The Dave And Trev Show

The Tories latest party political broadcast on behalf of the Dave Party even roped in Sir Trev to shine a soft light on the up and coming new leader of the country, with a bit of Sam on the side. Dave licked the floor with Trev. Trev licked Dave's derrier.

Sincere, down to earth, trustworthy with not an airbrush in sight? It was down to Sir Trev to give Dave a good grilling. Paxo and Humph were clearly not up to the job.

And what a grilling it was. Voters learnt not once but thrice that Dave's secret weapon, SamCam, calls him Dave, with no trace of a cut-glass accent. But mum calls him David - as all mums would do.

Student Dave went to the pub, played pool and gained a first in PPE at Oxford. As you do. And baby-faced Dave wasn't airbrushed - that's just the way he looks.

Under intense pressure from Trev, shockingly Dave admitted again he's a salesman - but not in a slick, deceitful, shallow Blair sort of way. No way. After all, he's selling the New Tory brand, not New Labour.

But Cameron the conviction politician convincingly did come across as honest. Now all he's got to do is be a bit more convincing on policy.

The only tough question came not from Trev but from a couple of punters at the railway station while Dave was trying to get a snack from a vending machine. "Did you get a receipt for that?" they shouted. How Dave laughed.

The Dave and Trev show with a bit of Sam on the side. SamCam’s much trailed appearance turned out to be quite refreshing. No steely Sarah for Dave. A nice girl who's kind of sweet, in a mumsy Boden sort of way.

How New Labour must hate it. Bully-Boy Brown's Moron weepy was so last month, peaking far too early to now make a jot of difference.

Clever Cameron got in quick just before broadcast rules over balance kick in. The contrast between Cameron and Brown’s interview was embarrassingly plain to see.

And when all the fuss has died down - and the spinners have had their fun - Dave and Sam came across as Mr and Mrs Nice. Dave as witty and human. And that makes him electable.

A human being for a prime minister. Now that will make a refreshing change.

Top picture: Private Eye cover

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Rogue Poll Sends Parties In A Tizz

A rogue poll has sent political parties in a tizz offering a meagre crumb of comfort for a fag-end government and its lamentable leader. Election weary voters were given only a short respite from hard core politicking. Now it's all hands to the pumps of a sinking ship.

A sure sign of political unrest and uncertainty comes when a single poll out of kilter with other polls is seized on to make political capital.

The 'surprise' Ipsos/Mori poll in yesterday's Observer should be taken with a pinch of salt.

As Anthony Wells over at UK Polling Report points out: "the big difference between MORI and other pollsters is that MORI do not politically weight their sample."

It's all down to the sampling and the political weightings, as Wells makes clear:

"Part of the reason for the shift in MORI’s voting intentions since last month is that their sample appears to have had significantly fewer people who voted Tory in 2005 and significantly more people who voted Labour in 2005."

Push polls, used extensively during the US presidential campaign, are common place in the run up to elections.

Taken on dubious face value, the poll cuts the Tory lead over New Labour to a narrow six points with the Tories on 37 per cent, Labour on 31 per cent and the Lib Dems down in the dumps on 17. A far cry from, er, the last major poll a couple of weeks ago.

But that didn't stop everyone and their political dog putting on their best Sunday spin, with the Observer proclaiming: "Poll boost for PM as confidence in economy grows". Yeh, sure.

The LibDem loving Observer even put a smile on the face of glum Clegg, jumping on his dream of a 'hung' parliament: "Chance of hung parliament as Conservative lead falls to 6%". LimpDems hanging on the coat tails of a hung parliament. Every wet liberals dream.

Tories have a fight on their hands to form a workable government. But that was always the case with an electoral system rigged in New Labour's favour. Even with a consistent double digit poll lead, Tories are not home and dry.

Cameron has managed to position the Tories as a 'government in waiting'. Boy George has done well to turn into Honest Osborne. But the sales pitch to voters is still 'David Cameron's Conservatives'.

The spectre of Cameron as a hyped up heir to Blair still haunts, is difficult to shake off and for many a turn off, despite the Sun banging the drum for Dave.

Dave's dithering EU referendum shuffle was a watershed. For the first time it seemed Cameron was heading for a Bernie Ecclestone moment even before he was in Downing Street.

Any politician who has to fall back on the lame of excuse of being 'a pretty straight kind of guy' to deflect deflated trust, faces an uphill task to win hearts and minds in the battle to contact and convince voters.

