In an absurd Comedy of PC Errors, new Cumbrian Tory MP Rory Stewart has had to apologise publicly for making accurate and utterly harmless comments about some of his constituents. In an interview published in the Scottish Sun and written by their “celebrity” interviewer, Matt Bendoris, it was clear that, despite their owner’s professed allegiance to David Cameron’s Conservative Party, the paper’s agenda was to make Stewart look elitist and out of touch, jeering at what they perceived to be his “toff” characteristics, in order, one imagines to curry favour with their intolerant and bigoted Scottish readers.
    Stewart is described, in the windy outdoors of the Lake District, as having “unruly black hair Worzel Gummidge would have been proud of.” [“Worzel Gummidge” is a standard Sun cliché for ‘slightly untidy’, and for years was invariably applied by the paper to the late Labour leader, Michael Foot.]
    His “tailor-made suit” (did Bendoris ask him or did he sneak a look at the label)  had “a light dusting of  dandruff,” not visible in either of the onsite photos published with the article.
    Stewart also “fiddles with his cuff-links a lot, like Prince Charles..” [another republican Sun bête noir] “..and speaks a little like him too.” [This is a standard Sun jibe at what they perceive to be an elitist toff accent. How, you may ask, would they describe the accent of News International CEO, Rebekah Brooks’ husband, Charlie, an old-Etonian, lapsed race-horse trainer.]
    Bendoris himself goes on to describe the residents of Langwathby, the village they are visiting, as “slightly potty” – a statement for which the hack has not felt it necessary to apologise.
    Stewart’s good manners in looking interested in the scare-crow competition he was inspecting is dismissed as a “toff trait”.
    Bendoris wonders why someone who made it into GQ Magazine’s Top 50 Men of 2010 [whatever that accolade is worth] should want to come to the back of beyond [just off the M6 between Preston and Carlisle].
    Then he quotes Stewart: “Some areas around here are pretty primitive, people holding up their trousers with bits of TWINE (sic) and that sort of thing.”
    And it’s for this that Stewart has been forced to apologise and describe his own remarks as “extremely foolish”.
    The local paper, the Carlisle News & Star, said he had been branded as arrogant and crass.
    The Guardian suggested that Stewart had called his constituents “yokels” which he hadn’t.
    It’s hard to see who can have been insulted by what Stewart had said (admittedly with a certain degree of naivety, given that he was talking to a man from a Murdoch rag). No one I know who wears binder twine would give a damn. In order to convey the flavour of the Welsh Marches where I live, I have often described some of the inhabitants in the more remote corners as using binder twine for a belt, because they do – it’s not a criticism; it’s not a condemnation; it’s not insulting; it’s just what they do (and why the hell shouldn’t they – anymore than young men in inner cities choosing not to wear belts so that their jeans can hang halfway down their arses?)

Rory Stewart is undoubtedly a bit of an eccentric smarty-pants – and thank God for that in a time when this is too rare. I suspect he is also more knowledgeable, more dedicated, braver, more resourceful and immeasurably more entertaining than the mediocre, cliché-scribbling pip-squeak who interviewed him. But, of course, it gave the hack a chance to have a dig at the British upper-middle classes that Rupert Murdoch has despised since he was shunned by a few of them when he was at Oxford back in  the ‘50s. A vain old man scorned can be dangerously single-minded.

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