Conference Season and Beyond
How different things seem now compared with less than a month ago.
Gordon Brown was riding high in the polls, perceived to be a national leader rather than a party politician. Then he reverted to type with some fatal miscalculations. I believe that it was not only the excellent conference that we had in Blackpool with a bravura performance by the leader and the announcement of key policies by George Osborne, important though these were, but it was the cynical trip to Iraq to try to upstage the Conservative conference and, as John Major tellingly termed it, a visit that was to a very different drum beat from the national one, it was a political one with an early election in mind.
It was aimed to upstage the conference, it was aimed to make a key announcement on troop reductions away from parliament, and it also fiddled the figures as he has done so many times before as Chancellor. The British people are not stupid, they saw through it.
There followed the humiliating march down from the top of the hill and the silly pretence that this was all so people could judge him on his record rather than because the polls showed that, at best, an election would be tight and that he faced the prospect of losing it.
Now the Conservatives lead in the polls. It clearly demonstrates that public opinion is volatile. It demonstrates the importance of inhabiting the centre ground of politics, and David Cameron is doing just that with a moderate right-wing prospectus that is attractive to the people of Britain.
The postponement of the general election also meant that Ming Campbell was placed under the spotlight once again. An obviously decent man who was doing his best to hold his Party together after the difficulties of the Charles Kennedy succession. The Liberal Democrats begin to look somewhat unattractive with the ditching of two leaders in quick succession. It may be said that Ming Campbell went voluntarily, but clearly, as Alice Miles’ article in yesterday’s Times suggested, the assassins knives were out for Ming.
Of the two front runners to success Ming, I am sure that the Times got it right yesterday, and that Mr Clegg has obviously been a loyal protégé with a quite honourable ambition to succeed Ming when Ming went of his own accord at some date in the future. Chris Huhne has the ‘lean and hungry’ look, as the Times said. I strongly suspect that anyone who had his hand on the hilt of the assassin’s dagger behind the arras, even if, in the event, it did not have to be wielded, will not get the crown.
I believe the lesson from this period for Conservatives is to realise the virtue of staying united and disciplined. Clearly any political Party is a broad church, and there are always going to be policy differences, but a clear agreement on the direction of travel and the need to inhabit the centre ground of politics seem to me to be the very clear lesson of this interesting period of British politics.
