It’s hard to decide sometimes whether things happen by conspiracy or cock-up. First there was the debacle over our £1.7bn bill from the European commission and whether the rebate applies or not. Then we had the mayhem in parliament over the vote on the European arrest warrant that was not a vote on the European arrest warrant. These events created an impression that the government is a clueless bunch of morons who have absolutely no idea what is happening at any point. I just imagine David Cameron being woken up by the phone first thing in the morning and going ‘Oh, what …? But I had no idea … Oh God’. Their political management is bizarre. They don’t seem to be able to handle the most simple of political tasks. I can’t remember a more shambolic government – and, as someone who worked for the party briefly during the Gordon Brown era, that’s really saying something.
I’m convinced that governments deliberately spread rumours that there’s a conspiracy because they’d rather look cunning than stupid. The problem is: why would you engineer such spectacularly dreadful situations that leave you looking inept? Take the row over the bill which George Osborne claimed to have halved. No one in the government mentioned the rebate at all. I don’t remember any commentator mentioning it either. The truth is usually as it appears. Osborne didn’t realise that the rebate applied. The main figure got talked about and everyone panicked. I’m convinced that Osborne had no idea that the rebate might apply, I’m sure he got lucky. From his point of view, it’s better to be seen as a devious so-and-so who leaked a larger figure to then appear to negotiate it down rather than be seen as a feckless chancellor who had no idea that the bill was coming. If it is a conspiracy then their misreading of the public is spectacular. Is there a single person in the country who can possibly have thought ‘Wow, that George Osborne just cut the bill in half. I love him. I really think he’s the best’? It’s a discount no one believes in. He’s the DFS chancellor. Repeatedly selling a discount that never existed. Although if he was on the advert he’d look on amazed halfway through as the price unexpectedly fell.
It’s usually political types that assume a conspiracy because that’s the way their brains work. When I worked in a regional office years ago I would actively encourage the notion that mistakes were part of a grand plan of Machiavellian proportions so that I didn’t look like the clumsy fool I was. I was often dealing with an audience desperate to believe these little distractions. Active Labour party members are the most conspiracy-prone group of people I’ve ever met. Tiny mistakes like not having enough tea and biscuits for the meeting would be seen as part of a Blairite plot to keep meetings short to prevent dissent. I remember one occasion where I’d left the imprint off a leaflet, making it undeliverable. I realised too late so had to turn up to a leafleting session without leaflets. Instead of correctly identifying me as a marrow-fingered pillock everyone wrongly assumed that it was ‘region’ trying to manipulate our campaign messages and prevent the candidate from getting their individual message to voters. My protestations only watered their seed. For the rest of the day I was treated like some Millbank genius. Osborne should take a leaf out of my book and just pretend that he had no idea – at least Labour party members would assume more was going on.
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Matt Forde is a stand-up comedian and talkSPORT presenter. He used to work for the Labour party www.mattforde.com