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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/04/just-about-managing-tory-failures-david-samantha-cameron-george-osborne
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| Just about managing? For these Tory failures, life is sweet | Just about managing? For these Tory failures, life is sweet |
| (5 days later) | |
| It feels fitting that Nick Timothy’s big pitch was to the “just about managing”. I am just about managing not to shriek with laughter at news that Theresa May’s recently departed chief of staff is back already, to write a weekly column in the Daily Telegraph and a monthly one in the Sun. I know! What month? February 2035? I think there’s an outside chance I could tolerate hearing from Nick by then. | It feels fitting that Nick Timothy’s big pitch was to the “just about managing”. I am just about managing not to shriek with laughter at news that Theresa May’s recently departed chief of staff is back already, to write a weekly column in the Daily Telegraph and a monthly one in the Sun. I know! What month? February 2035? I think there’s an outside chance I could tolerate hearing from Nick by then. |
| Some of you will have had package holidays longer than Nick Timothy’s period in the political desert | Some of you will have had package holidays longer than Nick Timothy’s period in the political desert |
| By all accounts, he has a massive brain, and it’s always slightly awkward to have to explain highly complex political ideas to someone who thinks they wrote the book on them. But here goes. The technical term for what he, fellow henchperson Fiona Hill and prime minister Theresa May did with the last election, at this most crucial, time-pressured moment in Britain’s national journey, is “shit the bed”. | By all accounts, he has a massive brain, and it’s always slightly awkward to have to explain highly complex political ideas to someone who thinks they wrote the book on them. But here goes. The technical term for what he, fellow henchperson Fiona Hill and prime minister Theresa May did with the last election, at this most crucial, time-pressured moment in Britain’s national journey, is “shit the bed”. |
| In any of the more decent decades of the past 100 years – basically all of them – Nick Timothy would be regarded as marginally more toxic than that salmonella outbreak at that e-waste processing site in Ghana, which itself makes Chernobyl look like a Dettol ad. And yet he has waltzed straight back to two high-profile and presumably highly paid media gigs. Some of you will have had package holidays longer than Nick’s period in the political desert. I hope he used the time to write a searing account of the experience, perhaps titled Long Way Back, or The Wilderness Minutes. | In any of the more decent decades of the past 100 years – basically all of them – Nick Timothy would be regarded as marginally more toxic than that salmonella outbreak at that e-waste processing site in Ghana, which itself makes Chernobyl look like a Dettol ad. And yet he has waltzed straight back to two high-profile and presumably highly paid media gigs. Some of you will have had package holidays longer than Nick’s period in the political desert. I hope he used the time to write a searing account of the experience, perhaps titled Long Way Back, or The Wilderness Minutes. |
| We’re reportedly due a big interview with him in Saturday’s Telegraph, so maybe he’ll acknowledge this. Or perhaps he’ll simply reprise his earlier take on the abortive election: “While I accept that the manifesto might have been too ambitious” – if anything, he’s too committed – “I worry that the implication of this argument is that politicians should not be straight with the electorate.” Righto. | We’re reportedly due a big interview with him in Saturday’s Telegraph, so maybe he’ll acknowledge this. Or perhaps he’ll simply reprise his earlier take on the abortive election: “While I accept that the manifesto might have been too ambitious” – if anything, he’s too committed – “I worry that the implication of this argument is that politicians should not be straight with the electorate.” Righto. |
| And yet, I worry that the implication of Nick’s insta-rehabilitation is that the electorate cannot be straight with politicians (elected or otherwise). The electorate was pretty straight with Nick: he pushed to call the election when the Tories were 21 points ahead in the polls; by the time May and team had worked their magic they’d lost their majority. I mean … the collective message to Nick was not what you might term opaque. And yet he appears to have decided that the public was really asking for more, and soon. | And yet, I worry that the implication of Nick’s insta-rehabilitation is that the electorate cannot be straight with politicians (elected or otherwise). The electorate was pretty straight with Nick: he pushed to call the election when the Tories were 21 points ahead in the polls; by the time May and team had worked their magic they’d lost their majority. I mean … the collective message to Nick was not what you might term opaque. And yet he appears to have decided that the public was really asking for more, and soon. |
| That said, his isn’t the only splashy bit of career news this week. Many will have enjoyed the spectacle of Samantha Cameron inviting Harpers Bazaar into her Oxfordshire house in order to promote her fashion business. Hard to pick a lowlight, though perhaps you’d go for the bit where David Cameron’s wife explains she bought two dresses for the referendum – one for if they won, and one for if they lost. In the end, Samantha wore her win dress after all. | That said, his isn’t the only splashy bit of career news this week. Many will have enjoyed the spectacle of Samantha Cameron inviting Harpers Bazaar into her Oxfordshire house in order to promote her fashion business. Hard to pick a lowlight, though perhaps you’d go for the bit where David Cameron’s wife explains she bought two dresses for the referendum – one for if they won, and one for if they lost. In the end, Samantha wore her win dress after all. |
| Reading this, I kept waiting for a punchline. It turned out to literally be an anecdote about which £1,500 dress she ended up wearing for her husband’s prime ministerial farewell to the country he’d just, on his own measure of success, fucked. See also Sam’s description of the house as “slightly falling down”. Does anyone – particularly someone who, during the week, lives in the very shadow of Grenfell Tower – currently want to get into some hideously affected public riff on the maintenance of their £1.5m-plus second hovel? I rather think they don’t, but then I’m not in fashion. | Reading this, I kept waiting for a punchline. It turned out to literally be an anecdote about which £1,500 dress she ended up wearing for her husband’s prime ministerial farewell to the country he’d just, on his own measure of success, fucked. See also Sam’s description of the house as “slightly falling down”. Does anyone – particularly someone who, during the week, lives in the very shadow of Grenfell Tower – currently want to get into some hideously affected public riff on the maintenance of their £1.5m-plus second hovel? I rather think they don’t, but then I’m not in fashion. |
