Everyone in politics knows Michael Ashcroft is not a man to cross. Apart from David Cameron, the object of this week’s pig-molestation allegations, few know better than Vince Cable, a 7 May victim in Twickenham of the key marginals strategy that Lord Ashcroft’s millions did so much to refine.
In the early days of the coalition, at around the time Cameron was fatally crossing Ashcroft by not giving him a big job, Cable had an approach at his new desk running the business department. It seemed his lordship needed some help taking on the uppity government in the Ashcroft protectorate of Belize. When Cable said he couldn’t help, the Tory donor was deeply unhappy. He then went quiet, but he doesn’t forget.
The Jeremiad and Aunty Tim
What’s in a name? The Lib Dems are now led by a Tim. The Tories have had Tims aplenty, including Tim Collins whose Cumbrian seat Tim “Agony Aunt” Farron took in 2005. In its 115-year history, the Labour party has never had an MP called Tim.
Yet those who asked “Can Labour be led by a Tristram?” were asking the wrong question. It is now led by a posh-sounding Jeremy, as the Lib Dems have twice been. First by Old Etonian Jeremy Thorpe (1967-76), who had his own animal troubles (his boyfriend’s dog Rinka got shot), then by Paddy Ashdown (1989-99). Lord Ashdown’s given names are actually Jeremy John Durham.
Careful with that recovery, George
Full credit to the Lib Dem activist who coined the words that may best describe Britain’s 2017 vote to leave the EU, which many senior Lib Dems now think is a 50/50 prospect if the Osborne recovery tanks. Not “Brexit” but “Braccident”.
Regrets, I’ve had a few…
Why are Lib Dems activists so happy to be out in record numbers for their post-defeat conference? Not simply because Ashcroft’s allegations against Cameron virtually guarantees them a scandal-free week.
It may just be grief-in-denial, but ex-MPs and activists have persuaded themselves that all over England voters who elected a bunch of no-hoper Tory candidates on 7 May are already suffering what Nick Clegg (not too repentant on Monday) calls “buyer’s remorse”.
Bournemouth’s bars and corridors are full of stories of late-night phone calls, even personal letters from Cameron, telling waverers it was their “patriotic duty” to prevent a Miliband-Sturgeon coalition. So they’ll re-elect ousted Lib Dem MPs in 2020? Not necessarily. Soft Tories usually risk voting Lib Dem only when Labour is not seen as a threat.
Unholy alliance
Lib Dems in Bournemouth were quick to shudder at the name of Ashcroft’s co-author in his Call Me Dave revenge biography. Isabel Oakeshott is the political journalist whose sympathetic words wheedled Chris Huhne’s M11 “swapped points” story out of the then Lib Dem cabinet minister’s wife, Vicky Price: both went to prison. If that was not enough, she is also a third cousin of Lord Oakeshott, a veteran anti-Clegg plotter. At least this time it’s a Tory pig.