As the election approaches, the Orange Party believes the polls will have less to do with a 'hardening' of New Labour support, more to do with a 'softening' of Tory support.

Would-be Tories voters could well turn to UKIP if they were not such a joke and embarrassment. Hanging over New Labour is the traditional 'Liberal' enemy. Hanging over both main parties is the dark shadow of the BNP.

Buried in the Observer poll report was a salient sliver of truth which should send a shiver down the spine of the struggling Supreme Leader. A question over the party leaders which never saw the light of day in all the poll spin.

Brown is still down. Cameron is still on his uppers.

"Brown's personal rating remains in the doldrums. Only 34% of people are satisfied with his performance, against 59% who are dissatisfied. David Cameron had approval ratings of 48%, with 35% against."

What is clear is that the election grid is now fixed whoever carries the burnt out baton in the dying days of the doomed New Labour project.

Sealed with the sham of a Queen's Speech. Sealed with a deliberate campaign to increase the scandal of postal votes. Sealed with the outrage of pulling a squalid rabbit out of the hat close to election day.

Soon the recession depression will be officially over. Brown's BBC cheerleaders can finally wheel out their unrealistic but reassuring 'Upturn' graph. Couple that with a promise to pull troops out of the Afghan killing fields - sometime. Things can only get better but who will clean up the mess?

For voters a stark choice still remains. Who do they trust to place a firm hand on the economic tiller? Who do they trust to get to grips with a decade of lies, deceit, failure and disaster?

And who do they trust when a rogue poll is placed in a New Labour supporting newspaper on a wet Sunday to give Beleaguered Brown a much needed bounce?

UPDATE 7pm: A new Angus Reid Strategies poll for politicalbetting paints a very different picture. Conservatives 39%, Labour 22%, LibDems 21%.

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Up Close and Personal With Dave

Cameron got up close and personal in a solid speech to the party faithful with an owl-like eye on voters, blasting Brown and his fag-end government for a decade of disaster and failure.

Mr Ambition still has a steep hill to climb to prove he can be trusted as 'the man who can'. Time will tell if this is the 'Audacity of Hype', turning Tories into one-term wonders.

But after a long road from leader of a defunct Party to a prime minister-in-waiting, Dave is certainly 'ready to govern'. Like his side-kick Osborne, he's not the only one who's grown up. Suddenly they are the 'government'. New Labour the 'opposition'. Get used to it.

Today it was down to Dave to raise the bar with a personal vision for the future. But that's where the danger lies. Too much had been invested in 'Cameron's conservatives'. Changing to 'modern conservatives' doesn't have the same snappy appeal.

Discredited Blair spin doctor, Campbell, reckons Cameron's speech was like Blair on a bad day. He should know. Two-faced Blair had quite a few of those. Dodgy Iraq dossiers and "blood on his hands" over the death of David Kelly and the Iraq war still fester away.

Cameron's speech certainly rattled New Labour's cage. Dave's got mealy-mouthed ministers on the run and boy do they know it.

How the Gang must hate Dave and 'Boy George' who's grown up into 'Honest Osborne' with a grim message of no shared pain, no gain. 'Dave the Chameleon' has transformed into 'Dave the Man Who Can'. Spiteful 'Tory Toffs' jibes cut no ice with voters.

But the Orange Party's big concern is still whether the heir to Blair will turn into the man himself. Talking the talk, walking the walk, all things to all men. All style and no substance.

The politics of false hope are coming to an end. The illusion of dreams are being shattered by doses of reality. Years of a political narrative that conned the country during the Blair years, promising the earth and delivering nothing has been shown up as a sham. The shine has worn off. Reality has kicked in.

Voters want a new breed of trusted politician who will get to grips with a country in the grip of a social and economic crisis. Not a bunch of political wannabes and their cronies who highjacked a traditional political party for their own selfish ends.

With Beaten Brown bent on saving his own skin, it fell to the Tories to spell out the grim financial realities that await the country over the next few years, not least tackling a grotesque national debt. The public is savvy enough to understand the Thatcher housewife argument rather than all the Brown sauce.

Fraser Nelson over at the Spectator reckons it was "one of the best speeches I have heard David Cameron give", alluding to Cuba's revolutionary Che. Both from privileged backgrounds fighting a corrupt regime with a revolutionary manifesto, sure, but taking it a tad too far.

The public have been living in New Labour La-La Land in a cosy unreal world for too long. Now they're waking up. Shallowness revealed a rotten inside, corrupt to the core.

