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Leadership, says Nelson Mandela to Springboks rugby captain Francois Pienaar in the film Invictus, is more than example. It is about inspiration. Pienaar understood that this meant unity in a common cause.
The message of unity has yet to reach the constituency of Westminster North, whose Tories are a rainbow cacophony of clashing interests. This is the real Notting Hill set, a collection of powerful professionals lumped together under a Whole Foods banner.
So we have a working mother-to-be, the Cameroon candidate Joanne Cash, at war with Amanda Sayers, a woman who “sacrificed” her career in order to bring up her children and support her rich banker husband.
Cash is accused by her opponents of a badly timed pregnancy (ie leaving it rather late at 40) and swanking about giving up a six-figure salary for the sake of public service. Both women are thus wrestling on the moral high ground.
There is a further question of whether Cash kept quiet about her pregnancy. She is legally entitled to do this: look what happened to the executive of City law firm Eversheds who questioned a pregnant woman's commitment (RIP dinosaur, as Cash might put it). Isn't it a bit Left-wing to get so huffy about it?
What is astonishing is the allegation that Tory agent Peter Fraser-Howells said: “It makes me sick seeing pregnant stomachs.” He says he has no recollection of making the remark.
It is not a simple division between modernisers and “backwoodsmen”, as Michael Gove says. Fraser-Howells is not a booming-voiced member of White's but a cool-looking leading member of the Gay Conservatives. I accept his word that he did not express physical revulsion about Cash but if you are gay you may not worship female fertility to the degree required by the Cameroons.
There is a further fragmentation. Joanne Cash is accused by her opponents of sucking up to poor Muslims in the area at the expense of the wealthy Jewish supporters. The last thing Cameron needs is for Israel/Palestine hostilities to break out in Notting Hill.
Cash is herself a mixed bag of messages. She is female and state educated but she is also married to an Old Etonian friend of Cameron's, which suggests entrenched privilege. I don't know how such a bright, professional woman responds to being labelled a “Cameron Cutie” or, as Ann Widdecombe puts it less admiringly, “a blonde bimbo”.
Stereotyping of every kind threatens to sink Westminster North. It is what happens if you target demographics rather than stick to ideology. Mrs Thatcher offered frugality, confrontation and aspiration. Men and women, gays and straights, philanderers and moralists bought (or rejected) the vision. People must be more than the sum of their parts.
Bring your catwalk home
I was momentarily startled to see moody television shots of David Beckham, advertising this week's Champions League game between AC Milan and Manchester United. Despite Beckham's sponsorship deals and international career, I have become used to him as an ambassador for British sport. Likewise, Victoria Beckham, in her effortful way, is an ambassador for British fashion. So why is she showing her collection in New York? Victoria is not exactly a successor to Alexander McQueen but I'd like to see her fly the flag. Or else isn't it time Cheryl Cole diversified into fashion?
Perfect Sarah puts Gordon out to grass
It is always dangerous when a PR person becomes more famous and successful than their client. It is why champions of the dark arts always protest that they are “not the story”. I fear that this may be starting to happen in the case of Sarah Brown and her all-consuming project, her husband.
Women are inclined to sort out their husbands in the same way they do up their houses, and the impulse is doubly strong if you are professionally trained in PR. I talked to Sarah Brown at last week's Evening Standard film awards and was won over by her awareness of other people. She seemed balanced in the way Cherie Blair, swerving between warmth and grandeur, never did. Sarah's responses as she sat in the audience for the Piers Morgan show were perfect, just as her husband's were like an incompetent performing seal. If the gap becomes too wide, she will serve not to support her husband's strengths but only to highlight his weaknesses.
Curse of the water carriers
The surging population of London, together with its atmosphere of urgency and purpose, demands a refining of our city etiquette. For instance, it is wrong to try to slow people down in the streets with surveys, although it is fine to push leaflets at them, and one should always accept leaflets out of respect for the dignity of labour.
My first law of London living however is the use of bottles in gyms. It is rude to stand for minutes at the water machine filling up an Evian bottle. We are not tankers and have no need for that quantity. Anyone trying to exercise afterwards would gurgle and collapse. Are we in a desert, with no further means of water? It is a pointless affectation. I wonder what readers would choose to ban to ensure a civil existence in London?
Reader views (3)
my god she's desperate with all this twittering her innocence. she is a mate of cameron or why else would she call him dave in all her other twitters. she's the best reason i know for not voting tory - and i live in the constitency
- David Baron, london, 17/02/2010 14:50
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I hadn't even heard of this spat before clicking on Sands' column. I wanted to vote Tory this time simply as a protest against ID cards but I just can't now, it really is true that DC is packing his party with the truly privileged. It stinks.
- David Short, Tunis, Tunisia, 16/02/2010 16:18
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"People must be more than the sum of their parts."
Or simply be able to do their job regardless of race, gender or creed.
Unfortunately Cash has the position for all the wrong reasons. PC politics is negative politics.
- Frank, Home Counties, England., 16/02/2010 14:55
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