The Prime Minister’s attack on privileged and out-of-touch Tories is paying dividends, says Ian Hernon
David Cameron had a Katie Price moment this week. “I don’t live some sort of charmed life”, he told The Sun. “I get up in the morning.”
This was an echo of the celebrity formerly known as Jordan’s proud boast: “I look after my children”. In the words of American comedian Chris Rock: “You’re supposed to. What do you want? A cookie?”
The Tory leader was delivering a prep school squeal against Gordon Brown’s “spiteful, sad” and jolly bad form taunts against the Old Etonians who are drawing up an economic strategy for Britain.
Two months ago, I was among those who advised Brown to let rip with class warfare – Cameron’s Achilles heel as far voters disillusioned with the Government are concerned There was predictable outrage and a large degree of prissiness from Cabinet ministers, some of them also privately educated, who feared it would backfire.
So what has happened? The Tory lead has been cut to single figures for the first time this year and Cameron’s dream of presiding over a Tony Blair-style landslide has all but evaporated.
Opponents of Brown’s new tactics don’t get the point that this is not about class envy, but a reflection of voter unease at Cameron’s rebranding. Put simply, they sniff hypocrisy, double standards and a hidden Thatcherite agenda.
That Cameron is a toff is not in question and most floating voters could stomach that if he stayed true to his background and convinced them he is not trying to hide his privileged upbringing. They are not impressed with toffs who pretend to know the reality of life on sink estates, crying crocodile tears over people excluded from their own leafy estates. They want honesty.
Instead he has given up blood sports and country matters, resigned his membership of exclusive gentlemen’s clubs and embraced green issues. That may have worked once, but the photo of him cycling to work just ahead of his limousine shattered the illusion. His aides insist his suggestion that Tory candidate Annunziata Rees-Mogg should change her name to Nancy Mogg was a joke. If so, the joke’s on him.
Cameron’s ditching of his “cast-iron guarantee” of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty outraged the members of theTory old guard who have kept largely mute because they like his emphasis on slashing public services and switching back to a right-wing agenda. Such double-dealing was exposed by the Tory reaction to Alistair Darling’s pre-Budget report. While the Chancellor prepares for post-recession sunshine, they promise austerity for the many and non-dom nirvana for the rich.
Cameron has made little secret of his ambition to follow Blair’s charismatic, man-of-the-people approach which united a fractious party and delivered a decade of power. That Blair imitation worked for a while, but Cameron remained so puffed up with his undoubted success that he failed to notice how times have changed. Voters now want the truth – to be reassured, not charmed and spoken to directly, not talked down to.
Towards the end of his tenure, the most damaging jibe aimed at Blair was “Phony Tony”. Cameron has already reached that point before he has even tasted real power.
