Cameron’s angry bullying shows his own party is rattled on policy

The Paul Richards column

Winston Churchill was one of the biggest personalities of the twentieth century. He embraced public relations to project his image with a theatrical variety of costumes, , hats and props, from the ever-present Romeo y Juliettes to a Thompson machine-gun. In public he gave speeches which will be remembered alongside those of Cicero. In private he drank enough brandy to drown a regiment, and dazzled and infuriated everyone around him. The party he led was monumentally defeated in 1945 by one led by a taciturn little chap with a neat moustache, poor at public speaking, and with a reluctance to deal with the press. When asked by reporters outside Number 10 if he would like to comment on a coming election, Attlee famously replied ‘no’. He didn’t even have a gimmick like a cigar or victory V. In 1945, the British people chose their government based on policies, not personalities. They would rather have Churchill, not Attlee, round for powdered egg and snook. But when it came to building the New Jerusalem, they chose Attlee over Churchill.

Politics has always been littered with big personalities. Some, like the dandified, waistcoat-wearing Disraeli, make it to the very top. Most, from larger-than-life Cyril Smith, to demagogic George Galloway, to big eye-browed Denis Healey, to leonine Michael Heseltine do not. In most cases, the British people make their electoral choices based on sounder judgements than the personality of the candidates. If they didn’t, we would have been governed by Screaming Lord Sutch.

David Cameron wants the election to be about personalities, because he knows he hasn’t changed the Conservative Party’s policies enough to win over a sceptical electorate. His failure to fundamentally change the centre of gravity within the Tory Party, preferring instead to sharpen up the communications and marketing operation, is the simple reason why he has failed to lead them to a commanding position in the opinion polls. After all the campaigning, press conferences, and posters, Cameron has not succeeded in making the Tories the obvious choice to be the next Government. A new book by academic Tim Bale, The Conservative Party From Thatcher to Cameron, makes the point that Cameron has been prepared to do everything to win the next election, except change his Party. It quotes a focus group member who hits the nail on the head:

“The Tory Party is like a British telephone box, which looks appealing on the outside, but if you open the door it smells really bad.”

Cameron has applied a crate-load of Febreze to the Tory Party, but the whiff lingers on. That’s why, after several days of policy retreats, muddles and cock-ups, Cameron launched an attack on the personality of the Prime Minister this week, at an event at the University of East London. The Tories are rattled. There’s a huge internal row about strategy. Cameron knows elections are fought over the middle-ground. Most of his party, including George Osborne, want to appeal to the Conservative core vote. Cameron’s interview in the Express yesterday, laced with Peter Lilley-esque rhetoric about people on benefits, is a sign of a shift to the right.

The great danger to the Tories of Cameron getting personal as he did at the University of East London is that it draws attention to their two greatest weaknesses. One is the absence of a coherent policy platform. This is the fatal flaw Labour must exploit mercilessly.

We must do it three ways: highlighting policies such as married couples allowance or inheritance tax which are either reactionary or elitist; exposing the internal policy schisms between Cameron and Osborne on economic and social policy; and pointing out where they have made the wrong judgements on big issues, for example on beating the recession.

Labour must make the next election about a series of important choices on big policy questions. The TV debates, if they ever happen, should help us to do this.

The other big Tory weakness is that Cameron is as fake as the ‘student audience’ sitting behind him when he made the speech (they were Tory Party plants). For all his political contortions since 2005, Cameron’s own personality hasn’t changed. I think he’s a nasty piece of work, with a temper on him if he doesn’t get his way. You can see the inner petulance from week to week at Prime Minister’s Questions. When his policy announcements failed last week, he resorted to name-calling.

When he attacks Gordon Brown’s personality, Cameron no longer sounds like a decent family man, with sound middle-class instincts. He sounds like a public-school bully, flogging his fags for burning the toast or failing to get a shine on the buttons on his OTC uniform.

Not flash, just Flashman.