Polly 'n' Dave: 2 gether 4 ever

Tabman — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 18:52:30 +0000

"Once upon a time there was a very poor family. Everybody in the family was poor. The father was poor. The mother was poor. All the children were poor. The butler was poor. The maid was poor. The chauffeur was poor ... "

So began the apocryphal essay on Poverty by a pupil at Eton.

Talking of which, David Cameron was interviewed on Today on the subject of Poverty this morning. The new view is that the Conservatives should be concerned about relative poverty, in other words the gap between the richest and the poorest in oursociety. On the face of it such a volte face should be welcomed. Traditionally the Conservatives' attitude to poverty, when they considered it at all, was that they should only adress basic needs such as food and shelter.

But Cameron is a different sort of Conservative: a liberal, kinder, softer, rounder, fluffier Conservative. One that is concerned with making society more cohesive by reducing the gap between those doing the best and those at the bottom. Isn't he?

Well, no, actually, he isn't. There in the interview (around 6:13 in) we have the slip that lets us in on the truth:

"The inequality we should focus on is the gap between the bottom and the middle."

That must come as a tremendous comfort to Cameron himself and all his friends in the City.

Possibly it is less comforting to the shopkeepers, deputy headteachers, matrons, foremen etc that he is trying to attract back to his party.

Peter has written elsewhere of how Boris Johnson accuses Polly Toynbee of epic hypocrisy. We suggest that he and his colleagues first remove the planks from their own eyes before criticisng the mote in hers.