If he was a plumber, though, what manner of plumber would David Cameron be? The Tory leader, summoned via the Yellow Pages to fix a problem with your boiler. You would let him in, I think. Nice face, easy manner. ‘There’s a problem with your boiler,’ he would say.
Indeed, you would agree. So fix it.
‘I will,’ says David the plumber, ‘but not yet. First, I am going to set up a series of Boiler Review Groups. Some of these will be headed by really quite surprising people who have been harping on about boilers for years. They will look into the problem in depth, and then they will propose a series of solutions.’
Fine, you might say, boilers not being your personal forte. And then you’ll fix it?
David the plumber might give a little chuckle. You know the one? That plumber chuckle? ‘I will,’ he’d repeat, ‘but not yet. I mean, let’s be clear. These won’t be my proposals for boiler repair. Far from it! Some of them will be frankly quite outlandish. So before committing myself to any particular course of action, I would prefer to float them all in the public domain, possibly by means of leaks.’
Hahaha, you’d say, dutifully, but then David the plumber would cock his head slightly, puzzled, and you’d realise it couldn’t have been a deliberate pun after all. This might make you feel a little tired. So you would gather yourself for one final push. And afterwards, you’d say, you will fix it? Right?
‘Of course!’ David the plumber would say, grandly. Then, he might clarify. ‘Although not yet. Instead, I will give you a firm commitment as to how I would fix your boiler, were it in my power to do so immediately. Obviously, by the time I actually have the relevant permissions to get at it, perhaps a couple of years from now, the situation may have changed.’
You would probably kick him out after that. You might wish you had just called your old plumber, who had a nice smile and easy manner too, but also occasionally gave the impression that he was actually in the business of plumbing. Although he retired, and the guy who took over his van really scares your kids.
You do know what I am on about? David Cameron on Parkinson, last Saturday. He spoke about being at Naomi Campbell’s bash to raise money for flood victims, and meeting Kate Moss. The pair talked flood damage, and swapped phone numbers. Trotting off back to his table, Cameron was left under the impression that Moss had been left under the impression that he was a plumber.
Or so he told Parky. Call me a cynic, but I have been wondering about his motivation. We are beyond thinking, are we not, that when David Cameron appears on Parkinson, his yarns are fresh, off the cuff, and not rehearsed into the cold and endless night in a small room somewhere in Tory HQ? This tale was not merely told. It was ‘put out there’. Why?
Sheer anecdotal value, maybe. The New York Post, Sydney MX, the Khaleej Times and the Times of India are just a few of the many, many papers that felt their readers had to know that Kate Moss had mistaken somebody called David Cameron for a plumber. Stupid supermodels make good copy. There was another story that went around a few years ago, also about Moss. I nicked it, in fact, and wrote it into a novel. At a fashion shoot in a derelict house, it was said, she had been warned that the toilet had no door. Reportedly, she asked how she was meant to get in.
Almost as good, this, as that one about a young and enthusiastic Sienna Miller (the actress) meeting Kevin Spacey (the actor). ‘I can’t believe I’m sitting here with Kevin Bacon!’ she is meant to have said. ‘Spacey,’ corrected Spacey. ‘Yeah,’ Miller allegedly agreed, ‘isn’t it?’
A few pinches of salt required in all cases, I would say. True, Moss is probably not the sharpest tool in the plumber’s toolkit (even if it only contains hammers and wrenches) but Miller is by all accounts pretty smart. David Cameron’s anecdote, though, was not just intended as a dig at ditzy supermodels. In truth, I suspect he rather liked the idea of a supermodel not knowing who he was. Humble old Dave. Just as starstruck as you or me, mate.
He may also, strategically, have been charmed to be taken for a plumber. An unpretentious working-class lad who uses his hands and gets stuff done. Hitherto, as discussed, not such an easy David Cameron to envisage. Can he fix it? Nobody knows.
I did enjoy Jemima Khan’s description of Benazir Bhutto as ‘a kleptocrat in a Hermès scarf’. For a foul voyeur like me, one sad consequence of the strong-arm government tactics in Pakistan is that we have missed out on the sheer spectacle of the wild unrest that her return has fermented. Barely an effigy in a fortnight. Most of the pictures that had made it out are of soldiers or riot police, or men in white kaftans, running away. Of the few placards we have seen, most have been wielded elsewhere in the world. There was one that caught my eye, at the demonstration outside Downing Street on Saturday. It read ‘Go Musharraf Go’.
This has been worrying me since then. What did it mean? Was it indeed calling on General Pervez Musharraf to go? Or was it doing the exact opposite, in the manner of an American high-school cheerleader? Did it actually mean ‘Stay Musharraf Stay’? One solitary Musharraf-supporter, in the wrong place? Or was it irony, as displayed by my friend Jez, who wore his much-loved Desert Storm ’91 T-shirt to march against the 2003 invasion of Iraq?
I have never been to Pakistan. I would bet, though, that even the most grim demonstration there has a strange conviviality that the occasional pictures of blood and baton charges could never convey. Once, years ago, I was caught up in a demonstration on the other side, in Bihar. Stranded at a railway station in a minor provincial Indian town of two or three million, I found myself in amongst a charming horde of striking railwaymen. They were waiting for the same train as me, logic notwithstanding, to go and picket another railway station somewhere else. Needless to say, it never turned up. Everybody just grinned, and waved their placards, and waited for the next one.
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