David Cameron’s recent comments regarding arts funding highlight imporant facets of the Conservative agenda. The sequence of quiet tutting that followed them reveals more about Britain and its media than the comments themselves.
Comment has focused on the anger of the Lithuanian community, apparently personally affronted by Cameron’s characterisation of them as a circus act. This misses the point entirely. David Cameron did not mean to target a particular section of the European community as deserving our mockery. His speech reveals the Tories’ contempt for diversity, for multiculturalism, especially in the arts. It showed the Tories’ fear of the fringes and desperation to inhabit and control the middle ground and, by extension, Middle England.
His plea for “a grown-up argument” was undermined by his juvenile stereotyping of non-mainstream arts as freakish or laughable. This is xenophobia in the extreme, an element that is at the heart of the Tory party’s makeup and always will be.
Related links:
Right-wing idiot bucket ConservativeHome’s views on Camerno’s recent immigration speech
David Cameron’s speech: The Chalenges of a Growing Population