A Life in Beta

Someone actually asked me for an opinion the other day. Its been a while since I actually had to think so it took me a little by surprise but nonetheless it was flattering.

What did I make of David Cameron’s rather unexpected and I have to say, slightly uncharacteristic, attack on Gordon Brown the man/politician than Gordon Brown the leader of the Labour Party, calling him a “secretive, power-hoarding, controlling” character.
I think it simply meant two things.

First, the ideological dividing lines in this election are so fine to be almost entirely non-existent. When some of the bigger bones of contention include how many years we should take to cut the national deficit (and even then itsa debate separated by 2 years!) and the recognition of marriage within the tax system, we can say for certain that there’s been a whole lot of political cross dressing going on down in Whitehall and some-one’s going to get injured in the trample for centre ground.

Twenty years on from “there is no such thing as Society”, the party of Margaret Thatcher are positioning themselves as the party of social inclusion, ready to pull out the band aids and mend our ‘Broken Britain’ while Red Gordon skirts around the edges of financial reform, hankering still, one suspects, for the maintenance of a loosely regulated free market economy (and not just in the City) but across Government service provision. Stange times indeed.

In short, if Labour lose this election it won’t be on the basis of policy or ideology, it will be because voters will simply have grown tired of the personalities implementing these policies. Same game, new faces. Anyone watching Nick Robinson on his recent travelling ballot box series will recognise what I mean….not once have I heard anyone identify an issue of policy which distinguishes Conservative from Labour. But I do hear a lot of…well, “Labour have had their chance, it’s time for a change”. (As an aside – worryingly for Labour that’s a harder tide to turn than one based on a consiered and informed policy debate ironically).

I don’t think this homogenisation of politics is necessarily a bad thing however. The fate of an entire nation or nations(s) and their people shouldn’t be a hostage to a political system of two extremes for the sake of maintaining tradition.  A considered, centralist approach to our problems is a good thing – whether that be in hues of Red or Blue. But it is making for a dull pre-election campaign and so Cameron went personal. He said very little really, but it spoke volumes for our politics today.

Secondly, it told me that in the week he launched such a personal attack on Gordon Brown he probably needed to more be careful about interfering in local Conservative Party business to re-establish the CCHQ status quo i.e. this week’s rather shabby Conservative Party Westminster North candidate row where “DC” intervened quite clearly to ensure that his favored candidate Joanne Cash got what she felt she needed to run (at some cost to others long standing in the party BC (if you’ll indulge me) it is alleged) as the Party’s elected candidate for that seat. 

For if he wants to stand in front of some very bored (and I have to say – incongruously petitioned it seemed) students railing against Gordon Brown’s dark and stifling instinct for control, secrecy and omnipotence and have us believe that his leadership style – allegedly democratic, open, devolved – will in fact be that and as such, represent one of the few distinctions between his party and that of Her Majesty’s Government he will have to do better, for it smacked just a little too much of those characteristics he had just finished railing against – “secretive, power-hoarding, controlling”. Careful David, that was naughty naughty naughty.

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• My part in the downfall of Tory hopeful Joanne Cash (guardian.co.uk)
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