Cameron told: it's time to ditch Churchill," proclaims the Guardian headline, referring to a new Cameron policy paper which urges the Conservative Party to take inequality more seriously, in line with, believe it or not, the well-known Guardian feminist-socialist columnist, Polly Toynbee, rather than with Winston Churchill.
As far as I can make out, the name Churchill is dropped in simply as a publicity stunt, and very successfully so, judging by the consequential media coverage. Spin, spin, spin.
Nevertheless, there is a serious point being made which has more to do with Mrs Thatcher than either Winston Churchill or Polly Toynbee. During the Thatcher years the traditional neo-feudal Tory concept of noblesse oblige - under which, in return for privilege, the rich and powerful undertake the care of the poor and weak - was replaced by the
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less-civilised Norman Tebbitt concept of requiring the poor and weak to "get on their bikes" and/or "stand on their own two feet".
In practical economic terms this meant relying on the 'trickle-down' theory which assumes that if the rich are allowed to get very much richer, the poor cannot fail to get a bit less poor. Too true, but sadly under both Thatcher and Blair the rich have got richer at an incomparably greater rate than have the poor, which is beginning seriously to endanger social cohesion.
So, in effect, David Cameron is hinting at a return to the patrician concept of noblesse oblige, and calling in aid the name of Polly Toynbee so as to disguise this reversion to the ancien regime. Better, in his public relations-dominated world, for the Conservative Party to be associated with Polly Toynbee than with an aristocrat like Winston Churchill.
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