Cameron the Conservative Condom

In Praise of Steve Bell's caricatures of David Cameron as a condom...

So why is it that Steve Bell’s caricature of David Cameron as a condom is so superbly apt? On a formal level the condom’s slimy, insubstantial transparency is a brilliant visualisation of the long term misgivings which were voiced by the British public over Cameron and his apparent modernisation of the Tories – that is, that there was no substance to the party's new claims to be progressive, and that Cameron's nice-guy rhetoric was merely a cynical veneer for something altogether more obscene. However, if it was only the combination of translucency and slipperiness which the cartoonist Bell wanted to evoke, then he could have stuck with his initial caricature of Cameron as a see-through jellyfish (see Bell speaking about his inspiration for that here). So why didn’t he? Well, let’s think about condoms...

Condoms have an image problem. They have never obtained any air of glamour, since as much as they are seen as a reliable means of having safe sex, so too does there seem to be something inherently seedy about things that can be bought for a pound from a dirty machine inside the pub toilets. Condoms do not conjure up lovemaking but one night stands, the predicament of what to do with the used bit of sagging plastic after use, the heavily anti-erotic awkwardness of putting it on in the first place, that malodorous scent of latex and cheap lubricant. They are essentially unwanted by most people since they detract from enjoyment, but are nevertheless considered necessary because of existing dangers.

What better image is there, then, for epitomising the public response to the Tory party and their cuts programme, than a condom, with its redolent mixture of pleasure and disgust? For as much as there is a sordidness to condoms they are also undeniably a product of hedonism, of jouissance. So too with David Cameron’s deficit-slashing – which has been greeted by the public with a kind of sado-masochistic pleasure (the self-righteous thrill of scapegoating ‘benefit scroungers’ for example). Indeed, what else are the Tories now if not a political condom that the public has reluctantly adorned in order to fuck the deficit? Steve Bell’s condom motif renders a Conservative Party who will be disposed of once the deficit droops, cast off like an embarrassing husk as Britain awakens from its right-wing inebriation with vague feelings of self-loathing.