What is he supposed to listen to, "The Times They Are a-Changin' Back?"

Friday, cigarette #3

John Harris is miffed that a Tory politician would have the unmitigated gall to dig the Smiths:

The plan was for him to have his photo taken in front of the building à la the Smiths, but the local Labour party got wind of the script, and dispatched a pack of activists to foil him. Their placards featured such slogans as "Salford Lads not Eton snobs" and "Oi Dave - Eton Toffs' club is 300 miles that way", and they would not be moved, so Cameron went home without his snap.

The nerve! I bet Cameron's even straight, too, and we all know that only gay boys and goth girls really get Morrissey.

Cameron's retort "I don't see why the left should be the only ones allowed to listen to protest songs" sounds right. If 80's anti-Thatcherite pop was mostly about rage over (in Paul Weller's words) "the whole breakdown of communities, trade unions, the working class - the dismantling of lots of things," then I don't see why a conservative politician in this decade couldn't concievably agree with that diagnosis, if not Weller's prescription. (Well, minus the trade unions part.)

Working class Toryism has always been a suspect thing — i.e. Disraeli's "We have been told that a Conservative working man cannot be Conservative because he has nothing to conserve, he has neither land nor capital; as if there were not other things in the world as precious as land and capital!" — but remember that sometimes upper- and middle-class boys with working-class sympathies turn out all right...