So who's on the naughty step?

Wednesday, 23rd January 2008

Further to my post below, I’m still none the wiser about what Cameron actually said about playing the church school system. On his blog, Ben Brogan reports:

Raised eyebrows in Camp Cameron this morning at the way his views on parents and faith schools were presented this morning by the Times. They assure me he does not condone parents who lied about their faith to get their children into religious schools. The key line is ‘I don't blame anyone who tries to get their children into a good school,’ but presumably he would blame those who can be shown to have exaggerated their religious enthusiasm.

The key issue here is: what was the question by the Times interviewers that elicited this ‘key line’? If their question was: ‘What do you think of parents who play the system by getting their children into church schools?’, the answer would have acknowledged middle-class elbow power but not condoned dishonesty. If, however, their question was: ‘What do you think of parents who pretend to be Christians when they are not in order to get their children into a church school?’ his answer would have condoned dishonesty. The implication of Camp Cameron’s elevated eyebrows is that the former was the case and not the latter. If so, the Times would itself be guilty of outrageously dishonest journalism. In such a case, one would expect Camp Cameron not to be elevating their eyebrows but hitting the roof. Instead, they don’t seem to be very sure what their man did actually say. According to the Mail:

Tory officials said they thought he had been slightly misquoted and were today checking the tape of the interview. ‘I don't think he said he approved of cheating,’ said an aide.

So what did he actually say? The problem is that the remark itself doesn’t even seem to appear in the interview, only in the related story, let alone the question to which it was apparently the answer.

I think we should be told.

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Herbert Thornton

January 23rd, 2008 6:05pm

Good gracious. Can "approval of exaggeration of expressions of religious enthusiasm in order to get a child into a better school" really be quite the same thing as approval of lying?

I should have thought that anyone who expresses strong religious enthusiasm in order to get a child into a religious school thereby necessarily demonstrates considerable enthusiasm for the religion concerned. It shows at the very least, respect for that religion because of the virtues of its educational system - and an equally sincere lack of faith in whatever the (presumably secular) alternative is.

Granted, since David Cameron seems to find it impossible to take a firm position about anything, it may provide an additional stick with which to beat him, but is it worth making a mountain out of a molehill?

archie wedderspoon

January 24th, 2008 8:46am

Maybe long experience of the dishonesty of Australian journalists has made me cynical, but the absence of Cameron's ipsissima verba from the story makes me strongly suspicious that he didn't say anything incriminating.

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Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power', published by Encounter.

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