Politics

Alan Johnson is the Labour leader that Cameron’s Conservatives fear

Wednesday, 31st May 2006

Alan Johnson is the Labour leader that Cameron’s Conservatives fear

Cameron’s musical choices and personal anecdotes were entirely authentic. No political strategist could have advised the Conservative leader to choose ‘Ernie, the Fastest Milkman in the West’ by the irredeemably unPC Benny Hill. But, combined with standard public-school tastes in navel-gazing guitar bands like Pink Floyd and Radiohead, it showed that with Cameron what you see is what you get. A normal bloke, decent, likable, quite conventional, who chokes up when he talks about the day he got married and isn’t too proud to admit to having a soft spot for something as English (and as naff) as Benny Hill.

Gordon Brown, however, wants us to believe that he jumps out of bed in the morning and struts his stuff to the Arctic Monkeys. If that were not ludicrous enough, he also wants us to believe that Gazza’s magical goal against Scotland in Euro 96 was one of his favourite sporting moments. The idea is so incongruous, it is actually painful. It’s a bit like watching a grizzly bear being forced to put on a frilly frock and dance.

At some point, Labour party members are going to look up from their internal squabbles and start taking these polls seriously. While the most touted alternative to Brown is John Reid, the biggest worry for the Cameron Conservatives has to be Alan Johnson. Like John Major before him, he is affable, easy-going, classless — and, apparently, without enemies. It is not hard to imagine a contest in which Gordon Brown and John Reid tear great lumps out of each other, only for Alan Johnson to make a late dash through the middle, emerging unscathed as the winner. Nobody is saying that Cameron cannot beat Johnson — at the moment the Conservative leader looks ready to take on allcomers. But there is no doubt that the defeat of Brown in the Labour leadership contest would remove at a stroke David Cameron’s best not-so-secret weapon.

Nick Boles is director of the think-tank Policy Exchange.