David Cameron: Britain’s first black Prime Minister

A few days into Cameron’s leadership of the Opposition, and his strategy’s clear. He’s using the Clinton strategy: be as black as yo’ white ass can be.

His first official engagement this week was to visit a Plaistow youth centre, where his PR guy made very sure the quote ‘He spoke like a good black man’ got into the papers. His team includes a shaven-headed policy advisor of mixed ethnicity and his wife’s got an ankle tattoo. Even better, he lives in North Kensington – although safely across the street from the notorious North Ken estate.

It’s an ideal strategy for victory in 2008. Even winning one seat in an inner London by-election would reflect a huge swing to his party, and he can do it by cultivating the gritty urban coolness so many white people ‘downspire’ to (what’s the opposite of aspire, anyway?) It’s a brilliant move: black culture affects white under-40s far more than they realise. I wear a lot of Nike; my favourite designer is Oswald Boateng; I loathe rap and hip-hop but acknowledge the talent of those who create it. As in the USA, it’s just not cool to be white, so white people unconsciously absorb influences from the black neighbourhoods and think we invented it.

In the next six weeks, Cameron will almost certainly attend a hip-hip concert ‘in a private capacity’, speak to a teenage mothers/disaffected youth/crack addiction conference, and make a minimum of 12 references using carefully-selected urban patois. Even saying ‘Yo!’ from the podium won’t be off the agenda. And this season, we is mostly wearing sportswear.

In other words, he’ll define himself by that strange cocktail of American and Carribbean influences that is Britain’s black culture – yet he’ll never mention it explicitly. His policy issues will revolve around those that disproportionately affect Britain’s black underclass – yet because these issues affect white people too, he can do so legitimately. In doing so, he will be the first Tory to appeal to black people.

David ma’ man, yo’ be the right guy in the right place at the right time. Gordon Brown hasn’t got a chance now. Go, ma bro’.