There they stood, in the Rose Garden at Number 10 Downing Street. Two smoothy 40-somethings in blue suits, arraigned behind identical lecterns, joshing away like a pair of ITV comedians — the Chuckle Brothers, perhaps.
The era of Dick Clameron has begun.
One can perhaps forgive them their moment of exuberance. It’s not often a chap becomes Prime Minister, even if he was expecting it. Nor a no-hoper, doomed to a life as a political Bedouin, unexpectedly to emerge as Deputy Prime Minister. It was more than a jaw-dropping occasion, it had all the ingredients of a new dawn, did it not?
For those who welcome a kindlier, softer form of Government, stationed firmly on the soggy marshland of the centre ground, it must have been a red letter day. From now on blue means red, or at least orange.
And, yes, there are lots of kindlier, softer things to look forward to, including higher taxes, chummier governance, smiles all round.
Crisis, what crisis? Do you mean our little, local difficulties? Don’t worry your pretty heads about it. The Clameroons are here.
Even Alex Salmond fell for the spell as the circus wafted into Edinburgh yesterday. Don’t be fooled, the phoney honeymoon is about to end.
Next week is a crunch period for the country. The question put will not concern who occupies Downing Street, but who governs Britain?
In Brussels, our secret masters are planning an audacious land-grab of power under the cover of the collapsing eurozone. Having presided over that chaos, they now want to drag us into the mess of their own manufacture.
On Tuesday, the Alternative Investment Directive comes up for final endorsement by senior politicians. It’s already got through committee stage, as participant Daniel Hannan has described in his blog.
It will do untold damage to the City of London, which has over 80% of Europe’s alternative investment businesses. Even the Americans, who are competitors in this trade, are protesting at this bulldozing measure.
Where is the opposing army to defend our shores? While I have every faith in George Osborne and William Hague to put up a fight, somehow Dick Clameron doesn’t instil much confidence.
There follows the EU Commission’s demand that all UK Budgets be submitted to them for approval before they are put to our “sovereign” Parliament. Where are the shouts of opposition? Apart from a few doughty journalists, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in particular, most people are still basking in the rosy glow of sweet togetherness.
Three governing bodies are being set up in Brussels to cement the final bars into our new economic prisonhouse. Welcome to the fascist Europe some of us have been warning of for years.
Make no mistake, these decisions will make Britain a minor protectorate of the illegitimate Brussels regime.
David Cameron must now tear himself away from the embrace of LibDem Euro infatuation and fight as if his life depends on it. Now is the time to take an arms-length position to the colossal burgeoning mess on the Continent and refuse to participate in anything they cook up.
If the Conservative Party can’t handle that, it doesn’t deserve to exist, let alone take office.
Now we’re into the final week of what has been generally a lacklustre event. The only redeeming factor was Nick Clegg’s night of glory in the first TV debate, an opportunity he grasped with both outstretched arms.
Watching Gordon Brown during this campaign I have been reminded again and again of Dylan Thomas’s famous lines:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And yet, after the gruesome events in Rochdale this week in which he mortified 65-year old Gillian Duffy, a staunch Labour supporter, he has seemed almost reconciled to his fate.
Little by bit, small admissions of defeat are leaching out of him, even the recognition that we could have a Tory Government a week from today.
In the third and final TV debate last night, he went through the motions of manufacturing a fighting front, but most of his words were species of untruth, blatant, rarely subtle, all designed to confuse and terrorize anyone who stands against him. It was an exercise in futility: the words of a man lacking in courage and noted for his cowardice.
He knew it, you could see it in his one good eye and in those spotlit grins that lack any warmth or projection. Like him, they are out of sync with time and space.
We’ve stopped listening to this little man from Kirkcaldy who masks his brutal nature by citing a Scottish Presbyterian background. John Buchan would have had a field day with such a character. He walks easily onto the pages of John Burnet of Barns.
And that was the real story of the final debate. David Cameron improved slightly on recent performances and clearly took the spoils. Nick Clegg seemed laboured, if you’ll excuse the pun. He had his day on Day One and, as predicted here, has retreated from his peak.
So what does all this mean for the final result? I think the even swing theory will prove false. The Conservatives are going to clean up in Labour seats where the LibDems are third. Even Grimsby looks ready to fall to the Tories, according to the Independent’s Michael Brown. It won’t be a landslide, but it could come close.
It’s not in the bag though until all the votes are in the town halls on the night. Could there be one more major surprise for us before the end of the campaign?
If there is, it will be in the Conservative’s favour. Brown and Clegg have nothing else to give, and Gordon’s topper is bereft of rabbits.
Scores on the night:
Cameron, 8
Clegg, 6
Brown, 4
Moderator, 7
Just a line or two: the Conservative Party political broadcast tonight is what they should have been doing weeks ago.
It showed David Cameron at his best, slicing through the horrors of the Labour government’s philosophy and policies which have led us into this disaster.
