A child of Thatcher

Osred

‘I’d rather be a child of Thatcher than the son of Brown’, is hardly a ringing endorsement, more like a typical evasive politcal non-answer. He probably meant it in the sense of 'I'd rather have a dose of the clap than Aids'.

Rhoda Klapp

Anybody have any idea what he could put into a British Bill of Rights which would not trip over what is in the european one? Or will he begin to enforce the one from 1689?

davidk

Little wonder this article is an orphan. How childish can a columnist sink to?

Oh dear.

Widmerpool

Good on yr Dave!

As Chairman Deng in China said "it does matter if the cat is black or white so long as it catches the rats!"

About time the Blue Rinses and Boneheads in the Tory Shires recognise they have a winner at least so far, even if Dave's hue is a bit blue with orange highlights!
Let's hope Dave's winning steak extends to the 2018 Footie bid

R.McGeddon

Red Ed Miliband certainly looked like a 'blank sheet of paper' today. Miliband missed so many open goals he looked appalling, frankly.
Will Ed's union bosses be asking for their money back ?

Jeptha

‘I’d rather be a child of Thatcher than the son of Brown’ Interesting use of tense. It implies (as many of us suspect) that he isn't really a child of Thatcher, merely that he considers it a slightly better alternative to the truly abysmal lot of being an heir to Brown.

Holly ......

davidk.
Never mind,there's always next week,or the week after that,or the week after that......

2trueblue

James, perhaps you could make the point that the quick quip Millipede was used out of context? Rather like the Thatcher misquote 'there is no such thing as society'. I am rather sick of journalists who are unable to follow the facts, but go for the cheap shot.

2trueblue

Just thought I should have helped you out. the misqoute was in fact in relation to the foreign office.

local local

EdM will have had his whole team working on that gag and he was slaughtered by Cameron in two short sentences.

Odds on EdM making the next Labour conference still Leader?

Verity

I'm going to answer James's post later, but had to pause to castigate the terribly silly response of Widmerpool - as ever, unworthy of someone who once read Evelyn Waugh.

I refer to "blue rinse". This is a faux "clever" but lazay insult that has been picked up from an American habit from yonks ago.

There was a time in, I think, the Sixties (50 years ago), when little grey-haired old ladies IN THE US had a blue tint, or rinse, run through their hair. They mainly leaned to the Republicans. I never once saw an old lady in Britain with a blue tint in her hair. (And the fad in the United States in ancient history.) Yet sneering, deeply trite Lefties (forgive the pleonasm) continue to sneer at a never extant group of people in Britain.

How intellectually bereft is that?

Verity

Widmerpool - Get Deng's quote right.

Tariq

Apparently the Labour leader forgot, or perhaps never knew in the first place, that his own brother once billed himself as a son of Thatcher in this very publication.

ollie

"Will Ed's union bosses be asking for their money back?"

Lol this made me chuckle - nice.

stephen williams

How anyone could elect and follow a party leader whook like he;s knitted from a tin of war-time spam is beyond me. Still maybe better than the son-of banker the limp dims are saddled with.
Brilliant conspiracy they've cooked up between them to blame poor people for the financial crises rather than the overstuffed institutions populated by their 6 toed relatives

nemsis

old ladies in the shires with blue rinses eh? rather throw in my lot with them than the spineless self abuser who resorts to castigating older women who have more integrity wisdom and guts in one finger than he has -i expect he'd runaway if threatened with a fishfinger.

Thucydides

"Pleonasm" indeed, Verity - congratulations on learning such a fine new word.

But why the reference to Evelyn Waugh in the context of Widmerpool? The latter, as I'm sure you know, was a character in that prime snob Anthony Powell's "Dance to the Music of Time" series.

Widnerpool

@ verity

You see to enjoy the same sort of pendantry as Le Bas. Sorry I have not got a spell checker on here so I don't know if I have spelt pedant right!

Magnolia

Verity the last true 'blue rinse' that I saw in this country was on an elderly home economics teacher at my grammar school back in the early nineteen seventies and I don't think I've seen one since. The colour was slightly purple.
The term now seems to be used to describe a certain type of older woman with silver grey hair and is often used in a deliberately rude and offensive way.
This might change quite soon because the latest fashion in hair colouring is for young women to dye their hair grey!
Truly I've seen this here in Yorkshire and aparently it's quite dangerous because you have to go beyond blonde but not so far that the hair breaks down.

Chris

Verity, since you seem to be confusing Evelyn Waugh with Anthony Powell, you seem ill-qualified to correct anyone's misquotation of anything.

Tiberius

Verity: you should be careful about calling other posters' contributions intellectually bereft.

I'm panting at the thought of your answer to James' post.

Tapestry

son of Thatcher vs Brown. Cameron is son of Brown. That's exactly the problem, except he's selling out even faster.

TGF UKIP

Been at the Wincarnis again, Tiberius?

dorothy wilson

Anyway, the real Widmerpool is a very nice village near to where I live.

TGF UKIP

One thing neither Margaret Thatcher nor any true "Child of Thatcher" would have done is to hoist the white flag in Brussels quite so easily. Much more likely to have been a very firm, "No, no, no!"

