Last December, after one of the most brutal PMQs this Parliament has seen, David Cameron was walking through the corridors of the Palace of Westminster to address a 1922 Committee meeting. Ed Miliband had subjected the Prime Minister to a real savaging, and Labour backbenchers had loyally joined in, raising a constituent’s suicide and describing Cameron’s government as ‘grandeur for the few, the workhouse for the many’. It had been a bleak session.
Heading for Committee Room 14, the Prime Minister bumped into a junior minister, who was keen to reassure him that everything would come out in the wash. He told Cameron that ‘they can go for the emotional attack, and we can always come back at them with statistics’. Cameron agreed with him and continued on his way to address the parliamentary party.
That junior minister was probably trying to impress the Prime Minister, but his prediction that the Conservatives would be able to counter Labour’s Dickensian pessimism with statistics seems to be coming true in a most satisfying fashion for the party, with a flow of good stats on the economy, crime, immigration and other key policy areas.
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