General Election: Conservatives stumble on 'wobbly Wednesday'
May and Hammond reopen talk of a rift, Osborne sticks the knife in and there's a gaffe from Boris. A day to forget for the Tories.
Wednesday 17 May 2017 20:01, UK
Even parties that win general elections handsomely - as opinion polls suggest Theresa May will on 8 June - often suffer from a mid-campaign wobble.
Back in 1987, when Margaret Thatcher won a majority of 102, the Conservatives had a "wobbly Thursday" when opinion polls suggested Labour was closing the gap.
Thatcher favourite Lord Young claimed he grabbed Norman Tebbit by the lapels, shook him and shouted: "Norman, listen to me, we're about to lose this ****ing election."
No-one is suggesting the Tories are panicking like they did in 1987, although Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, has rather unwisely admitted he has "occasionally sworn".
But his admission - and Mrs May's failure to say that he will still be Chancellor after 8 June - started what began to look like a "wobbly Wednesday" for the Tories in this campaign:
:: First, the PM and the Chancellor unwittingly but spectacularly between Nos. 10 and 11 Downing Street;
:: Then, used an Evening Standard editorial to savage her "tens of thousands" immigration pledge;
:: And then, Boris Johnson - who else? - insulted a teetotal voter in a Sikh temple by talking about tariffs on whiAG百家乐在线官网.
All this on the eve of publication and launch of the Conservative manifesto, meaning there are plenty of questions for the PM to answer before she even starts talking about the manifesto's contents.
The day began with Mrs May and Mr Hammond holding a news conference to attack Labour's manifesto, described later by the Tory-supporting Spectator as "an apparently pointless press conference".
The Conservatives were guilty of breaking one of former Labour guru Peter Mandelson's first laws of spin-doctoring: never hold a briefing unless you've got a good story to announce.
The news conference, in Canary Wharf in London's Docklands, was intended to attack Labour's manifesto and claim there was a £58bn black hole in Jeremy Corbyn's spending plans.
But apart from keeping the election on Labour's agenda and appearing rattled by polls suggesting some of Mr Corbyn's policies are popular, the PM and Chancellor failed "Mandelson's law" on two further counts.
They allowed themselves to be quizzed about economic news showing earnings are failing to keep pace with rising prices, which means the PM's "just about managing" are seeing their incomes squeezed.
And, carelessly, they re-ignited all the reports of disagreements between the Chancellor and the PM, with comments by both of them that showed a lack of awareness of the dangers lurking.
The No. 10-No. 11 rift began, it's claimed, last autumn over access to the single market after Brexit and claims that the Chancellor was opposed to a perceived "hard Brexit" being pursued by the PM.
But it took off big time after the Budget in March, when the Chancellor faced the humiliation of being forced to abandon his bungled national insurance increases after a furious backlash.
Amid the row - and loud protests from Tory backbenchers and people hit by the proposals, such as "white van man" - the Chancellor is said to have called Downing Street insiders "economically illiterate".
Now he has admitted, with the PM standing alongside him: "I'm not going to say I've never occasionally sworn." No wonder she wouldn't give him a vote of confidence.
The former chancellor, of course, doesn't have to worry about the PM keeping him in a job. She has already brutally sacked George Osborne, in her first act on becoming Prime Minister.
He has used an editorial in London's Evening Standard, which he now edits, to dismiss her pledge to cut immigration to "tens of thousands" as "economically illiterate" and claim no senior figures in David Cameron's cabinet backed it.
Let's not forget that in his first editorial in the paper he said Mrs May's election campaign was "no more than a slogan" and on his second day encouraged Tory MPs to rebel on education funding.
But the gaffe of the day on what began to looking like "wobbly Wednesday" had to be Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary. Let's not forget what post he currently holds, either!
On a visit to a Sikh temple, he promised to end tariffs on the whiAG百家乐在线官网 trade between the UK and India. A Sikh voter told him alcohol was against her religion.
"How dare you talk about alcohol in a Sikh temple?" she challenged the Foreign Secretary. He sheepishly apologised - as he frequently has been forced to do after this sort of gaffe.
In this election, as far as we know, nobody has grabbed anyone by the lapels yet or warned that the Tories are going to lose the election.
But no doubt - metaphorically, at least - the Prime Minister would like to give some of her senior colleagues a good shaking as she prepares to face questions at her manifesto launch.