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Alan Watkins: Mr Cameron's plausibility stops at Dover

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Considering his wealth of inexperience, we may wonder at Mr David Cameron's sure-footedness as Leader of the Opposition. Having Mr Gordon Brown against him certainly helps matters along. And, on the whole, he has been lucky. Sometimes, however, a row will blow up out of nowhere. The fuss about grammar schools was a case in point.

Alan Watkins: Mr Blair's legacy of flatulent rhetoric

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Mr Tony Blair has done immeasurably more harm than Mr Nick Griffin ever has. He has started at least five wars, at the last count. But Mr Griffin is hooted in the streets, or, at any rate, on Question Time; whereas Mr Blair is acclaimed as the potential saviour of Europe.

Alan Watkins: Even a new leader can't save Labour

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It was Mr Alastair Campbell who first formulated the 11-day rule. This was that, if a story in the papers lasted for this period, it was important, but that it was forgotten afterwards. By this test, the story about Mr Nick Griffin and the BBC had lasted longer than the allotted span. I am fairly sure that it will quickly be forgotten.

Alan Watkins: Bullies both, but Mr Brown is worse

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

For most of the past year I have kept in my head two propositions, or, if you prefer, predictions. They may appear contradictory, but they are perfectly consistent. One is about what will probably happen; the other is about what ought to happen. Mr Gordon Brown, as I have thought for a long time, is most likely to carry on for as long as he can, if necessary till June 2010. However, for the good of the country, it would be better all round to have an election at the end of October.

Alan Watkins: Mr Cameron cuts a lonely figure

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Mr David Cameron's advisers, or it may have been Mr Cameron himself, decided to hold the party conference in Manchester, or so I read in the papers. That was because it was in the North-west, where there are numerous seats to be won by the Tories or, I suppose, lost.

Alan Watkins: Welcome to the malice party conference

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The most effective known antidote to a Labour Party conference is one held by the Conservatives. You thought that malice, lack of charity and sheer craziness were all freely on display in Brighton last week? Just wait until you get to the Tories at Manchester. In fact, over the past decade or so, perhaps longer, the audiences at all the party conferences, the Liberal Democrats included, have become tamer, more restrained.

Alan Watkins: The party's over before it has begun

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The conscientious columnist, on the Sunday between two party conferences, is always divided by the need to cover the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. The accepted wisdom, first imparted to me by a former editor of mine, the monstrous Sir John Junor, was always to look forward, never back. In this year, the last before all the parties meet in a general election, I want to say a few words about both parties – and maybe about the Conservatives as well.

Alan Watkins: This is Mr Cameron's silly season too

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The last month before a general election tends to generate a good deal of excitement. It was so before Harold Wilson won in 1964. It was the same when Tony Blair arrived at No 10 in 1997. On both occasions, expectations were disappointed by the course of subsequent events, though both times I was among the sceptical minority. But that was not what most observers thought at the time.

Alan Watkins: What chance, the bookies' favourite?

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

This week it is Mr Alistair Darling's turn to have a twirl on the floor. The colour-writers (as they used to be called in the trade) have taken the week off, the judges have retired from the competition, taking their notebooks with them, and once again peace of a kind has come down on Westminster.

Alan Watkins: A title is worth shedding for the top job

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

This week it is Lord Mandelson's turn to assume the position of acting prime minister. In reality, Mr Gordon Brown is in constant touch, by various electronic and no doubt other means including telepathic and divine intervention, resting neither by day nor by night, God help us all. In recent years, the silly-season practice has arisen of speculating about who, if anyone, is meant to be in charge of what Lord Beaverbrook once called the clattering trade.

Alan Watkins: Mr Cameron's 'cursing' won't harm him

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The silly season has come a little early this year. By the middle of the week it was well under way. The most pressing question was whether Mr David Cameron had sworn during a live breakfast radio show and, if he had, the further question arose of whether he was fit to shoulder the responsibilities that would shortly be his.

Alan Watkins: New Labour awaits a new messiah

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Some time after the Labour Party's defeats in the 1980s, The Spectator (a less strident Conservative organ in those days) published an article on the lines: Can Labour ever win again? It was by Lord Skidelsky, best known for his lengthy biography of J M Keynes. The firm answer was No.

Alan Watkins: An editor knows what his reporters are doing. And a would-be PM should know about his staff

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It is many years since I dealt with political press officers, or press officials of any kind, in the normal course of business. Even in those days, when Labour was in opposition, we tended to give one another a wide berth. Mr Alastair Campbell was still with the Daily Mirror, where he tended to devote more time to the interests of the Labour Party, and, in particular, of its then leader than I considered to be wholly appropriate.

