Here’s an odd story….

In the little Indie on 23^rd May 2011, under a spot on their gossip page 15, called “iquotes”, we read that actor Dominic West tells the Sunday Times how he and a friend reacted when the now  Samantha Cameron said she was to marry David, the future Prime Minister. West is quoted as saying ‘We were like: “Why do you want to marry that Tory boy?”.’

I wanted to check the story in the Sunday Times – presumably recent (although, maybe not, if the little ‘i’ is really scratching its arse for tattle) but couldn’t, because I cannot sign up to the News International PAYWALL. Given my current relationship with NI news harlot, the News of the Screws, whose lawyers Messrs Farrer & Co are threatening me with legal action if I don’t apologise to truth-molesting  Mazher Mahmood for damaging his reputation (which I’m not going to), and knowing their methods of information-gathering, I think it would be unfair to give them my  address, email address, mobile telephone number, landline number or bank account  details, because they might be tempted to plunder private data about me – not that they would find anything of interest to the public or even in the public interest, so squeaky clean has my life been.

So I looked elsewhere and I found a piece in the Guardian dated 17^th July, 2008 nearly three years ago…..

‘David Cameron was a couple of years ahead of (Dominic West) at Eton. “I didn’t know him then but I do now,” West said. “I know his wife a bit because my best friend used to be crazy for her. When she wound up marrying Cameron, we were like, ‘Why do you want to be with that fucking Tory boy?’” West now lives just a stone’s throw from the Camerons in west London but claims not to have infiltrated the Notting Hill set. “I must try harder to ingratiate myself with them,” he laughs.’

Odd, don’t you think,  that the Sunday Times should have repeated the story almost verbatim, give or take a “fucking”, three years later, especially when you consider the relationship between the PM and News International’s boss, Rebekah Brooks, who has without any doubt instructed all the editors of newspapers under her control to be very Cameron-positive.

At first sight, most readers might see West’s assessment as a little negative. On the other hand, last year before the election, Andy ‘Soon-to-have-a-Felt-Collar’ Coulson, then (as a result of DC’s distressingly poor judgement) running the Conservative propaganda show, arranged for it to be ‘leaked’ that the lovely Sam Cam had once voted Green, not Tory, thereby immediately improving her profile as a modern independent woman (not the Sloane-Ranging, Tory-loving young Hooray Henrietta the public might have expected DC to marry), thereby giving her and him (as a broad-minded chap who understands that bright young females don’t always vote Tory [bet she does now though]) some useful street-cred. (Coulson performed a similar reverse spin for George Osborne in the Screws five years ago, when they became firm friends).

Andy Coulson may have gone, but his fingerprints linger on, with the help of his old mates at the Sunday Times.

And here’s a side note, Cameron’s claim that the reason he had dinner last Christmas with Rebekah Brooks, who is now clearly seen to have been in charge of what was effectively a criminal organisation in Wapping, was that he was an old school friend of  her husband, Charley Brooks, looks pretty thin.

Brooks was three years older than DC at Eton, and in a different house, thus very unlikely to have had any intercourse with him – other than of a rather beastly nature. And frankly, the ambitious Cameron’s interest in Charley Brooks the race-horse trainer manqué, not to say Ladies’ Underwear merchant ( also manqué), and novelist – most would agree, manqué – would have been non-existent.

But Bonker Brooks has made it to home base with Rebekah the Testarossa, and for DC being on good terms with Ole Rupe is a Number One PR priority – otherwise why would had have taken the absurd risk he did in taking the mendacious Coulson to Downing Street, just to keep Rupe happy?

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The Conservatives’ Master of Ironic Spin and Double-bluff, Andy Coulson has pulled off a useful image-enhancing coup at a key moment in the Tories’ election campaign.
     He has contrived to have it leaked, by means of a TV “gaffe” by Tory Shadow Arts Minster, Ed Vaizey that Samantha Cameron, sexy wife of Vaizey’s leader and close friend, has voted Labour in the past.  To compound the effectiveness of the spin, of course, the Conservatives are denying it hotly, and Sam announced that she never voted for Tony Blair, adding the unverifiable statement that she has never voted labour.
     She may have done; she may not, but in 1992, she and Dave had barely met and weren’t an item (they weren’t married until 1996). During the general election that year (Kinnock’s Greatest Hour and the year of his pre-triumphal rallies in football stadia across the nation), Sam was studying Fine Art at UWE, Bristol. At that time (after 11 years of Mrs T, and a year of dithering by Major) and in that place, she could only have considered voting labour.
     On close inspection, and despite the Conservatives’ faux indignation, this revelation that an intelligent art student in her early 20s had – at least temporarily – eschewed her tribal leanings and abandoned the prescribed path of the burgeoning Sloane Ranger or Hooray Henrietta, is entirely positive. It can have done nothing but good for Cameron’s appeal to the middle-ground, as yet uncommitted voters that Cameron needs to swing him into power. It is precisely these non-tribal, thinking voters that he needs to impress – and they will be impressed by Sam’s evident (and quite possibly genuine) independence of thought and social sensitivity.

On the same theme, since my blog last week on the electoral liability of George Osborne (despite Coulson’s best efforts to make him more elector-friendly by dirtying him up a bit through tales of student friendships with less than straight, drug-using, non-white folk), rumours abound that Osborne is to be sidelined in the Conservatives principle electoral push, with the likable, reliable and unsnobby Ken Clarke returning to the fore.
     If he moves into No 10, Andy Coulson’s former involvement with illegal activities at the News of the World will make him a serious, long term liability for Cameron, despite his best efforts now.
Since he’s shown them how to do it, DC should bung him out before his presence does serious damage.

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