When it was just James Bond, it was OK because there was something predictable about David Cameron loving Ian Fleming. But at a certain point mid-summer, we learnt that Cameron loves chirpy sitcom Gavin and Stacey – the most calculated piece of political positioning since Gordon Brown and the Arctic Monkeys. He told Dylan Jones – Cam’s current biographer – that the previous night he had finished watching all of the G&S series and could now confirm that he had a soft spot for Stacey, admitted that he was starting to mimick the soft south walean accent of the show’s characters and had even taken to asking his staff, ‘what’s occurring?’ (instead of ‘where are we in the polls?’).
For those of you who don’t know, this programme is largely about the virtues of marriage (OK, an obvious attraction to Cam) but around the edges are a myriad of characters who fritter their lives away in less than ideal circumstances (gambling, single parenting etc) and are pretty much OK too. So, history doesn’t yet relate how Cameron: a) found the inclination to watch all of it; and/or b) came to have it to his finger tips. Maybe it was shown at an Iain Duncan Smith ‘Broken Society’ video night, with Dunkers needing some documentary evidence of the costs of people who spend their benefits down ‘the slots’ and who have more babies than birthdays.
But here’s the politics. Why bother with focus groups when you can get into a key marginal by watching a funny programme? Cam has been to Barry – where Gavin and Stacey was filmed – three times, including the morning after this year’s May elections, since it turns out that the area is a target seat for the Conservatives. Which might lead you to imagine that the Conservatives’ ‘Project Get Barry’ is a slick machine? An AM member was selected to fight the seat and was a sure fire cert until he was asked on Welsh national television what he thought of Italians and the words on the tip of his tongue were, ‘greasy wops’ (for those of you not down with racist colloquialisms, that means Without Papers). At around the time Cameron told the world he loved Barry, Barry’s prospective MP was suspended and was being investigated. We’ll see whether the combined efforts of Gavin and Stacey win you that seat at the next election.
Plotting a holiday?
Like some of us write notes for our next-door neighbour before we go on holiday (instructions on plant watering, cat feeding etc), a few days before David Miliband went away on his hols he left his own note, folded up neatly and posted through the door of the left intelligentsia. He wrote an op-ed for the Guardian, with its stern ‘no junk mail and this dog bites’ brass plaque above the slot. Well, the trouble is everyone else went on holiday too but allies of Miliband predicted he’d be back in early September with names and numbers to challenge Brown. This was taken seriously for half a second before it also emerged that Miliband ally James Purnell was away that week. Playing golf with the political editors of the Times and the Sun. At the time of writing, it still felt like the House of Commons was deserted – with tumbleweed growing through the marble floor of Portcullis House. Many at the TUC, but a fair few may have tried to get on that golfing trip too. Certainly beats another week of leadership speculation.
Compass calls
But there is one individual who certainly had no holiday. The burning issue we all want answering is this: how much did Compass pay that intern for that work? He has been ringing MPs all summer long, amassing signatories to the windfall tax campaign. Director Neal Lawson was heard to brag that ‘our intern has been really working the phones.’ But it has not been a big bang. It has been a drip feed, a few further MP signatories every other day – 55 in week one of the silly season; 75 in week three; over 100 in week five. Maybe they had 100 from the beginning and this slow climatic build throughout the summer was masterful media management?.
Labour MPs who have been rung by said young person – possibly just out of university, highly probably the child of a Labour peer – describe it as a kind of Jiminy Cricket for their leftwing conscience: the phone rings and it’s a young voice asking said MP if they support this extra tax. ‘I did when I was your age…’ For a twentysomething who has spent his summer in the pursuit of such a pure aim, we certainly hope he’s been on at least the living wage.