It doesn't surprise me that David Cameron shagged a pig while at Oxford. I'd almost be more surprised if he hadn't. Having spent three years at Cambridge (similar to Oxford in the sense that it's the same) I'm fully aware that the posher you are, the more morally questionable you are - something I've illustrated with the following UN-approved - sorry, un-approved - scale:
Posh level 1 - You've never bought from the reduced section in Sainsbury's: occasional restaurant-trashing.
Posh level 2 - Your parents have more than one car but don’t opt for a money-saving multi-car insurance deal: weekly arson, possibly some incest.
Posh level 3 - You've ordered Pizza without a voucher code: hourly necro-bestiality.
You might think I'm kidding, but I'm not; in fact kidding is actually what Oxbridge students call sex with a goat. (Well, most of us. Not me. I didn’t need to join a society populated primarily by attention-seeking, white, public school boys to harvest a sense of identity while at University, and I was too busy with The Footlights anyway.)
Basically, because I'm aware of Cameron's background, the Piggate allegation doesn't interest me in and of itself. What does interest me is the following:
Had it been alleged that Jeremy Corbyn shagged a pig, or even shagged a pig in a collective sense in order to bring about the peace process, I'd have been angry. The allegations would have represented yet another toxic personal attack by the right-wing press, drawing attention away from politics and towards superfluous, fabricated nonsense.
But, when the allegations were levied towards Cameron, I wasn't angry. In fact I was pretty chuffed. Finally, a scandal that could seriously hurt the Conservatives! Wahey! Hi-5s all round! Crack open the dick jokes! Crack open the Ferrero Rocher! Crack open the champagne! Wait, no, I’m a socialist – crack open the Lilt! Then share it!
And I wasn't the only one. Plenty of politically engaged, intelligent, left-wing individuals pigged out on pig jokes. Navigating Facebook became like swimming through swine - a sort of bizarre test-of-faith-nightmare for anyone not allowed pork; PHD students reading ‘the negative impact of dick jokes on representative democracy’ took a break to Photoshop Cameron onto the Babe poster; even my mum muttered something about The Conservatives needing oinkment, probably. The only man in Britain who didn’t get involved was Jeremy Corbyn, and that’s just because he was too busy not singing Living on a Prayer at a Bon Jovi concert. The shit.
In essence, millions saw a chance to land a blow to the conservatives, and took it. What's upsetting, though, is that this shouldn't be what it takes to land a blow at all. Piggate has got to be one of the least immoral things Cameron has ever been involved with. Finding out David Cameron fucked a pig is a bit like finding out Idi Amin once put some food-waste in with his recycling, or that Voldemort briefly torrented 'Orange is the New Black' before installing Netflix in a whirlwind of guilt: pretty trivial, in the scheme of things. It would be much more appropriate if, say, killing citizens with drone strikes or admitting a shamefully small number of refugees was the kind of thing to throw Cameron's reputation off a cliff.
Sadly it isn't though, and the reaction to Piggate shows that while very few of us are above using scandal to hurt a political figure like David Cameron, that’s only because using politics simply hasn’t worked.
So, if Cameron really, properly suffers from Piggate (which he probably won’t, because the allegations were printed by The Mail, implying they think necro-bestiality is less despicable than ‘a man with a beard’ in the eyes of the public), we’ll have to draw the following conclusion: scandal is the future. The future of political engagement. The future of peace. Cameron bans hugs? Doesn’t matter. Cameron bombs a baby-sloth sanctuary in order to fund Mrs. Brown’s Boys? Ignore it. Just shout oink. Repeatedly. Out of the window.
It’s the only way.
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