DIARY OF A NOTTING HILL NOBODY
MONDAY Tremendous excitement after the PBR. Dave called us into The Cauldron, our inner sanctum, for a top-secret briefing. Felt v privileged to be there, just me and 150 other core members of CCHQ. Dave was wonderful. He completely cleared up any nagging doubts we might have had as to why we are not opposing the rise in the top rate. It’s deeply strategic stuff, but suffice to say he and Mr Letwin, and Gids obviously, have worked out that standing up for the middle classes is precisely what Labour thinks we will do, and therefore precisely what we will NOT do — genius! We are drawing on our hugely successful strategy of not attacking Labour’s spending plans, which I think you will recall was terrifically effective for a year before we had to drop it and do a U-turn. So, you will not hear me, or anyone else in the Compassionate Conservative party, standing up for Middle England and its big fat pay packets. Not now, not at the election, not ever! And that’s final.
TUESDAY
Bit of bother last night when I told Mummy and Daddy about our not-falling-into-thetrap-of-defending-the-rich policy. Might have to moderate it, just when I’m en famille. Daddy is furious and says he’s moving us to the Isle of Man. He was ranting in a most unmodern way: ‘Cutting debt my a***! Who will stick up for us if Dave doesn’t!’ Am not too worried. He always goes on about the Isle of Man when he’s angry. He finds the lure of a low-tax independent state with no ties to the EU very hard to resist. I think he’d been hoping that was what Dave was going to create here. Bless! I tried Mr Lansley’s line — a bit of recession never hurt anybody, do you good, get some of the fat off, etc — but he just went purple and said he was going to rewrite his will.
WEDNESDAY
Bev from Labour tried it on this morning. Rang to say: ‘It’s a f***ing outrage what Gordon’s doing! A betrayal of everything Tony stood for! Why the hell aren’t you guys opposing it? Are you nuts? My parents are talking about moving to Jersey! What’s Dave going to do about it, that’s what I want to know?!’ I told her she could drop the act, I wasn’t born yesterday. I know the Lord of Darkness is listening in on speakerphone. I’m not going to fall for it. We’ve come too far. Under the principled leadership of David Cameron, we’ve changed everything we believe in to make ourselves more electable. We are made of sterner stuff, oh yes! She was stunned. After a long silence she simply said, ‘I can’t help you people. I’m defecting to the Libs.’ Result!
THURSDAY Bumped into Lord A outside the Austerity Room. He’d been catching up on the soaps — we keep a tape of them in there so we can stay abreast of the concerns of the working classes, our main constituency. Anyway, he was all smiles, which is amazing given the huge amounts of extra tax he’s going to be paying when the new 45 per cent rate comes in. Made me think, if Lord A can be stoical, I don’t see why the rest of Britain’s high earners can’t stop moping about. Meanwhile, we low earners must be brave too. Am off to the King’s Road to do a little VAT-cut bonanza shopping. There’s a Moschino jumper I’ve had my eye on which I’m hoping will be down from £100 to £97.50!
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