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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
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| David Cameron, get back in your hut. You’ve done enough damage | David Cameron, get back in your hut. You’ve done enough damage |
| (about 2 months later) | |
| “David Cameron eyes return to frontline politics.” God, why couldn’t that sentence stop after the word frontline? Why does “politics” have to ruin everything? I suppose it’s because Cameron is more of the type who’d have been drinking wine back at the chateau in the first world war. “We’re right behind you!” brays General Melchett at Baldrick on the eve of sending his men over the top. “About 35 miles behind you,” mutters Blackadder. | “David Cameron eyes return to frontline politics.” God, why couldn’t that sentence stop after the word frontline? Why does “politics” have to ruin everything? I suppose it’s because Cameron is more of the type who’d have been drinking wine back at the chateau in the first world war. “We’re right behind you!” brays General Melchett at Baldrick on the eve of sending his men over the top. “About 35 miles behind you,” mutters Blackadder. |
| Having said all that, I do hope our former prime minister’s forthcoming memoirs are entitled David Cameron’s War, with a cover picture of him doing a thousand-yard stare in a White Stuff fleece. (Out of shot, the back of it reads: “Val d’Isère 2018 – THE POWDER AND THE GLORY BOYS!!!”) | Having said all that, I do hope our former prime minister’s forthcoming memoirs are entitled David Cameron’s War, with a cover picture of him doing a thousand-yard stare in a White Stuff fleece. (Out of shot, the back of it reads: “Val d’Isère 2018 – THE POWDER AND THE GLORY BOYS!!!”) |
| And so to an eye-catching report in the Sun, in which a “friend” of Cameron does a spectacular drive-by on him, unintentionally or otherwise. According to this mate, Cameron is toying with a return to politics, and fancies being foreign secretary. It’s rather difficult to know precisely what to make of a story in which almost every quote sounds like it was said for a dare. “David is dedicated to public service;” “David is “bored shitless”; David “has often said he wouldn’t rule out a public role one day, domestically or internationally”. To which the only possible response is: ahahahahahahahahahahaha. I mean, I wouldn’t rule out opening a $300m action movie, but I guess I’m just a glass-half-full kinda gal. The glass contains liquid LSD. | And so to an eye-catching report in the Sun, in which a “friend” of Cameron does a spectacular drive-by on him, unintentionally or otherwise. According to this mate, Cameron is toying with a return to politics, and fancies being foreign secretary. It’s rather difficult to know precisely what to make of a story in which almost every quote sounds like it was said for a dare. “David is dedicated to public service;” “David is “bored shitless”; David “has often said he wouldn’t rule out a public role one day, domestically or internationally”. To which the only possible response is: ahahahahahahahahahahaha. I mean, I wouldn’t rule out opening a $300m action movie, but I guess I’m just a glass-half-full kinda gal. The glass contains liquid LSD. |
| He and Arron Banks are two chancers, both alike in dignity, with Banks the Moriarty to Cameron’s Barratt Holmes | He and Arron Banks are two chancers, both alike in dignity, with Banks the Moriarty to Cameron’s Barratt Holmes |
| Even Cameron’s more achievable goals appear to be eluding him. He still seems to be in his £25,000 shepherd’s hut, writing this wildly called-for book of his, with the publication date now pushed back again to some unspecified date next year. Perhaps the shepherd’s hut could be towed to some remote snowy location, where a captive Cameron would be forced to write the book readers would like to read as opposed to the one he wants to write. It’s only a vague idea. I think I saw a movie about it once. | Even Cameron’s more achievable goals appear to be eluding him. He still seems to be in his £25,000 shepherd’s hut, writing this wildly called-for book of his, with the publication date now pushed back again to some unspecified date next year. Perhaps the shepherd’s hut could be towed to some remote snowy location, where a captive Cameron would be forced to write the book readers would like to read as opposed to the one he wants to write. It’s only a vague idea. I think I saw a movie about it once. |
