Have the Tories become a one man band?
What are the dangers if something should happen to Dave?
Over the past fortnight quite a few people have commented about the lack of sparkle in the UK political scene because of the absence of David Cameron following the death of his son. And this extended, to a certain extent, to his party as a whole for without their leader the Conservative had a much smaller impact on the media agenda.
Thus George Osborne’s big speech on the economy at the weekend would have probably got a lot more coverage if Cameron had been about to flag it and give it a boost.
I was particularly struck by this comment on the previous thread by Antifrank:
“..In some ways the Tories are more vulnerable during an election campaign than Labour. The Conservatives are dependent on a good performance from David Cameron, Labour are not depending on a good performance from Gordon Brown.
If Gordon Brown performs unexpectedly well (perhaps unlikely, but certainly conceivable) or David Cameron makes a real gaffe (entirely conceivable), the impact of those unexpected events would be much greater than if Gordon Brown and David Cameron perform to their usual standards. New information (Gordon isn’t as bad as we thought he was / David isn’t as smooth or charming or politically acceptable as we thought he was) will have more impact on the polls than confirmation of existing information…”
Apart from Ken Clarke, and to a slightly lesser extent William Hague, the Tories front bench consists of people who are hardly household names. There are not any big figures there and hasn’t it been showing?
The issue, of course, is that as our politics become increasingly presidential then the leader is everything. He/She is a large part of the reason that people will/will not vote for a particular party.
