OK, that’s enough sweet nothings, Dave
THERE HAS always been a whiff of the Richard Curtis hero to David Cameron: his style of posh is urban and glossy rather than rural and smelling of mothballs. He still appears genuinely besotted with his wife Samantha, and one suspects might even have a working knowledge of cutting-edge jewellers and florists.
It is, admittedly, not hard to outdo Ed Miliband on the New Romantic front: Mr Miliband has never fully recovered, in the eyes of many women, from not having found time to enter his details on his first son’s birth certificate. Now I am sure that Mr Miliband cares deeply for his sons, and also for his wife, whom he married last May – but it does suggest a man preoccupied by matters more political than emotional, to whom a spouse might hint: “There’s a very special day coming up in May, darling” and hear back: “Yes, the anniversary of the 1929 election which brought Ramsay Macdonald back to power.”
Despite his advantage, Mr Cameron has been charming too hard of late, with his faintly cringe-inducing chat to Now magazine about a weekly “date night” and remembering his wedding night “minute by minute”. Female voters remain pragmatists at heart. What with attacks on child benefit, the runaway rise of tuition fees, and the realisation that our own “date nights” are increasingly unaffordable, he could still find his roses in the bin and his dinner in the dog.