The first compassionate conservative

Toby Young

22 April 2009

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Toby Young on how his old pal rebranded himself in order to become President of the Oxford Union

That’s not to say he didn’t do a certain amount to court us. He didn’t formally join the Limehouse Group — there was some pathetic initiation rite that involved drinking a noxious cocktail — but he did attend one of our drinks parties. As good little lefties, we pretended to be unimpressed by Boris’s glamorous credentials — Eton, Bullingdon Club, best-looking girlfriend in the university — but we were secretly flattered that he bothered to turn up to our humble little gathering.

More importantly, he stopped describing himself as a Conservative and rebranded himself an ‘environmentalist’. No doubt this had some basis in reality — his father, Stanley, is an environmentalist — but the main point was to detoxify himself. I think we all knew in our heart of hearts that he was still a Tory, but by not drawing attention to that fact Boris provided us with the figleaf we needed in order to support him. As he himself wrote in The Oxford Myth, a collection of essays edited by his sister Rachel, ‘The terrible art of the candidate is to coddle the self-deception of the stooge.’

Fast-forward 24 years, and we see the same tactic being employed by David Cameron and his team. The Conservatives realise that, like Boris in 1985, they can only win the forthcoming election by persuading people who don’t think of themselves as Tories to vote for them. The people in the centre are already inclined to do this, so great is their dissatisfaction with New Labour, but they need an excuse, a way of justifying such a decision to themselves. Hence Cameron’s hug-a-hoodie rhetoric, and his embrace of environmentalism. As Boris understood all those years ago, it is all a question of facilitating a bit of self-deception.

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The Laughing Cavalier

April 25th, 2009 11:53am Report this comment

Some time ago hames wrote an account of his campaign tactics in The Times. He seemed to be glorifying in the fact that his behaviour was that of a frightful little shit.

lauriemacdonell-sanchez

April 29th, 2009 3:55pm Report this comment

‘The terrible art of the candidate is to coddle the self-deception of the stooge.’ Ever was it thus, & as recently as 11/08 (a new date that will live on in infamy) it worked like magic here in the States, when the bone-headed mob division of the electorate galloped, snout-to-rump, over the cliff & headlong into CHANGE-land, the NWO Socialist paradise that's about to nationalize its banking sector, among other dreadful CHANGEs.

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