Diary – 29 April 2005

Let no one say that this election is going to be the same as the last. We are winning back what I call the buggy vote. That is the middle-class mums and dads pushing prams. I don’t know quite why, but I attach terrific political significance to the opinions of these representatives of ‘hard-working families’. There they are, ferrying their precious cargoes, our nation’s future, and they must be heeded. They have reached the age — thirties, forties — when they are the pivot of society, simultaneously required to have a care to their parents and their offspring. Last time, as I recorded in 2001, I found they were almost all going for Tony. They wanted good local schools, they wanted good hospitals, they thought that Labour was the party to deliver, and they thought Tony was a man after their heart. I called them Tony’s Tories, and wrote that the Conservatives would never recover unless we had something better to say to them. This week, prowling the streets of Dorchester-on-Thames, I find three mums in a row, all with prams, who say more or less the same: ‘I voted Labour last time but this time I’m going for the Tories.’ Bingo! It’s a phenomenon! I am so excited that I call an immediate halt to canvassing (it’s freezing and drizzling) and my party goes into Dorchester Abbey for a spot of meditation and thanksgiving.

If you don’t know Dorchester Abbey, one of the key religious centres of Saxon England, you should get there immediately — perhaps for the forthcoming festival of English music. Once inside we whisperingly canvass the stone effigies (rock solid) and admire the mediaeval frescoes. Then I see I am standing on a tombstone, and my eyes mist at the inscription, and a lump forms in my throat.