| Either way, Cameron is beginning to feel like the George RR Martin of political memoirists, except without any actual fans. The author on whose novel series Game of Thrones is based has famously delayed and delayed the release of Winds of Winter, the conclusion to his epic, to the point where the TV series has overshot the books and will wrap it all up before the source material gets there itself. Perhaps the same could be done for Cameron. Surely at some point the public can’t wait any longer and a couple of pervy telly producers will have to step in and finish it for Dave, with some post-imperial self-castration and the dehumanising rape of a couple of UK economic regions. Hey – it was consensual by the end. | Either way, Cameron is beginning to feel like the George RR Martin of political memoirists, except without any actual fans. The author on whose novel series Game of Thrones is based has famously delayed and delayed the release of Winds of Winter, the conclusion to his epic, to the point where the TV series has overshot the books and will wrap it all up before the source material gets there itself. Perhaps the same could be done for Cameron. Surely at some point the public can’t wait any longer and a couple of pervy telly producers will have to step in and finish it for Dave, with some post-imperial self-castration and the dehumanising rape of a couple of UK economic regions. Hey – it was consensual by the end. |
| As for layout, it is fashionable for gentlemen scribes to adorn their frontispieces with some quotation from Heraclitus or Bowie or whoever. But it would perhaps be apt if Cameron’s featured only that hilariously clunky and portentous line from Game of Thrones: “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.” Cue titles, and a little mechanical House of Chipping Norton rising up from a map before getting completely torched by a passing dragon. “When you play the game of thrones, you – oh.” | As for layout, it is fashionable for gentlemen scribes to adorn their frontispieces with some quotation from Heraclitus or Bowie or whoever. But it would perhaps be apt if Cameron’s featured only that hilariously clunky and portentous line from Game of Thrones: “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.” Cue titles, and a little mechanical House of Chipping Norton rising up from a map before getting completely torched by a passing dragon. “When you play the game of thrones, you – oh.” |
| Speaking of bazillion-dollar-an-episode TV dramas, what ghastly news of Dave’s worthy foe, Arron Banks. I am shocked to learn that the motorbike insurer and anti-elitist diamond mine boss who bankrolled the provisional wing of the leave campaign is under criminal investigation. The Electoral Commission this week confirmed it has asked the National Crime Agency to investigate whether one of Banks’ Isle of Man-based companies was the illegal source of £8m in Brexit campaign funding. | Speaking of bazillion-dollar-an-episode TV dramas, what ghastly news of Dave’s worthy foe, Arron Banks. I am shocked to learn that the motorbike insurer and anti-elitist diamond mine boss who bankrolled the provisional wing of the leave campaign is under criminal investigation. The Electoral Commission this week confirmed it has asked the National Crime Agency to investigate whether one of Banks’ Isle of Man-based companies was the illegal source of £8m in Brexit campaign funding. |
| On the plus side, this feels like a great series two arc for the landmark US TV adaptation of The Bad Boys of Brexit – Arron’s searingly searing account of how some bad boys did a Brexit. It wasn’t so long ago, you may recall, that Arron and the rest of the Nigel Farage entourage – the enFarage, if you will – were claiming to be off to LA to ink a deal with a major studio to adapt this opus for a $10m-an-episode six-part series. This was due to have begun principal photography in early 2018. According to the Daily Express’s well-briefed report on the matter: “Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey or Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch have been tipped to play Mr Farage.” | On the plus side, this feels like a great series two arc for the landmark US TV adaptation of The Bad Boys of Brexit – Arron’s searingly searing account of how some bad boys did a Brexit. It wasn’t so long ago, you may recall, that Arron and the rest of the Nigel Farage entourage – the enFarage, if you will – were claiming to be off to LA to ink a deal with a major studio to adapt this opus for a $10m-an-episode six-part series. This was due to have begun principal photography in early 2018. According to the Daily Express’s well-briefed report on the matter: “Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey or Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch have been tipped to play Mr Farage.” |
