Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 9 January 2010

Monday

What a way to start The Year For Change! Am quite overwhelmed by the response to my slogan. Dave’s Big Face may be the most successful political poster campaign of all time. And to think how it started. With me walking into Nigel’s office in tears, practically hysterical. Little did I know when I wailed ‘We can’t go on like this!’ while blowing my nose into my cardy sleeve that my words would be up in lights. Of course we left off the rest of the sentence. ‘We’ll have to come up with some detail for the manifesto soon or everyone will work out that Mr Letwin hasn’t even finished the introduction yet and I’m afraid I’m going to say the wrong thing any second now, in fact it’s a miracle I haven’t put my foot in it already!’ is a bit long for a slogan. Besides it might give the wrong impression. The photo-shoot was so exciting, although Sam kept interfering and shouting at him to stick his lower lip out — ‘More chin, Dave!’ If you ask me, we should confine her to minor procedural matters of policy all the time, not important issues like posters.

Tuesday

Some understandable confusion over our Married Couples’ Tax Allowance. But it’s really v simple, as Jed explained in the War Hub this morning. We have not downgraded our commitment, we have simply changed it to a ‘definite hope’. A ‘definite hope’ is better than an aspirational commitment, and certainly better than a plan. Though not as good as a firm plan, or a committed aspiration, obviously. In any case, changing a ‘commitment’ to a ‘hope’ is most definitely not a ‘wobble’, as Labour is claiming. A ‘wobble’ is what we’re having on the NHS, but they haven’t noticed that thank goodness.