Nicolas Leonard: Spin doctors furious as allegations about Brown's temper and self-doubt dominate the media
Britain is heading for the most personality-driven general election for 100 years, said former chairman of the Conservatives David Davis yesterday, and it is the personality of Prime Minister Gordon Brown which is at the centre of the contest.
To the fury of Brown's spin doctors, allegations about his temper, his depressions, his indecision and his self-doubt are dominating the media agenda at a time when they had been hoping to launch their general election campaign.
There is nothing new about amateur psychologists ferreting around in the recesses of the Brown ego, but the worries about his capacities and stability have been given fresh impetus by a new book about Labour written by respected political commentator Andrew Rawnsley.
Brown was 59 on Saturday but it was far from being a happy birthday weekend for him as he was humiliatingly obliged to go on TV to deny that he had ever hit anyone in his life.
As it happens, the book does not actually allege that he physically assaulted anyone but it certainly shows that working for Brown is not for the faint-hearted.
The business minister, Peter Mandelson, gave a masterclass on TV yesterday on how to deal with the kind of barrage that Brown is now experiencing. Mandelson cheerfully admitted that he and the prime minister have "had their moments", a reference to their vicious, long-running feud, but he nimbly portrayed Brown as "demanding" rather than "bullying" and asked whether voters wanted "a shrinking violet" in charge of the country.
While Brown struggles to extricate himself from damaging claims about his real-life character, the Conservative leader, David Cameron, is about to face a bizarre and entirely fictional account of his life as a teenager.
In 'Dave Cameron's Schooldays: How I Became a Tory', the tabloid journalist Bill Coles presents a Flashman-like narrative in which, according to the publishers, Legend Press, Cameron was "relentlessly bullied" and became both a pornography pedlar to fellow pupils as well as a paparazzo photographer.
Fictional novels about real people during a general election campaign are unusual, to say the least, but the historical truth about Cameron's family tree is almost as lurid as the made-up memoirs of his time at Eton.
Research by Debretts Peerage has shown that seven generations ago Cameron's direct ancestors were King William IV and his mistress, Dorothy Jordan, an actress who came from Co Waterford. Ironically, William IV, who became king in 1830 and reigned for seven years, was the last sovereign to sack a prime minister.
If Cameron gets into Number 10, he is at no risk of suffering a similar fate at the hands of his distant cousin, Queen Elizabeth. But she could get caught up in the democratic process if the general election fails to produce a clear winner.
The former Conservative minister Michael Heseltine said last week that if he was a betting man, he would put money on there being a hung parliament and that forecast was underpinned at the weekend by the latest opinion polls, which show Labour clawing back some lost ground.
If neither Labour nor the Conservatives get an outright majority, the queen could, in theory, decide which party leader to ask to try to form a coalition government. But, in practice, she would do everything possible to avoid being the final decision-maker. There was an outcry in Canada less than two years ago when she indirectly got caught up in local political manoeuvring through the governor-general.
The man most likely to have the power to make either Cameron or Brown prime minister in the event of a hung parliament is Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader.
But, if the gap between the two main parties is very narrow, then the final decision could well rest with the 18 Westminster MPs to be elected in the North.
The Conservatives have been worried for months about the scale of success needed for them to secure an outright majority. They have to win 117 extra seats just to have a majority of one and they have not had a triumph on that scale since 1931.
In contrast, Labour under Tony Blair in 1997 gained 146 seats, showing that such turn-arounds are feasible.
If Cameron does falter, his spin doctors will know where to place the blame. The opinion polls show that while voters rate him a lot more highly than Brown, they fear he is too "slick" and paperbacks about his Etonian upbringing simply underscore that image.
The popular view of the Conservatives as out of touch and out of office was dramatically reinforced last week by one of their MPs, Nicholas Winterton, who complained bitterly about MPs no longer being allowed to claim expenses for first-class travel on the railways.
Instead, he moaned, they must go second-class along with what he called "a totally different type of people: there are lots of children, there is noise, there is activity. . . They have a different outlook on life".
- Nicolas Leonard
Irish Independent
