THOUGH you can say that cheek brings fun or at least mischief to dull politics, you can also argue that it’s not socially distanced from ‘a sense of entitlement’.
The spectacle in Westminster last week of sheep-like Tory MPs nudged into shameful voting, then ditched, was a reminder of the cliquishness at the top of today’s British government.
One commentator ran through the cast, with schools and university attended in brackets after their names. Old Etonians Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg obviously, Owen Paterson’s Cambridge and ‘Radley’, less familiar posh school to the rest of us.
The outlying part of the United Kingdom, the regions least connected to the centre of power, are not the Shetlands - or Northern Ireland. It’s everywhere north of Oxbridge.
What these fellows have in common, fuelling their fantasies of British sovereignty in a global age (though the globe is burning), is the sense of entitlement expensive education reinforces.
At times in this chaotic Tory era the dominant tone of the British media has been similarly ex-public school/Oxbridge. This time, the clever clogs who eat and drink together hadn’t the stomach or nerve to dress up friendly spin as analysis. Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph howled in harmony and behold, a U-turn.
Though there was an initial dishonest and typically brazen whisper from the centre of the web.
Boris Johnson was said to be asking how the disaster had happened. With apparent bewilderment, tetchily, as though none of it had needed his airy wave, much less been urged on by him.
There was nothing airy about the plug-pull after Owen Paterson trekked through broadcasts to insist on his innocence and that he’d do it all again.
It was his distinguishing mark as occupant of Hillsborough Castle in 2010, blithe self-belief or something that looked like it. Way before his emergence as one of the least reasonable Brexiteers he was a man on several missions, flying into Belfast before the Tories turfed out Labour regularly, for years, to prepare for a posting he badly wanted.
Apart from his drumbeat of business encouragement, he talked up the tiny local Conservative party. The notion remains unproven - that the UUP could re-launch itself as Conservative above all, to attract non-voting Protestants repelled by the DUP, that Ulster Unionism is the real British deal, essentially non-sectarian.
‘UCUNF’ for Ulster Conservatives and Unionists, name as unappealing as the idea, was invented in 2009 and formally dissolved three years later well after it had ceased to be.
BBC NI reported that Paterson charmed some to run as UCUNF candidates. But he was dismayed when the UUs agreed a joint candidate with the DUP in Fermanagh-South Tyrone, disappointed when UCUNF failed to contest every seat as promised.
The first Conservative Secretary of State since Sir Patrick Mayhew, Paterson behaved as though the Good Friday Agreement was now ancient history.
Why pretend that nationalism deserved equal respect? Unionism should be a uniting force, he preached briskly across the Hillsborough dinner table to journalists and occasional academic guests, frequently about the virtue of breaking moulds, searching out new customers, the challenges for modest-sized business like his leather firm.
Another favourite routine described his tours along the border. His police guard didn’t like this much, he twinkled, indeed they showed surprise and dismay. But south Armagh held no terrors for him, after years of horse races on the steppes with his wife.
From expressions round the table that he failed to notice, he may have generated more identification with his PSNI detail than his business style.
The NI job has encouraged show-boaters down the years; take Mandelson, Mowlam, Peter Hain.
Owen Paterson’s sense of entitlement differs if at all from others in how it was fed, briefly, by similar entitlement in Number Ten.
The tragedy in the tale is unlikely to encourage private embarrassment at the top.
