “Slashing wasteful spending in the public service and redirecting it to front line services. he could go further though. oh wait, another $2 billion. yes please.”

            Mmm loved it how he’s cut down on biosecurity, and put the boot into the frail elderly. Front line offices around the country are closing down or losing staff, but by simple tricks certain folk think that the front-line is being bolstered. The latter is quite sad really, these regional folk who think that all the ‘bureaucrats’ being fired are from the bad ol’ centril gummint, when it’s their locals gettng the sack. And they are too dumb to see it.

            “enabling the country to get on with living, rather than being subservient to the wishes of the state. to make up for nine years of wasted opportunities, that we are still paying for.”

            Wow, there’s just SO much substance in that to get my teeth into. Why, the last nine years is just couldn’t live, dahling, now I’m free! I used to spend all my time wailing “why must I be subservient to the wishes of the state”. Now I’m free to drive around using my cellphone, I don’t have to worry about some nanny state enforcing booster seats in cars, or increasing the driving age, or increasing the drinking age. No more bureaucracy in schools, no more needing to vote for regional councils, no more cares about Auckland’s resources, since some nice oligarchs will worry about all that stuff for me.

            I’m also free because instead of a stagnant and restricted economy, my beautiful NZ has spread her wings and economically soared! The masses of people with newfound jobs and newfound economic freedom…what a beautiful thing. Shucks, I get misty thinking about this, and how Key did it all with a smile and a wave.

            “pressing ahead with a raise in consumption tax to replace income tax. thereby encouraging saving and investment.”

            I doubt this one, and a higher tax that affects those on lower incomes will not encourage saving for those who would really benefit. I’m not opposed to taxation on consumption per se, but it needs to be balanced with appropriate wealth taxes, and ways to prevent an excessive burden on the consumprion of needs, not wants.

            “being a fantastic leader. I love it when he smiles and waves and the crowds go wild. i can see all the pinkos gnashing their teeth in frustration. imagining that only they know the truth, and that everyone else is stupid. that cracks me up no end”

            I read, during the US election, someone complaning about all these stupid questions – “who would you rather have a beer with – Obama or McCain?”. The commentor was saying he wanted the President to be a good President, not a drinking buddy. So you want a nice smiley PM. I want an effective one. Maybe we should get Miley Cyrus to run next time to distract voters like you, who want a smiley-wavey PM, and we can only hope an effective one sneaks in.

  5. outofbed 5
    26 April 2010 at 10:13 pm

    “with Cameron poised to take 10 Downing St”
    I don’t think so, not on these figures
    http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/

  6. prism 6
    26 April 2010 at 10:32 pm

    What a glorious rollicking swashbuckling attack on David Cameron by Charlie Booker. And Rex W does a pretty good send up. I wonder if its true that there never have been any Tory truly historical figures, except when there have been, but only by mistake.

    • Lew 6.1
      26 April 2010 at 11:01 pm

      Churchill and Thatcher seem the two most obvious exceptions. Though Churchill dallied with the Liberal party for a while, his important deeds were with the Conservatives.

      They still owe him a very great deal, and certain among the British media, periodically and especially around elections, ask that dear old question of who was the greatest Briton of the 20th Century (or the greaterst British Prime Minister, or somesuch similar), to which the reflexive, ingrained answer is invariably “Churchill”. He gives Britons a warm and fuzzy feeling which predisposes them somewhat towards thinking kindly of the Tories.

      Not so much Thatcher. Once knew a bloke whose band was given the honour of playing God Save The Queen at their public-school prizegiving ceremony in 1985 or so. To the horror and fury of the dignitaries gathered there, they launched into Maggie’s Farm — in the style recorded for Hard Rain. Sounded like good times.

      L

  7. AlbatrossNZ 7
    26 April 2010 at 10:54 pm

    Thanks for sharing this. It was good for a laugh on a monday. I’m hoping the Tories wont win given their trackrecord with thatcherism.

  8. outofbed 8
    27 April 2010 at 12:01 am

    “It is my job to see that Cameron fucking well gets into Downing Street,” proclaimed Tom Newton Dunn, political editor of the Sun, to a group of journalists from rival papers, recently.

    Just change the names eh?

  9. RedBack 9
    27 April 2010 at 12:22 am

    I was watching the live debate on Sky News (UK) the other night and low and behold who puts their slimey mug on the telly for their opinion of how the debate went but Mr Textor himself. While ITV news introduced him as Conservative PR consultant. Good old Murdoch Sky News announced him as “Political Commentator”. WTF??!! I know Murdoch wants his mate Dave at No. 10 but thats just taking the p***!. Cameron’s campaign has so many similarities to Key’s 2008 campaign its just not funny. The negative “Broken Britain” slogan along with branding Labour’s jusitifed rise in national insurance as the “Jobs Tax” its straight out of the Lord Ashcroft funded Textor Crosby handbook on “How to get posho simpletons elected”.

  10. deemac 10
    27 April 2010 at 12:55 pm

    Charlie Brooker is brilliant – thanks for reminding us!~

  12. RedBack 12
    27 April 2010 at 10:00 pm

    I knew I’d read it somewhere. This article written by Johann Hari for the Independant newspaper last year is a fine piece of journalism regarding their near hysteria the Right and its mates in the media created over the financial crisis and its that same wave of hysteria that looks like David Cameron will ride to No. 10 Downing Street. Makes the Tory argument of Labour mismanaging the UK economy rather flimsy.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-britains-not-bust-so-dont-use-it-as-an-excuse-to-impose-cuts-1799217.html

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