ANOTHER VOICE

Where the Tory candidate's cause is contemptible, and Labour's candidate has no cause at all

MATTHEW PARRIS

To the Memory of Rachel Charlotte O'Brien ... Her death was occasioned by her Clothes catching Fire; seeing the Flames communi- cating to her Infant, all Regard to her own Safety was lost in the more powerful Consid- eration of saving her Child, and rushing out of the room she preserved its Life at the Sac- rifice of her own. She Expired on 13th December 1800, in the 19th year of her Life.

10 REASONS FOR ELECTING BEN BRADSHAW: New Labour, new life for animals.

This is probably the nastiest constituency fight in Britain. It is between Labour's can- didate for a marginal seat, Ben Bradshaw, and the Conservatives' Dr Adrian Rogers, who has pursued, through his political can- didature, his own personal loathing of homosexuality and his conviction that this (in his words) 'disease-ridden, sterile, God- forsaken occupation' is one of the besetting evils of our day. The news media, by asking Dr Rogers about little but his opinion of homosexuality, have contributed to an impression that this is a personal obsession with him.

Ben Bradshaw, meanwhile, is homosexu- al. Rogers has called him 'Bent Ben', while Bradshaw has accused Rogers of being hung-up on the subject. Rogers plods around the town with a little soapbox, handing out ugly pink leaflets knocking Bradshaw's campaign, while the Labour candidate sweeps through the streets with teams of gung-ho New Labour groupies, tapping on doors and disparaging (mostly by silence) his opponent. The two unite only to sneer at their Liberal Democrat rival's candidature as a dustbin vote.

Bradshaw's campaign is bland, cheery, happy-clappy, contentless and confident. Rogers's is quirky, defensive and sour. Something of the contrast between not only their personal styles but their parties' tac- tics, too, was betrayed as I joined Mr Brad- shaw and his team for lunch at a pub over- looking the Cathedral green. The Labour candidate leaned over his pint of shandy and lamb-and-mint pastie. 'I just don't understand', he said, in tones of genuine bafflement, 'why Tory Central Office is sending Dr Rogers around campaigning as he does. It's not the best way to win a marginal seat.'

I was perplexed. 'Central Office don't direct individual candidates' campaigns,' I said. 'They wouldn't dream of telling Rogers what to say. They'd get a flea in their ear from any other local Tory associa- tion if they tried to dictate. This campaign in Exeter is Rogers's responsibility: his choice.'

`You mean they don't control him?' Mr Bradshaw returned, puzzled, to his pastie. So Dr Rogers was not controlled. How strange.

This young man was not a problem can- didate. Mr Bradshaw is no slouch, no lame duck, and in need of no help or advice from Millbank Tower. Tall and personable, with Hugh Grant good looks, it strikes me that if he had not been a star BBC reporter and a Labour parliamentary candidate he might have been a model.

And in a way he is. He is modelling New Labour -- a human frame upon which to hang a set of saleable notions. Bradshaw displays the characteristics his party requires in a recruit to its remodelled officer class. He is intelligent, enthusiastic, reassuringly devoid of ideas (or adept at concealing them) and palpably ambitious. Except for his London tendency to talk to West Country voters as though they were children, his doorstep manner is appealing, his communications skills enviable.

He possesses the outward command cou- pled with inward obedience to a higher authority which I remember sensing in East German diplomats under communism: the men and women who have now been so successfully reprogrammed as free-market democrats. It is an odd feeling, talking to these New Labour people, a feeling one sometimes experiences in conversation with Christians, Scandinavians and customer relations personnel. If Abba could be trans- lated into a political creed, it would be theirs. Everything harmonises, everything rhymes. They speak English. The grammar is perfect and there is no trace of an accent. No wires from their ears or navels are visi- ble. They seem so terribly nice, and bright, and clean. . . .

And yet. It is as if some small but vital part of the brain had been removed surgi- cally or disabled by the application of elec- trodes. You think they like you. You think it is you they like, you they see, you they are talking to. But something blank in their eyes tells you their attention is not upon you at all. Not you but your eternal soul. They want you for Jesus. They want you for New Labour. The thought strikes you that if you were to take their trousers off you would fmd, beneath, what we find on those window-dressers' dummies: a sort of low, smooth lump, designed to give the impres- sion of substance, but without form. They are mannequins upon which are hung New Labour's new clothes.

I hope this does not seem unfair to Mr Bradshaw. Shorn of his political ambitions, I might like him a lot. I find Dr Rogers's campaign almost beneath contempt. I should rally to Bradshaw's cause. But what is his cause? Is there more than an amor- phous lump under his trousers? His cam- paign as a New Labour candidate teaches me nothing about him, nothing about the likely next government. Worse, it teaches him nothing about why, or for what, he is about to be elected. I really don't think he knows.

I retired to the Cathedral, and read the memorials. There was one to George Loughton LLD . . .

... who, having early distinguished himself by a conscientious and disinterested attention to the cause of Liberty and the Reformation . • • an instructive, animated and convincing preacher, a determined enemy of Idolatry and Persecution, a successful exposer of Pre- tence and Enthusiasm ... at length ... pre- pared by habitual meditation to resign Life without Regret, to meet Death without ter- ror, expired, with the praises of God upon his Lips, in his 79th year, September 13th 1762.

Outside, men in sunglasses, barking into mobile phones, were preparing for the arrival of Tony Blair. They needed the Cathedral as backdrop.

Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter of the Times.