Cameron the mafioso

The Tory leader's defence of his shadow cabinet and Andy Coulson reveals a brutal double standard at

Geoffrey Wheatcroft has a fine piece in today’s Guardian drawing together a range of concerns over David Cameron. He argues that Cameron’s decision to force a number of MPs out over the expenses scandal, while protecting his own shadow cabinet, highlighted a brutal double standard at work:

It was the action of a capo who whacks a few civilians but spares his made men, and it caused considerable, though so far private, resentment on the Tory benches.

Wheatcroft also homes in on the shamefully lenient treatment of Andy Coulson by Tory high command, a man he presciently described two years ago as someone “who makes Alastair Campbell seem a cross between CP Scott and Hugo Young”.

The largely muted response to the phone-hacking scandal has been an indictment of our media. To paraphrase Nye Bevan’s verdict on Anthony Eden during the Suez crisis, if Coulson did know about the hacking then he’s too wicked to be Cameron’s aide, if he didnt know then he’s too stupid to be Cameron’s aide.

Wheatcroft goes on: “Clinging to the Tory team is a whiff of clever-clever cynicism, of game-playing frivolity, of calculation rather than honour.”

I would add that there is something spiteful and even sinister about the Tories’ increasingly personalised attacks on Gordon Brown, a topic explored by my colleague James Macintyre earlier this month.

As far as I know, George Osborne has never apologised for his description of Brown as “autistic”. I recently witnessed another ugly Tory slur when Alan Duncan declared at a private meeting that Brown “looks like he needs a wash”. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that such remarks pander to those amused by Jeremy Clarkson’s description of Brown as a “one-eyed Scottish idiot”.

Unfortunately I can’t agree with Wheatcroft’s verdict that “the public is repelled” by the Tories’ cynicism and frivolity. The supposition that the electorate would welcome Brown as a more substantial and sober figure than Tony Blair has been wholly discredited.

As the politicisation of celebrity and the celebritisation of politics continues, the truth is that the razzmatazz of Cameron will always triumph over the stoicism of Brown.