| Another creative project that seems to have had its start date postponed, there. However, I do hope plans are being made to adapt it for the 2019 HMP Frankland panto. Perfectly possible that Spacey could still star. As for the showrunner, perhaps Banks himself might be on hand to take the reins. | Another creative project that seems to have had its start date postponed, there. However, I do hope plans are being made to adapt it for the 2019 HMP Frankland panto. Perfectly possible that Spacey could still star. As for the showrunner, perhaps Banks himself might be on hand to take the reins. |
| Or perhaps not. It’s like that old insurance proverb: you come at the GoSkippy king, you best not miss. Naturally, Banks has had something to say on the matter of his elevation to suspect. I usually enjoy Arron’s press statements, which sound like he honked them into a car speakerphone while flooring his Vauxhall Cavalier on the way to a suppliers’ meeting in a BizSpace on the Avon ring road. But this one ends with a poorly punctuated attempt to create a false equivalence with the political donations of … oh dear, “foreign national George Soros”. Well, I wonder what all that can mean. | Or perhaps not. It’s like that old insurance proverb: you come at the GoSkippy king, you best not miss. Naturally, Banks has had something to say on the matter of his elevation to suspect. I usually enjoy Arron’s press statements, which sound like he honked them into a car speakerphone while flooring his Vauxhall Cavalier on the way to a suppliers’ meeting in a BizSpace on the Avon ring road. But this one ends with a poorly punctuated attempt to create a false equivalence with the political donations of … oh dear, “foreign national George Soros”. Well, I wonder what all that can mean. |
| 'You caused enough damage': MPs react to David Cameron's rumoured return | 'You caused enough damage': MPs react to David Cameron's rumoured return |
| Yet for all of Banks’s artless grotesquery and all Cameron’s artful civility, there is something rather fitting about the pair representing the two sides of the event that sundered the nation – and not simply because either would hate the comparison. They are two chancers, both alike in dignity, with Banks just the Moriarty to Cameron’s Barratt Holmes. | Yet for all of Banks’s artless grotesquery and all Cameron’s artful civility, there is something rather fitting about the pair representing the two sides of the event that sundered the nation – and not simply because either would hate the comparison. They are two chancers, both alike in dignity, with Banks just the Moriarty to Cameron’s Barratt Holmes. |
| Over two years since Cameron ran out on his mess, what strikes you more than anything is his smalltimery. With the obvious exception of the giant, epoch-defining balls-up he made on his own terms, he is almost without other legacy. There is just … nothing much there, with the exception of gay marriage, which you might reasonably have expected an alternative-timeline Labour government to have done anyway. Austerity will always be regarded as a George Osborne-owned project. But listening to the chatter and the chuntering at Tory conference this year, I had to remind myself that Cameron had ever been prime minister. Even in his own party, it is as if the Cameroons never happened. | Over two years since Cameron ran out on his mess, what strikes you more than anything is his smalltimery. With the obvious exception of the giant, epoch-defining balls-up he made on his own terms, he is almost without other legacy. There is just … nothing much there, with the exception of gay marriage, which you might reasonably have expected an alternative-timeline Labour government to have done anyway. Austerity will always be regarded as a George Osborne-owned project. But listening to the chatter and the chuntering at Tory conference this year, I had to remind myself that Cameron had ever been prime minister. Even in his own party, it is as if the Cameroons never happened. |
| Maybe his book will change all that. Or maybe it will confirm there was even less to him than ultimately met the eye. Maybe he is sitting in his £25,000 wheeled shepherd’s hut right now, wondering about the best “way in” to his own story – still unable to come to terms with the fact that history is only ever going to be able to judge him as another very bad boy of Brexit indeed. | Maybe his book will change all that. Or maybe it will confirm there was even less to him than ultimately met the eye. Maybe he is sitting in his £25,000 wheeled shepherd’s hut right now, wondering about the best “way in” to his own story – still unable to come to terms with the fact that history is only ever going to be able to judge him as another very bad boy of Brexit indeed. |
| • Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist | • Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist |
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