And another thing…

FROM today’s Sunday Times:

Here’s another thing that some people might have overlooked about the Tories: the Conservatives still haven’t recovered, in the public’s minds, from the Major years. Yes, he left office nearly 13 years ago and there will be many people voting this time round who can barely remember a Conservative government and others who can’t remember one at all.

But they will be outnumbered by those who can and do. The Conservatives lost catastrophically for a reason, or for many reasons. In the immediate aftermath of 1997, there were many who predicted that the party would never recover electorally, that it was finished. Others (me included) refused to write them off but felt it would take them a very long time to get back to the point where government was a realistic target.

Too many Tories thought that all they had to do was keep quiet, behave themselves, and wait for the pendulum to swing back towards them. But it’s now becoming clear that such a strategy was flawed. It’s predicated on the assumption that the pendulum is still working normally, and I’m not sure it is.

It’s still too early to predict a definite outcome one way or the other, but the message from the polls is that the momentum is with Labour. If the Sunday Times poll is confirmed by other polls (and I accept that might not be the case), then Labour will head into the campaign with a healthier polling position than Major did in 1992. There is some discussion in the blogscape that a fourth Labour win would be good for the Tories in the same way that a four Tory victory in 1992 effectively finished Major’s party for the next three elections. I’m not so sure.

In the aftermath of the 1992 election, Labour held its nerve. It didn’t implode. It got on with the job of offering effective, if safe, opposition under John Smith, and then even more effective, and radical, leadership under Tony Blair.

What would happen to the Tories were Labour to win a fourth successive Commons majority? I’m sure Cameron would not survive. But he would not be replaced by another “moderniser” in the same mould. The party would be in danger of disintegration as the old right wing, anti-EU brigade took their revenge on the Cameroons. Such civil war didn’t happen to Labour because Kinnock had taken Labour in the general direction the party wanted to go. Cameron cannot say the same.

I’ll be out door-knocking in the constituency later this afternoon. The view of my agent, campaign manager and activists is entirely uniform: the sooner Gordon calls the election, the better. Let’s get on with it.

READ it here.

I TOOK part in a panel discussion with Steve Richards of The Independent and Jonathan Isaby of Conservative Home on Friday at the Commonwealth Club near Embankment.

A question from the audience about George Osborne elicited a surprisingly generous response from Richards, whose political analysis I’ve always been impressed by. But I was nevertheless taken aback by his enthusiasm for Osborne, who he described in glowing terms as the pre-eminent political talent of his generation. A future leader of his party? I asked him. Yes. he replied, unequivocally.

Afterwards I reflected on the reality that if talent and ability automatically led to political success, we would have seen Denis Healey and Michael Heseltine become prime minister. Luck and judgment play as big a part as ability in any political career.

Which brings me back to Osborne.

Iain Dale did a very good job last night in exposing the vacuity of The Sunday Times’ latest attempted demolition of Osborne. Nevertheless, at a time when GO, justifiably or not, is under some pressure, he has decided to launch a very controversial attack on the government’s economic policy by predicting a run on the pound.

Ken Clarke says there’s no convention that says the Shadow Chancellor cannot speculate about the strength of the currency. And Iain pointed out that the threads on Conservative Home which The Sunday Times prayed in aid of its case against Osborne actually featured no substantive criticism. Yet as I’ve pointed out before, at the very least, Tory activists are less impressed with his performance now than they were a month ago.

So is now the right time for GO to making himself vulnerable to the inevitable accusation that he’s talking Sterling down?

Ability, skill, luck, judgment: GO may well have the first two in sufficient quantity, but without the last two, he’s a goner.

JOURNALISTS are really scraping the bottom of the barrel to try to get new angles on the “leadership crisis” story. Today’s Sunday Times names me as risking “censure” by expressing sympathy with David Cairns. 

Well, if “Minister still friends with former minister” qualifies as a story, then British journalism really is going down the pan.

CONSERVATIVE Party treasurer and chief paymaster, Lord Ashcroft, is the subject of a fascinating piece of reporting in today’s Sunday Times.

There’s plenty for the party’s critics to get their teeth into. To me, the most damaging quote is this:

He was initially blocked for a peerage, but was made a peer in 2000 on the condition that he would become resident in the UK and hence start paying British taxes.

To this day he has not said whether he has honoured that pledge.

And there’s the rub: if Ashcroft actually had lived up to his promise, and had become resident in Britain, he would surely have said so a dozen times before now, wouldn’t he?

PRIVATE polling by the SNP puts them just four points behind Labour in Glasgow East, according to The Sunday Times.

Well, of course it does – it always does. Four points is the margin the SNP always invent on the last weekend of every by-election they’ve ever fought – still behind but just within striking distance. It’s a traditional part of Scottish by-elections. Somewhere in SNP headquarters there’s a news release template which reads “SNP four points behind Labour in _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ (insert name of constituency)”

It’s also a tradition that is traditionally ignored by the media, but The Times obviously doesn’t care much about its journalistic credibility these days.

I hope Labour will prevail on Thursday, and if we do, it will be a huge disappointment for most of the Scottish media, some of whom are genuinely sympathetic to separatism, but most of whom would simply regard a Labour victory as a bit dull.