I’ve written here before about how easy the Tories find it to revert to type and assume that power is about to be handed back to them on a silver platter. Now ‘Dave’ is so sure of becoming prime minister that he’s warned Boris Johnson (no, seriously) that he’ll have to wait his turn before he gets to No.10.
I know the polls are looking good for them at the moment, but you’d think they’d wait to see if they get into power before they turned power mad.
Oh, dear. ‘Dave’ has decided to make the abolition of the 10p tax rate a central issue of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. All very well if you want to commit to restoring it if you get back into power. But despite being harangued in the street by an angry voter and challenged on the issue, ‘Dave’ refused to commit himself to anything other than saying nice things and tilting his head in a sympathetic way.
At this point it should be pointed out that not only will ‘Dave’ not commit to restoring the 10p band - he’s also against tax credits, so neither will he support the government’s compensation package for those who have lost out. Why don’t you put that in your candidate’s leaflet, ‘Dave’?
Michael Portillo has just told Andrew Neil on BBC’s This Week that Boris’s campaign for London was “an insult to my intelligence.” So who did you vote for, Michael? When grilled by Diane Abbott, he refused to say.
While writing that last post, I was reminded of the events of 9 April 1992, polling day in the general election. As press officer for the party in Scotland, I was despatched at ten o’clock to the studios of Scottish Television. My job was to brief Labour MPs on the “line to take” as they arrived throughout the night to join the panel of talking heads in the studio.
I was armed with an invaluable document faxed that evening from head office in Walworth Road. It very helpfully gave me the party lines in the event of either an outright Labour victory or, in the worst possible case, a hung parliament. Oops.
By the time the Basildon result came in and Cecil Parkinson was punching the air in victory, I had very little helpful advice to offer the panelists, unless you count sweating, wide-eyed panic and swearing as helpful.
One other interesting (in my opinion) anecdote from that day. A friend of mine, Kenny MacDonald, a journalist who I worked beside at the Paisley Daily Express, was regularly travelling to London to work shifts at The Sun. On polling day, after his plane touched down at Heathrow, the pilot made an unusual announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, today is polling day in the general election, and I just wanted to remind you that under the Conservatives, British Airways was privatised and has gone from strength to strength as a result. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.”
Never missing an opportunity for a scoop, Kenny duly filed the story in the next day’s edition.
I joined the Labour Party in 1984, and for the next decade, the experience was not a happy one. I approached every electoral test unjustifiably optimistic, only to feel a sickening emptiness in the pit of my stomach as the results started to filter through. In by-elections, regional, district and general elections, I prayed - literally prayed - that this time Labour would make the breakthrough. And time after time I had to pick myself up, dust myself down and start all over again.
There are very many Labour Party members today who don’t share that experience, who joined the party after Tony became leader, and who have never really had to experience the awful desperation of defeat at the hands of the Tory Party.
Which is why so many in the party have been, until recently, complacent. They believed the myth that the Tory party could never recover after the rout of 1997. Now, when it’s clear that that’s exactly what’s happened, they may be tempted towards the opposite extreme: panic.
Don’t let that happen. What we’re seeing s not the end of the world, but a return to business as usual, where Labour is once again the underdog of British politics, and where, for the first time in 15 years (but certainly not the first time in our history), we have to make the case for our party instead of sitting back and reaping the electoral benefits of a fractured and divided Tory Party.
Real politics is difficult. It’s hard work and it can be discouraging. Those whose first experience of national politics was 1997 could be forgiven for forgetting that.
The results of May 1 were a wake-up call, not a death certificate. The electoral arithmetic in Britain still makes it incredibly difficult for the Tories to win a general election outright. They still aren’t well represented outside of their heartlands.
What would win it for Cameron would be if party members started swallowing the media myth of Tory inevitability. Nothing is inevitable. The prize of a fourth term for Labour is something that’s worth fighting for. The media are bored with us, and they won’t do us any favours. And we will have to work harder than we have ever worked before to achieve victory. But it will be worth it.
And if we succeed, if we can bounce back after the last few months, David Cameron will become just another footnote in the political history of our nation, filed alongside William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard.
And that would be worth fighting for.
I’ve been asked by Iain Dale to appear on his weekly post-PMQs blogcast from College Green next Wednesday. I’m appearing with Tory MP Keith Simpson. Should be fun.
Sorry I’ve not been able to blog recently - the pressures of office, and all that. In fact, it’s proved quite a challenge, this blogging lark, especially as a minister. I’ve deliberately avoided writing about my ministerial responsibilities (mostly), and I don’t really want to start encroaching into other departments’ responsibilities either.
As I’ve said before, there are many (too many!) good Tory blogs out there and not enough good Labour ones. But Labour supporters get too defensive for too little reason, while Tories tend to get obnoxiously arrogant and complacent for too little.
With everyone paying tribute to Bond creator Ian Fleming on the 100th anniversary of his birth, I thought it appropriate to point out a little known Fleming tribute in the House of Commons.
Around the walls at the opposite end of the chamber from where the Speaker sits are a number of small wooden shields or coats of arms, each one representing a former Member who fought and died in the war (both world wars, I think, but I’m not sure). One of them has the name Fleming underneath, representing Valentine Fleming, Ian’s father, who was a Tory MP when he was killed on the battlefield in France in May 1917. As a Bond aficionado, I would like to take a photograph of it, but I doubt if the Serjeant-at-Arms staff would let me.
Breathlessly I logged on to Nadine Dorries MP’s blog last night. What was the “big news” that on Saturday she had promised to reveal two days later?
It turns out it was something about David Cameron nicking other people’s shoes, or something like that. Is that it?! Come on, Nad, you owe us more than that, surely?
Currently stuck on a delayed Virgin train at Preston. The reason is that somebody has been killed on the track south of here. Unclear as to whether or not it’s a suicide.
Valid reason for the delay notwithstanding, I always get nervous in these situations in case someone recognises me as the railways minister (however unlikely that may be). I have visions of someone pointing at me and shrieking “It’s him!” and everyone else pursuing me while someone shouts: “Get a rope! String ’im up!” Then there would be a big chase up a mountainside at night, with me being pursued by angry Bavarian villagers carrying lit torches…
I’m either getting my genres mixed up or I’ve been working too hard. Probably the former.
And the damn train still hasn’t moved. Suggestions for keeping a four- and a two-year-old entertained in these circumstances?
