
The first time was last December, on the anniversary of Lennon’s death, when the rockin’ leader played a few bars on the piano at the annual Tory convention party. This time he went all out, singing part of the tune in a YouTube-destined duet with 10-year-old Maria Aragon.
Obviously, the man could not have picked a song more opposed to his stated beliefs — religious, cultural and political — than Lennon’s 1971 hymn to secularism, socialism and world peace. [...]
Reporters usually don’t get any closer to the Prime Minister than Somali pirates to an American destroyer. Yet with all the camera flashes and shutters going off in the YouTube clip, it’s clear that this was a tightly scripted photo op. The Harperites already have their “base” onside—the evangelical crowd, the oil patch, Washington and Wall Street. There is little need to convince them of Conservative intentions.However, they have a public relations problem with voters in the centre, particularly women, who see Harper as a hybrid of cold fish and cold warrior, running with scissors through the social safety net and toward an ecological cliff. The Tories are clearly desperate to humanize their leader.