But a decade of New Labour failed policies have taken their toll. The economy has been ruined. The public is weary. All that's left festering away is big government, a crony culture and MPs' gravy train.

Some trade union leaders have predictably likened Cameron's speech as a return to the 'Thatcher' days. Cameron certainly made his mark on the Tory welcome home party like Thatcher in '78, just months before an election. Oborne reckoned "the similarities are uncanny". This is not Blair '97, he argued, more Thatcher '78.

But Cameron still has to contact and convince voters that caring conservatives, not just Dave, have got what it takes and are up to the job of turning things around and confronting inherited failures.

Cameron has at last stood up and told voters what he stands for and where he stands. Reality won't go away, despite New Labour's cunning plan to dupe the public into more false optimism.

Opinion polls in a few days time will show whether Cameron has managed to pull it off. But only when the dust settles on conference bounces will voter intentions start to harden in the run up to the election.

What will linger is his passion, emphasis on the family and attacks on New Labour's poverty record. Moves to clean up politics and get to grips with big government squandered waste were much more muddled.

The public knows it will be a long, hard slog. After Honest Osborne's grim austerity, Cameron's speech was always set to be upbeat. A vision of a country when the gloom finally lifts on recession depression.

The Orange Party is no Tory and certainly no fan of Thatcher. But like so many voters and the Sun is starting to bang a drum for Dave. Not least to rid Westminster of the disreputable New Labour deadbeats who have brought the country to its knees.

Mid picture: Sun

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Brown's Afghan Coat Shot To Pieces

After a little bit of leaking, Tories have been forced to reveal a new recruit in the ex-army chief fresh from delivering a broadside to Bullet-ridden Brown. The move may bring a ray of hope to war-weary voters and brave souls sent to their deaths in the Afghan killing fields.

New Labour death by Tory triangulation knows no bounds. Capture the enemy guns, tweak them a bit and turn the fire on the opponents with the secret weapon of a bit of cross dressing and a new breed of Goat.

Today it's the turn of blunt speaking ex-army boss Dannatt who's set to join Dave's 'war cabinet' after firing off an attack on Bunkered Brown over troop numbers. Another unelected crony in the Lords but this time batting for the Tories.

The BBC reports Dannatt is to become a defence adviser just a day after he revealed that his plea for 2,000 extra troops in Afghanistan was stubbornly ignored.

That, said Dannatt not mincing words, was like leaving UK forces fighting with "at least part of one arm tied behind their back".

It came as some surprise when Dannatt popped up in the middle of the Tory welcome home party. Delivering his outspoken views on Brown's War, he finally confirmed how Blinkered Brown flatly refused heart-felt requests for more boots on the ground.

The cheerleader for the troops had been at the sharp end of a nasty Downing Street smear campaign ever since his strongly-held views put him at odds with New Labour's mealy-mouthed ministers. Expect Dannatt to be nobbled with a knocking narrative.

The leak may well have been timed to steal Dave's thunder in his big speech tomorrow. Whatever. Brown's threadbare Afghan coat has been shot to pieces. It comes as another BBC survey suggests most people in the UK continue to oppose the unwinnable war.

Fannying around looking for an elusive strategy while troops are dying is no way to wage war.

But Beleaguered Brown's hands are tied to Obama's apron strings. His wannabe best friend calls the shots. At the moment Obama is firing blanks, ruling out this and that, while mutterings of the new Vietnam grow louder on Capitol Hill.

The shameful spectacle of US troops and marines brought home in a box is beginning to fill the media. Here it's now a shocking and disturbing everyday occurrence.

ITV news is making a point of delivering the gruesome message on its news bulletins every day.

The days of lions led by donkeys are hopefully long gone. No general worth his pips would willingly send troops to their deaths just to prop up a corrupt Afghan government.

Tories may like a good flex of the jingoistic muscle every now and again but Dannatt is no donkey. He's already hinted that it's now a case of put up or pull out. The Orange Party has long banged the drum for the latter.

Cameron and his foreign affairs side-kick Hague don't have war-mongering Blair's legacy to live down to. They may just listen to their army adviser and, after a lot of huffin' and puffin', bring the boys home.

That will depend on when pragmatic Dave's much-vaunted promised 'reality' kicks in and the disgrace of this hopeless, bloody unwinnable war is finally shown up for what it is.

