While Tory campaign relaunches, Labour’s pop group reforms
In south London this morning David Cameron switched what was meant to be a small business speech into a relaunch address.
Some of those business people who’d made the journey for a different sort of event button-holed me and said it was a bit of a nerve, taking up their time then not taking their questions.
But David Cameron knew he had to field press questions to look confident on the campaign line he has settled on to pull back the election. You need “decisive” (for which read “majority”) government to get real change – hung parliaments, minority administrations or coalitions don’t get you “change” but “haggling”.
David Cameron said he would “accentuate the positive”, in the words of the old song, and the second prong of his message today was that he was putting “the Big Society” centre stage in the campaign. There are Tories round the country who will be scratching their heads about that… I met a couple of them at the event.
Labour’s just had its press conference. The old pop group reformed (Peter, Alastair Campbell etc) are showing signs of enjoying themselves a bit too much – it was preceded by a mock TV news bulletin from Summer 2010 after a David Cameron victory at the election, with Alastair Campbell playing the ingenue sports correspondent in South Africa suddenly having to report on the German chancellor snubbingPrime Minister Cameron’s invitation to meet up in South Africa (dangerous stuff this – I’m sure Chancellor Merkel didn’t want to be portrayed in this way).
Gordon Brown has just said, re. Nick Clegg, “I know how short political honeymoons can be…” and “I wish (Nick Clegg) well in it.”
Like David Cameron, Gordon Brown is saying he wants a majority government but emphasises ( a little more emolliently than David Cameron) that the voters “must decide”. Gordon Brown is still emphasising the constitutional overlap with Lib Dems’ policy while swiping at their economic credentials. He says he thinks the “energising” of the campaign is “a good thing”.