{"id":960,"date":"2012-02-23T12:04:02","date_gmt":"2012-02-23T11:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/?p=960"},"modified":"2012-02-24T15:47:29","modified_gmt":"2012-02-24T14:47:29","slug":"retail-politician-wholl-buy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/?p=960","title":{"rendered":"Retail politician? Who’ll buy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Michael<\/a>
Prime Minister? Me? Now there's a thought!<\/figcaption><\/figure>This Thursday’s Thought is raised by an article in the Independent<\/a> by John Rentoul: what’s a ‘retail politician’? Perhaps, in contrast to a second-hand car salesman, estate agent, etc, someone you’d buy a policy from? <\/p>\n

Not, at least, the kind derided by Lear:<\/p>\n

Get thee glass eyes;
\nAnd, like a scurvy politician, seem
\nTo see the things thou dost not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not that it’s stopped The Telegraph<\/em> using those very words about the current Prime Minister in an article entitled ‘Why shouldn’t David Cameron holiday in Tuscany?<\/a>‘ (yes, that’s a thought for another Thursday):<\/p>\n

They’d conclude that Cameron was just another scurvy politician, posing as a man of the people when, in reality, he’s a well-heeled member of Britain\u2019s plutocratic elite.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whatever the answer, it seems that Michael Gove ‘is not a retail politician on television’. Ah – so it’s how you look under the studio lights that matters? Still, according to John Rentoul, he still ‘could be prime minister’.<\/p>\n

Now there’s a thought!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Retail politicians and premiership<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[82,73,115],"class_list":["post-960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-words","tag-gove","tag-prime-minister","tag-telegraph"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":977,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions\/977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}