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Wednesday, March 22, 2006
A Change of Spin tactics by Gordon Brown's Little Helpers
You'll all no doubt be releived to hear that I am safely ensconced in the Watergate. I haven't caught up on the budget details yet, but one little snippet I thought I'd share with you is this. I'm told that immediately after each of Gordon Brown's previous budgets his little helpers would scurry round the Press Gallery spinning away like mad. But they didn't do that this year. Instead they waited until David Cameron had finished in the hope that he would have made some kind of giant cock up which they could take political advantage of. I have no idea yet what happened but one Tory MP has told me that Cameron was like an Apache helicopter bombing a second world war tank.
David Cameron not only delivered his prepared line of response, but caught him out on his failure to mention the NHS. There was precision, aggression, humour and authority in his reply. He even outed Brown's favourite trick of leaving the negative elements to be teased out latter.
ReplyDeleteThe Govt front bench were all glum- except strangely Tony Blair who seemed to rather enjoy it all - I wonder why ?
Apache helicopter? Would that be the hugely expensive US import that can't fire its missiles properly and was shot down in the 2003 Iraq war by a load of Iraqi fedayeen armed with only rifles?
ReplyDeleteNot perhaps the perfect metaphor.
Any leader of the opposition has a crap time replying to the Budget but DC rather blew his "no punch and judy" bit. That is exactly what it was.
Ming Campbell was awful. What did he do, drink too much coffee before going in?
David Cameron's response was excellent - sharp, punchy, to the point, funny, aggressive and just the right length. Yes, he was loud - had to be, as the Government toadies were making lots of noise and had to be told to shut up by the Deputy Speaker. He was authoritative, looked like a man on top of his brief.
ReplyDeleteHaven't been a great fan in the past, but was impressed by him this week.