The message is beginning to come together — at last. He didn’t do it in the staged TV broadcasts, but he’s done it on the stump.
This is the winning formula. They should stick with it. Play it again and again.
I smell victory in this presentation of policy. Dave’s time has come.
I caught a bit of the would-be Foreign Secretaries’ debate on BBC2′s The Daily Politics on Monday.
LibDem, Ed Davey was clearly out of his depth. The real Foreign Secretary, David Miliband was hardly in the league of past giant’s of British politics who have occupied this post. Can you imagine him following Lord Grey of Fallodon’s “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” That scenario is increasingly likely.
What was worse was William Hague’s nodding in agreement with Miliband more often that one would care to witness in the present circumstances. He appeared to be in thrall to power, unable, just as David Cameron was last Thursday, to challenge the current orthodoxy despite the shrieking signs that all of it is disaster in the making.
Where is the grit and the fight in the Conservative Party to bite back against this trend? Can no one make a powerful case for the defence of Britain against the most destructive government since Wilson’s and Callaghan’s in the 1970s?
There are two week’s to go to the election. Thursday’s debate on Sky will be watched by a million or two, not the 10 million that tuned into ITV. If David Cameron performs well it will not sway as many voters as Nick Clegg’s strong showing last week. Although there will be a rowing back from that peak, the LibDems will retain some of that advance in the polls.
With all the parties swarming in the soggy lower centre ground, the Conservatives need to show strong leadership in areas they are associated with. The Big Society of the manifesto had no follow-through, and is far too complicated to explain in a few weeks. It should have been presented more clearly months ago.
Only stark choices will resonate now. The scandals of massive immigration, hopeless schooling, pathetic healthcare, and betrayals over Europe and the soldiers who fight our wars for us, need to be presented with a vigour that only Brown’s endless lying and cheating can match.
Otherwise, the Tories will fade away, neither blue nor green, but a very pale shade of indeterminate pink, having a view on nothing tangible that will galvanize a clearly confused electorate.
If neither Cameron nor Hague can produce the goods against mediocre opposition in the debates, what chance is there for the breakthrough necessary right now?
I remain optimistic that there’s something in the pipeline ready to explode. My worry is that there’s only a pipedream, drowning not waving.
Let’s be frank, Dave partially disappointed on the night. He was a little stiff at times, unsmiling, and seemed to lack energy. Everyone has an off day, of course, and the fact is we can’t choose when they pop up.
When it dawns on us that we’re not at our best, the first thing that goes is our ability to extemporize. Cameron struggled to escape from his notes.
As I warned yesterday, Clegg did this to great effect. He succeeded in projecting his personality to both audiences: at home and in the studio, while imperiously inspecting his opponents as they spoke. With Cameron in the centre ground, he was not able to do that.
Brown, by contrast, was predictably awful. His point that only the state is capable of supporting the economy could have come straight from Leonid Brezhnev. The idiocy that a National Insurance cut is “taking money out of the economy” — i.e. the non-earning, engorged state sector — deserved a sledgehammer response. It was not forthcoming.
However, he spotted early on that Dave was not firing on all cylinders and smirked and smugged his way through the rest of the debate. If I had had a peashooter handy, I’d have peppered the right side of the screen all evening.
Amazingly, even when Clegg made hugely negative points against him, Brown smiled and nodded his head in agreement. What on earth are we to make of that?
Moderator Alastair Stewart, favoured Brown and Clegg, allowing them to complete even their lengthy spiels, while time and again cutting Cameron off sharply, or not permitting him to answer a major riff by Brown. He was thrown off his stride visibly by this intrusive interventionism, although it has to be said, he was often slow to get to the point.
Professional observers commented that many of the personal anecdotes used by all three candidates didn’t work. Cameron should drop them next time. So also the “my values” peroration, which, as Frank Luntz pointed out, is more suited to an American audience than an English one.
Summary: Gordon Brown mostly put voters off and will continue making enemies during the remaining two debates. Clegg will trip up at some point through overconfidence, but will still eclipse Brown overall.
Only Cameron has the opportunity and ability to improve dramatically for a barnstorming finish. Above all, he must extemporize more. Not rant and gabble, but use his brain creatively rather than reach for the soundbite, the prepared response, and the safe option. Then he will undoubtedly power clear of this modest field.
On the night:
Clegg, 7
Cameron, 5
Brown, 3
Moderator, 2
Rules, 1.9
Now we’re into the final week of what has been generally a lacklustre event. The only redeeming factor was Nick Clegg’s night of glory in the first TV debate, an opportunity he grasped with both outstretched arms.
I caught a bit of the would-be Foreign Secretaries’ debate on BBC2′s The Daily Politics on Monday.
Let’s be frank, Dave partially disappointed on the night. He was a little stiff at times, unsmiling, and seemed to lack energy. Everyone has an off day, of course, and the fact is we can’t choose when they pop up.
