What planet am I from? What have I been smoking? Matt and Fraser understand politics far better than I can ever hope to, but after reading their blogs I can scarcely believe we all witnessed the same event this afternoon. What I saw was a car crash, or at any rate an accident in a school playground.
On Monday, with George Osborne’s pledge on inheritance tax, the Tories had the metropolitan Guardian vote more or less in the bag, and for 24 hours they looked like possible winners. Today they look like losers again. David Cameron’s speech was a feat of memory but of nothing else. It was the same old, same old about the horrors of Europe and the horrors of human rights, and the beauties of our old friends freedom and choice. Plus, there was some feel-good stuff about the family as ‘the best welfare system of all’ (but hang on, let’s not be judgmental: ‘single mums do a brilliant job’). No one will have been converted by it, and old Tories — by which I do not, necessarily, mean Tories who are old — will remain disgruntled.
The low point for me came when Mr Cameron said that he wanted his children to go to state schools. He has said it before. If he really means it, if he really means that he is prepared to send his children to inferior schools, he is a bad parent. A man who in the pursuit of power will deny his own children the privileges he enjoyed — and a man who, furthermore, allows it to be thought that he regards privilege as somehow shameful — is not fit to lead the Tory party.
Gordon Brown can relax.
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