Elections and Referenda
Ed Miliband’s speech on the EU was cleverer than most are giving him credit for. In one speech he managed to neutralise a potential bust-up inside the Labour Party, draw Labour and the ever more pro-EU Liberal Democrats closer together, AND back out of the limelight on this issue so as to give more prominence to the inevitable wrangling inside the Conservative Party after May’s European Elections AND commit himself and his Party to an election strategy based on the cost of living. Phew, that’s quite an achievement for one speech.
We in Britain are not alone in building heroes up and then pulling them down, but we do have a press that is probably more vicious than any in the world (Note please the Brooks and Coulson trials). We all knew that when Farage said that he wanted to clean-up and professionalise UKIP that a) a whole host of skeletons would come crashing out of the closet and b) that the Party was going to find the scrutiny that comes with riding high in the polls weeks before an election very difficult. I mean the PM and DPM can’t even employ a foreign nanny – Nigel has a foreign wife! UKIP are going to have a very difficult 10 weeks. The question is whether voters care. Are they voting for UKIP, a real political Party that aspires to power or for an idea, a fantasy unfettered by concerns about jobs, trade and international relations?
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That having been said, if UKIP do as well as the polls suggest in May, Tory Europhobes are going to demand a much harder line from the PM, exactly at the time when business is beginning to worry publicly about the impact of a British exit from the EU. Cameron’s dilemma is that if he appeases the Europhobes he’ll alienate the business community, not something the Tories are ever keen to do.
Downing Street’s new headache
The sordid and depressing evidence being aired in the trial of the other Nigel, Nigel Evans, former deputy Speaker and Tory MP, in the dock on charges of rape and the allegation that complaints were dismissed by the Conservative Party leadership should be worrying the Prime Minister and Grant Shapps, the Party Chairman. Especially a week after it is alleged Downing Street tried to hide the arrest of a senior Party official on child pornography charges.
The persistent stream of stories in the media of campaigns being run by supporters of George and Boris to replace a defeated Cameron in 2015, should also be keeping Dave and Grant awake at night. With a deceptively able opponent, the Party would be foolish indeed to indulge in a succession struggle in advance of an election that they have a decent chance of winning.
This is all beginning to add up in the public consciousness and no matter how the economy is doing; there is always a risk that the Tories slip back into being understood by voters as being both divided and sleazy. Cameron understands the threat, but can he do anything about it? In this typically non-Westminster Week in Westminster you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d slipped back into the early nineties - and we all know how that ended for the Conservatives, the longest spell out of office in their history.
Simon Gentry
Director, MWW