Government in waiting?
- 27 Sep 08, 09:00 AM
Tomorrow sees the beginning of the Tory conference. It's a moment of risk for the Conservatives and their leader David Cameron. With conventional wisdom now suggesting that they're heading for power, they'll be under more scrutiny than ever before to test whether they look like a government in waiting and whether he is ready to be prime minister.
On Monday night, Panorama will screen a film I've made called Next stop Downing Street? It's the story of a single day on which I took the Tory leader to Birmingham - the city where the Tories are holding their conference - to meet five undecided voters and to be quizzed by them one on one.
The programme is a mirror of a Panorama I made with Tony Blair when he was leader of the opposition, called Blair's Britain. Cameron, like Blair then, is ahead in the polls although those same polls suggest that they don't know what he stands for.
As deputy editor of Panorama in 1994, I persuaded Blair to take the risk of meeting people he knew little about on camera.
In 2008, I suggested the same format to David Cameron's advisers.
The Panorama team picked undecided voters (without the involvement of or knowledge of Cameron or his aides) to test the Tory leader on a range of issues and to see how the man who's currently on course to be our next prime minister would handle them.
It is these voters that determined the agenda of the programme. My job - this time as reporter - was to pursue their line of questioning and to try to ensure they got answers.
Now, as then, the most memorable parts of the programme are about the human interactions rather than the policy detail.
In 1994, Tony Blair told an elderly couple who wanted the return of corporal punishment that he had been caned at school and it hadn't done him any harm. In a bizarre coincidence, David Cameron is also pressed on the return of the cane but this time it's by a DJ on a black community radio station called Dennis.
Tony Blair confessed to Panorama all those years ago that he didn't mind if people got very rich. In 2008, David Cameron is tackled about his privileged background and that of many of his shadow cabinet who are millionaires by a single mother who works on one of Birmingham's poorest estates.
In addition, the programme sees the Conservative leader pressed by a doctor on increasing corporate involvement in the NHS; by a small business man on how he'll pay for tax cuts; and by a green activist on whether he'll have the guts to tell us all to pay more to fly.
At the end of the programme, those who met him are asked for their verdicts and they give some interesting responses.
PS. The day we filmed (8 September) was the one on which, as I reported at the time, David Cameron and Gordon Brown, ended up a carriage apart on the same train back to London from Birmingham.
UPDATE, 29 September: I've posted a couple of clips ahead of the programme here.