Nor would Mrs Thatcher, or any true metaphoric child of hers, have sub-contracted part of UK defence to the French much less agree 50 year treaties with them.

Meanwhile, here's a couple of links the people who pull their strings would certainly not allow the Spectator's Editor or Political Editor to put out on this blogsite.

The first is a video clip of the Leader of Britain's only conservative party getting well and truly stuck into the EU leadership to their faces, and the second is a piece by Dan Hannan on Nigel Farage and his recent autobiography.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gm9q8uabTs
 
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100065985/what-drives-a-normal-man-into-politics/

As to the Farage sceptics, I would simply say that a man whose main interests comprise "pubs,golf, women, cricket and fishing" can only compare well with you-know-who. Indeed, that's the kindest description I've heard of any politician since one of Cecil Parkinson's Cabinet colleagues was quoted as saying "For Cecil an non-alcholic drink means a dry white wine."

Widmerpool

Thank you all for your support over Verity's rants
BTW I read the term Blue Rinse being used on this very site only recently to warn Dave on the threat from the Boneheaded backwoodsman of the Tory party!

robert williams

I thought Milliband's best foot in mouth comment at PMQs was (refering to Cameron, obviously not NuLab) "You can only re-write history for just so long"

Verity

Chris - You're right! No excuse for such a stupid mistake.

Verity

thucididdly - Just the level of chippiness we have learned to expect from your mewings. Why would you assume that someone who uses a word you've never heard before has just learned it? Bizarre thought process. It's not even an unusual word or a foreign word ... except it's Greek in origin, of course. Don't feel badly. I realise the standard of literacy in Britain has plummeted. It's all part of the One Worlder plan to weaken the power of the population to protest.

Verity

Widmerpool, yes, I'm sure you read a comment containing the words "blue rinse" on this site as we are infested with ignorant, lefties in search of a sense of superiority - and this is one of their favourite sneers.

Rinsing grey hair blue was a brief American fad a long time ago and has no legs in Britain. The usage is raw craving to be vicious. It's a two-fer: a chance to sneer at Conservative women (for something they've never done) and the United States for a fad some of them had 50 years ago. The hatred of America among the left runs deep and is fuelled by envy.

Fergus Pickering

The prime snob is Proust, and if you have to be a snob to write like that then snobbery is to be encouraged. Brits go ape nuts about snobbery. It's our King Charles's head. Most of us claim to be working class, which is obviously simply not true. I belong to the noble middle class, as did my father and mother before me. If you keep- on digging you will doubtless find some horny-handed son of toil, and some titled person too. We're all related to one another and all titles started in the dirt, as Proust and Powell well knew. meanwhile I pity the faux-workers, just as I pity that fool Hogg with his moat. I knew him, thank God only slightly, in my young days. A grade A prat and rather stupid. Curious that an intelligent father should have such a berk for a son. Rather hopeful, don't you know. It means lilies can spring from dung too, so no need to worry about all these underclass single mothers. Our novelists and our leaders are probably even now their offspring.

Remittance Man

A British Bill of Rights - that' a joke.

If the buggers in Westminster had any real intention of adhereing to something of that ilk, they'd have paid the 1689 Bill and the philosophy behind it a little more respect than they do. Since it's clear they don't, we can only conclude this is just another cynical effort in meaningless gesture politics.

Now what does that say about Cam the Sham?

Thucydides

Verity,

Why would you assume that I didn’t know what “pleonasm” meant? And why the ingratitude? I went out of my way to congratulate you on spelling and using pleonasm correctly, since you have had a number of unfortunate accidents when having a go at fancy foreign-ish words in the past. So much for old-fashioned courtesy.

I have never associated the term “blue rinse” with America. Regardless of how it originated, it has no such connotations in contemporary British usage. You have picked up on some little factoid about the term and gone on to make up nonsense about the left’s envy and hatred of America. I have noticed that you occasionally refer to articles in the Daily Mail, and you have the same loose relationship with facts and evidence as that ridiculous rag does.

Widmerpool

@Fergus
An amusing post you are clearly a Proustian!

Clogs to Clogs in three generations as they say I think in Yorkshire but I stand to be corrected by Verity if I have got the source wrong!

BTW that snob Evelyn Waugh[? as read by Verity], according to a bio I read, used to walk up hill nearly a mile to post his letters from a smarter London post code! What would Proust have made of that?

BTW The site seems very slow and cranky again

Widmerpool

@Thucydides
Glad to see you are living up to your Greek name for factual unemotional reporting.
Blue Rinse is actually described on Wiki as follows:
"Blue rinse brigade" is a somewhat pejorative term used, particularly in the United Kingdom, to describe elderly middle-class ladies usually of a conservative socio-political persuasion. This group is usually characterised as forming the backbone of local branches of the Conservative Party."

Fergus Pickering

Thank you, Widmerpool, for that little fact about Waugh. If it isn't true it ought to be. Curiously his snobbery didn't work for him and produced his worst book, that ghastly Brideshead farrago. I like Helena which is set so far in the past that the 'great English families' had only got as far as Old King Cole.

yank

I'm tickled that you all have diagrammed and ranked the snobbery. It's worth much more than throwaway mock as here, and merits a deeper dive. If we're all snobs about something, we might as well understand the somethings.