When I read this morning about Brown and his failed attempt to appear on Match of the Day I tried hard to feel the contempt for his cynical PR ploy that the newspapers suggested I feel. Instead I felt a strange kind of admiration for such blatant opportunism and the willingness of the PM and his PR team to grasp at anything to hitch a ride on the political zeitgeist of popular-cultural integration. As we all know, this is a technique pioneered by Blair and elevated by Cameron in his early years as leader of the Conservative party to a fine art. Despite the cynicism of parts of the media, it has been very successful in winning over the ordinary punter – something that both parties need to be doing to turn around a legacy of low turn-out in UK elections.

The fact is, I admire Brown in this case because, rather than seeing it as a desperate stunt, I believe that in politics the counter-intuitive often works. Sarah Brown’s stewardship of London Fashion Week was completely unexpected when it first took place a couple of years ago. But in the opinions of many it has turned her into Brown’s greatest asset. If Samantha had done the same thing, it would have made no impact at all on David Cameron’s reputation.  Although the Match of the Day attempt may not have worked, more broadly this approach is where Brown might have the edge over Cameron. Brown is perceived as impersonal and awkward, but what if Brown’s faltering style and capacity for PR blunders make him the perfect candidate to build a campaign around his ‘everyday life’? I wouldn’t be surprised if we see at some point during the campaign another Match of the Day style PR attempt for Brown suddenly strike the right chord and have a real impact on his hither-to un-glittering profile as a figure of public empathy.

Based on the counter-intuitive premise, it follows that Cameron’s excellence at using this technique in the past might make the public more cynical about any carefully choreographed PR moments he is planning in the next six weeks. The air-brushing accusations and the android connotations all make this ground trickier for him in the future and my feeling is that Cameron should be careful that he is not seen as trying to emulate his success of a few years ago when he was seen as a star-in-waiting rather than as the possible Prime Minister in a few weeks time. Cameron may well therefore be sensible to steer away from a very ‘lifestyle’ focused campaign and concentrate on winning over the doubters with a serious straight campaign that delivers some really meaty policies – and indeed recognises the public as having the intellectual metal to deal with these.

Posted by Administrator on behalf of Isabella Sharp

Part of the discussion I had with David Cameron (results available in Company magazine, March issue, on sale at all good newsagents from 13 March) revolved around the Tories’ publication of draft manifesto chapters.

He said:

“We’ve launched it draft chapter by draft chapter, on the internet, with people then coming up with their ideas and their questions. I’ve done online public meetings, the first one I think 40 000 people took part and voted on which questions they wanted answered on their particular subject. So we’ve got a long way to go but I think it’s a world away from what we used to do. And the exciting thing is is it’s totally interactive – it’s driven by what people want to say rather than just being pushed stuff by the politicians.”

I asked him if this was a bit of a cop-out, maybe even played into (unfounded, by the way) accusations that the Conservatives are entirely focus-group driven.  He replied (unsurprisingly…) that he disagreed, because: “The draft manifesto is what we want to do, it’s what we believe in but I think in the modern world of Wikipedia and crowd sourcing and interacvtity it’s only right when you’re asking people and you want to be their government, look here’s our draft manifesto what do you think, what have we left out, what do you most think is your priority? I think it’s a very good and modern way of doing politics.”

At the time, I was a bit sceptical. After all, four years of research, policy work, review and discussion – surely they are ready to make the argument for the policies they believe in? But actually, the more I think about it, and the more I hear about just how fed up of politics as usual voters are, the more I think that if this process is seen to be making a difference, then it can only be a good thing.

After all, we are a representative democracy. Our politicians are supposed to be answerable to us. They are supposed to represent us – not just pass laws from on high.  I do want politicians to listen, and react to what we say.

Remember when Tony Blair was attacked on Newsnight about the 48 hour GP targets – he had absolutely no idea what was going on. He assumed that because his government’s 48 hour target was being met, everything was ticking over nicely. But he was very wrong. Politicians need to work out a way to get the real facts – targets being met did not tell them that the GPs’ surgeries just disconnected the phone once two days’ of appointments had been made.

Gordon Brown is right on one thing: politics is all about choices. But you can’t make an informed choice unless you have enough information, and politicians need to make sure that they can access enough information from sufficiently diverse sources to inform the choices they make in our name.

