Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody

29 November 2008

Tamzin Lightwater's unique take on the week

Monday

Tremendous excitement after the PBR. Dave called us into The Cauldron, our inner sanctum, for a top-secret briefing. Felt v privileged to be there, just me and 150 other core members of CCHQ. Dave was wonderful. He completely cleared up any nagging doubts we might have had as to why we are not opposing the rise in the top rate. It’s deeply strategic stuff, but suffice to say he and Mr Letwin, and Gids obviously, have worked out that standing up for the middle classes is precisely what Labour thinks we will do, and therefore precisely what we will NOT do — genius! We are drawing on our hugely successful strategy of not attacking Labour’s spending plans, which I think you will recall was terrifically effective for a year before we had to drop it and do a U-turn. So, you will not hear me, or anyone else in the Compassionate Conservative party, standing up for Middle England and its big fat pay packets. Not now, not at the election, not ever! And that’s final.

Tuesday

Bit of bother last night when I told Mummy and Daddy about our not-falling-into-the-trap-of-defending-the-rich policy. Might have to moderate it, just when I’m en famille. Daddy is furious and says he’s moving us to the Isle of Man. He was ranting in a most unmodern way: ‘Cutting debt my a***! Who will stick up for us if Dave doesn’t!’ Am not too worried. He always goes on about the Isle of Man when he’s angry. He finds the lure of a low-tax independent state with no ties to the EU very hard to resist. I think he’d been hoping that was what Dave was going to create here. Bless! I tried Mr Lansley’s line — a bit of recession never hurt anybody, do you good, get some of the fat off, etc — but he just went purple and said he was going to rewrite his will.

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