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Making mileage out of Tory toffs

Michael Crick | 15:56 UK time, Wednesday, 2 December 2009

Following on from my comments on Gordon Brown at PMQs.

The key word is "relaxed". Once one joke works well, a speaker relaxes and he establishes a relationship with his audience.

Then his other material is likely to work successfully, and he gets more quick-witted on his feet.

Mr Brown's problem for most of his premiership is that he's been far from relaxed, and nearly always looks wooden, slow and clunky.

One of my Downing Street sources tells me that Mr Brown's new confidence, which we've increasingly seen in the Commons over the past two-three weeks, stems from a feeling that he's finally overcoming the three big crises that have dominated his years at Number 10 - the economic crisis, the political crisis, and now, with Barack Obama's speech and announcement last night, the Afghanistan crisis.

It was also clear again from Mr Brown's reference to Eton that Labour plans to make a lot more mileage over the coming months from the privileged background of Mr Cameron, Mr Osborne and their close colleagues.

After the Crewe by-election in 2008 the conventional wisdom in politics was that attacking Tory toffs would never work for Labour.

I was never persuaded of that - I just felt it was not best to experiment with such attacks in the traditional home of Rolls Royce, or against the Conservative candidate there, Edward Simpson, who wasn't a very convincing example of a toff.

Mr Cameron will now be under big pressure to do three things to answer the "privileged" and "wealthy" jibes from Labour:

- drop his policy on Inheritance Tax for estates of less than £1 million

- show that Lord Ashcroft has been paying British income tax on his worldwide earning since he became a peer eight or nine years ago

- and insist that Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative candidate in Richmond, who has said today that he no longer holds non-domicile status, pays British income tax on every penny he has earned for the last year or two.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    OLD WAYS OR NEW - HARD TO CHOOSE

    Blair's Labour went where the votes were, and abandoned any remaining ideals, yet they howl at the Tory's for (allegedly) returning to theirs. The Westminster mind is truly unique - fortunately.

  • Comment number 2.

    Not sure there is much mileage in this apart from perhaps propping up the core Labour vote.

    The voters in the key marginal constituencies are well aware of the toffs int he Labour party. Harriet Harman and Ed Balls two examples of toffs.

    In addition the fact that the most powerful person in the cabinet, one Lord Mandelson, highlights how Labour is clearly a party where unelected toffs rule.

  • Comment number 3.

    what's wrong about the politics of envy? It worked in Russia in 1917..

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