The Bullingdon Club

The Telegraph did everyone a favour and published this photo of David Cameron in fancy dress as part of the Bullingdon Club in the late 1980's. The "man of the people" turns out to be very alien indeed.

The Bullingdon Club is an exclusive Oxford "drinking" club, who's motto is "I like the sound of breaking glass". Their modus operandi is to damage other people's property, unprovoked, and then to pay, the idea being to demonstrate that they are above the law and can do whatever they like and then buy people off.

The Oxford Student has a revealing article on what they get up to:

Last December[2005], images of snivelling Bullingdon members were splashed all over the tabloids after all 17 members were arrested for wrecking the cellar of the 15th century pub, the White Hart, in Fyfi eld.

17 bottles of wine were smashed into the walls of the pub after the civility of a gourmet meal descended into a brawl, leaving a trail of debris that was compared by eye-witnesses to a scene from the blitz. The inebriated members started fi ghting, leaving one with a deep cut to the cheek, and the landlord recalls attempting to pull apart the fi ghting parties, only to have them set on each other once more, exclaiming, “Sorry old chap, just a bit of high spirits".

.........‘At another infamous Bullingdon garden party, the club invited a string band to play and proceeded to destroy all of the instruments, including a Stradivarius.

.........Cameron was member of the club at a time when it was de rigeur to engage in the ‘man of the people’ pursuits of washing down “a cocktail of drugs with an honest, working class box of chips and a fi ve pound bottle of wine”.

.........A large part of the members’ motivation is the feudal idea that its quite alright to inflict damage on peasants’ property, provided one is able to pay for it.

Did Cameron as an adult vandalise other people's property? If he did, we should know about it. The type of person who thinks it's OK to damage other people's property, is also the type who thinks drugs laws don't apply to him, indeed this is a mindset that believes the law doesn't apply to them at all.

What sort of person would willingly join such a club and participate in such things? What sort of person destroys a Stradivarius? Someone nasty and arrogant, with a sense of entitlement?

I believe the next election will revolve around questions of Cameron's character and whether he is a fit person to be PM. Questions about vandalism, questions about drug-taking, possibly questions about other things that will crawl out as stones are unturned.

Tories are already trying to spin this by saying "Blair was at Oxford too". It's true that Blair was at Oxford, but he wasn't very active, he didn't even join any political parties. (Edit: I understand that the BBC have a photo of him at a dining club). Instead, he seems to have started getting serious about religion at Oxford (which precluded any drug-taking, let alone vandalism) and spent much of his time hanging out with lefty Aussies (Blair spent his early childhood in Australia, and all his life has been drawn to the sunny egalitarianism of Australians).

Related articles:
Bullingdon photo now censored
Bullingdon again - Osborne was a member too