Top picture: Private Eye

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Champagne Chasing Chumps

The sad old Mirror is trying it on with a last ditch bid to nail champagne quaffing Tories to the Toffs mast and stitch up the hell-raising Bullingdon Boys. Calm down dears - it's only a general election. That sort of thing would never have happened in the two-faced Blair years.

Bubbly Dave has been caught red-handed with a glass of champers in hand. But only after duped Fraser Nelson handed it to him at a Spectator partay. A gift to the mobile Mirror man with a weedy copy of the Sun's 'Gotcha' splashed on the front page with glee.

Still there's always a snap of Dunky Duncan kicking around, caught quaffing bubbly traded in with points from his ration book.

How galling for clapped-out New Labour that Boy George has magically morphed and grown up into 'onest chancellor Osborne.

Time for one last roll of the dice with a stunt to ply him with drink from a Mirror mole cunningly disguised as a waiter. Big O's minders could see that one coming a mile off.

Blair man Marr tried it on as penance for asking deluded Brown about pill popping, grilling Dave on how much he's worth with a picture of the Bullingdon Boys in the background. Or rather a painting of a photograph with the original squirrelled away under copyright wraps.

Will the Mirror ever learn? Voters don't give a toss about 'Toffs'. Crewe and Nantwich showed that. They do care about who to trust after a decade of disaster and failure. Lord Snooty and his pals is mildy amusing. The Broon-ites, a downright disgrace.

The whole charade is set to be repeated again with the hair-raising Dave and Boris show and the Bullingdon Boys jolly japes broadcast on some obscure Channel 4 channel. Cripes.

The Mirror should look in the mirror. The Orange Party is waiting for the next instalment.

How about privately-educated Edward Michael 'just call me Ed' Balls or privately-educated Harriet 'just call me Hattie Harperson', er Harperson? After all, 'I'm Harriet Harman, you know where you can get hold of me.'

There must be room in the busy schedules for a prog on how working class heroes like Al Johnson and David Davis pulled themselves up by their worn-out bootstraps, after living in a cramped shoebox, sucking mud. Prescott doesn't count.

Students eh? What are they like? Not like the Orange Party's days wrapped up in duffle coat and university scarf with only a trusty pipe, cup of cocoa and copy of Karl Marx and 'Health and Efficiency' for comfort.

The Orange Party doesn't recall much bleatings about posh boy Blair and his private privileged upbringing at Scotland's Eton, Fettes. But then he was the Man of the People who didn't do his posh background - or God. Who airbrushed out that rather rude hand gesture in later photographs?

Stitching up the high and mighty is all good fun and par for the course. But in the wonderful world of the political and media class there are some real people buried in the debris of despair and desolation.

The Sun has captured that mood. It doesn't say much for the Mirror when its only hope is to bring back Piers Morgan.

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The Day Boy George Grew Up

Boy George had his big day after practicing a stern look in the mirror, despite sneaky Darling's plan to rain on his parade. But has Boy George got his 'cuts' message across and grown up as chancellor Osborne?

Once again Tories are trying it on with a quick death by triangulation. New Labour on speed. Today Osborne delivered a stark message of no shared pain, no gain. Pensions were first in the cuts firing line. Public sector pay, tax and bureaucracy were quick to follow to tackle the grotesque public debt.

Pension age will have to go up whoever is in power. There's no cash left in the kitty. When, how fast? Tory 2016? New Labour 2026? Whatever. What's a few years when you're on the dole now or staring redundancy in the face.

The Orange Party is starting to warm to Boy George. He's stuck his neck out and long-warned of the dire state of the country's finances. Something has to give sooner rather than later after a decade of disaster.

As happened over yesterday's benefits cuts, New Labour hasn't made a song and dance about Osborne's pension age rise. That would show up years of the spending spree sham. Both Parties have a pension age plan in the back-pocket.

Osborne is gambling on the 'sober, reasonable, realistic' look, packing a tough package to tackle the huge deficit and pining his hopes that he can take voters with him. But Boy George took an early beating when up popped Darling with a public sector pay freeze. There's some life left in the old dead dog yet.

Is Darling secretly part of a Tory fifth column? He captured the headlines for a fleeting moment. But it took the heat off Ducking Dave's EU referendum shuffle.

That put the ball firmly back in the Tories court, just where they want it - on the dire state of the economy and what they plan to do about it.

Osborne has already blown the gaff showing two-faced Brown misled MPs and the public over spending cuts. Voters can see through the sham. A pension age rise is on the cards to fill New Labour shameful black hole after years of crafty Brown living in cloud cuckoo land.

