This article is from the February issue of Total Politics
Like cheap Greek Retsina, David Cameron doesn’t travel well. The prime minister is looking forward to welcoming the world to the 2012 Olympics if only because it will save him the time, trouble and inevitable embarrassment of venturing abroad. After witnessing Gordon Brown’s disastrous coverage on overseas trips, Team Cameron entered Downing Street dreading what might befall their hero on foreign shores.
They didn’t worry in vain. Dave has chalked up an impressive list of diplomatic rows, blunders and plain bad luck during 18 months of globe-trotting. His recent trip to Afghanistan, which offered a few of us lucky hacks the chance to spend two nights in the back of a military transporter plane, was the latest in a long line to go awry.
A dust storm meant that our gigantic C-17 Globemaster couldn’t land at Britain’s Camp Bastion HQ. The crew were all for heading to Muscat, home to some very pleasant hotels, until defence chief General Sir David Richards made it clear that failure to touch down in Afghanistan would mean new career opportunities at EasyJet. After diverting to the international Kandahar base the PM, surrounded by squaddies, insisted he isn’t “cursed”. Really? So far he has been forced to cut short trips to the Middle East, Africa and a Commonwealth summit, caused international upsets in India and Turkey and been publicly abused in Pakistan. The latest mishap cheered grumbling lobby colleagues who have started to compare his pit stop visits unfavourably to Brown’s gruelling schedules. It didn’t help that, while DC graced a private cabin above the flight deck and No 10 staff were treated to camp beds, we slept on the steel floor. Any doubts about the pecking order were removed by a sign on the ‘VVIP’ toilet, which declared it was reserved “for the use of prime ministers, generals and crew only”.
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We are in for a tough year but with the government’s long awaited reshuffle finally on the horizon many MPs are thinking only of their own skins. Louise Mensch spoke for most backbenchers when she demanded, in a typically understated GQ photoshoot: “What do I have to do to get promoted over here?” Another jobless MP confided: “You do start to wonder what’s wrong with me? Why am I stuck with the freaks and weirdos?” Sadly many more face disappointment than promotion and those hoping to climb the greasy poll should realise that job applications are not best delivered in the pages of a glossy magazine.
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The return of Europe as a major story has given excitable Tories fresh opportunities to shout ‘BBC bias!’ It suits their purposes to portray dear old Auntie as some red-under-the-bed, Brussels-fanatic hell-bent on signing Britain up to the single currency even as the eurozone burns. The truth is that most Beeb hacks are objective to a fault and running orders are more influenced by the Daily Mail than Das Kapital. Like any large organisation the BBC is sometimes guilty of bias. Anyone eager to catch them red-handed should tune in to the Today programme’s newspaper review, where listeners are invited to compare coverage from the (boo-hiss) ‘Labour supporting’ Daily Mirror with apparently impartial offerings from the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Daily Express. I often wonder whether Tony Blair listened from No 10 as the Mirror delivered another broadside over Iraq and asked what he had done to deserve such a slavish champion of his party.
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It’s hardly news that morale is not universally high in Labour’s ranks and former leader Margaret Beckett (yes, she counts) has done her best to rally the troops. The caravan-loving MP recently rode out, circled the wagons and declared that Ed Miliband is “doing incredibly well”. The intervention didn’t have quite the impact that she might have hoped. One shadow cabinet chum texted to say: “Until I heard that I didn’t realise how bad things were.”
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Just to make the start of the year even grimmer I’ve started a punishing new training regime. Those lovely people at Virgin have sorted me a place in the London Marathon and I now have to get in shape. On my last attempt I raised money for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research, a charity doing vital work to combat a horrible disease that my family sadly knows far too much about. I’m not planning to rattle the collecting tin this time but if you have cash burning a hole in your pocket a better cause is hard to find. For those of us who are broke registering as a stem cell donor is free, usually painless and could save a life. You can sign up today at anthonynolan.org.
James Lyons is the deputy political editor of the Daily Mirror
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