Blog:Cameron's Secret Weapon
From Bolton Interweb
Cary Urbagg, Political Correspondent, 25th July 2009
Deputy leader of the blind leading the blind, Harriet Harperson says that the reason why Labour lost Norwich North on the 23rd July was that Labour voters stayed at home or voted for someone else. Miss Harperson is missing something critical. If people didn’t vote for Labour then they aren’t Labour voters. They are at best floating voters not convinced by anyone enough to get off their arses and vote, or someone else’s voters.
Meanwhile, leader of the blind leading the blind, Gordon Brown, says none of the main parties could take "any cheer" from the result. Hmmm, he managed to turn a 5,000 majority into a Tory win by 7,000, a 16% swing. If I were the Tories I’d be taking a lot of cheer. This is the problem with Brown – no matter what the voters tell him, he has to deny it and tell us what we really want. The guy is incapable of listening to the citizens who are telling him time after time that we don’t want him to get on with governing and taking the difficult decisions, we want him to sling his hook. What the people want is someone else to be governing and taking the difficult decisions. Gordon is obviously taking electoral advice from Uncle Bob Mugabe. The difference is that at least Uncle Bob has genuinely won elections in the past.
The difficulty for Cameron and the Tories is that, despite this win, there is not the same feel as in ’97 when Blair came to power full of promise, the start of a new era. Cameron can’t expect tears of joy and street parties when he takes the reins in 2010 as he surely will. Such is the impact of the MP’s expenses debacle that no-one can really predict the results, and it is conceivable that the Tories will not have a majority. Which could be good news, in that one of the only two men that could be trusted with the economy, Vince Cable, may just get an opportunity to prove it.
Cameron has another option though, a move to seal the deal with the electorate. The only redeeming feature of the Major government was the economy, managed by the only other man who could be trusted with the economy, Ken Clarke. If the Tories had elected Ken as leader they may have been governing for the last four years. Ken is back in the Shadow Cabinet but not in the seat he should be occupying. The Euro is dead as far as the UK is concerned and Ken accepts that, so make him Shadow Chancellor. At the time of the biggest recession since 1931, I don’t want a kid who has only just started shaving to be managing the economy, hence my vote is not safely in the hands of the Conservative Party. If Gordon goes and Alan Johnson takes over then I have a dilemma and Alan could just sway it with some smart and radical moves. But with a trusted elder statesman in the role of Chancellor and maybe Deputy PM, sign me up for the Tories now. Give Boris Johnson a peerage and make him Foreign Secretary-elect and I’ll put a poster in the window – I have an evil streak.
© Evrose, 2010
