Today’s news has been dominated by the claim in Lord Ashcroft’s David Cameron biography that the Prime Minister once had intimate relations with a dead pig. Naturally Cameron has been the subject of much mockery, even though the story has come from only one source, who remains unnamed. While Ashcroft says that the MP who told him the story is well-placed, he also adds by a way of justification that ‘it is an elaborate story for an otherwise credible figure to invent’.
However, could the source simply be well versed in the writings of Hunter S. Thompson? In his election book ‘Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72’, the writer chronicled his experiences covering the 1972 presidential campaign. Thompson writes of an old political trick by which one plants an untrue rumour that their opponent is a ‘pig-f—er’ simply so they are forced to deny it:
‘In both the Ohio and Nebraska primaries, back to back, McGovern was confronted for the first time with the politics of the rabbit-punch and the groin shot, and in both states he found himself dangerously vulnerable to this kind of thing.
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