It's a strange feeling that overcomes you when you're sitting on a beach near Brighton Marina, quietly reading the Saturday edition of 'The Guardian' when you turn the page to see a double page spread interview and large photo, with a bloke who was one of your brother's best friends at university and has now created a think tank,is raising millions of pounds in a short space of time and is providing your friend and mine,David Cameron,with a lot of his current thinking.
His name is Phillip Blond and he is without doubt a highly intelligent man whom, whenever I met him,was quite happy to make that fact abundantly clear.He has certain views that are rooted in theology(he was a lecturer in divinity for a long time) and his latest wheeze is what he calls 'Red Toryism'.I found the interview illuminating,but thought the interviewer found him out. The very idea of a kind of red Tory suggests a chameleon like belief and indeed even Phillip's background propagates this,as he himself points out,having led what he says was a mixed upbringing in Liverpool. Sure, he followed the standard working class existence but also wallowed in middle-class frivolity as his father was a gallery owner/artist and this possibly is now reflected in his political views. When I think back 20 years or so to the Thatcher hating pair that were Phillip and my brother(as most of us were) and now gaze upon this man who is supplying the Eton educated Tory leader with some of his ideas,virtually saying that abortion should be criminalized but at the same time railing against Tescos I'm left thinking that if one seeks the limelight then it brings upon you certain changes in thinking. No doubt Phillip would out think and out argue me and probably make me feel inferior as he usually did but I was left with one overriding impression having read the article........ Phillip,you're all bluster but then what do I know,I'm just a nobody.