Alan Johnson is the Labour leader that Cameron’s Conservatives fear

Alan Johnson is the Labour leader that Cameron’s Conservatives fear

I got the shock of my life the other day. Recording a programme called What Is Right? for Radio Four, Norman Tebbit, that pitiless scourge of touchy-feely tree-hugging modernisers, went out of his way to agree with what I had said. Three times. It was quite unnerving, not to mention flattering. But I do not kid myself about my role in this. The Thatcherite war-horse’s compliments were not directed at me, but at the man who has dragged the Conservative party from third-time also-ran to pole position in under six months.

In politics, no argument is as persuasive as electoral success. Whatever gripes Norman Tebbit may have, he recognises that what David Cameron is doing is working. And he is both loyal and pragmatic enough to realise that he’d prefer to see Britain governed by a liberal Conservative than by no Conservative at all.