Boris’s gift to Labour

Might Labour’s attack machine have come back from the dead? They have today seized – and quite rightly – on this comment in Boris Johnson’s Daily Telegraph column:

“If you believe the politicians, we have a broken society, in which the courage and morals of young people have been sapped by welfarism and political correctness.  And if you look at what is happening at the Beijing Olympics, you can see what piffle that is”

Quite apart from Boris talking about “the politicians” as if he’s forgotten he is now one of them, there is only one party talking about a “broken society” and that’s the Conservatives. It was a theme of Liam Fox’s leadership campaign, adapted by David Cameron and now used liberally. Gordon Brown despises the phrase, asking how Cameron can “sell” Britain if he says the country is broken. Some senior Tories agree, and for a while Chris Grayling tried “the Jeremy Kyle generation” instead – you won’t hear him refer much to “broken society”. But The Sun likes “Broken Britain” and Cameron has stuck with it in spite of the critics. Critics who, as of today, include the Mayor of London.

It was a gift to Labour, and here is the party’s quote:  

“Whatever David Cameron might say, Britain is a decent, compassionate and vibrant nation, and on almost every measure it has got better in the last decade. No one has broken Britain, and no one ever will.”

It’s from Jack Straw, who is minding the shop while Brown heads off to China. Doing a better job fighting Tories than Gordon Brown, you might think? Jack couldn’t possibly comment. Ah the games, the games.