So Ed Miliband brought up the Flashman thing at Prime Minister’s Questions today. How rum. Now I think it would be sensible for the Prime Minister to be polite to his opponents. There’s no need to belittle Mr Miliband when he does such a good job of doing so himself.
If Labour think attacking Cameron’s privileged background is a winning tactic then good luck to them. I rather suspect the public have already priced that in to their view of Cameron (and George Osborne) and so this ploy cannot do much more than entertain Labour’s backbenchers.
I suppose Labour are thinking of the Harry Flashman* of Tom Brown’s Schooldays.That Flashman was a bully eventually expelled from Rugby (for drunkeness). But that Flashman has been eclipsed by the Flashy of George MacDonald Fraser’s meticulous catalogue of Victorian adventures, presented to posterity as the Papers of Harry Paget Flashman.
Granted, Flashman’s winning description of himself as “a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and oh yes, a toady” is not without merit. And, yes, his comfortable, if less than first-class, background allowed his father to purchase him a commission in the Light Dragoons. And yes too, Flashman’s marriage to Elspeth was a scrambled, shotgun affair rather like Cameron’s to Clegg.
Flashman’s honours – among them the Victoria Cross and a KCB – are invariably ill-gotten and thoroughly undeserved. But nothing is more reliable than Flashy’s ill-won good fortune. No matter how hopeless the situation and however much he may deserve his comeuppance something always turns up to rescue the situation. He gets away with it. Always. He may be a lying, cowardly, wholly unappealling womaniser and all the rest of it but that never seems to matter because the people who know always fail to survive and the legend of Harry Flashman grows and grows. Those who are left to hear the tales believe them.
So, um, perhaps there is something to it after all. If David Cameron is anything, he’s lucky. Let us count the ways:
1. He comes second on the first ballot of the Tory leadership election yet still prevails.
2. Labour decides they must eliminate Tony Blair.
3. Labour replace Blair with Gordon Brown.
4. Without even holding a leadership contest.
5. Gordon Brown is Gordon Brown.
6. Brown declines to call an election in 2007 that he is well-placed to win.
7. The roof caves in and the economy is ruined.
8. Few people care to give Brown much credit for measures taken to repair the damage.
9. Brown remains Brown.
10. During the election campaign Gordon suggests much of the electorate aren’t much better than a bunch of rancid old bigots.
11. Despite all this Cameron fails to win an overall majority at the election.
12. The parliamentary arithmetic, however, pretty much makes a Labour-Lib Dem coalition impossible.
13. Dave marries Nick and people persuade themselves this is what they wanted all along.
14. Nick generously spends a year taking all the flak that comes the coalition’s way.
15. Bounced into holding a referendum on electoral reform, Dave’s fortunate that the alternative to First Past the Post is the Alternative Vote. Which, it turns out, no-one likes either.
16. Labour replace Gordon Brown with Ed Miliband.
17. He launches a reckless, ill-advised military intervention in North Africa and few people seem to mind or care.
18. Eventually, the economy will pick-up and start growing properly. Dave will receive credit for other people’s work.
19. Nick Clegg becomes Dave’s patsy.
20. Ed Miliband remains Ed Miliband.
David Cameron did not earn all this good fortune but he’s benefitted from it nonetheless. And deservedly or not and like Flashy the bounder keeps getting away with it.
This must infuriate those who know or suspect better – especially those on the Tory right – but there it is. The Tory right, after all, suspects Dave may be a coward on europe, human rights legislation, law & order, immigration and europe. No-one else cares, however.
And so events keep falling into place, women still swoon for his charms and old Flashy escapes his adventures rattled but with skin intact. He is a loser who somehow keeps on winning, eventually building a magnificent career on the back of all these failures, culminating as the Empire’s unofficial Grand Old Man. Many bodies are buried along the way but, hey, that’s politics too.
*The other problem with the analogy is, mind you, that Flashman is insufficiently famous for the attack to strike home. Too few people, damn their foolishness, have read the Flashman Papers.
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