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Labour’s secret election plan revealed: tea on your sofa with Gordon

19 March 2010 04:09 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. PM to get up close and personal during the election campaign by meeting local heroes in their living rooms, APA reports quoting â€œThe Guardianâ€
John Major had his soapbox, and Tony Blair a battlebus. Barack Obama relied heavily on the web. Gordon Brown, however, is going to deploy a different sort of secret weapon at the forthcoming general election â€“ your sofa.
Coming to a home near you, the prime minister intends to get up front and personal during the campaign, holding intimate meetings in the living rooms of pillars of the community, in the hope that his message will then ripple out and through the constituency.
The sitting room sessions might not be glamorous, but they are quite "Gordon" â€“ and will help him to come across as a normal human being, is the thought of Labour strategists.
They are also more in keeping with these austere times, and could even favourably contrast with the the glitz, helicopters and cash that may characterise the well-funded Tory campaign.
"We think it is a format that will work for Gordon," said a Labour insider. "We have to try something different in the face of public attitude to all politicians. Sometimes Gordon is going to need an hour to bring people over in a way in which he cannot in five minutes."
Tea with the prime minister is certainly the antithesis of the Sheffield rally during which Neil Kinnock famously, and rather embarrassingly, shouted "Well all right!" to 5,000 Labour supporters â€“ an event deemed to have been instrumental in losing the 1992 election.
The belief is that, in an age of unbridled cynicism, politicians need to persuade local opinion-formers of their authenticity, and it is these people who will influence the views of others. Downing Street officials say the strategy works for Brown, and will be a key part of the campaign armoury, alongside the traditional TV interviews and town hall meetings. Brown and his team have road-tested the sofa sessions in places such as Llanelli and Chatham to see if he comes over successfully in the living room. Those invited included nurses, teachers, business people and community leaders.
Diane Keating, a headteacher who shared tea and biscuits with Brown, said he was very jovial. "He made a joke," she said. "It was around the time he had been criticised for his handwriting after writing to the family of that soldier killed in Afghanistan, and he told me that he had been to his son’s parents’ evening recently and the teacher had said he was doing very well but needed to improve his handwriting." The prime minister said: "That runs in the family!"