But first, more convalescent reading. David Cannadine on Stanley Baldwin, the proto-Cameron:
For Baldwin, such cosy rural dwellings were the essence and epitome of the real England, which everyone ought to share and venerate. Of course, he was forced to concede that “over the last hundred years, we have become largely an urban folk” but he remained convinced that it was the countryside which embodied “those eternal values from which we must never allow ourselves to be separated.”Major famously tried to recycle this with that speech about warm beer and old maids, thereby demonstrating that though traditional country sentiment undoubtedly exists, it just doesn’t make it politically. Environmentalism’s another matter. Instead of bringing the nation together in a kind of quasi-mystical union, green conservatism subsumes country sentiment into a utilitarian framework; we need to preserve the envbironment to maintain our way of life, the thing about the environment being that we all live in it. And bundling both messages together gets you the ear of an important constituency:
Nothing suited Baldwin better than to be described as “suburban”. From that time on, the public were deluged with descriptions of his simplicity, suburbanity and rusticity and were offered a picture of a man so like themselves…
Dave’s a regular guy too. He’d rather be at home hanging out with his kids, but if you insist on thrusting power upon him…well, he’ll give it a go. Of course, neither of them are or were actually suburban. Both had aristocratic connections; both went to public school; both were and are eager self promoters, willing to give a speech at the opening of a crisp bag. And Baldwin’s overall message seems entirely consistent with Cameron’s:
…the need for social reconciliation and class co-existance, the claims of country and community.
All very soothing. Which brings us to another point.
Like George V, but in a less grand way, Baldwin gave a reassuring sense of dutifulness and purpose, wholesomeness and permanence, in an era when everything seemed to be changing for the worse, with bolshevism and fascism in Europe and industrial depression and unprecedented unemployment at home.
A political analgesic, in other words. The current situation doesn’t provide an exact analogy, despite all the folks who screw up their eyes really, really tight and see muslimonazi panzer divisions massing in the Fulda Gap. On the other hand, we have a government that goes in for speculative warfare, and which constantly raises ghosts and bugaboos that either inspire disbelief in themselves, or inspire disbelief in the same government’s ability to put them down. There seems to be a certain wariness about tackling international issues, even what would be previously thought of as no-brainers like Darfur. There’s a large convalescent vote out there, essentially, and it seems to me that this is what Cameron’s going for.
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