London Letter: Tories rub regional press up the wrong way

David Cameron is not a man much given to introspection, it often seems. Blessed with a happy, comfortable childhood, he has always approached life confidently, believing that he could face down the challenges ahead.

It has not always turned out like that, obviously: the death in February 2009 of his son Ivan after a short life struggling with severe epilepsy and cerebral palsy pole-axed him, even more than anyone around in Westminster realised at the time.

Today, he is facing the challenge – important, but not comparable – of re-election. But it is not going according to the plan that he, George Osborne and Australian strategist Lynton Crosby believed would deliver victory.

Its design was simple: an improving economy would boost the public's mood, Labour's Ed Miliband would be deemed unelectable and pledges on a European Union referendum and immigration would tidy up the edges.

Last year, the Conservatives slowly closed the gap on Labour in the polls. From the new year, they were supposed, Crosby told them, to nudge ahead, before accelerating. Two weeks from polling day, it has not happened. So far; but there is a fortnight to go.

This week, Cameron sat in a rail carriage chatting to the Spectator – the vibrant, occasionally contrarian voice of Conservative opinion, which is beginning increasingly to fret that the party may not be in power after May 7th.

The Spectator's questions say much about the worries that permeate the Conservatives, since they began with one that wondered why some people in his government believe that he must do more to show that he wants to win.

“I don’t know,” he replies. ‘There is something about me – I always manage to portray a calm smoothness or something.”

“It sounds like a moment of self-reflection,” write James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson.

Cameron quickly defends his campaign – 26 visits in a week is his record. Earlier this week, he went to five constituencies in one day, giving five speeches. “Look at my schedule! I don’t know what more I can do,” he continues.

The ambition is to target key seats. The Conservatives have been all over the west country for months, believing that they can “decapitate” the Liberal Democrats in 10 or more constituencies in a one-time Liberal heartland.

Equally, the midlands and Yorkshire are key. Strategically, the aim is to hold brief pool-clips for national TV, but then focus on the local press – less challenging, less metropolitan, more willing to listen – to get the party’s message across.

Press fury

If such be the ambition, then the execution is sadly, woefully lacking, since the regional press – broadcast and print – in England is in a state of fury about the manner in which the campaign is being run.

In Yorkshire, the Huddersfield Examiner was left for an hour in a room in a small factory its staff watched Cameron, followed by a national TV camera-crew, walk around the factory floor, chatting to the few workers present.

In the end, the paper's reporter got a single minute with him, while its photographer was blocked from taking a photograph on the factory floor. In its next edition, the Examiner fumed, prompting an apology subsequently from Cameron.

In Nottingham, the local evening paper bit its lip and bowed to demands that it submit questions a day before Cameron’s arrival last Thursday, but then found it was allowed but one by one of the prime minister’s staff.

Local questions were barred, including one about the failure of the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust to meet four-hour A&E waiting time targets, and major funding shortages affecting the elderly home-care.

In Manchester, five reporters – four local, the other from BBC Newsnight – were held in a corner while chancellor George Osborne had an inaudible conversation with an engineer. Newsnight eventually spoke to him. The rest were left quoteless.

Labour are guilty, too, of their own sins in Election 2015, if less so when it comes to talking to local media; but both parties – troubled by the way in which mobile telephone cameras and social media can torpedo a campaign – seek to control the space around them.

The complaints of the press could be interpreted, if one wished to do so, as self-importance, but they are not. Instead, they illustrate that Election 2015 is the most distant, remote campaign ever held in Britain.

For the parties, the press is a nuisance; the public seem to be the enemy. The public may not understand, or be interested in understanding all of the mechanics of Election 2015. They may not be interested in having anything to do with politicians. But they recognise when people in power seek to keep them at arms length.