6 ways #PigGate reveals the stench of UK establishment hypocrisy

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. He has written for many newspapers and magazines in the UK and other countries including The Guardian, Morning Star, Daily and Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Spectator, The Week, and The American Conservative. He is a regular pundit on RT and has also appeared on BBC TV and radio, Sky News, Press TV and the Voice of Russia. He is the co-founder of the Campaign For Public Ownership @PublicOwnership. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66

The big story in the UK this week has been generated by the revelations about UK PM David Cameron in a new book, "Call Me Dave," by former Tory Party donor Lord Ashcroft and journalist Isabel Oakeshott, which has been serialized in the Daily Mail.

The claim which has made the biggest news is the rather sensational one that "Dave" put "a private part of his anatomy" into a dead pig's mouth during an elite student club's initiation ceremony at Oxford University.

READ MORE: #PigGate farce: Story of Cameron’s ‘private part’ in dead pig’s mouth resonates gloriously online

While "PigGate" has led to an endless barrage of jokes and mockery online, establishment commentators, have, by and large, been trying to diminish the story - and Lord Ashcroft's other allegations.

That's if they mention them at all.

Their dismissal of the importance of PigGate and other allegations made in "Call Me Dave" is quite revealing - as one couldn't imagine them reacting in the same way if such claims had been made of an anti-establishment politician. Six typical elite reactions to PigGate can be identified, all showing a high level of hypocrisy.

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1. "The papers shouldn't have run such a story."

This, by and large, is coming from the same people who have defended the media attacks/allegations made about the new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn - and the digging up of anything - however trivial about him from the past. Those who thought it WAS a story that Corbyn may have had an affair with fellow left-wing activist Diane Abbott in the 1970s think it's not really a story that the British Prime Minister might have f***ed a dead pig.

All of a sudden it seems, "the public interest" does not apply. I'm confused, can anyone help me...?

2. "The allegations are clearly motivated by malice and aimed at sabotaging Cameron and the Conservatives."

As if the allegations against Corbyn during the Labour leadership campaign weren't! Let's get this right: when an Establishment politician is concerned, it seems it IS acceptable to question the motive of the person making the charges. But when it’s Corbyn, or George Galloway, or anyone else who challenges elite interests, who is facing the allegations, this is not done. Then we are always told that the person making the allegations is acting from the most noble of intentions - even though they might have a clear and obvious vested interest in blackening the name of the person in question.

3. "The whole thing is really shoddy journalism"

Isabel Oakeshott was an award-winning journalist when she was political editor of the establishment-friendly Sunday Times and a regular guest on television politics programmes. But now she's published a book critical of the prime minister, she has been attacked and denigrated. On ITV's Good Morning Britain, Ms Oakeshott was taken to task for having only one source for her claim about Cameron's private part and the dead pig's mouth. A former editor of the News of the World - a paper shut down after the phone hacking scandal - has also said that he wouldn't have run the story due to lack of sources.

This concern for sources is all rather touching, but I don't recall too much establishment concern when other people, or indeed countries - are accused of things which rely on an "unnamed source" or "unnamed sources." If you're a neocon pushing for another war you can make any wild claim about Iraq having WMDs or Iran developing nukes, and you won't be properly challenged on your sources; if you challenge elite interests, then all of a sudden, they’re all terribly important. Let's have a little bit more consistency on the source front, shall we?

4. "This is all very unfair to David Cameron - the poor man can't hit back"

Again, this is the establishment trying to protect each other. It's OK to make allegations and to smear and denigrate people who challenge elite interests and to poke fun at the powerless - (that's basically what satire has been reduced to now in the UK and France), but when the most powerful man in Britain faces allegations that he might actually be a total idiot - why, it's outrageous, "the poor man can't hit back."

It's worth remembering that in six weeks this summer Jeremy Corbyn had to endure more attacks, more smears, more scandalous allegations that Cameron has, up to now, ever been subject to. If there's someone who deserves our sympathy its Corbyn, not Cameron, a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth and who, because of his family background and neocon connections, was fast-tracked for Tory leader, despite a woeful lack of experience. 

5. "Even if it's true, what Cameron did with the pig was only high jinks - the sort of thing young people do when they're at university"

So, we're to believe that sticking a private part of your anatomy into a dead pig's mouth is just high jinks. Like stealing a traffic cone or a policeman's helmets for a bet, or getting blotto during Freshers' Week. But there's high jinks and there's high jinks. Sex with dead farm animals is not "the sort of thing young people do when they're at university" - it's the sort of thing seriously weird young people do. Or perhaps I went to the wrong university, or joined the wrong university societies?

6. "There are more important things for us to be focusing on, such as the refugee crisis and Syria"

Well, on the face of it the refugee crisis and Syria are more important issues. But the allegations made about Cameron, the current refugee crisis and the situation in Syria are interlinked.

Call Me Dave gives us an insight into the incredibly arrogant, ubermensch attitudes of Britain's pro-war ruling class toward everyone else. People who not only think they're superior to the plebs, but who also think they have the right to topple governments around the world and ride roughshod over international law.

The book includes an interview with former Tory chairman Michael Ancram, who accuses Cameron of "doing an Iraq" in Libya. Ancram quite rightly points out that Cameron's intervention in Libya has played into the hands of terrorists. "We now have a country which is ungovernable....with vast amounts of weapons from Gaddafi's arsenal moved south of the border, arming Boko Haram in Nigeria,"

Ancram is quoted as saying. "They're actually more of a threat to us than Gaddafi was at the time."

Ancram accuses Cameron of pursuing regime change - illegal under international law - in Libya. "To claim it was only about protecting citizens in Benghazi, so we're going to bomb the living daylights out of Gaddafi in the south and everyone else, just simply doesn't hold water,"he said.

Then there's Syria. Cameron has been obsessed with toppling a secular government which posed no threat to Britain and which acted as a bulwark against Al-Qaeda and other hardcore terrorist groups. Why has he been so keen to topple the Syrian government? In whose interests is he acting? It certainly isn't Britain's.

Up to now, "Dave" has got off scot-free for the destruction and chaos his policies have caused in Libya and Syria. Thus, to say, "Let's focus on the refugee crisis and on Syria and not on Call Me Dave,'' is to spectacularly miss the point. These are problems that the prime minister has caused by his neocon regime change foreign policies and his supporters’ attempts to use them to deflect criticism of him need to be countered.

The truth is that Cameron - whose wars and interventions have led to an incredible amount of human misery, deserves to be reviled as much as his fellow warmonger Tony Blair is. And if he did really put "a private part of his anatomy" into the mouth of a dead pig that should only add to our revulsion - as well as our determination to remove from power our morally bankrupt, uber-arrogant, neocon elite.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

http://www.rt.com/op-edge/316635-piggate-book-cameron-media-uk/