Diary

In tandem with Asa Briggs, I am speaking at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center atop Boston University. This is a truly remarkable institution, yet, even in Boston, Mass., surprisingly few people know about it. Gotlieb himself was an extraordinary man; a Rhodes scholar, he began by collecting British archives over 40 years ago — then discovered that no one had ever shown an interest in Hollywood memorabilia. He cornered the market. Asa and I are transferring all our papers to it, in my case 150 boxes dating back to the 1950s.

Am sleeping on the bunk bed at Dave and Sam’s. The atmosphere is v tense. SUNDAY Am sleeping on the bunk bed at Dave and Sam’s. The atmosphere is v tense. We don’t know when they will come for us, but we know they will come and when they do we have to be ready. Miliband wasn’t ready, and look what happened to him. They found contact lens boxes and tin cans — tin cans! No doubt he was too busy thinking about policy to have someone check what was going into his bin — well, that is not going to happen to us. When the Mail and the Mirror come rummaging we will not be found wanting. Oh no. MONDAY Jed chased me out of kitchen this morning for frightening the children. Godammit — one of them dropped a piece of rainforest into the Brabantia!

MondayWe have to stop Gordon from stealing the environment! It was Dave’s idea to save the planet. It’s theft, pure and simple, what Labour is doing. Jed has written ‘Ownership’ in big green letters on the whiteboard. We’ve all got to come up with five ideas (why is it always five of everything in politics?) on how to remind people that tackling climate change was our policy in the first place.

MONDAY Confusion and misery. Everyone saying Dave has made his first mistake and, quite frankly, I’m beginning to think so myself. If I wasn’t a Cameroon from my Brora bobble hat to my King’s Road pedicure, I wouldn’t know what we stand for at the minute. It seems that people actually believe the policy commissions are producing ideas that are going to make it into our manifesto! This is one eventuality we hadn’t bargained for. I mean, how could we have predicted people would believe Dave is going to adopt £21 billion worth of tax cuts? Now we’re getting hammered by Mr Brown’s nasty people called Ed for promising things we never were going to promise. Actually. Only now we’re not going to get any votes for not promising them.

Monday DD is on a major ‘guns ’n’ ammo’ high. It was manageable while it was just General Dannatt stuff, but now it’s spread — badly. No one could make sense of his rant about veiled Muslims being the ‘unexploded bombs of modern politics’ until Poppy pointed out that he was, for about three hours, in the bomb disposal unit of the territorial SAS. A quick phonecall to Doreen confirmed that he spent the weekend creeping up on mysterious packages in the back garden. Found it strangely unsettling when he approached me after morning conference and said, ‘Y’know, Tammy, sometimes the best way to avoid a big explosion is to have a series of smaller detonations.’ But then when I thought about it, I realised it made a lot of sense.

Monday night Am in spare room at Dave and Sam’s! On ‘webcameron’ duty which means I have to follow leader everywhere, and help with that internet thingy he does. There’s a huge team of people here, fussing about. As Jed says, spontaneity doesn’t come out of thin air you know! Did my first shoot today — ‘Dave makes granola-based breakfast while discussing health policy.’ Things got tricky when the false wall the builders put up down the middle of the kitchen to make it look pok-ier started flapping around like an old Crossroads set. Looked like we might have to abandon filming until I came up with a fab idea which everyone agreed would totally dumb things down.

SATURDAY Phonecalls to Dorset police: 235. Nights without sleep: 3. Double espressos: 25. Where is Dave’s pass?!!?!? We applied two months ago for-heaven’s-to-Betsy-Duncan-Smith’s-sake. Chief constable most unhelpful. ‘How do we know your so-called Mr Cameron’s not an al-Qa’eda sleeper cell, eh? Eh?’ Why would they do this? Am starting to feel nervous. I mean, how well do we really know Dave? Nigel says this is the caffeine talking. But, seriously, you can’t be too careful, can you?   SUNDAY It’s here! DD rang the chief constable and threatened to ‘give him an interview without biscuits’ (?). Now it’s just 3,000 other members of the party, including yours truly, who have to queue.

I have always been a confident person. Whether setting up my own business, pitching a new idea or appearing on TV, I have always thought that I am perfectly capable of holding my own. But speaking at a party conference? It never even crossed my mind that I would go to one, let alone organise my own fringe meeting. So I must admit that, as the conference season kicked off, I had a moment of self-doubt. Since launching OUR SAY (a new campaign pushing for the introduction of citizen-initiated referendums) I have been hugely encouraged by the positive feedback, even from those who do not entirely agree with our proposals.

Monday Look, this thing with the tree isn’t funny. It’s deadly serious. Jed has found out from the ad agency where they got the template and it’s not good news. Terrible showdown with little guy in red specs who looked just like Lord Saatchi’s mini-me. Personally I don’t see it makes much difference that our new logo is based on the first flag of Lebanon. Or that it’s a cedar, not an oak. We have cedars in Britain don’t we? But Jed is distraught and says that when Dave finds out ‘we’re all kofta’ — some form of cockney rhyming slang. Don’t care. Am off to Bournemouth with Jed for conference preps while everyone else going to horrid shad cab away-day in Leeds. Feel v smug.

Monday Busy busy. Dave is adamant that foreign policy cannot be reduced to soundbites, so of course, as Jed explained, we need a range of soundbites to convey this. ‘We will give solid not slavish support to the US’; ‘We will not come up with grand schemes to remake the world’ (Nigel says this is just as well because we can’t think of any); and most important ‘We’re all neo-libs now’. Unfortunately, we’re short-staffed due to holidays in Corfu (we should set up an office there) so I end up doing both sides of the briefing. The notes were like a market research questionnaire. ‘If reporter neocon omit par. 5’, etc. Don’t know how we get away with it. Do these journos not speak to each other?

When I told my husband I had been asked to write the Spectator diary by the editor he retorted, ‘Nepotism.’ ‘No darling,’ I explained, ‘not Boris’ (whose brother Joe is married to my husband’s niece) ‘the new editor of The Spectator.’ ‘Ummm,’ he said, ‘so how do you want to come across in the diary?’ ‘Oh, you know,’ I said, ‘witty, clever, charming, likeable.’ ‘Ah’, he said, ‘better get someone else to write it, then.’ Of course, Matthew has every right to feel a little grumpy at the moment.

Chelsea Post Office, situated on the corner of Sloane Square, is a regular meeting place for us pensioners as we draw our weekly pension, in cash. Sometimes the queue sneaks down the King’s Road, but the long wait gives us the opportunity to catch up on local gossip and concerns. The ‘persons’ behind the grille are helpful and courteous, and we all know each other well. The government wants us to transfer our custom to Barclays, but if we had a problem it would involve an endless frustrating wait until ‘customer services’ respond from Bangalore or some equally puzzling conurbation. There is always some incident in the queue to keep us entertained. Last week a delightful pensioner colleague bypassed the queue to weigh an envelope.