A pageant of squawking, flapping, shrieking…and that’s just the journalists
There are many differences between political journalists and normal human beings, but perhaps the biggest is their attitude to manifestos. Normal human beings don’t read manifestos, and, by and large, are all the happier for it. Political journalists, of course, have to read them – but that is not enough to explain their behaviour, at each campaign’s launch event, when a party underling tiptoes up with a cardboard box and timidly blurts: “Manifestos!”
Honestly. It’s like watching seagulls fighting over a bag of chips. The lunging and flapping and shrieking and squawking, as grown men and women descend en masse upon the petrified underling and battle to grab the precious document first. The fastest and strongest snatch up as many copies as their talons can carry, and then soar triumphantly away, back to the nest with their spoils. The rest squabble bitterly over whatever remains.
It’s a startling sight. The furious, predatory swooping; the ravenous, clamouring greed; the burning-eyed, Darwinian ruthlessness. And all for an 80-page pamphlet about “knowledgerich curriculums” and “digital infrastructure”.
David Attenborough, right, should make a documentary about it.
Yesterday, however, the excitement was almost justified – because the Tory manifesto, launched in Halifax, West Yorkshire, contained something remarkable. It appeared on page nine, under the heading “Our principles”.
“We do not believe in untrammelled free markets,” it declared. “We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality …”
We flipped back to the cover. Well, it definitely said “Conservative” on the front. There it was, beneath the stern and faintly Soviet-sounding command: “FORWARD, TOGETHER.”
Theresa May stalked on to the stage. “Today,” the Prime Minister announced, “I launch my manifesto for Britain’s future.”
No, not “our” manifesto; “my” manifesto. Sometimes, it seems, individualism isn’t so bad after all.
Her speech barely mentioned actual policies. Instead, it was a generalised encomium to unity, fairness and government intervention.
At the end, journalists raised their hands. Several, clearly, had been struck by that section on “Our principles”. One asked whether she considered herself a Thatcherite.
“Margaret Thatcher was a Conservative,” intoned Mrs May. “I am a Conservative. This is a Conservative manifesto.” But this manifesto was
‘It’s a startling sight. The Darwinian ruthlessness of it all. David Attenborough should make a documentary’
nothing like a Thatcher-era manifesto, said another journalist. Was “Mayism” a rejection of Thatcherism? “There is no Mayism,” retorted Mrs May. “There is only good, solid Conservatism!”
I glanced out of the window at her party’s bright blue battle bus, its sides decorated in huge letters with the words “THERESA MAY”, and, in tiny letters, with the word “Conservatives”.
To applause from activists, Mrs May strode off – followed, in a line, by her Cabinet. A journalist tried to collar them. What happened, he asked, to the Tory belief in free markets? Were none of them Thatcherites any more? He got no reply. In silence, their eyes fixed to the floor, the ministers shuffled like a chain gang out of the room.