HAS POLITICS CHANGED FOREVER?

10/07/2009

 

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There are changes afoot at Number 10 according to Steve Richards, The Independent’s chief political commentator and host of the Sunday Programme on GMTV and Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.

“You can’t have a government in peril and an economic crisis without something huge happening in the next eighteen months,” Richards said at The Media Society’s Annual Summer Drinks held earlier this week at The Groucho Club. 

Members and guests were treated to Richards’ insights into the effects such prolonged crises of government may have on the possibility of change at the next election. 

“As a journalist I have never dealt with a more dysfunctional Number 10,” said Richards.  Indeed, he claims that this is the most volatile time he has ever seen in Parliament, “it is extraordinary”.

Although he won’t predict anything about Brown’s future, he cautions to not underestimate the Prime Minister. After all, he has been wildly unpopular before, according to Richards, and has always swung back into the public’s favour.

Indeed, Brown reminds Richards of a certain Harold Wilson.  Wilson, Richards reminded, displayed a similar ability to turn seemingly negative events on their head when after having been struck in the face by an egg thrown from a Tory protestor in 1970, he commented, “If the Tories get in, in five years no one will be able to afford to buy an egg.”

One of Brown’s major problems at the moment, according to Richards, is his government’s inability to fend off bad press. “In modern politics you need a good press secretary,” he said. “And at the moment Brown doesn’t have one.”

Another one of Brown’s problems came when he failed to call an election in 2007, a decision from which Brown has since been unable to recover. “Brown felt like he had to prove himself and break away from Blair before he called an election,” said Richards.

With a certain amount of irony Richards believes that Cameron is heavily “influenced by Blair”. “If you look at Cameron’s speeches they are clearly modelled on the Blair of the mid-90s,” he said. Richards sometimes feels that Cameron’s strategy is to out Blair, Blair.

In the current climate it is hard to predict what will happen but “politics never repeats itself.”

“There is a twist to come,” asserts Richards. “Anything can happen, and that is the joy of
politics.”

Steve Richards has a book coming out after the ever-elusive election.

 

Lisa Botter

 

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