When David Cameron agreed last June to let his chief strategist work from California for six months, it seemed a timely break from what was threatening to become a dull job. Gordon Brown looked finished, and his party too weak to depose him. British politics threatened to be a comedy of errors stumbling on until the middle of 2010 — leaving plenty of time for Steve Hilton to go abroad, get married and send email advice from beside the swimming pool. From there, he must have watched in horror as British politics changed utterly.
Even his fortnightly flights home will not have been enough to keep up with the bewildering speed of the Brown bust. Boarded-up shops and pubs are starting to scar high streets, alongside jumble sales from retailers who fear they won’t be here at Easter. Across the country 1,500 jobs and 200 homes are lost each day — Britain is expected this year to suffer the worst rise in unemployment of any developed country. Soon, most people will know someone who has been laid off.
Mr Hilton is due to return next month, and will be tasked with drawing up a 2009 battle plan. It will have to be written in the lightest, most erasable pencil. There may or may not be a general election, a secondary banking crisis (which could yet bankrupt the country), and these are the risks we know about. Those we do not — what Donald Rumsfeld called the ‘unknown unknowns’ — will likely shape this year. The trick is for the Tories to stay as versatile as possible, and make the best of these Black Swans (rare and unpredicted events) when they arrive.
There are, however, a few certainties.
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