No more than a bloodsport?

Cameron looking happy...

I have to confess to feeling some guilt at my enthusiastic participation in piggate. Normally I detest and avoid the type of lynch-mob, feeding frenzy on social media. It’s just another version of playground bullying. Had Dave, say, done whatever he is alleged to have done with a dead pig while at Eton, and had word got around, you can guarantee that the taunts would have been merciless and would have gone on long after young Dave was reduced to sobbing into his pillow. Now we roll out the mockery (as I have done) on Twitter, Facebook and blogs, hoping to hurt and humiliate the Prime Minister. It is hardly edifying behaviour, and it contains a streak of nasty sadism—and I have reflected that it seems to bring out a side in me of which I’m not that proud. Indeed, it is reminiscent of the bloodsports that Cameron loves so much and most of the rest of us find so distasteful. (I wonder, does Cameron feel like the pursued fox right now?) Oh, to be as noble as Jeremy Corbyn and not stoop to such personal attacks and tittle tattle. I genuinely admire those who are able to stay serenely aloof from the story, and one day (which will probably be tomorrow) I shall likely look back, ever so slightly appalled, at my gleeful response.

I can’t offer much justification for it. Still, I would say the following. First, the Tories and the Tory-dominated press have never refrained from launching personal attacks on their political opponents, many of which have been utterly outrageous. Ed Miliband, a thoroughly decent man whatever one thinks of his leadership abilities, was pilloried relentlessly. The Sun labelled Corbyn ‘disgusting’ for not singing the national anthem (I’d say he demonstrated admirable taste in refusing to sing what must surely be a leading contender for the world’s worst national anthem; and anyway, coming from a newspaper that hacked into a murdered girl’s phone, one has to wonder at just what The Sun understands by ‘disgusting’). Cameron’s mate, Jeremy Clarkson, thought it fine to ridicule Gordon Brown for being blind in one eye. And so on. While it may not be impressive for those of us on the left to vacate the moral high ground (and let’s face it, leftism is morally superior to the politics of the Right), it is certainly satisfying every now and then to fight back against the bullies of the right.

Second, this is not really about a dead pig and whatever sexual act is alleged to have been performed on with it. I’m pretty broad-minded and laissez-faire about what people get up to in their private lives. Dead pigs are not my thing, but I’m really not that bothered if they happen to be somebody else’s thing. No, this is about the elitist, poor-despising, riotous Piers Gaveston Society into which the dead pig act was allegedly an initiation ritual. It’s about a social and political class whose sense of entitlement affects us all. That the TV schedules are full of programmes that criticize, ridicule and mock the poor and those on benefits stems ultimately from the Bullingdon and Piers Gaveston attitudes of Cameron and others like him who believe they constitute the natural ruling class. Piggate allows us to turn the spotlight briefly back on this ‘ruling’ class.

Ultimately, therefore, this is political, not personal. I’m sure in many ways Cameron is a decent, likeable man; I certainly have no wish to inflict gratuitous suffering on him as a human being. But he represents—and he has taken it upon himself to represent—a set of values that has increased economic inequality and social injustice, creating poverty, hardship, suffering and insecurity for vast numbers of the population. If the route to challenging and undermining those values goes via the Prime Minister’s relations with a dead pig’s head, then there is possibly a defence to taking that route.