David Cameron reportedly made £7m from Greensill Capital, but the former PM has only ever referred to the amount as “generous”. That word speaks volumes, says James Kirkup in The Spectator. An unwritten rule of his class is that “you don’t talk about money, especially if you have bags of it”. Cameron certainly does: in 2009 he was said to be worth £30m once inherited wealth was taken into account. He once described the 6,000-acre estate in Lincolnshire that his wife, Samantha, part-owns as a “field in Scunthorpe”. That “elaborate understatement” is part of the aristocratic, casual approach to life in which he is steeped. Excessive effort is embarrassing; “trying too hard is for other people”. It wasn’t hard to see that philosophy in his premiership.
Kamala’s cool act leaves voters cold
Kamala Harris’s “cool aunt” fakery is what puts people off the Veep, says Miranda Devine in the New York Post. When asked if she opposed legalising marijuana in 2019, the former prosecutor replied: “Half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?” Her father, Donald Harris, emeritus professor of economics at Stanford University, wasn’t amused. “My dear departed grandmothers… as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected… with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy-seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics,” he wrote in riposte to Jamaica Global Online.
Boris is in a hole over coal
Sixty-year-old Brian was one of the few miners left at Kellingley colliery, Britain’s last deep coalmine. He voted for Boris Johnson in 2019, reasoning: “He promised to sort out Brexit and he’s not like those other Tories.” Now his views on the PM have changed, says Sebastian Payne in the FT. “What a bastard! I can’t believe it,” he told me this week. Brian was incensed by Johnson’s joke about Margaret Thatcher closing the mines for environmental reasons. The Conservatives’ success in 2019 lay in disassociating themselves from their Thatcherite past. Johnson’s jibe is dangerous because it reminds people of it.
Pings can only get better
Trade Minister Greg Hands must be the “most pinged man in Britain”, says Politico’s Alex Wickham. He has been forced to spend 43 days at home after being hit by the pingdemic on four occasions. The MP for Chelsea and Fulham spent his summer inside after he twice encountered someone with coronavirus on a business flight, and his son tested positive on two separate occasions. Following the recent spell of poor weather, he tweeted: “If you had to pick a summer to spend 43 days in self-isolation, it would probably be this one.”