The Fall‘s Mark E Smith has delivered a withering assessment of Prime Minister David Cameron on the eve of the general election (7 May). Speaking to Q just after the first televised election debate aired, the singer compared Cameron to one of Smith’s most loathed headmasters.
“The Grammar school I went to, the headmaster looked like Sherlock Holmes and he just hated anybody who passed their 11-plus from a working class home,” recalled Smith. “I liked him. You knew where you stood. He was called Dr Barnes. But then, just before I left, we had this new, dead liberal head who’d shake your hand and call you Mr Smith, try to empathise with you all the time. He was a massive twat. Cameron reminds me of him a lot.”
Smith suggests Cameron’s main problem is that “he’s too eager to please.”
“He’s always apologising,” explains the singer, who’s just released his 31st album with The Fall, Sub-Lingual Tablet. “Why is he always apologising? When he said to that copper [during the debate] ‘I know exactly how you feel…’ What does he know about how policemen on the beat in the Midlands feel? He’s never worked, has he?
“He’s that public school type who can never really understand that people can be properly upset,” continued Smith. “I understand, that’s what he always says, when he understands nothing. His remedy for anything is to apologise. What if he does something really wrong?”
