A Slice of Politics
On Sunday, whilst Gordon Brown was completing his whirlwind tour of Middle Eastern rhetoric, at a supermarket somewhere in the Glasgow East constituency a smiling William Hague posed for a photograph.
Having made the short trip from his Yorkshire constituency to campaign alongside his fellow conservatives, Hague stopped off at the local Tesco to take the chance to highlight the rise in food prices, in particular, the rise in cost of a loaf of bread. Whilst the former Tory leader stood, trolley in one hand, Kingsmill in the other, smiling broadly to all, a visiting photographer thought he saw the chance to take the classic campaign picture - candidate engaging with locals. Instead, what our intrepid photographer actually managed to take was an impromptu snapshot of the ‘David Cameron’s Conservatives’ party and Labour’s failure in tackling them.
The snapshot was created when unbeknown to the Hovis waving Hague, at the crucial moment of capture, the supermarket barometer of new conservatism, a stray Tesco ‘finest’ Margherita pizza, could be seen peeking out from the trolley. Unfortunately for ‘David Cameron’s Conservatives’ the pizza in question featured “A Tuscan inspired base” and “hand finished mozzarella pearls”, ingredients which although no doubt popular in the home counties, one suspects may not feature quite so prominently in their un deep-fried form in the diets of people in Glasgow East.
Alas, this blog is not about pizzas. Nor is it about the semantics of pizzas. It is however about the way in which whilst the Tory party would love the voters to embrace this new £1.24 loaf-concerned Conservatism, they remain far more concerned by the £3.49 pizza and it is Labour’s enduring failure to exploit this which has led to the Conservative’s enviable lead in the polls.
Following Blair’s resignation, Brown promised that unlike Blair he wouldn’t play politics and unusually for the Brown premiership, he would have done well to heed his own advice. Time and time again Brown’s government has been caught chasing its tail by trying to play politics with the 10p tax cut, the bungled election and the bizarre lowering of the inheritance tax all serving as testament to Brown’s ineptitude at politics.
In the summer of 2007, when a plague of events of almost biblical proportions (fire, floods, disease etc.) struck the UK, Brown had no need for politics and instead behaved in a moderated, considered and statesmanlike manner. The effect was to marginalise Cameron so much that he became a non entity, a man with image but no substance, and as so is so often the way with the conservative party, by the end of the summer the knives were being drawn.
So my advice to Gordon Brown is this, when you’re on holiday this summer, sit back, take a deep breath, remember you’re the prime minister then come back and govern. Let the Tories make their own mistakes.
Posted by Spartacus