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Godfather
Local Government
Chronicle - 09 August 2007
I usually have a Godfather. Pastrami, onions, peppers, tomatoes and cheese all toasted into a delicious hot pannini. I drink cranberry juice- it’s supposed to be good for the prostate and at 63 you can never be too careful!
As I forked out the change the lady who runs the little sandwich bar a stone’s throw from the constituency office in Skipton – a jovial figure who has built a canny business in the Yorkshire market town – waved her carving knife at me and declared: “We’re backing Boris, you know. Make sure you get him in.”
From Skipton I headed the few miles to the local VW garage. My Passat, faithful transport for more than nine years pounding up and down the A1 to Yorkshire, had finally indicated that, with 202,647 miles on the clock, it had had enough. I realised this when most of the engine fell out. I had negotiated a deal with an agreeable young salesman to pick up its successor.
The machine’s electronics explained, the documents handed over and the cheque reluctantly parted with I was ready to shake hands and head off. The salesman fished bashfully in his drawer: “It’s my wife’s 40th coming up. She thinks Boris is absolutely fantastic. Do you think there’s any chance you could get him to sign this card. It would make her day?”
Two days later I approached the Johnson office. The great white shark was not there but his researcher spotted my need immediately. “No problem,” he assured me. “It happens all the time. I’ll make sure it goes in the post and let you know when it’s happened.” I crept away rejoicing- the nice salesman had, after all, given me £500 for my car and written it down in his books for £1!
So Boris, Skipton wants you to be mayor of London. You’ve got Yorkshire tied up. Of course they have a pretty low opinion of London folk up in Craven but if you need it we can muster an expeditionary force to install you in the Gherkin or whatever the mayoral emporium is called.
As David Cameron prepares for what the French call La Rentree – the resumption of normal school and normal politics after the summer holidays, Boris is about the one thing in the early weeks of the Brown premiership which prevented the Tory Party resembling one long train crash.
The worst was the Ealing Southall by-election. Who on earth came up with the patronising and glitzy wheeze to put the words “David Cameron’s Conservatives” on the ballot paper? Let no Conservative ever again condemn Tony Blair for superficial spin!
Cameron needs to recover momentum. The set-back need not be decisive: too many people in the party were beginning to think the next election was waiting to be won. There is a balancing act to perform: the party’s Right has grumbled and fretted at Cameron’s direction of travel, notably the reluctance to embrace tax cuts and the Thatcherite vision of the smaller state. The more subtle Cameron formulation of an enabling state which empowers and promotes people and communities into civil engagement lacks red meat.
Now the commitment to re-introduce tax breaks for married couples has sent the first real anxiety tremour down the nerves of the party’s liberal contingent. Five years ago Francis Maude was dividing the party into those who “got it” (the need to change fundamentally) and those who did not “get it.” Cameron won the leadership largely with the votes of those who had “got it.” Maude has now paid the price for, perhaps once too often, telling the party in the country that it is part of the problem. It will be much more comfortable with the eminently level-headed and councillor-friendly Carole Spelman.
The Tory policy groups are beginning to publish their ideas. The best response to the charge that Cameron is all narrative and no plot is to let the policy debate rip. And with Gordon Brown still looking extraordinarily tentative and defensive at the despatch box Cameron should look forward to those bruising bull-fights to parade his abilities in the hard skills of politics as well as the soft sell.
Above all David Cameron needs to demonstrate “authenticity:” an idea of the core beliefs which make him tick, which articulate his personality. And the public will buy into authenticity warts and all.
Now why does that make us think of Boris…?
© Local Government Chronicle
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