Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary appeared on television today and proved to the world that she and her party are out of touch with the electorate. How did she do that? – By telling everyone that she and her party were not out of touch with the electorate. I don’t like Ms Smith very much, she has adopted that hectoring school-marmish way of talking at people as if she knows it all before she asks anyone.
You see, Ms Smith (should you by some fluke of technology read this – which in itself might back up your claim to be “in touch”) when someone says “you aren’t in touch with your electorate”, what you then do is ask the electorate, “Are we out of touch? – What is it you would like us to do? How do you feel we could do better?” – which is what Labour did in opposition between about 1990 and 1997 – after dealing with the internal issues of the party. I personally suspect that this is the turning point for the government. They’ve ridden Iraq, because the Tories were with them in the first place, and so couldn’t make any capital out of it. They’ll ride the economic woes purely because people remember only too well what happened when interest rates got to 15% and the media will never stop showing the pictures of David Cameron following Norman Lamont on Black Wednesday. But Labour have dropped right into the big bear trap of being in power too long, they haven’t had to fight for anything for so long that power is being taken for granted. My advice to the Labour party, if they want to win, is like the advice that good rugby coaches give at half time when their team is winning, which is to go back out as if you’re 15 points down. The real trouble is that there aren’t any people left in the upper eschelons of the party who can remember or want to remember what it was like to be in opposition. I recommend them to take a bus down the Walworth Road to jog their memories.
