Cameron can’t stop the nasty showing

David Cameron is currently the most popular party leader. According to all polls he’s winning the popularity contest hands down. Labour have to acknowledge that this is true before we can change it. But change it we must.

There’s been a great deal of focus on Ed and his leadership and popularity. Certainly that needs work, and I hope the party continue to work on it. I still believe Ed can and will turn things around. But we have to deal with both sides of the coin. We won’t do a thing, not a thing, to dent Cameron’s popularity unless we shift some of the scrutiny to him.

Cameron has had an astonishingly easy ride, and we’re partly to blame for that. If we spent just 20% of the energy we expend discussing the pros and cons of our own leader exposing some of the more obvious flaws of the Prime Minister, we could start to make in-roads into that popularity.

So far, when we make attacks on Cameron, they have been clumsy. They haven’t landed blows as often as we would like, as we haven’t developed a clear sense of how we should be attacking him. We attack him for things that resonate more with people who already vote Labour – such as being a Tory, or loving Thatcher – than for things that have meaning to floating voters.

But Cameron does have flaws. Ones which – as his popularity inevitably diminishes (who was it who said all political careers end in failure?) – will become more and more evident. Firstly, he can’t help himself from being nasty. It flashes through every now and again. At PMQs, in interviews, and when defending government policy. Everyone again he just lets the mask slip, and Flashman comes through. It’s not statesmanlike and it doesn’t look good on a Prime Minister. It makes him look arrogant.

That arrogance also makes him look out of touch. The “out of touch” narrative is an important one for Labour, but one we have to play carefully. It’s not about his background or the school he went to, it’s about his inability to understand the negative difference his government is making people’s lives. The combination of his inability to grasp detail and the fact he genuinely doesn’t get what living in
Britain is like for many people today make him vulnerable on this front. It’s one Labour should attack relentlessly.

Every time a Tory makes an idiot of themselves, disgraces themselves or just does something a bit daft, we should be there, pointing it out.

Winning is a contact sport and we have to want to win. The Tories understand this. That’s why they focus on Ed’s daft spelling mistakes. I argued last week that I felt Ed should behave in a more statesmanlike manner. I stand by that, but that means the rest of us are going to have to play dirty for him. We can’t afford to be precious about it. Because the Tories aren’t going to.

With so much to criticise, we need to be attacking at every opportunity. Only we can change the narrative at a pace that suits ourselves.