Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

All bets are off

Fraser Nelson says that the new Prime Minister has positioned himself in territory that the Tories have left vacant, and is ready to fight a cultural battle to defend the ‘British way of life’ and win over the C1 voters who decide elections

Fraser Nelson says that the new Prime Minister has positioned himself in territory that the Tories have left vacant, and is ready to fight a cultural battle to defend the ‘British way of life’ and win over the C1 voters who decide elections

It was a phrase that David Cameron would never dare to utter. As Gordon Brown was giving his first speech as Labour party leader in Manchester, he repeatedly pledged to defend the ‘British way of life’. This dog whistle may have been missed by his audience, and was certainly neglected by the press, but resonated in Conservative headquarters. Immigration, an issue which the Tories have dropped as a frontline issue, is now firmly on Labour’s agenda. And this is simply the latest of the spin bowls being delivered by our new Prime Minister.

Mr Brown has only just arrived in 10 Downing Street but is already proving a more agile foe than the joyless curmudgeon against whom the Conservatives ‘war-gamed’ in their strategic meetings. Their belief was that, if they gave Mr Brown the space to reveal himself, he would blunder, scowl and scare off the electorate. In fact, precisely the opposite has happened: the Tories have made fools of themselves with the grammar schools civil war, while Mr Brown has grown into his new role.

His attempts to lure Liberal Democrats into his government took all of Westminster by surprise, and Quentin Davies’s astonishing defection on Tuesday hit the Cameron team like a thunderbolt. The only certainty about Mr Brown now is that he intends to surprise. Could this supposedly leftist Scotsman actually win over Middle England, the C1s who decide every election? Not so long ago, this was thought impossible. Now, all bets are off.

Insofar as the labels ‘left’ and ‘right’ carry any meaning in British politics today, Mr Brown appeared to be to the left of Mr Blair.

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