REGARDLESS of its veracity, social media has decided that as an Oxford student David Cameron probably did stick “a private part of his anatomy” into a dead pig’s mouth.
And if the PM and his press team thought it would just go away, how wrong they were.
Overnight on Monday there were more than 20,000 new posts on Twitter, along with a phalanx of cartoons, memes, podcasts and more on Facebook. The avalanche continued throughout yesterday, with contributions from all over the world to what was swiftly titled #piggate and David #Hameron.
Among the many highlights were: “Whether or not #piggate is true, the fact that I would unquestionably believe it says more about him than anything,” from Camilla Borges.
Michael Heron commented: “I bet Samantha now looks sideways at DC every time he calls her ‘babe.’”
On a trip to Brussels, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson was even asked if she thought #piggate would damage her party’s standing in Scotland.
After “trying to think of a way to answer this”, she replied: “I can’t understand why David Cameron didn’t want to give a job to Lord Ashcroft in the last few days. I can’t understand why he thought he wasn’t a suitable person to be a senior force in government.
“And I think that’s where I’ll leave that answer.”
And on Facebook there was a pictorial comment featuring Nigel Farage saying: “And they have the nerve to call us fruitcakes and looneys.”
Another had Jeremy Corbyn contemplating his phone with the thought: “Looks like I’ve won the 2020 General Election.”
Aside from the hilarity though, there were serious aspects to the affair.
Ann Fields wondered on Twitter: “Given Ashcroft’s means, it must have had exhaustive legal scrutiny, so it makes me wonder what Ashcroft’s endgame is.”
And another tweet posed the question: “#piggate is important. What would you have sold, promised, avoided investigating, if you were trying to keep this hidden?”
Damian McBride was a spin doctor for former Labour PM Gordon Brown and said he was confused by the lack of an official denial from any one of Cameron’s numerous political advisers.
He wrote that Cameron’s official spokesman could have issued an official statement on Sunday night saying: “This disgusting story is a complete and utter fabrication, and casts huge doubt on the credibility of all the other allegations in this book”. That would have been “devastating” for Ashcroft, who co-wrote the book, and the Daily Mail, which serialised it.
It would also have deterred other newspapers from repeating the pig story or the book’s other allegations.
McBride said Cameron’s media team were too experienced to have made such a major miscalculation and that perhaps the “what’s the truth?” conversation with the Prime Minister was not “as clear-cut as they might have liked”.
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