21 Comments

• Chris Keating 9th Jan '09 - 8:57pm

  What a ludicrous over-reaction.

  It’s not as if he had any remotely significant role in the Conservative Party.

  If holding the most minor Party office in the land means lazy hacks will be trawling your Facebook profile for embarrassing details, even fewer young people will be involved with politics than is currently the case…

• Russ 9th Jan '09 - 9:19pm

  Mr Keating is right about the lazy journalism, but I can’t help feeling that if people who think this is funny don’t get anywhere in politics, all the better for politics.

  Also, doesn’t this feel like a uniquely Tory sort of scandal? When parties take dodgy donations or Councillors make ill-advised comments I tend to think it could happen to political affiliates of any stripe. But this sort of nonsense only ever seems to attract thrusting young Conservatives…

• Alix 9th Jan '09 - 10:40pm

  He’s been expelled from the *party*? The poor prick! I mean, still a prick, clearly (“OMG, dressing as Maddie McCann, that’s just like soooo shocking and it’ll be like soooo hilarious and like maybe people will want to sleep with me for being edgy”) but this is a ridiculous response.

  They’re not taking any chances, are they. Aren’t people scary when they start to sniff power. I am amused though by Caroline Spelman’s pronouncement:

  “There is no place for this sort of person in the party.”

  Makes you wonder how many Tories are going to be left by GE time.

• John 9th Jan '09 - 11:36pm

  But this was supposed to be a “bad taste” party. Who but Young Conservatives would want to organise or go to such an event? That is what they are FOR. It comes naturally to them.

  So what is all the fuss about? Tories always do show bad taste. When the Thatcher Government was devastating British industry, and people were having breakdowns and committing suicide on all sides, who but a Tory Chancellor would appear in public and proclaim that it was “a price worth paying”?

  So some junior Tories (and would be Tory MPs) display a bit of bad taste…. Par for the course, I would have thought. They cannot help being like that, any more than a cat can help killing birds.

• Lee Griffin 10th Jan '09 - 12:04am

  Plus, to add to Chris’ comment, what is actually so terrible about what he did? As Alix says, it’s not exactly tasteful and it’s pretty pathetic to be courting that sort of controversy.

  Reality check time though, did the McCanns really get so much in to pop culture that people getting drunk out will see him dressed in his get up and think “Oh look it’s that japester dressed as Madeline McCann!”? I really would be amazed if it would remain as anything other than an in joke.

  Similarly, how many people would be offended by the outfit other than her parents and close family and friends if they did work out the costume? Is it really the liberal or even sane thing to claim that people can’t dress up as things lest they offend anyone?

  So in reality this is an issue for one reason, partisanship. If these photo’s were discovered (and the comments found) on anyone that wasn’t a celebrity or involved in politics (or maybe a position of authority) then it would have been ignored as what it was…immaturity manifesting in bad taste.

  So who is really to blame for any offence or outrage here? The press peddling this pathetic non-story for a start, as well as whoever else is currently (I can see a few Lib Dem’s) making a big deal over nothing. Without this kind of interference then the McCann’s wouldn’t know about a harmless in-joke and we wouldn’t have to endure this air of smugness that Labour and some of you Lib Dem’s are now displaying as if your shit doesn’t stink.

  It reminds me wholly of the Brand/Ross saga and what a non-issue of bad taste that was until the tabloids dragged it through the dirt and whipped up irrelevant outrage.

  Quick question, how does how someone dresses to a party affect someone’s ability to represent someone should they become an MP later in life? The only reason he is out of the party, as he would from any party, is because of the tabloid scandal hit squad of frequent callers.

• Jay Entee 10th Jan '09 - 8:37am

  Alix you are the best blogger here but your comments in this thread are, quite frankly, pathetic and calling this chap a “prick” is pretty juvenile.

  He did nothing wrong. It was a bad taste party after all – not the Tories although you could make a case that it is as well – so why should he not go as Maddy McCann.

  As for her media whoring parents whining about it in the press they should shut up and look at themselves. Going out on the lash and leaving their kids in the holiday apartment. If anyone is shameful it is them.

• Alix 10th Jan '09 - 9:06am

  Jay, why the hell shouldn’t I think he’s a prick? Read my post again. As I said there, this is a shocking over-reaction. And I agree with you on every point, he’s done nothing basically wrong, why shouldn’t he dress up as, etc. All correct.

  But that doesn’t preclude my thinking he’s a prick, does it? You just get a feeling off some people’s Facebook walls. Liberalism has to encompass the right to think people are pricks, so long as one doesn’t think any sanctions should be invoked against them for so being. To go back to our Voltaire: “I may disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to be a total prick.”

• Oranjepan 10th Jan '09 - 10:53am

  Whether or not this was in bad taste, the scale of the reaction to expel three members is serious enough to smack of a guilty conscience.