| Flicking on through the photos, there was, naturally, another run-out for David Cameron’s ghastly £25,000 “shepherd’s hut”, which I increasingly feel must be a deliberate nod to Marie Antoinette’s hameau. The hameau was very much the Versailles version of a shepherd’s hut – indeed, the Queen used to dress up as a shepherdess and play at tending her dyed and perfumed flock, before these kind of activities were misunderstood by the peasants. Cameron writes speeches in his hameau, and then jets off to five-star hotels to deliver them for a hundred grand or so per throw. The other week, you’ll recall, he was in Seoul, explaining that critics of austerity were “selfish”. Next year at Davos, I hope he simply herds a flock of pink sheep on stage and inquires: “Anyone fancy skiing to Klosters for lunch?” | Flicking on through the photos, there was, naturally, another run-out for David Cameron’s ghastly £25,000 “shepherd’s hut”, which I increasingly feel must be a deliberate nod to Marie Antoinette’s hameau. The hameau was very much the Versailles version of a shepherd’s hut – indeed, the Queen used to dress up as a shepherdess and play at tending her dyed and perfumed flock, before these kind of activities were misunderstood by the peasants. Cameron writes speeches in his hameau, and then jets off to five-star hotels to deliver them for a hundred grand or so per throw. The other week, you’ll recall, he was in Seoul, explaining that critics of austerity were “selfish”. Next year at Davos, I hope he simply herds a flock of pink sheep on stage and inquires: “Anyone fancy skiing to Klosters for lunch?” |
| As for his closest political buddy, former chancellor George Osborne famously passed straight through the revolving door into the editor’s chair at the London Evening Standard, and now has all sorts of people “thinking again” about him on account of his amusingly frequent editorial attacks on Theresa May, the PM who sacked him. And yet, looked at another way, Osborne is a guy who couldn’t take the rejection of being professionally broken up with, despite his clearly unreasonable behaviour, and who now spends his days tormenting the one who spurned him. He’s a sort of political stalker, really. | As for his closest political buddy, former chancellor George Osborne famously passed straight through the revolving door into the editor’s chair at the London Evening Standard, and now has all sorts of people “thinking again” about him on account of his amusingly frequent editorial attacks on Theresa May, the PM who sacked him. And yet, looked at another way, Osborne is a guy who couldn’t take the rejection of being professionally broken up with, despite his clearly unreasonable behaviour, and who now spends his days tormenting the one who spurned him. He’s a sort of political stalker, really. |
| Much more seriously, the effects of his ultra-ideological pursuit of austerity can be seen in a devastating denunciation this week by Britain’s most senior family judge. Of a case involving a 17-year-old girl that cuts to the heart of catastrophic underfunding of child mental health services, James Munby said: “we, the system, society, the state … will have blood on our hands”. Anyone “thinking again” about Osborne is advised to think again about doing so. Meanwhile, I await the Evening Standard report on the case with interest. | Much more seriously, the effects of his ultra-ideological pursuit of austerity can be seen in a devastating denunciation this week by Britain’s most senior family judge. Of a case involving a 17-year-old girl that cuts to the heart of catastrophic underfunding of child mental health services, James Munby said: “we, the system, society, the state … will have blood on our hands”. Anyone “thinking again” about Osborne is advised to think again about doing so. Meanwhile, I await the Evening Standard report on the case with interest. |
| Instead, Osborne seems to be spending much of his time “settling scores” with May, while some are speculating that Nick Timothy will use his own media pulpits to “settle scores” with Philip Hammond, and his many other enemies. | Instead, Osborne seems to be spending much of his time “settling scores” with May, while some are speculating that Nick Timothy will use his own media pulpits to “settle scores” with Philip Hammond, and his many other enemies. |
| Let’s hope not. Public life today seems to be run as a host of bitter personal revenge plots, by characters who reinvent themselves so quickly it feels like we’re watching one endless continuity error. And yet the country is shackled to this wildly dysfunctional telenovela, even in its hour of destiny. No point wondering where these people get off, because they clearly don’t. | Let’s hope not. Public life today seems to be run as a host of bitter personal revenge plots, by characters who reinvent themselves so quickly it feels like we’re watching one endless continuity error. And yet the country is shackled to this wildly dysfunctional telenovela, even in its hour of destiny. No point wondering where these people get off, because they clearly don’t. |
| But it does seem worth wondering how long so-called Jams are going to just about manage to stomach the spectacle. They must subsist precariously, while people who fail big in political life – often making things even more precarious for those who can ill afford it – simply reboard the gravy train and pootle off to the next stop. Or as the framed poster by the sink in David Cameron’s second home (thanks, Harpers Bazaar!) prefers to put it: “Calm down, dear – it’s only a recession.” | But it does seem worth wondering how long so-called Jams are going to just about manage to stomach the spectacle. They must subsist precariously, while people who fail big in political life – often making things even more precarious for those who can ill afford it – simply reboard the gravy train and pootle off to the next stop. Or as the framed poster by the sink in David Cameron’s second home (thanks, Harpers Bazaar!) prefers to put it: “Calm down, dear – it’s only a recession.” |
| • Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist | • Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist |