For centuries it has been traditional for the Donald family to spend the third week of July in Cornwall. Age may have withered the clan, but I sustain the tradition, making sure that I give the widest of berths to the people in tailored shorts and the general yachty types among whom our Blessed Leader-in-Waiting is so happy to be photographed. (God truly help us if sailing is to the New Conservatives what soccer was to New Labour!) I avoid all chat about gybes and things, preferring to spend a week alone staring at the ocean and eating fish. It is a time to take stock.
In many regards, our position has never been better. The seas are calm and there appear to be no dangers lurking on the horizon. We have navigated past the choppy waters, showing no little skill and brinkmanship in keeping the Prime Minister in his job, and now need only sit and wait for next May.
Except . . . Labour may be exhausted and fractious and beset by pettiness, but they are not stupid. And on the fourth night, as I cracked open the second crate and tucked in to more prawns, a semblance of what they might be up to came upon me.
Yet again, it is all to do with our old friends' fear and greed. It was Margaret's genius to appeal to the working man's better side, to offer him a chance to clamber aboard the property ladder and generally improve himself. If You Want to Get Ahead, Get a House. Winners voted for Maggie, others joined the SDP. And, because in the privacy of the ballot box everyone considered himself to be a winner, it worked a treat.
But that was in affluent times. Now people feel pinched and scared. They suspect, in their souls, that they might be losers. They no longer want someone to give them a shove up a rung or two, they want someone to hold their hand as they come back down to earth. And would you entrust that task to Darling or Osborne? Brown or Cameron?
So perfectly suited are the Clunking Fist and the Quiet Man to depressing expectation that it is tempting to wonder if they engineered the recession in order to play to their one strength. A temptation which increases when you factor in that Obama's Rooseveltian ambitions have also been well served by the recession. And a temptation which, over a final glass, as one remembers both parties' links with those bonus kings, Goldman Sachs, becomes nigh on irresistible.
This makes things tricky for the Tories. If people feel poor, they will vote for the party of the poor. The grimmer the economic picture, the brighter the prospects of the Brothers Grim. A party that came to power singing "Things Can Only Get Better" is changing its one tune to "Things Are
Going to Get Worse".
All of which makes September crucial. For a long time, it has been obvious that this is the month that will determine the severity of the recession.
It is the month when the full toxicity of the banks' debts will be revealed. It is the month when the final bill will land on the mat.
It is likely to be monumental, which, paradoxically, will suit Labour. It will fall upon us to proclaim the green shoots among the rubble in order to give people the confidence to vote for the party of aspiration. And because we do not believe in the existence of these shoots, there must be a very real danger that the public will not believe in us.
More prawns?
