Tim Hamer: When the government’s reputation becomes Britain’s reputation

Tim Hamer, a Conservative Party activist in Oxford, believes the danger for Labour is that their failures are starting to reflect badly on the nation not just themselves

Labour’s failures are starting to look like national failure.  Any government can make mistakes.  But once the chaos reaches a certain level, it’s the country that looks clapped out, disorganised and inefficient.  That difference marks the boundary between unpopularity and contempt.  Them and us: if it reflects badly on them, then, with time, they might sort it out.  If it reflects badly on us, they need to be kicked out.   

We learned this after Black Wednesday in 1992.  What began with the exit from the ERM was swiftly followed by the botched closure of coal mines, then Mellor-gate, then back to basics, and then and then and then…

The reality was a hard-up post-recession government with a tiny minority and without a meaningful idea of what it wanted to do.  The impression given was a hapless government of a country where we couldn’t even start the Grand National or qualify for the World Cup. Even the shiny new 186mph Eurostar trains had to take their place behind the creaking, delayed 8.23 from Tonbridge on the crawl through Kent.  We were a nation that shoved our kids in front of video-nasties and didn’t care about the consequences.  Nothing worked properly.