To win the election, the Tories must learn to fight dirty

Wednesday, 17th February 2010

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics

Waiting for one’s enemy to slip up is an unreliable plan of attack. If Gordon Brown goes for a few weeks without a major error, as he has since Christmas, then the Tories lose momentum and begin to suffer an attack of the jitters.

Crucially, Labour now has a kinder at-mosphere in which to play its Tory-baiting games. The media, consciously or unconsciously, wants to see a contest. At the moment, more scrutiny is being directed at the Tories than at Labour. When George Osborne talks about cuts in the financial year 2010-11, journalists press him on how big they would be and whether they would damage the economy. When Lord Mandelson floats the same idea — as he has, twice — the comments go almost unremarked, despite the fact that they contradict Mr Brown’s main message about the econ-omy. Equally, one can only imagine the frenzy if a Tory MP — and a whip to boot — had publicly described Labour as ‘scum-sucking pigs’ and then lied about having said it. But the Labour MP David Wright’s comments have been treated as a bit of joke rather than as a debasing of our political discourse.

Team Brown has always been a group that thrived in opposition. Fundamentally, their agenda is one of destruction, not governing. But they have one crucial weakness: they can only highlight Tory mistakes — rather than advance their own ideas (of which there are staggeringly few). As Peter Watt, the former Labour general secretary, recently revealed, the Brownites, having agitated to get Blair out of Downing Street for years, had no real election manifesto when they got there in 2007. When faced with radical Tory plans — as they were in the election-that-never-was — the Labour attack dogs go mute, or start barking up the wrong tree. Monday’s successful launch of a bold new Tory policy encouraging employee ownership in the public sector, for instance, has left Labour floundering.

There is a moral in all this. To win the campaign, Mr Cameron needs to take three steps. First, stop unforced errors coming out of central office (perhaps by putting a campaign manager in charge). Next, foster in the Tory operation the same intensity that characterises the Labour one. And finally, make the election a battle of bold policies and ideas. As the last two years have taught us, the Brownites are incapable of joining such battles.

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cityboozer

February 18th, 2010 11:06am Report this comment

I do wish you journo and political types would find a better word than "staffer". It really is very ugly.

Vulture

February 18th, 2010 11:34am Report this comment

The Duke of Wellington famously said that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Well, it may have been, but every subsequent battle has been lost there.

The problem with Cameron and his clique is that they don't do hate. Having never had to fight for anything harder than the corner table at the Ivy, they don't understand the bare-knuckle, broken-bottle tactics of Whelan, Campbell, and the sadly departed Irish bloke.

This comes over clearly on programmes like Question Time or Any Questions. Inevitably the Tory spokesman is a mild-mannered gent like Willets, Gove or Damian Green. And inevitably their tepid, cerebral, fluffy comments are forgettable - and forgotten.

Those that gets the roars and applause are not official Tories at all but the red-meat
popular journos like Littlejohn or Kelvin Mackenzie who are happy to talk abt topics forbidden in polite Tory company such as crime, the EU, and the two 'I' words: Islamification and Immigration.

But Dave and co. won't go there. No wonder they are wobbling in fear of Liebour attacks. They are just too effete, too posh, too gentlemanly, too rich and fastidious to get their hands dirty, - and too arrogant to spot idiotic mistakes.

In other circumstances they would deserve to lose, but Liebour are so unutterably awful that they will probably scrape in despite themselves.

Personally, I don't have a problem hating Bruin and Liebour. My problem is that I hate
Clique Cameron almost - not quite - as much.

Cogito Ergosum

February 18th, 2010 9:22pm Report this comment

I am surprised Labour have not made more of 54% versus 5.4%. The Conservatives claim they will set our economy straight; but they won't if they make blunders like that.

There does seem to be widespread innumeracy at the top of the Party.

Steve Patriarca

March 3rd, 2010 10:23am Report this comment

Is it a matter of learning 'to fight dirty' or learning to fight at all? I cannot bekieve they have let the Labou media - and Dark Horses - make the running over Lord Ashdown. They have not even tried to point to the difference between Domicile and Residency. Most of the reports are a complete muddle.