Lessons to be learned

Just as high street chains send spies to Paris fashion shows to nick ideas, so British political parties send envoys to American conventions to see what new ideas are coming off the production line. Francis Maude is here for the Tories and Ed Miliband (plus his fellow Harvard alumni David Lammy) for Labour. In my political column for tomorrow’s magazine, I list some lessons they should be taking home – because the convention so far has highlighted vulnerability in both parties. The first two are worrying for Cameron, the last three for Labour. 

1. When charisma goes wrong. The ghost at the feast here in Denver is the lack of any sustained poll lead for Barack Obama. How come he’s got more media acclamation than any candidate since Bobby Kennedy and still can’t get ahead? One of his main problems is behaving like the superstar the media make him out to be – addressing a mile-long crowd in Berlin, and moving into an outdoor stadium for tomorrow’s main conference speech. The junior senator has to overcompensate due to his lack of experience, but what he described as the “audacity of hope” starts to look more like the audacity of taking the electorate for granted. In behaving like the incumbent, he has given McCain the gift of underdog status. So a warning for Cameron: if he enjoys his poll lead too much, it may evaporate. Not that Francis Maude would need much convincing on this point anyway.
    
2. Bringing out the beef. Why did Obama take such a wobble this month? Another reason is that the electorate simply started paying attention, as it’s closer to the election. Most normal people only look at politics from a distance most of the time, but when the election comes it changes. And when they looked more closely at Obama, they saw not a lot there. This isn’t to say Obama won’t bring out the beef later on. Just that the marathon of the campaign does break into a sprint at some point, and Obama has been unprepared for it. Cameron talks about the “opposition” phase and the “alternative government” phase. What’s required from him now – to look plausible as Labour implodes – is quantitatively different from what will be needed four months from election day. Cameron had best have enough meat to put on the table of the electorate will look elsewhere.

   Of course, Obama is not failing. He’s still level pegging and the favourite to win. The above helps explain why his success d’estime hasn’t converted into a harder poll lead. Now for Labour’s bad news.
    

3. The economy, stupid. Speaker after speaker here in Denver are coming out with great lines about the economy, all of which apply with bells on to Britain. In my column I talk about the Bush-Brown economic policy: an explosion in state spending, accompanied by a huge deficits and a spiralling national debt. Interest rates set too low for too long, triggering a housing boom and a subsequent bust which hits consumer spending. The currency collapses, as the public finances are so bad, importing inflation and unemployment. Result: soaring prices, falling real incomes, repossessions and misery. The Democrats have some powerfully simple language here which the Tories should use.
    
4. The effect of a split. The Clinton stuff shows what happens at a convention where a good chunk of the delegates are unconvinced about the candidate. It’s been almost an apologetic convention so far: Michelle Obama saying effectively “I do love my country, in spite of what I said earlier” and Hillary saying “Barack isn’t really that bad, and he’s better than McCain.” Waving placards saying “unity” is a sure sign not much of it exists. In Manchester, Labour will be full of people who think Brown is a dud. But that have nothing else to do but carp. As the Republicans here in Denver gleefully say, when one party’s split the other party tends to win.
    
5. Republican Insurgency.  Although Ed Miliband will have a long lists of friends in the Democrat Committee, he should embed himself with the Republican War Room – or as it’s called “Not Ready ‘08”. They’re having a whale of a time, stirring the Clinton split and inserting themselves into news agenda. The Republicans have given up moaning how Obama gets all the media coverage, switched tactics and are instead supplying their own Obama stories to sate the appetite. They release a YouTube ad costing nothing, and its up on cable networks in minutes. The news cycle is no longer 24 hours – “you’re lucky to get 24 seconds” moaned one Democrat strategist to the New York Times. So Team McCain brilliantly sates this appetite by supplying new Obama stories of their own. They are blowing a raspberry at Obama, with a slogan coined for this mountain conference – “a mile high, an inch deep”.  The tactics they use should teach Labour to do the same: piggyback on Cameron stories, rather than try to launch the latest “eat your leftovers” message from Brown. It means adopting the role of the insurgent. 

My hunch is that Brown will not bring himself to adopt Republican tactics, and will still trust his own failing ones soon to be demonstrated in Glenrothes. But there’s much here for both Maude and Miliband to write home about.