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Even Uglier

Terry Eagleton: Music Hall, 20 December 2012

My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall 
by John Major.
Harper, 363 pp., £20, September 2012, 978 0 00 745013 8Show More
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“... Wilson could imitate his true identity as a bluff, plain-speaking Yorkshireman to perfection. David Cameron once worked for a public relations agency and looks as though he was assembled by one. From Reagan to Schwarzenegger, the line between politics and performance has become increasingly blurred: during the US presidential debates, a soi-disant ...”

Short Cuts

James Meek: Voter ID, 4 May 2023

“... the Birmingham Trojan Horse hoax.)In response to the Tower Hamlets case, the then prime minister, David Cameron, asked his ‘anti-corruption champion’, Eric Pickles, to look into electoral fraud. The subsequent report acknowledged its debt to Mawrey – ‘the judgment of Richard Mawrey QC was one of the reference points for this review,’ Pickles ...”

What’s a majority for?

James Butler, 18 July 2024

“... a revitalised Border Command. He has been reticent about immigration targets, which helped undo David Cameron. For liberal politicians, migration is a zugzwang: a state in which action is unavoidable, but any action makes the situation worse. Aggressive migration policies imperil the cheap labour on which Britain depends (especially in its health and ...”

Magic Beans, Baby

David Runciman, 7 January 2021

A Promised Land 
by Barack Obama.
Viking, 768 pp., £35, November 2020, 978 0 241 49151 5Show More
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“... the novel power of social media to drum up interest and financial support. His campaign manager David Plouffe liked to say of Obama’s candidacy: ‘Walking a tightrope without a net … That’s when we are at our best.’ Yet when Obama does make a misstep – and inevitably there are plenty, from dismissing Clinton as ‘likeable enough’, to ...”

‘Just get us out’

Ferdinand Mount, 21 March 2019

“... their breath as ‘bastards’ (John Major) or openly denouncing them as fruitcakes and loonies (David Cameron, until they threatened to engulf his party), but more often singing to their tune, denouncing ‘Brussels’ as a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy, but one out of which he (or more often she) had managed to screw ‘a good deal for ...”

Notes on the Election

David Runciman, 7 May 2015

“... office after only one term. The exception is Heath’s 1970-74 administration, so unless you think Cameron is Heath – and maybe he is – then everything suggests he’ll be given another turn. This is sometimes taken as evidence of the basic sporting instincts of the British electorate: people don’t like to rush to judgment and want to allow newcomers a ...”

I, Lowborn Cur

Colin Burrow: Literary Names, 22 November 2012

Literary Names: Personal Names in English Literature 
by Alastair Fowler.
Oxford, 283 pp., £19.99, September 2012, 978 0 19 959222 7Show More
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“... up a gear (‘I’ll change cogs’) or just slow things down (‘chain clogs leg’). Samantha Cameron should be warned that ‘David Cameron’ is an anagram of ‘adman divorce’, and we should all be wary of a politician whose name contains ‘random advice’. A really good anagram gives a similar sort of ...”

Against Responsibility

William Davies, 8 November 2018

Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism 
by Melinda Cooper.
Zone, 447 pp., £24, March 2017, 978 1 935408 84 0Show More
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“... political upheavals of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in 2015 and the resignation of David Cameron the following summer. (Theresa May initially hoped to refocus on ‘JAMs’ – Just About Managing families – but lost all ideological confidence along with her parliamentary majority in June last year.) The phrase was used as a way of ...”

Rubble from Bone

Tom Stevenson: Israel’s War, 8 February 2024

“... in grave abuses’. But the British political establishment has shown firm support for Israel. David Cameron, now foreign secretary, said that there was no way Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza, because it is ‘a democracy’ and ‘a country with armed forces that are committed to obeying the rule of law’. On 14 December the UK’s chief of ...”

Reflections on the Independence Referendum

“... about the SNP’s fitness to ‘lead’ Scotland, I’ve been called a Stilton-eating, Cameron-loving surrender-monkey often enough to wonder if this is the reasoned debate I’d hoped for. I do believe that Scotland (like any supposed democracy) should be independent of the following: a) the whims of American billionaires with grandiose plans for ...”

Diary

Adewale Maja-Pearce: ‘Make Nigeria Great Again’, 9 May 2019

“... world. This must be the reason that, in 2016, after he resigned as prime minister, David Cameron convened an anti-corruption conference that singled out Nigeria, even though his own government had enabled large-scale, illegal transfers of money out of the country. Not only did Buhari agree to fly to London to be lectured on his country’s ...”

How should we think about the Caliphate?

Owen Bennett-Jones: In the Caliphate, 17 July 2014

“... deployment of US forces would play into Baghdadi and Zawahiri’s hands. Towards the end of June, David Cameron told the House of Commons that Isis could take control of northern Iraq and set up a government there: ‘The people in that regime, as well as trying to take territory, are also planning to attack us here at home in the United ...”

Within the Saffron Family

Andrew Whitehead: Modi, 10 September 2015

The Modi Effect: Inside Narendra Modi’s Campaign to Transform India 
by Lance Price.
Hodder, 342 pp., £25, March 2015, 978 1 4736 1089 7Show More
2014: The Election that Changed India 
by Rajdeep Sardesai.
Penguin, 372 pp., £16.99, November 2014, 978 0 14 342498 7Show More
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“... talking to someone who just got more votes than any other politician anywhere in the universe,’ David Cameron told Modi. The BJP took 31 per cent of 550 million votes – barely above the Miliband mark – but the first-past-the-post system Britain bequeathed to India, combined with the strength of regional parties in the east and south, transformed ...”

Diary

Lana Spawls: What a Junior Doctor Does, 4 February 2016

“... was prepared to force the contract on doctors regardless of whether the BMA agreed to it. David Cameron said last month that junior doctors could not be allowed to ‘block progress in our NHS’. Whose NHS? The government has done everything it can to make it seem as if its main concern is with reducing weekend mortality rates, but even if that ...”

Snobs, Swots and Hacks

Jonathan Parry, 23 January 2025

Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite 
by Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman.
Harvard, 317 pp., £20, September 2024, 978 0 674 25771 9Show More
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“... to think that Boris Johnson’s wife, Carrie, was a dysfunctional presence in Number 10, and that David Cameron had performed a sex act on a pig, can be said to be many things, but a secretive wirepuller is not one of them.Reeves and Friedman​ allege that the wealth elite ‘tilts strongly to the right’. The comparison is with the rest of their ...”

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