Alan Watkins: So we turn to Mr Brown's Last Phase

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Old-fashioned biographies of great men used to come out in three volumes. If the fashion were to be revived, which seems unlikely, the first book would be entitled Gordon Brown: The Years of Promise, and would cover the years up to 1997. The second book would be subtitled The Years of Fame, and would take us up to the great non-election of 2007. We are now coming to the end of the last book. It would be called The Last Phase.

Alan Watkins: Labour's backbenchers are revolting

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It is hard to see the Government surviving for a whole year, or just under. Mr Gordon Brown talks of going on and on and on, just as Ramsay MacDonald did in the 1930s, or as Margaret Thatcher did on a later occasion, not long before her fall. I cannot see it happening. But then we live in strange times, as the election of the new Speaker demonstrates.

Alan Watkins: Too incompetent to get things wrong

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

For some reason, the faith of the political classes in bookmakers is unbounded. The trust is without limit. I have nothing against Mr John Bercow, except that he was until Friday favourite for Speaker. He has now been replaced by Mrs Margaret Beckett.

Alan Watkins: This is a farce, but the timing is dire

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The kindest thing to say about the Labour Party is that it would be incapable of organising a reshuffle in a brewery. As for getting rid of a prime minister, the difficulties pass all understanding. The only single person to have managed the feat was George Fyffe in 1931 (aided and abetted by his private secretary Sir Clive Wigram). In that year, Ramsay MacDonald replaced himself as the new head of an ostensibly National – in reality, Conservative – government.

Alan Watkins: Labour has lost all its stuffing

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

In the days of old Fleet Street, there used to be someone who bore the unofficial title of the Editor's Friend. The friend's duties included those of warning the editor against any threats to his authority, accompanying him to the pub towards the end of the morning, and trying to cheer him up generally. For these reasons, he would not be a journalist of any great distinction himself, and, above all, would not present any danger to the editor's own position.

Alan Watkins: Save Labour with PR, Mr Brown

Sat, 30 May 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The late backbencher and journalist Julian Critchley used to be fond of remarking that the only safe pleasure for a Tory MP was a bag of boiled sweets. Indeed, he used that as a title for one of his several works of reminiscence. Even that small indulgence is to be denied to our legislators – and quite right too, if those reforms which are now occupying the minds of the Government and the House of Commons authorities are ever carried out, as I rather doubt they ever will be.

Alan Watkins: He had no lines, yet he fluffed them

Sat, 09 May 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Watching one of Mr Gordon Brown's several strange appearances on television in recent weeks, I immediately noticed a small coloured poster of a swastika positioned just behind him. Subsequent reports said there had been several of them, forming a kind of tableau or display, but only one of them caught my eye. He had been speaking at a school.

Alan Watkins: Stop the rot, Mr Brown. Set the date

Sat, 02 May 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Only political columnists of a certain age any longer quote nursery rhymes. So this week I will cite no fewer than two of them. Not exactly to extract any sympathy for Mr Gordon Brown, but simply to illustrate the difficulties in which he now finds himself – largely, it must be said, through his own fault.

Alan Watkins: Loyal to the end. And it is the end

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Once a year, in April, a group of us who were active in the Cambridge University Labour Club in the mid-1950s meet for lunch. This year the number was up to eight. There were two retired diplomats, two former professors (of modern languages and mathematics), two representatives of advertising, recruitment and market research, a psychiatrist and a journalist – myself.

Alan Watkins: Mr Brown's twilight among the elves

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The row about Mr Gordon Brown and his aides, or former aides – it seems safest to call them "former aides" – has now gone on for the best part of a week, and only now does it show signs of abating. The week after Easter has become more and more like the week between Christmas and the new year. Everything shuts down for seven days at least; or more like 11, if you count the days before Christmas.

Alan Watkins: Spin cannot change the weather

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Recent experience of this country's politics, for what it is worth, teaches us that a change in the weather takes place every 15 or 20 years. It was so with the elections of 1945, 1964, 1979 and, yes, 1997. People waved little Union Jack flags outside No 10, and it was a bright May morning. Even Mr Alastair Campbell could not control the weather, but he did supply both the flags and the cast of extras, who had been conscripted predominantly from the staff of Labour Party headquarters.

Alan Watkins: Top of the bill, but with the same old act

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Several of my colleagues in the commentating trade specialise in attending international conferences of one sort of another. They seem positively to enjoy these occasions. The organisers distribute ballpoint pens, key rings and other baubles to visiting journalists in much the same spirit as 19th- century explorers would give coloured beads to the potentially hostile tribesmen. Nor is there a shortage of free food and drink. An industrious reporter can supply himself or herself with the necessities, or, sometimes, the minor luxuries of life for days at at time. Even so, the daily grind can be hard.