Diary – 20 November 2004

I’m in Sedgefield, County Durham, contesting the nomination for the Conservative candidate who will fight the Prime Minister for his seat in Parliament. I make my speech to the assembled Tories: tax, Europe, crime, education, pensions. Afterwards I go into the corridor and make agonising conversation with the other finalist. I smoke a cigarette. I go to the loo. I smoke another cigarette. They are taking an extremely long time. Eventually the chairman emerges and delivers the verdict. The other chap takes it well, slipping away with a smile and a handshake. The chairman takes me to the pub.

In 1997 Mr Blair promised a low-tax government, to make education a triple priority, and to be tough on crime and its causes. In 2004 people in Sedgefield pay the highest council tax in the country. GCSE standards in English and maths have gone down and violent crime and antisocial behaviour have rocketed. But for all this, Sedgefield remains a lovely place to live. The Dun Cow pub, where I sink grateful pints with the chairman, looks out on to Front Street, up to St Edmund’s church and the village green. Mr Blair brought President Bush to the Dun Cow two years ago, and there are still angry memories of the disruption caused by huge secret servicemen with wires in their ears. I get the encouraging sense that people here don’t want a world statesman as their MP.

I share an old headmaster with the Prime Minister. Eric Anderson taught Mr Blair in the 1960s and me in the 1980s. Eric comes to see Michael Howard to talk about education policy, and I sit in to take the notes (I work in the party’s policy unit). I am therefore alone in a room with the two most terrifying men in my life.