Straws in the wind

By David Beeson

The calendar tells us that the year ends on 31 December, but to me the crucial date is the 21st, because that’s the day of the Solstace, the turning point when the days start to get longer again. Things may get colder, but at least they won’t get darker. In the deep tunnel of winter, we get a glimpse of light at the other end, the glimmer that says ‘spring’.

This year that’s as true of politics as it is of the weather. They may only be straws in the wind, but they’re encouraging.

The first straw was the Pre-Budget Report. What that showed was that Labour leaders were finding their instinct as fighters again. It’s one thing to run a competent government – and the admiration their economic policies have won around the world shows they’re doing that – but to win elections you have to land some blows on the Opposition too. Osborne’s shrill protests showed that they’re doing that now.

Another straw is provided by recent economic results. The recession isn’t over, but it seems to be slowing dramatically, and November showed the first drop in unemployment for two years. Good news, and helpful politically too.

The Tories themselves have been providing some straws too. Right from the outset, David Cameron showed himself to be far better at shine than substance – indeed, when he cycled to work with his papers in the car behind him, he rather suggested he was all shine and no substance.

Then he decided to buy off the unreconstructed hard right of his Party by throwing them some raw meat, in the form of a withdrawal from the mainstream Centre-Right of European politics into a fringe grouping. This showed him for the opportunist that he is: I’m sure he disagrees profoundly with both groups, but he thought this was an electorally cheap way of buying off his opponents to the right, so he got into bed with the insufferable. He also treated Europe with contempt, though it’s the only large entity we can hope to influence capable of competing in a world dominated by the big battalions. In this way he demonstrates how little he understands about defending national interests.

The same kind of thinking inspires – or is the word infects? – the Tories’ stance on the recent debate around Munir Hussain. The case, which is going to appeal, turns on whether Hussain used excessive force against burglars who had broken into his house. The law currently allows the use of ‘reasonable force’ in these circumstances and the first trial judged that Hussain had exceeded this level. The Tories, never happy to let a bandwagon roll past, have leaped on to this one. Chris Grayling, Tory home affairs spokesman, wants the test raised to allow anything short of ‘grossly disproportionate’ force.

I’m not even sure how this would make a difference. What’s the difference between ‘unreasonable force’ and ‘grossly disproportionate force’? Isn’t it precisely the fact that it’s grossly disproportionate that makes it unreasonable? Or are they saying that there is a category of force that is unreasonable but not disproportionate and they want that allowed?

It makes me feel that the real unreason would be to vote for a party with that kind of tortured thinking, and I hope I’m not doing excessive violence to the concept of ‘thinking’.

Further straws in the wind are provided by a Tory who is actually in office, Cameron’s fellow Bullingdon Club member Boris Johnson. As candidate, Johnson denounced the ‘disgrace’ of cuts in funding to rape crisis centres. As Mayor, he hasn’t built a single new centre and has taken a further half a million out of the rape crisis budget.

Less well known but perhaps even more telling is his refusal to select a new Arts Council Chairman for London from the list of candidates submitted to him by the Council’s interviewing panel. Instead, he’s hanging on for the opportunity to appoint a supporter, Veronica Wadley.

This is the London chairman of the Arts Council. Who cares? But such is the control freakery of these people that no post, however obscure, is too small to fall below their desire to stuff it with henchmen and acolytes.

A symptom of things to come if they’re elected to national government? Straws in the wind, as I say.

But it does feel as though the message is beginning to get through. Perhaps some of those who were beginning to think they would vote Tory if only to express their discontent with Gordon Brown are beginning to think again.

Which leaves us the biggest straw of all, what may just be the last straw for Cameron and his mates. In September 1996, Labour was 15 points ahead of the Tories according to ICM. By that December, they were 19 points ahead. Blair went on to win by 13% in May. In September 2009, the Tories were 17 points ahead of Labour. In December, they’re 9 points ahead. That still leaves them as favourites for an election in May – but they’re going in the wrong direction.

There’s light at the end of the tunnel: spring, of course, but everything to play for politically too.