While it does have to actually make a difference (in my experience, fake concern is worse than no concern at all), I have become a fan of wiki-writing the manifesto.  It’s all part of the post-bureaucratic way of doing things…

For a while now, all we’ve heard from the Tories has been a bit gloomy. And with good reason – that second look at Gordon Brown is not a happy one.

But this afternoon in Brighton, it seems to all be coming together. William Hague’s speech was a classic tour de force. He set out the very stark choice we face: change or ruin.

Audible gasps of shock in the audience accompanied his revelation that Britain was 4^th in the world for tax and regulation – and now is 84^th and 86^th. This is not something people can vote for.

But crucially, instead of merely bashing Brown and setting out the dire state we are in and the dire measures needed to fix the problems, William, Andrew Lansley, Oliver Letwin, Phillip Hammond, Ken Clarke and most convincingly George Osborne then laid out just why those measures are needed – because there is a point to all the pain. There will be an end to it. And when we are at the end, we will have a far better country. One where life will be improved, where our NHS can do its best, where our schools can beat the world, where our environment can be saved, where our government does its job properly and gives people value for the money that they hand over to it, where the energy, resourceful inventiveness and essential good nature of our fellow countrymen can flourish.

No-one would want to vote for a party that simply gives up and says ‘all is lost’. People want to vote for something, and the only way to persuade people to vote for the frankly unpleasant task ahead is to give them a reason to do so. That message of hope is what David Cameron does best.

It will not be easy. But the message coming out from this weekend is simple: we are a country worth fighting for. The party that has the ideas to change the country is the Conservative Party. It is not going to be easy but the change will come, and the effort is worth it.

Tomorrow I’m interviewing David Cameron about the election for a blogging special in a magazine. We have already set most of the questions but is there anything you’d like to ask him? Let me know.

I’ve been away so not following things as closely as I might. I missed the launch of the giant Dave posters (yes, I think a bit over-corrected but they are massive so they had to make them look ok); I missed the not very exciting Labour dossier of non-existent Tory spending plans (most people seem to have ignored that anyway); I missed the marriage tax gaffe (or was it…) and I spent yesterday afternoon glued to Sky News but not seeing much that would make a real difference.

To return to the marriage tax gaffe. I said above ‘or was it?’ – I don’t mean that in a ‘David Cameron can do no wrong’ way. When I first heard about it, I thought it could be the start of a refinement of the policy – much as Andrew Lansley’s 10 per cent cuts in government spending was the start of a whole new battleground. Given the clarifications and corrections that have since come out, I think it was probably a slip of the tongue that caused a few more ripples than it might have done.

Which brings me on to what I want to say. We are in for a four month election campaign. I was talking to someone the other day who said ‘You absolutely must support and promote the Tories – don’t damage them in any way.’ My response to him was that of course I want to see a Conservative government in May – but that however hard I try, I can virtually guarantee that someone somewhere will misinterpret something I write here or say somewhere. We are all only human. People complain about the dullness of politics, the on-message spinners and the media management machines.

The problem is, if anyone does make a slip or say something even slightly different or say something that could be interpreted as being unsupportive, they are immediately battered with wave after wave of criticism.

If we want politics to be interesting, and radical, and imaginative, we must allow participants a certain amount of leeway. I’m not saying that anyone should say anything that pops into their head at any moment. But I am saying that, where politicians make a mistake, they should be able to admit it and correct it.

I’m surprised and a little disappointed that it took CCHQ so long to admit it was a mistake. I’ve long argued that admitting to errors is a key part of how politics needs to change; I don’t want a bunch of politicians who remain adamant that a clearly failing policy is actually a glittering success. I want politicians who are sufficiently confident to say ‘I don’t know’ or ‘It’s nothing to do with me’ or ‘I got that wrong, I’m sorry’ – because otherwise all we’ll have is a tiny group of people who are willing to entirely cut off any personality they might have had in order to gain power.

I don’t want to see that. I want to elect real human beings, with failings and blind spots and warts and all – because they are the ones who understand that simply passing a law is not going to change anything. They are the ones who understand what life is really like, and they are the ones who have the ideas that will help them to help society to change.