The Sketch: Brown's admirers mistake pure dullness for honesty
Thursday, 26 July 2007
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Friends of the Prime Minister find much relief in the fact he isn't Tony Blair. They admire the detail, the thoroughness, the lack of flashy presentation. Me, I staple a "Do Not Resuscitate" sign to the back of my head when he starts talking, and go into a tactical coma.
His admirers assume that because he is dull he must be honest. These qualities are twinned together in that odd way politics has. If you believe in renationalising the coal industry you also support the Palestinians against Israel. There's no need for it to be like that, but that's the way it usually is.
However, the world proves to us that you can be dull and devious; you don't have to be charming to be dishonest. His current stance against Cameron can be summarised thus: "He's going back to the old agenda, restricting immigration, cutting health services and tax cuts for the better off. But we'll just get on with the business of governing Britain (by restricting immigration, cutting health services and giving tax cuts to the better off)."
It's a mark of Bwana Cameron's failure that he can't stop Brown saying these things, even by pointing them out.
No, they're not serious about wanting power, as Michael Portillo pointed out a couple of weeks ago. They just haven't done the work. And they're still not doing it. For instance: the new text for the coming EU conference. Cameron says it's the Constitution by another name. But has he read it? Has he compared it with the Constitution line by line? Has he - or his researchers - got a list of copy-and-paste similarities to make the case?
It's only just been published, they'll whine. And it's in French. And they're busy. That was why Cameron spent his allocation in PMQs asking questions that Jim Murphy (I repeat, Jim Murphy) answered perfectly well on Monday.
Then into the Terror statement. Brown repeated a government line for extending detention without charge beyond 28 days. He said six people had been held right up until 27 or 28 days. But David Davis had been on the radio saying that was misleading, and after speaking to the police, he was able to say Sir Alan West's assertions on the subject were "a mistake". Nothing of any significance had been discovered in the last couple of weeks of the detention, Davis reported.
That would have put the cat into Brown's pigeons. That would have made him stammer.
At the moment, Bwana Cameron is like one of those actors in a fight scene aiming his blows at the other man's weapon, not at his body. It may be fatal, but not for Gordon.
