So Many to Choose From

When searching for a strategic weak link in the silken-underwear chain of twits, flits and shits who constitute Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives, New New Labour at first glance suffers an embarrassment of riches. From the party leader Michael Ashcroft and his chum, the fool and/or crook William Hague, through schoolboys like Michael Gove and Liam Fox and clowns like Eric Pickles, to Daveybloke himself, whose life since actual policies were required of him has been one long Gay Times interview, it seems that wherever Gordon's propagandists aim their poisoned darts there must inevitably be at least one pair of bulbous buttocks waiting ripe for the sting.

It isn't as simple as that, of course. If New New Labour attacks Gove and Fox on matters of education and defence, the public mind may drift onto such indiscretions as faith schools, Iraq and Afghanistan; if New New Labour attacks William Hague for being a fool and a crook, Geoff Hoon has only recently left the Government and Lord Mandelbrot the Inifinitely Recurring is still inside it. If New New Labour attacks the Conservatives for being in hock to rich businessmen, someone will have the bad taste to point out that Tony was selling opt-outs to Bernie Ecclestone before the millennium dawned and that New New Labour's failure to retain the favour of the Murdoch press has not been for want of trying. For every Eric Pickles or Chris Graybeing among Daveybloke's Cuddlies, there is a David Miliband or a Jack Straw on the other side.

Accordingly, New New Labour has vowed, as the Observer's melodrama correspondent hath it, to target George Osborne, the progressive shadow chancellor. This is reasonable enough. Gordon's little Darling may not have done much to mitigate the effects of Gordon's little recession, but he did at least do more than nothing, while Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives squealed lèse marché. In addition, New New Labour's focus groups have responded with negativity to "mocked-up images of Osborne standing outside 11 Downing Street"; which apparently indicates that Osborne is perceived as more shrill than Lord Mandelbrot, more immature than Randy Burnham, and more lightweight than a brace of Milibands. A spokesbeing claimed that the intention, as always, "is not to make it personal, but to make it about policy".