My digital obsession with shallow Dave

By Alastair Campbell

Philip Gould, whom God preserve, has a theory about me: that today’s irritation becomes tomorrow’s obsession. (I freely admit to being both irritable and obsessive). So up to the age of 40 odd, I had no time for joggers. Once I took it up myself, I couldn’t stop. I hated dogs. And what’s that next to me on the sofa as I tap this into my blackberry (irritant 2004)? Yes, it’s Molly the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

So it may prove to be with all this online malarkey, in which I am a late developer. At the Hutton Inquiry in 2003, some of the conspiracy theorists imagined there was some great mystery to the fact there were no emails directly sent by me. That was because I never sent any. I used to scribble out notes on print outs and my poor PA would have to reply for me. I know, I know, not exactly cutting edge, but there we are.

So I am conscious of catching up from a rear position as I seek to embrace all this. I have joined John Prescott onboard the virtual battle bus that the campaign we launched last year, Go Fourth, is becoming. He, his son David and Mark Bennett, who has worked for me in and out of Downing Street, have finally got me signed up to Facebook. Mark likes to say that the population of Facebook is two and a half times bigger than that of the UK. And it felt like a foreign country the first few days as I attempted to navigate my way around it. But I have enjoyed some of the exchanges and debates that kick off on there, also the generally hopeful and optimistic nature of a lot of the contributions. It is always nice to bump into people who dislike the idea of a Tory government under Dave as much as I do.

I’m also putting the finishing touches to my own website where I can bring together all the various things I do – writing, public speaking, charity, politics, media and so forth – and a video blog will be an important part of it, with Dave Cameron a regular feature. If I was doing it today for example, I might draw attention to the clear contradiction between what Kenneth Clarke said about the economy yesterday – grim but not as grim as Dave is saying – and Cameron’s increasingly shrill and juvenile attempts to talk Britain down.

Or I might talk about the three people I spoke to yesterday who had been canvassing in Camden, Southwark and Dulwich, who said that for all the worries about the economy, they found next to no desire for a Dave Premiership, and more understanding of GB’s handling of the crisis than some might imagine.

And I might conclude that for all their cockiness as GB gets hit by one economic blow after another, and the media goes into another of its ‘Labour can do no right’ phases, the Tories frankly ought to be reflecting on why they are not much much further ahead in the polls. For the answer, they need look no further than a shallow, lightweight, superficial leader whose heart and values are on the country estates of the upper classes not the housing estates of urban Britain, and who is praying each night that the economy gets worse, all the pressure stays on the government and he can get away for even longer without coming up with any serious policy proposals that might take an averagely intelligent civil servant more than five minutes to put in the ‘does not stack up’ file.