I was going to do the Embarrassing Bodies Penis Special on More4 but sadly it wasn’t available. Happily, Spotlight – David Cameron: Tonight (ITV) was. Same sort of idea.
I won’t apologise for comparing the honourable member for Witney to a cock. I work for an organisation whose chief political cartoonist unrolls a condom over the PM’s smooth, shiny pink head every time he draws him. It’s Steve Bell’s fault – once you’ve seen that it’s very hard to see him any other way, frankly.
So if last week’s TV debate was about the main party leaders hurling billions of deficit and immigrants and long-term economic planzzzz at each other, these Tonight programmes are their chance to try to show they are actual human beings underneath. And to show us their kitchens.
The Camerons’ is the Downing Street kitchen, so there’s probably not a whole lot to read into it or for the camera operator to seek out. The Spectator’s Radical Britain cover on the wall, with Dave as a mohicanned punk; a “The Boss” coaster on the table. Organic Weetabix though – who has that? And what does it mean? An attempt to be just like everyone else that fails because they had to go and get the slightly posher version? Friendly to big business, but environmentally conscious as well? Actually, unless he’s mushed his up, the PM himself appears to have porridge – good slow-release energy, long term calorific plan, zzzzz … What’s with the box full of toothbrushes and toothpaste and hairbrushes on the kitchen table though? Are there no bathrooms in Downing Street?
Dave is at pains to show what an excellent, modern family man he is. He expertly ties up 11-year-old Nancy’s hair and remembers to ask Elwen what he’s going to school as for Book Day. Robin Hood, says Elwen, nine. What, Robin Hood who robbed from the rich to give to the poor? Uncle George won’t be happy, that’s not part of the plan at all, pretty much the opposite in fact; is it too late to change to the Sheriff of Nottingham, Dad says (though silently, to himself, remembering ITV’s political editor Tom Bradby is there with his camera). “Can you take a sword to school, is that all right?” he actually asks, aloud. Good, health and safety, tick.
Bradby doesn’t unsheathe his own sword. Especially not with Mrs C, under whose spell he seems to fall. It looks as if all of you – but you especially, Samantha – are doing an absolutely brilliant job of being a lovely normal family, would I be right, he asks her. (Not Tom’s exact words, admittedly, but that kind of idea). But hey, she’s not running the country, she doesn’t need to account for herself. With The Boss, Bradby asks the right questions without going all Paxman. It’s actually quite refreshing, evidence that if you treat people – even politicians – as human beings, you might get more out of them.
And what do you get with Cameron? What you see, of course; he’s the WYSIWYG PM, no hidden depths. He misses a trick or two – like a chance to pay Samantha a compliment when discussing Dick Dastardly and Wacky Races (“I wanted to be the good-looking one with the beautiful girl, but anyway it didn’t work out that way”), and the kitchen staff at his kids’ school might be less inclined to vote Tory after the Camerons all have a jolly good laugh about the horror of the school food.
Otherwise it’s a polished, smooth performance, as you’d expect. Absolutely unsurprising: vision, team, plan, family blah. Dave is as at home in the home as he is downstairs in the shop. Robin Hood, Isis, can you take a wooden sword to school, can you drop bombs in Iraq and Syria, is it all right? That’s almost certainly how it goes. On the death of his son Ivan, he’s open and moving, as he has been before, and more human for it.
The most telling contribution comes from the journalist (and Tony Blair’s former speechwriter) Phil Collins, who says Cameron’s big strength is that he looks and behaves like a prime minister, but that his big weakness is that he also looks and behaves like a Tory, so he will never appeal – as Blair and Thatcher did – outside his natural territory.
Certainly he’s not doing it for me here. I don’t dislike David Cameron; he seems like a decent enough chap and a nice dad. I don’t get that involuntary cold shiver I feel when Uncle George Osborne comes into my living room (via the TV, thankfully). But I don’t want him to be our dad for another five years – I don’t like what he stands for, if indeed he stands for anything at all, apart from being The Boss. And he will of course always have that condom on his head.
