A government relaunch of the sort we’ve endured this week is inevitably a fraught, fragile affair. The problem with such enterprises is that they have this unfortunate habit of drawing attention to the fact that it is, well, a relaunch. Downing Street may hope differently but a relaunch inevitably draws attention to the very failures the relaunch is supposed to put behind us. You wouldn’t be doing this if things were going well, would you Prime Minister?
Of course things are not going well. Nor will they get any better any time soon. Yesterday’s Essex reprise of the chummy Downing Street coalition presser was a mistake. A necessary or at least understandable one perhaps but a mistake nevertheless. That’s a river, as an old Greek said, in which you cannot bathe twice. Similarly, Mr Cameron’s attempt to suck-up to right-wing Tory voters via a weak-toast piece in the Daily Telegraph was a misjudgement. If he carries the country he either carries the right too or, damn it, he doesn’t need them. In government putting country before party is, all things considered, generally pretty sound advice.
Of course, that’s what yesterday’s Dave’n’Nick show was supposed to do. But there’s no longer any upside to being seen with the poor, hapless Liberal Democrat leader. All yesterday’s performance can have done is remind voters that they don’t much care, thank you very much, for either of these nicely-dressed, politely-spoken chaps.
Of course, politicians abhor the thought of sitting still, staying calm and doing as little as possible. The theory is this creates some kind of “news vaccuum” that will be filled by the opposition and from that, quite obviously, nothing good can come. I am not sure this is true. In the present political climate it may be that familiarity does indeed breed contempt.
You can appreciate what the government was trying to achieve this week (and the Queen’s Speech was an obvious moment for such a ploy) but far from signalling a fresh start it has all, in fact, sent a rather different message: things are pretty bloody grim and the government is in a wee bit of a panic.
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