Brown is risking the Norwich North by-election on July 23. He must know something we don't. Having already done a reading for that poll, drawing a card for the reasons for not pushing it back, Fertile Ground (Green - Enchantment/Aura) - "Pretty, valuable, and delicious - a boggart thief's trifecta") suggests he believes there is scope to win there and that circumstances are more favourable on the ground. Let's hope so.
Anyway, today's card.
Elephant Ambush - Green - Instant
This image, combined with the idea of "Flashback" - playing a card from your discard pile rather than you hand - suggests to me there is someone who we think is politically "dead" lurking in the wings. How you can hide when you are the size and stature of an elephant is largely beyond me but the idea of an ambush from beyond the metaphorical grave intrigues me enough to leave it to our collective imaginations as to who and what will happen.
As for something I noted on my Facebook page last night about the Tories' need to tell us what they are doing, there is a problem when people see them as a possible government but too dependent on not being Labour to govern. My feeling is that - privately - the party has always promised me as an activist that they will be putting forward a proper platform for government "in a couple of months". That "couple of months" has lasted a couple of years at worst.
Some people cite fear of the media and Gordon Brown making a mockery of them and using them to deny the Tories a return to government. But the media are much more favourable to the Tories now than they were in 2003-05, and no government has ever been elected without a thorough exposition of their policies or by becoming the focal point for concrete opposition - such as Tony Blair became in 1995-97, particularly with issues such as handguns. By contrast, I don't see the Tories concentrating on anything other than raw statistics - activists on the ground, poll ratings, poll leads - which will evaporate or become disillusioned if they make no more than a cursory nod towards policies in the months ahead and continue to bash Labour's record repeatedly without offering a positive alternative or one constructed with government - rather than just an election win - in mind. Labour had that platform and design for government in 1997, otherwise they wouldn't have lasted so long now. Whether or not you agree with them - and I've said several times the state needs to refocus and allow non-state organisations to develop and grow rather than making people dependent on government bureaucracy - it seems to work.
Perhaps the Tories know this - that they don't have a credible alternative to Labour's bureaucracy yet. They have a scheme for short-term cuts, yes, and a reduction in spending, yes - but not how to spend the reduced budget in such a way that existing statist necessities like a . In many places they are indistinguishable from Labour or propose fairy flim-flam like a Minister for Quality of Life. They don't understand the modern age and, as I've said several times, don't understand that the world has moved on since they were last in government. Blair adapted to the conventions set up by Thatcher and Major, but established conventions of his own. The Tories understand this, but they do lack awareness of the extent to which the public sector has evolved under Blair.
It's no longer a case of "I want my country back". It's a case of "We want to move our country forward in a different way".
So what are those different ways? The Tories still don't apparently know except "let's cut off resources we can't afford". They need to get more in-depth and more mature before they will convince the public that not only are Labour dead, they are also obsolete. I don't think that will happen if they hide their manifesto until polling day in a general election, or want an election before one is fully ready.
(Owlperson says it isn't because they have had to change direction so many times in the last few years - due to the recession - that what worked in 2006 doesn't work in 2009 and thus the bulk of the policy is still subject to the changing economic times. As a loyal Tory but a former government minister, most of the above is what he thinks the Tories still need to understand, let alone distill into practical policy, and he thinks that the support for the Tories in his constituency is still not deep enough among the marginal parts to be assured at an election, though the main opposition for him is Liberal Democrat. Extrapolating his ideas on to the national picture, the Tories will certainly pick up seats but not reassure people that they are competent enough to govern instead of Labour to get into overall government. He predicts a small Labour majority with questions as to whether the LDs will lose seats to the official opposition - but not enough and in not significant enough places to wreck Labour's fourth election victory.)
