Ever heard the one about the Prime Minister and the pig? Of course you have, via Black Mirror, the fictional TV programme in which Charlie Brooker imagines a dystopia where the Prime Minister is forced, as part of a ransom, to have sex with a pig on live TV in order to release a kidnapped princess.
But the story became (porky) flesh last night when the Daily Mail’s front page, given over to Lord Ashcroft’s new book (more on him later) contained the allegation, ‘The book reports a source who claims that during Mr Cameron’s initiation ceremony he “put a private part of his anatomy” into a dead pig’s mouth. Furthermore, the source claims to have seen photographic evidence.’
Twitter ran amok, with piggy puns everywhere, people joking that, you know, this puts Ed Miliband’s inability to have eaten a bacon sandwich at a photo opportunity into perspective, that all Jeremy Corbyn’s ever really done wrong is not sing the national anthem/wear a tie properly and that this incident is either going to be called #BaeOfPigs or the more simpler: #piggate.
Charlie Brooker denied he ever knew that the pig incident was alleged to have happened in real life before he wrote the storyline, all those photoshoots Cameron’s ever done with a pig have done the rounds online and @David_Cameron and @number10gov have remained strangely silent.
While some right-wingers such as Louise Mensch posit that, well, who hasn’t done something stupid when at university, those on the left have pondered how Bullingdon could take something so savage and dress it up in a way that makes it part of their special, exclusive set. A set that can propel its members into political leadership much faster than your average university society.
As for the other leaders of political parties?
Others might be wondering why we all started believing the Daily Mail. Well, it’s worth noting how the story – true or not – got there in the first place.
Lord Michael Ashcroft is a billionaire non-dom (he’s registered to live elsewhere so that he doesn’t have to pay tax on his income in the UK) who made an £8 million donation to the Conservatives leading up to the 2010 general election. David Cameron got in some hot water for not knowing about Ashcroft’s non-dom status when it was made public in 2010. Ashcroft said Cameron had known about his status and taken the money – something that would’ve been ethically questionable.
Anyway, Ashcroft had been expecting a job when the Conservatives (sort of) won the election in 2010. But Cameron didn’t give it to him, maybe because of those tax issues. And since then, Ashcroft’s been cross at Cameron. So now he’s written this book dishing the dirt (we can’t legally say if any of it is true or not) on Call Me Dave.
Other allegations – as if you need any others beyond the pig – are that Cameron has been in societies around lots of sex and drug-taking, and that he smoked weed with James Delingpole, a climate-change denier who writes for Breitbart.
A Conservative source told The Telegraph they ‘do not recognise’ the allegations.
We eagerly anticipate the Prime Minister’s next move.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.