The Orange Party doesn't buy into the spin of raising retirement age because now there are more older people. The cupboard is bare. Pension pots have been raided to help pay for years of false hope and a feel good factor with crafty off balance sheet accounting.

Private pensions are the first to go when firms fold and flatpack in the dodgy world of buying up a brand and bugger the workers. Whitehall and Town Halls have frittered away pensions cash squandered on wasteful non-jobs, huge salaries for the top dogs and 'services' to massage egos.

Osborne gets it in the neck from enemies in the City and on the Telegraph. That's par for the course with the on-going cat fight and dark briefings from Mandy but it's the voters who count.

Today Boy George had to go in with an honest, harsh Tory 'cuts' policy and morph into Osborne the trusted chancellor-in-waiting. Did he pass the test? The Times kinda thinks so. Opinion polls, focus groups and the Sun will show whether he's pulled it off.

What has Downing Street got up its sleeve to spoil Dave's big day? Will Bunkered Brown pop up in the war zone again, making promises over troops and kit he won't have to keep?

Bungling Bob has already been out there getting a flea in his ear from the boys on the ground, with minder Johnson looking like a shady member of the East End mob.

Maybe beleaguered Brown will call a snap election - or quit. The Orange Party can live in hope. Today Osborne delivered a dose of reality.

Top picture: The Sun

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Death By Tory Triangulation

Tory attack plans are now clear as the welcome home Party gets into full swing. Ducking Dave has to deliver big and bold, with a touch of triangulation and spot of strangulation. New Labour on speed.

What bold, radical, alternative policies is Dave coming up with? Cross dressing politics to capture hears and minds. Triangulation followed by a quick death by strangulation.

Capture the policy guns from the enemy. Add a few tweaks to make them your own. Capture the argument. Leave opponents floundering, strangled by their own failure to come up to scratch.

A decade of government has left a decade of failures and a fag-end government on its last legs. The Masters of triangulation, the Clintons would be proud.

Tired New Labour tried to hark back to Nye Bevan and the good old days of his Welfare State at Brighton to pick up a few bob from union paymasters.

But lurking underneath was discredited Brand Brown bent on bringing in similar welfare policies now proposed by the Tories but by stealth. The difference is Beleaguered Brown is too busy looking over his shoulder, Cameron is shouting it from the rooftops.

Today it's the old chestnut of benefit cuts - in particular incapacity benefits. Where has the Orange Party heard all that before? Ministers are not exactly bending over backwards to condemn Tory plans. How could they?

Step forward bold benefits architect, Freud, who switched to the Tories after beavering away on a benefits plan for the government.

Mealy-mouthed ministers brought that in by the back door. But Dave is promising to deliver on Freud's 'Get Britain Working' plan with a bang.

What is clear is the current benefit system is unfair, too complicated and wide open to abuse. Benefits have become a right not a state safety net for the needy as Bevan intended.

What's needed is something clearly defined to make sure taxpayers don't feel diddled and everyone knows where they stand.

Will Darzi, who took the knife to the NHS with back-door privatisation, follow Tory footsteps after quitting as one of Brown's ministerial goats?

Soon it will be the turn of schools and the discredited Adonis academies programme, with Bon Govey getting a tad too obsessed with Swedish models.

No wonder the government academies architect, Blairite Adonis, is climbing up the greasy pole of people Tories would like to snuggle up to. Even Mandy has made it to the Tory top 20. Adonis? He's on the right track. Pussycat Peter? In your dreams, chump.

There is more than a cigarette paper between the two Parties, with clear blue water and honesty over cuts and tackling the grotesque mountain of national debt.

In public services, Tories are targeting the process - the management and organisation. Where the tick-box culture and squandered waste can be hit. And delivery - what the public want to see in real terms at the end of the day, when all the waffle is stripped away.

Team Cameron is on a winner as long as they prove to voters they can be trusted to clean up the mess after years of lies, deceit and spin from two-faced Blair and now deluded Brown.

The government may well have cause to bleat about nicked policies - but they had their chance and they blew it. But hey, there's an election round the corner and a little bit of triangulation is all par for the course.

Cameron has an uphill task to contact and convince voters Dave's Tories can be trusted to deliver. On key policies he has to show the Tories will move firm and fast. But they have nothing to lose by being bold. The days of false hope are over. The days of harsh reality have begun.

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