The Jacobites had their king across the water; we have our pretender overlooking the water. They had Bonnie Prince Charlie; we have Boris the Former Big Time Charlie.
The question, then as now, is: when will he make his move and who will prevail in our very own 21st-century Culloden?
All of this struck me as I tried to make head or tail of what Alan Duncan was quick to label “Fiddle-gate”. I was assisted by having recently read an article by the nearly always readable Charles Moore in which he skilfully explained to Specie readers the difference between a Tug and an Oppidan. For those of you who don’t take the Spectator, a Tug is the name for someone who wins a scholarship to Eton (a King’s Scholar) while every other Etonian is an Oppidan. Naturally, the latter look down on the former for requiring assistance with the school fees, being too clever by half, and, in all probability, not having been to prep school. For these reasons when I won a King’s Scholarship my father sportingly stumped up the fees, thereby allowing me to decline it and avoid the stigma attached to being a Tug.
Enough social history. The vital thing is that David is an Oppidan and Boris a Tug. Not that you would know it from their recent behaviour. When the Telegraph finally got around to fingering some Tory fiddlers, our leader flew into the kind of bate which a highly strung emotionally fraught Tug might have thrown on having the quality of his photographic memory questioned by a less than perfect mark in the Newcastle exam.
He descended on the Palace of Westminster seeking vengeance. Round and round he stomped, saying: “I’m so angry.”
“About what, DC?” I enquired. “People breaking the rules
on my watch.” In vain, I attempted to explain that no rules had been broken. I went on to argue that there must be play in journalists, of all people, criticising other people’s expenses. Hell hath no fury greater than a hack deprived of a perk. Now that journalists were desk-bound and their expenses limited to claims for screen-wipe and tissues, they were bound to cast envious glances at those with licence to be more imaginative . . . more creative . . . bolder. “Show a little Oppidan sang-froid, my friend,” I concluded, “and we can turn this one round.”
He might have done, too, had not John Selwyn Gummer appeared from out of the shadows to whine: “Horse manure, hedge-cutting, paddock rolling, moat clearance. I think there’s
a green angle to be exploited here, David.” And that was that for sang-froid. Our leader smote his forehead with his palm before jabbing his finger at a terrified Gummer and snarling, “You’re fired!” As if JSG would ever have a job from which to be fired.
Meanwhile, our Mayor watches the Thames roll by and becomes more serene by the day. He has, after all, won an election while DC still has one to lose. We are a long way from that catastrophe, although the economy looks less sick than one might hope, and it is just conceivable that Labour might have the balls to elect a new leader to take advantage of any favourable change in circumstances.
In which event it would be helpful if David can remember his Oppidan roots and remain above the fray while competently fixing things behind the scenes. It’s not too much to ask.