  It would seem that Cameron has failed to decontaminate the tory image sufficiently that they are still haunted by the appearance of insensitivity.

  The Conservative party leadership clearly doesn’t set a strong enough example.

• Jay Entee 10th Jan '09 - 12:21pm

  Alix, you can think whoever you wish is a prick. In this case I think you are not only being churlish but I disagree with you.

  Like I say, I did qualify it as I do like your blogs and without wishing to go for a Private Eye OBN I do think you are the best blogger here by a mile. However I think you are wide of the mark here.

• Alix Mortimer 10th Jan '09 - 12:25pm

  Oh, all right then. [Grumble grumble.]

• Jay Entee 10th Jan '09 - 1:00pm

  🙂

• guest 10th Jan '09 - 1:45pm

  Such wonderful Parents…
  leaving babies ALONE? while Gerry & Co head off for a TAPAS..

• asquith 10th Jan '09 - 1:49pm

  Firsly, 1:45, you are cordially invited to sod off & your trolling with you.

  [cut & pasted from my posts elsewhere]

  I remember Matt Lewis from Keele. We never became fully-fledged mates, but he struck me as an ok sort of person & we always spoke if I saw him out. I haven’t seen him in 3 years, the last time I saw him was at his leaving party before he went to South Africa. Well, we didn’t keep in touch but I followed his CF career.

  I am actually not particularly outraged (nor am I surprised, at him, or at the fact that it would be viewed as a laugh amongst CF members) but he can hardly complain about being punished.

• Cheltenham Robin 10th Jan '09 - 2:09pm

  This is frightening – being expelled from the party is way over the top but unfortunately it is what has to be done these days when the press jump on a bandwagon because they don’t have enough real news to go round.

  Politicians of any persuasion can’t all be whiter than white, we’ve all made inappropriate jokes at times in our lives or done things that we would now change in hind-sight.

  Even so, it’s still funny when it happens to be a member of CF and there is a picture of him with Cameron to accompany the story.

• Lee Griffin 11th Jan '09 - 1:45am

  So today it also looks like Prince Harry has fallen foul of something similar.

  What appears to be banter among friends is made public and then becomes some kind of racism issue. Except it wasn’t at the time and it is only the involvement of the media that has made it such.

  I seriously wish this sort of bullshit would end.

• Benjamin 11th Jan '09 - 11:39am

  I don’t actually think it’s the same at all. Prince Harry used language which can be genuinely considered racist. Maybe it was just “banter” – I know I use language and make statements in jest (to other people of liberal mindset who I know will get the joke) which I would never use in serious public discourse – but he made statements which can be genuinely said to cross a line and be “offensive”.

  Making a joke about Maddie McCann is not “offensive”. It isn’t racist, misogynistic, homophobic nor does it fall foul of any of the other -isms we quite rightly don’t tollerate. It was in bad taste and might be embarassing but at the end of the day this person’s crime is to take on a tabloid sacred cow.

  I’m not going off on my rant about how little coverage the McCanns would have got if their daughter had been ugly, older, male, working class, god forbid black or gone missing at a different time of year, but stories like hers are NOT no-go areas for satire or humour and shouldn’t ever be so.

  As it happens it wasn’t terribly funny, but since when was that a crime either?

• Carla Drewen 15th Jan '09 - 1:28pm

  How stupid can people get it don’t mattter how low down they are Chris Keating but the pure fact of how SICK it is to dress up as a missing girl pressumed dead and a little boy who was beaten to death!!!!

  I’t doesnt matter who they are they need to be shown for the sick individuals that they are!!!!!!!!!

• Leeroy 15th Jan '09 - 7:32pm

  Drewen, it is people like you who are sick, it was a bad taste party. What do you expect. We live in a democracy what law did they break ?

  They are not responsible for what happened to the kids. The McCann’s deserve contempt for going out and leaving the kids on their own. It was their fault. As for Baby P blame Labour.

• Carla 15th Jan '09 - 8:18pm

  Sooo what does that matter it is a moral issue here if it was your child or your cousin who was killed

  I agree the mccans shouldnt have left them that if they didnt have something to do with it but the baby P person is disgusting no not labour one lot of council people who didnt do there job simple just because u r lib deb they are crap worse than labour

• Leeroy 16th Jan '09 - 7:26am

  It is not a moral issue, it is an issue of personal liberty and humour.

  If you cannot see it is a personal liberty issue then you are in the wrong party and would probably be better off in the Tories.

  May I also compliment you on the extremely articulate, well thought out and well written posting. Had you been drinking ?

• Carla Drewen 16th Jan '09 - 10:03am

  That is not the case!!! it isnt funny to dress upp as dead children!!!

  Dressing up as a nazi can be understood but not dressing as one of the jewish babies with bullets in there heads!!!

  Trust Me I would never vote lib deb knowing the stupidity of the people who support them

  I’ve not yet voted and very much doubt i will none of the party are worthy of the waste of time