I hate David Cameron.
Why do I hate him? I’ll explain. I hate him in a very specific way. I hate him in the same way that I hate Coldplay.
You see, every now and then I’ll hear a Coldplay song on the radio. And, not realising it is Coldplay, I’ll listen to it, and think, ‘Hey, this is quite good. This is quite catchy. I quite like this’. And then I’ll recognise it as a Coldplay song and feel literally disgusted with myself. I’ll feel despicable, degraded and dirty. As though I have betrayed the most fundamental of human decencies.
And that’s what David Cameron is like. Because I’ll listen to him delivering a speech or soundbiting on the news, and I’ll find myself agreeing with him. ‘Nurses are good,’ he will say, ‘We should help to improve the National Health Service’. I agree with that. ‘Teachers are good,’ he will say, ‘We should fund state education properly’. And I agree with that. ‘Crime is bad’, he will say. ‘We should work to reduce it.’ And I agree with that.
But he might as well be saying ‘Oxygen is good. We should make sure that everyone has access to as much oxygen to breathe as they need’, because all he ever says is stuff that is so basically, universally, obviously self-evident that no-one in their right mind could ever disagree with it. It’s the political equivalent of a Coldplay song. It’s calculated, focus-grouped, crowd-pleasing mediocrity. It's political beigeness.
And this is why we should hate him. Because politicians who only tell people what they want to hear are not motivated by principles, but by the pursuit of popularity, by power for its own sake. If the guy has any principles, he’s doing a good job of keeping them quiet.
