The Osborne saga is a danger for the Tories. But so is Obama’s likely victory
The midday sun clearly does have a strange effect on Englishmen. How else to explain George Osborne’s multiple lapses of judgment in going to meet Mr Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is so unsavoury that he is banned from entering the United States. What possible good could Osborne — generally regarded as the sharpest Tory operator — have thought would come of returning to Deripaska’s yacht with the party’s chief executive Andrew Feldman?
Osborne has not committed a hanging offence; there was no donation in the end after all. The second, and published, version of the Nat Rothschild letter does not contain the allegation that Osborne and Deripaska discussed funding, which was present in the first letter. It was apparently removed after legal threats from the Tories. But next year Andy Coulson, or someone similar, needs to play the part of the responsible adult and tell Osborne he should not holiday with the jet set in Corfu. The cocktail of sun, sail and billionaires clearly destroyed his judgment. Perhaps he should try Bognor instead.
This scandal has come at the worst possible time for the Tories. They sensibly took the decision to allow Gordon his moment in the sun during the banking crisis. But they then panicked at the amount of good press he was getting. David Cameron made a speech last Friday which contained few ideas and was widely panned by the rightwing commentariat. Meanwhile, there were murmurings, mostly unfair, against Osborne from panicked backbenchers. Now that this story has broken, the murmurs have become loud accusations.
But the Osborne drama, which reads like a cross between Gossip Girl and a Michael Dobbs novel, should not totally distract us from two elections — one foreign, one domestic — in the first week of November that will determine the contours of British politics from now until the next general election.
The domestic one is in Glenrothes on 6 November. If Labour holds this seat (and the SNP needs a 14 per cent swing to win it), the press will declare Gordon the comeback kid. The boost that Brown has received from the financial crisis would then become locked in and he would have a fighting chance of winning a general election. However, if the SNP do pull it off, the Brown bubble will burst. He will no longer be the Prime Minister showing the world the way, lauded by Le Monde and Nobel laureates, but the Labour leader who can’t win in his own backyard of Fife. Gordon will have crashed to earth as rapidly as those other one-time masters of the universe.
The other election is, of course, the US presidential one on 4 November. There, an Obama victory looks more likely by the day. McCain is now betting all on winning Pennsylvania, a state no Republican presidential candidate has won since 1988 and where Obama leads by 11 points in the polls.
The effect that the election of a President Obama would have on British politics has long been a source of conversation in Westminster. Until recently it was assumed that its effect would be to change the moodmusic, to make Brown look out of touch with the generational zeitgeist. It was hardly a secret that Brown’s desired election result was a Clinton restoration. The young Tories were so excited by Obama’s primary success because it appeared to represent a generational turning of the page, a move away from the politics of the 1990s.
At the Democratic convention in Denver, there were plenty of young Cameroons. They were all scrupulously well-behaved, though. No buttons or any other Obama paraphernalia could be seen. But beneath the proper reserve there was a real sense of excitement: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,/ But to be young was very heaven!’ But the financial crisis has ensured that an Obama presidency will have a less predicta ble effect on British politics. Brown’s strongest card right now is the idea that this time of economic turmoil is ‘no time for a novice’. Obama will put that statement to the test. It is hard to think of a less experienced president. Four years ago he was just a state senator in Illinois. But after 20 January he is going to have to sit in the Oval Office and address this crisis.
Given that the Democrats are pretty much guaranteed to increase their Congressional majorities, Obama will be able to pass a big stimulus bill in his first hundred days. If this bill and Obama’s other decisions are perceived to be a success, the novice charge will lose its force. If a novice can guide the engine of the world economy through the storm, then it is hardly credible to say that Britain can’t take a risk 18 months from now on someone with twice as much national political experience as Obama. Obama would also fill the global leadership role that Brown has been trying out for in recent weeks.
However, if Obama is seen to dither or if his response is thought to be inadequate or to worsen the problem, then Brown’s haymaker will pack an added punch. In these circumstances, Brown could present himself as Macmillan to Obama’s JFK, guiding a young president after he has stumbled initially. Brown could, ironically given his complicity in the ‘Age of Irresponsibility’, fashion an image for himself as the wise old man who can guide the world through these tough times.
Some Tories argue that if Obama has a poor start — as both Clinton and Bush did, it will discredit left-wing economic thinking, not the Tories. But the novice charge is now the biggest obstacle to Cameron getting to Number 10. Anything that increases its salience is bad news for the Tories.
Both parties have sought to connect themselves to Obama. The Tories rushed out a web video of Cameron’s praising Obama after the two met on Obama’s trip to London, while Labour used Obama’s polite videotaped words about Brown as the highlight of the video before Brown’s crucial conference speech. If Obama wins, there’ll be a race between Brown and Cameron to the cameras and the phones to congratulate him.
But both parties might find themselves far more dependent on how Obama performs in office than they were ever expecting. The Tories have to hope Obama really is change they can believe in.
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