Dave has some special new Labour friends

10 June 2009

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Anne McElvoy spots a new political type: the ‘Labrators’ who have more in common with Cameron than Brown, and may co-operate with a Tory government

The upheavals of the past week have unleashed a lot more potential Labrators from captivity. Hazel Blears concedes she gets on ‘like a house on fire’ with Gove as they talk about how to increase local decision-making in education.

George Osborne spends considerable time talking to senior figures who have served Labour to work out what goes wrong between conceiving reforms and executing them. He prides himself on an ‘outreach programme’ which poached Sir David Freud, the City financier turned welfare reformer, from James Purnell’s department.

What’s in it for Labrators? The fight to remain relevant. Conservative thinking is still being roughed out in many areas. So if your interest is something long-term like social mobility, health ‘outcomes’ or refining the academies programme, it’s more realistic to find out what the Tories intend to do and try to influence it than to wait for Labour to resolve a long argument with itself in a back room.

Mr Purnell, now in the wilderness, is the figure New Tories identify with most. Mr Cameron says privately that if he could play fantasy Cabinet, he’d like him on board, together with the ex-health secretary Alan Milburn. But Labrators are a strange species. How far they’ll go with a new occupying power is as much about disposition as political alliance.

Richard Reeves, who heads the Demos think-tank, is a former adviser to Frank Field, himself an elder Labrator. Reeves believes we can distinguish between those who are attracted to politics for ‘the tribes and the triumphs’ rather than the ‘policy and the ideas’. The new Transport Secretary, Lord Adonis, who was SDP in his youth, is a specially bred Libra-Labratory: a policy brain admired by all three parties.

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wonderfulforhisage

June 11th, 2009 12:17pm Report this comment

I despair, Brown goes and we get NuLab Lite headed by the Heir to Blair.

It's enough to make a mother eat her young or vote BNP or something.

Rhoda Klapp

June 11th, 2009 12:42pm Report this comment

Hooray, when one party loses credibility these people will just support the other, so that the Utopia of centre-left politics may continue, unimpaired by any consideration of right or principle.

Scum.

Minnie Ovens

June 11th, 2009 8:18pm Report this comment

I suppose it is quite natural for Mr Cameron to look to his immediate left for friends.
I'm sure they approve of his manifesto far more than the right wing Conservatives do.
Well, that's if anyone knew what his policies were, but I guess he's probably told his new friends what they are.
Doesn't seem if Dave is picking up many of the disgruntled voters from Labour.
I wonder why not?

c chapman

June 12th, 2009 12:36pm Report this comment

Frank Field would certainly be a good man to talk to. The inside track on what stopped his welfare reforms and his ideas on controlling the massive welfare budget would be valuable in the extreme. I can never understand why he hasn't crossed the floor. He is far too sensible to still be in the same party as Brown and Prescott.

The Masked Marvel

June 13th, 2009 6:56pm Report this comment

This sounds like some Bizarro version of Reagan Democrats. That worked for at least one election, and one assumes that's all that matters at the moment. Too bad that most voters who aren't already voting Tory use the following formula to understand Mr. Cameron and his party:

Conservative = Toff + "I remember what the BBC remind us it was like under Thatcher".

Crude, but effective. Additionally, Reagan spent far more time on policy, his convictions, and the direction he wished to take the country when elected than on whining about Jimmy Carter's personality and leadership crisis. Perhaps a lesson there for PMQs?

If one is to judge from the recent EU election, it might be a better idea to bring voters over with real policies which will lead the country from strength to strength, instead of trying to triangulate towards them with advice from Labourites. In case anybody forgot, it's those Labourite policies which are the reason Messrs. Griffin and Bron will now have more say in laws which influence British lives than if they were in Westminster.

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