Over the life of this blog I’ve said many nasty things about Dave, taking exception to just about every policy he has championed. The recent policy I found ill-advised was his fanatical touting of single-sex marriage, but the most frequent criticism has dealt with Dave’s shilly-shallying on Europe – and also his shortage of any noticeable qualifications for high office.
Following his resounding victory in a Brussels all-night squabble, all I can do is kneel, bang my forehead on the floor and keep shouting ‘mea culpa’ as loudly, and for as long, as it takes the neighbours to call the noise police.
For Dave has used his natural charm and debating strength to bring Angela Merkel around to virtue – and he has used his unbending fortitude of character to resist François Hollande’s animadversions, turning the pinko into a snivelling, bad-natured irrelevance. Dave has thus established himself as history’s greatest statesman this side of Pericles, the nation’s greatest asset and saviour, and a shining example for all aspiring politicians to follow.
Just consider the true magnitude of Dave’s triumph: by threatening to use his veto, a concept first developed by the Romans in the sixth century, he managed to make EU leaders – including Rumpy-Pumpy! – agree to a whopping €5-billion reduction in the EU budget over five years.
The clash with François is particularly significant: a third of the EU budget goes on its agricultural subsidies, of which France is the principal beneficiary. Thus François was arguing from a purely parochial position, whereas Dave proved yet again that his concerns laudably transcend purely national interests. Or indeed his own, for there’s every danger that first-growth clarets, to which Dave is reputed to be partial, will now become more expensive just at the time he’ll have to start paying for his own wines.
Five billion! That’s five followed by nine zeros, ladies and gentlemen, a huge amount by most people’s reckoning. Have you got that much in your savings account? Can you even imagine such a huge, or in Dave’s parlance ‘ginormous’, sum of money? I know I can’t, which shifts my response to Dave’s feat from admiration to sheer awe. I’m now ready to take on all naysayers, to whom I so lamentably used to belong, rebuffing their arguments that can only ever be spurious.
I can anticipate their vituperative objections based on something as trivial as maths. Lowering a proposed €913-billion budget to €908 billion, they’ll hiss in their snake-like fashion, represents a puny reduction of merely less than 0.5 percent. Since this will probably be followed by another raid on Britain’s rebate, the nasties will claim, the country will lose rather than gain as a result of Dave’s principled stand. And since the EU is known for its unwavering commitment to parliamentary democracy, the reduced budget still has to be approved by the MEPs, which is highly unlikely.
Trust those vipers always to look on the dark side, especially wherever the great statesman Dave is concerned. They refuse to see that it’s God who proposes everything that Dave disposes.
Didn’t Christ preach universal love? Yes he did. Did he stipulate that the love could be heterosexual only? Of course he didn’t. Hence Dave’s orthodox Christian position on same-sex marriage.
Didn’t Christ state that the poor in spirit are blessed? Hence Dave’s pious stance on education.
Didn’t Christ specify that his kingdom was different from, and implicitly higher than, any kingdom of this world? Hence Dave’s derision of national sovereignty.
Didn’t Paul say, ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice…’ Hence Dave’s healthcare policies.
No critic of Dave can henceforth be a friend of mine. Thus I’ll live friendless in the world for everyone I know insists that Dave’s a useless, spineless, self-serving spiv. But that doesn’t matter: with a PM like Dave looking after us, who needs friends?