As factory workers in Chatham awaited the arrival of David Cameron, the prime minister’s angry face popped up on a TV screen in the centre of town – live from Brussels. He had been due for a tour at some docks in the parliamentary seat of Rochester & Strood, no doubt to explain why it would be a mistake to vote for a rabidly anti-EU party in the forthcoming byelection.
But there he was, on TV, banging his podium and lambasting European authorities for demanding another £1.7bn from hard-pressed British taxpayers. It was quickly established that the prime minister was indeed in another country, not the constituency where his party is furiously fighting the attempts of ex-Tory MP Mark Reckless to get elected for Ukip.
But the town would not miss out on its love-bombing from the Conservative leader, who will be in serious trouble if the seat falls to Nigel Farage’s band of populist upstarts. In fact, Cameron was still planning to hop on a flight in order to spend a 40-minute appearance at a “community forum” later in the day.
Within a couple of hours, he was chairing a round-table discussion in Chatham, looking relieved that the hand-picked crowd of local dignitaries appeared to be a receptive audience for an EU-bashing joke or two.
“These European councils, there are too many of them, they go on far too long and they always try and get hold of your money. I’ve had all of those things this time, but they didn’t get my money and I managed to get here in the end,” he said.
It was frustrating, he said, that the EU had landed him with the bill in the middle of the Rochester & Strood byelection. And yes, he might have been kept in the dark by the Treasury about it by “a day or so”.
But Cameron was sure the voters would appreciate all his statesmanlike behaviour, in contrast to that of Nigel Farage, “gloating” down the pub with a pint.
