Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Michael Gove, responding to Peter Mandelson's comment, that whilst David Cameron had not chosen to go to Eton, he had decided to join the 'Bullingdon Club'. "When Peter Mandelson was at university he joined the Young Communists and travelled to Cuba to listen to Fidel Castro." An entirely pertinent reply which just about summed up the unconvincing nature of Andrew Rawnsley's 'Dispatches' documentary about David Cameron, screened on Channel 4 last Monday. At the time I was watching a proper car-crash, as Liverpool lost to Wigan Athletic, however the show is available on 4OD.

Perhaps Michael Gove reads ‘Three Thousand Versts’ . The Shadow Secretary for Children, Schools and Families has drawn parallels between hate filled republican ideologues and hate filled Islamist ideologues. He asks, “How can anyone in Northern Ireland justify a recourse to murderous violence for political ends when the political process is so determinedly inclusive and every tradition is carefully respected? And how can any British citizen, however opposed to any Government policy, ever think it right to slander, barrack and abuse young men who have risked everything in the service of this country?” The answer? “The hatred that drives the Real IRA is a product not of blind killing rage but the bitter fruit of ideological commitment. The ideology of Irish republicanism, which celebrates blood and martyrdom and holds that the sacrifice of innocents is a price worth paying that Ireland may be free of perfidious Albion, has the murderers of Massereene barracks in its grip. What drove t...