And another thing…

A NIGHTMARE! The evil Baron Cameronstein in hellish communion with four of his predecessors.

At the risk of sounding like an American, happy Hallowe’en…

THE ABSENCE of a warrant for the police search of Damien Green’s House of Commons office is by far the most worrying aspect of this whole business. Why didn’t they have a warrant? Why were they nevertheless allowed to continue with their search?

Meanwhile, Michael Howard asserts that the reason Damien Green was arrested was purely for carrying out his duties as an MP. This was repeated by Labour’s David Winnick. Neither of these people have, as far as I know, privileged information that would support this assertion.  

And no protests or walk-outs as far as I can tell. Yet.

UPDATE at 3.18 pm: For the avoidance of doubt, I should have added that those who claim that Damien Green is utterly blameless in this matter have no more justification than those who claim he has a case to answer.

CLEAR blue water, it may be, but the bottom line is that the Tories have returned to the election-winning* policies of Hague and Howard.

However you dress it up, spending less than what the current spending plans allow for is a cut. It means a future Tory government will impose cuts in the health service, cuts on transport plans, cuts in education and local government budgets.

And for what reason? That’s right, to deliver a “long-term” tax cut.

But I think ‘Dave’ should be congratulated. He’s had enough of this “New Conservatives” rubbish, all this mealy-mouthed “reaching out” to the plebs sort of nonsense. His back benchers were getting sick and tired of it and who, anyway, believed that the man who devised the infamous “patient’s passport” for the 2005 manifesto – designed to drain billions of pounds out of the NHS and funnel it into the private health sector – could now pass himself off as a supporter of the NHS?

Far better that he’s honest about what the Tory party is actually about. It may not make him popular, but he may gain people’s respect for saying (somewhat belatedly) what he actually thinks.

The Tory party should feel much more comfortable now that they can embrace the rhetoric of Thatcher without having to apologise for it. Good for them!

* not

I joined the Labour Party in 1984, and for the next decade, the experience was not a happy one. I approached every electoral test unjustifiably optimistic, only to feel a sickening emptiness in the pit of my stomach as the results started to filter through. In by-elections, regional, district and general elections, I prayed – literally prayed – that this time Labour would make the breakthrough. And time after time I had to pick myself up, dust myself down and start all over again.

There are very many Labour Party members today who don’t share that experience, who joined the party after Tony became leader, and who have never really had to experience the awful desperation of defeat at the hands of the Tory Party.

Which is why so many in the party have been, until recently, complacent. They believed the myth that the Tory party could never recover after the rout of 1997. Now, when it’s clear that that’s exactly what’s happened, they may be tempted towards the opposite extreme: panic.

Don’t let that happen. What we’re seeing s not the end of the world, but a return to business as usual, where Labour is once again the underdog of British politics, and where, for the first time in 15 years (but certainly not the first time in our history), we have to make the case for our party instead of sitting back and reaping the electoral benefits of a fractured and divided Tory Party.

Real politics is difficult. It’s hard work and it can be discouraging. Those whose first experience of national politics was 1997 could be forgiven for forgetting that.

The results of May 1 were a wake-up call, not a death certificate. The electoral arithmetic in Britain still makes it incredibly difficult for the Tories to win a general election outright. They still aren’t well represented outside of their heartlands.

What would win it for Cameron would be if party members started swallowing the media myth of Tory inevitability. Nothing is inevitable. The prize of a fourth term for Labour is something that’s worth fighting for. The media are bored with us, and they won’t do us any favours. And we will have to work harder than we have ever worked before to achieve victory. But it will be worth it.

And if we succeed, if we can bounce back after the last few months, David Cameron will become just another footnote in the political history of our nation, filed alongside William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard.

And that would be worth fighting for.