The view from 2018: how it all went wrong for Prime Minister Osborne
So it was 2018 and the government was in trouble. Real trouble. In newspapers and magazines, on Dame Emily Maitlis’s Newsnight and Davina McCall’s Today programme, one question was being asked. Would anybody ever vote Conservative again?
At this stage, by-election disasters were not unexpected. The loss of Crewe and Nantwich had been on the cards for years and Enfield, although symbolic, was hardly a surprise. Fulham had been a shock. Henley all the more so.
Lord Johnson (of Henley) was particularly upset by the latter. As he said to the Radio Times, ‘to call this lot a shambles would be an insult to other shambles, such as erm... ’ Although Lord Johnson couldn’t think of other shambles, not on the spot, and the rest of the interview was about his new series of Strictly Come Dancing, the quote still made the front pages. For a government in such dire straits, all news was bad news. They were in freefall. It had never been worse.
Where had it all gone wrong? There was an easy answer, even if it wasn’t an entirely accurate one. The Osborne Oscillation had been far, far too short-lived. For a time, such a brief time, the new Prime Minister had seemed like such a breath of fresh air. No shorts. No bike. There was no inkling that he owned an iPod, even now, and you never had to see his wife’s knees. The man even wore a Barbour, thank God, and apparently had done since he was 12. Finally, a pair of safe hands.
When he had appeared on the steps of Downing Street clutching the hand of a frail Glenys Kinnock, it had felt like the start of a national government. ‘This shall be a government of all the talents!’ Prime Minister Osborne had piped, using that curiously familiar phrase that had come out of nowhere. For a time there was talk of Labour defections. The name of Dame Cherie Booth (QC) was even floated as the head of some kind of task force, but nothing ever came of it. Probably for the best, what with Tony at the Hague.
Osborne should have gone to the country right then, right at the start. Who knew it would get so bad? Yes, the economy was in a poor state, but wasn’t that a global thing? What could you expect, with oil at $600 a barrel? No country was at its best when involved in three entirely separate wars, but he had inherited all of them, and the one in Venezuela looked like it might end quite soon, anyway. With troops due home from Israel by Christmas, and the French promising to take a more active role in Belgium, things should have been on the up.
There was the fresh young Labour leadership, of course. So much more capable than their predecessors. The Kelly years had been an erratic wilderness, and the Miliband ‘dream team’ so mad that it was almost surreal. When Ed Balls got in, the Tories were positively hugging themselves at the notion of more of the same. Then he snapped, ran around with that axe, ended up in that padded cell. Everyone agreed that they should have seen it coming. He always had that glint in his eye. It wasn’t like they hadn’t been there before, with Gordon. His departure had opened up the field. There was a new generation, already.
But that was just symptom, not cause. The real problem was that the public didn’t like Tories. It wasn’t a new problem. Under Cameron it was just hidden, because Tories didn’t seem like Tories. Oh, those had been glorious days! The first few years, the flush of success. The young family moving into Number 10, the perfect words on the Coronation of King William (so skilfully balanced, what with the whole notion of Queen Billie still being such a surprise) and then the Olympics, and the way he made those three gold medals for curling seem so special, so British, so Dave’s.
Of course there were scandals. The Johnson resignations, the defection of David Davis to Ukip, the questions raised, perhaps unfairly, over the way that Caroline Spelman was able to buy that house. It was water off a duck’s back at first. Then they grew overconfident, and then they grew lazy. Cameron put on a stone. Parliamentary candidates were allowed to use the word ‘black’ in interviews without being sacked. Michael Gove started wearing his glasses again. The Treasury briefed one way, Downing Street briefed the other. Theresa May appeared in a shoe commercial, Cameron put on another stone, and things started to go wrong.
Out of nowhere, the government was suddenly split over the inconsequential issue of whether Britain should one day join the rouble. There were still failing schools, there were still failing hospitals. Impatient and bored, the Tories began to clamour for change. They wanted a real Tory, a thinner Tory, perhaps from only the fifth or sixth poshest school in the land rather than the first. In time, Cameron slipped away; a grand-standing, tear-jerking performance at the party conference, followed by an American lecture tour. By the time he started his improbable new job as the United Nation’s peace envoy to war-torn Belgium, Osborne was already in trouble.
And such trouble. Some dubbed him the worst Prime Minister in history. Every byelection was a disaster. Ken Livingstone became the Mayor of London again. Others, the young Turks, began to plot. And, as the polls plunged to unprecedented levels, the media screamed, and the resurgent, fragrant Labour party talked a lot of sense, many declared the Conservative party to be finished for ever, like the Whigs. Some protested that it was all cyclical and nothing new, but nobody listened to them. They listened to the exciting ones, the doomsayers, who were certain, this time, that it was real.
Istruggle, come 2018, to think of a suitable Conservative equivalent to John Prescott, who has waded into things so supportively this week by likening Gordon Brown to the captain of the Titanic. Will the Tories have anybody of his stature even ten years from now? I doubt it.
One of my favourite facts about Prescott (and I have many) is that the former sailor was born on the same date that the Titanic was launched (31 May), albeit 27 years later. Call me self-indulgent, but I couldn’t stand the thought of this brief fuss passing by without anybody pointing it out.
Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.
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