Of pigs, plebs and red flags
A top Conservative is claiming British Prime Minister David Cameron supplemented his drug-fuelled university education with the insertion of a “private part” into a pig’s head. National Post’s Tristin Hopper provides a brief update of the interesting stat
WINK, WINK, NUDGE, NUDGE, SAY NO MORE
Michael Ashcroft’s new book, Call Me Dave, alleges David Cameron belonged to two secret societies while attending Oxford University. The first, the Piers Gaveston Society, is a drinking club named after the alleged male lover of Edward II. “Truly, none remember hearing of a man enjoying another so much,” reads the society’s Latin motto. Its activities seem to consist primarily of large drunken summer parties in which severed pig’s heads may or may not be featured. Cameron also belonged to the Bullingdon Club, another drinking society. With a lineage dating back 200 years, members are known for donning waistcoats and tails, drunkenly trashing restaurants, then throwing cash at the owners to cover the damage.
CONSERVATIVES BEHAVING BADLY
As far as British Tory scandals have been going lately, at least Cameron’s alleged debauchery didn’t seem to involve much blatant snobbery. It wasn’t too long ago Conservative cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell was forced to resign after allegedly calling two policemen “f---king plebs.” He was apparently upset that the cops, assigned to protect the PM, wouldn’t let him take his bicycle through the gates that seal off Downing Street. Last year, another former minister, David Mellor, was secretly recorded in an upper-class rant to a cab driver. “Who are you to question me? ... I’ve been in the Cabinet, I’m an award-winning broadcaster, I’m a Queen’s Counsel — you think that your experiences are anything compared to mine?” he can be heard saying. Fortunately for the Conservatives, the House of Lords peer who was recently videotaped snorting cocaine off a
hooker’s breasts was Labour.
LABOUR’S RED FLAGS
While the Tories are in the media looking like prep school hooligans, the Labour Party seems equally committed to looking like wild-eyed Marxists. On Sunday, the party’s new far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn, celebrated by going to a pub and singing The Red Flag, a British socialist anthem. “The people’s flag is deepest red/ It shrouded oft our martyred dead ... their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold,” sang Corbyn supporters as an irate table of Americans apparently tried to drown out the song with shouts of “U. S. A! U.S.A.!” This is less than a week after Corbyn, a vocal anti-monarchist, refused to sing God Save the Queen at a Battle of Britain ceremony. Under Corbyn, the party is expected to move hard left from the centrist tack taken by former leader Tony Blair, including a renewed commitment to “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.”
KISS MY ASHCROFT
In his introduction to Call Me Dave, Ashcroft, a longtime Conservative Party organizer, describes how he was insulted by Cameron’s offer of a small-time Foreign Office post when the Tories came to power in 2010. “After putting my neck on the line for nearly 10 years ... after ploughing some £8-million into the party ... it would have been better had he offered me nothing at all,” he wrote. Still, he alleges his book — which also claims Cameron smoked pot, did cocaine and listened to Supertramp — isn’t an act of vengeance. As Ashcroft has noted in interviews, it also has a lot of good things to say about the Conservative leader.