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Friday 22 August 2008

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The view from 2018: how it all went wrong for Prime Minister Osborne

So it was 2018 and the government was in trouble. Real trouble. In newspapers and magazines, on Dame Emily Maitlis’s Newsnight and Davina McCall’s Today programme, one question was being asked. Would anybody ever vote Conservative again?

At this stage, by-election disasters were not unexpected. The loss of Crewe and Nantwich had been on the cards for years and Enfield, although symbolic, was hardly a surprise. Fulham had been a shock. Henley all the more so.

Lord Johnson (of Henley) was particularly upset by the latter. As he said to the Radio Times, ‘to call this lot a shambles would be an insult to other shambles, such as erm...’ Although Lord Johnson couldn’t think of other shambles, not on the spot, and the rest of the interview was about his new series of Strictly Come Dancing, the quote still made the front pages. For a government in such dire straits, all news was bad news. They were in freefall. It had never been worse.

Where had it all gone wrong? There was an easy answer, even if it wasn’t an entirely accurate one. The Osborne Oscillation had been far, far too short-lived. For a time, such a brief time, the new Prime Minister had seemed like such a breath of fresh air. No shorts. No bike. There was no inkling that he owned an iPod, even now, and you never had to see his wife’s knees. The man even wore a Barbour, thank God, and apparently had done since he was 12. Finally, a pair of safe hands.

When he had appeared on the steps of Downing Street clutching the hand of a frail Glenys Kinnock, it had felt like the start of a national government. ‘This shall be a government of all the talents!’ Prime Minister Osborne had piped, using that curiously familiar phrase that had come out of nowhere. For a time there was talk of Labour defections. The name of Dame Cherie Booth (QC) was even floated as the head of some kind of task force, but nothing ever came of it. Probably for the best, what with Tony at the Hague.

More articles from: Hugo Rifkind | this section

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