Tamzin Lightwater

Monday Who would have thought thrift could be so much fun! Am having a ball teaching working people to be careful with their money as part of our ‘Live Life For Less’ campaign. Obviously we can’t actually cut the cost of living or mess about with interest rates and inflation (we’re not going there again!) so the next best thing is to teach people to be a bit more responsible with the cash they have. Buy slightly smaller plasma TVs, one 4x4 per family, that sort of thing. Nigel suggested it would be more hard-hitting if we called it ‘Poor people — know your limits’, but Jed doesn’t want to upset our new working-class supporters by being too confrontational.

Monday Happy New Year and May The Force Be With You in 2007! I think it’s fair to say that Dave’s brilliant message sent shivers down all our spines, mine included, even though I was in the office last week when Jed was writing it. V powerful stuff. If any of us were in any doubt of the seriousness of the battle ahead of us as Darth Vader prepares to take control of the Empire with his formidable band of Imperial Stormtroopers, then our leader’s words must surely galvanise us into a state of readiness. It can be no coincidence that Sky was showing the entire Star Wars saga from start to finish today. Got up at six to watch it from end to end.

Well, here they are! My exciting New Year’s Resolutions for 2007!1) Make more policy Controversial, I know. But after long chat with Jed am convinced that this is where I can make my mark. He says, and I agree, that policy is far too important to be left to politicians, ‘especially clueless Tories. This is a job for people who understand people, Tammy. Their hopes, their fears — goddamit, their dreams. It’s about knowing what they want — and giving it to them.’ Then he clicked his fingers in v sexy way. It’s becoming clear to me why he is in charge. Have already had some success with my 35-hour working week proposal. So, am going to spend Christmas on a new plan for people with pets to be given equal rights to paid parental leave.

Monday Now I know why they call it the unhappiness agenda. Am suicidal. I never want to have anything to do with ‘social justice’ again. I shouldn’t have even been at the press conference, but Dave was nervous after things went a bit nuclear at the weekend, so nothing left to chance. Captain Smithy — Mr IDS-Pod himself — was wired up with a team backstage shouting answers into his ear. Afterwards, his people asked if I wanted to join them for a late lunch. What could be nicer, I thought, imagining a cabbage and beetroot smoothie in one of the usual hangouts. Well! Call me Ms Picky, but I just don’t think it’s very appropriate to get blotto in London’s most exclusive restaurant after launching a report on poverty and addiction.

I despair. All this nonsense in the papers about Sam’s £300,000 bonus totally misses the point of everything we’ve been trying to explain for the past year. MONDAY I despair. All this nonsense in the papers about Sam’s £300,000 bonus totally misses the point of everything we’ve been trying to explain for the past year. For the last time, all you Thatcherites at the back, wealth is not about money. Wealth is not City bonuses or share windfalls. Wealth is the smile on the face of a child who gets to see Daddy before bedtime. Wealth is the smell of organic chicken slow-roasting in the oven of an environmentally sound yet affordable starter home.

Monday Trust Labour to go and apologise for the slave trade. The cheek of it! We played just as big a part, if not bigger, in the atrocities of Roots. It’s just as much ours to say sorry for, and Dave would have done it so much better. With real tears. Well, see if we care! Our man’s in Iraq sporting a flak jacket with panache and not looking like a constipated jellybaby — like certain people with clunking fists and the handwriting of a psychopath we could mention. It’s just so petty. No sooner do we announce that Churchill is ‘wholly inadequate’ (hello? statement of the obvious!) than Blair comes out with a measly historic U-turn of his own. Talk about desperate. He’ll be apologising for Iraq next. (We’re planning to do that next week!

MONDAY Life is just one long crisis. Big row over what to take to Sudan in Lord A’s jet. I just thought that a few Harrods hampers thrown in with the medical supplies might cheer people up a bit, although possibly I shouldn’t have forked out for them myself on my account card. (Have given up on ever paying it off now, no matter what Gideon says.) Then had to sort out hacks who were bored and demanding more ‘access’ before trip had even started. Told them, you’re on the jet, only ten rows down from Dave, and we’ve put you in the next best hotel to ours. What more do these people want? Jed says they won’t be happy until they’ve seen Dave break down in Di-style tears of empathy with the displaced multitudes.

MONDAY Fab write-ups of our top secret meeting with unions. (Another great U-turn!) Of course, what we couldn’t reveal is how embarrassing it was when they told Dave how fantastic he is. It was bordering on creepy. The guy from the Long List of Letters which have something to do with manual labour asked him to autograph his son’s hooded sweatshirt. ‘He’ll laugh his head off when he sees this.’ Honestly, how gauche! Couldn’t he have waited till the end and asked us to send him one like everyone else? Was a bit odd having all those lefties round. Lot of faffing trying to work out what to give them to drink. Poppy got into a right state trying to buy something called ‘real ale’.

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.

Sunday I can exclusively reveal that Dave will open conference by appearing on stage with the man from the oven chips empire. Anti-Bush stickers available in heavily disguised packs in foyer for a limited period only. To be worn spontaneously on lapels when Dave and Mr McCain (sounds like western!) ascend the platform at 16.45. On the fringe, DD presents: ‘Are we having an identity crisis?’ (he means Britain, by the way) and Michael Ancram asks: ‘Why are we here?’ Oh no, sorry, that should be ‘Why are we there?’ — it’s about Afghanistan. Phew! We don’t want him getting his guitar out and going all hippy on us this year, thank you. Monday 9.00 The Hot Topic Debate, organised by yours truly! Should we ban all advertising to children?

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?

MONDAY Sawubona! And what terrific feedback from our South African adventure. Although it was touch and go at first. The poor guy was obviously extremely nervous about meeting such an iconic figure. But Dave put Mandela immediately at his ease by asking him whether Robben Island had a House system. Soon they were chatting away like old chums, swapping stories about the deprivation and hardship of their youth. (Reading between the lines of the summary notes, I think it was obvious that Eton in the Seventies was a bit tougher than de Klerk’s penal system but I don’t think Dave laboured the point.) Anyway, the upshot is we’re all friends now. Jed says the tipping point was Mr M’s appearance on the garden makeover show Ground Force.

MondayDo we want people to notice our policies or not? According to Nigel, we have just presided over an epic triumph — but shouldn’t we have told a few people while we were doing it? If you ask me, it was a mistake giving the announcement to Damian. He was so polite and nice, no one noticed he was calling for an end to immigration. Poppy disgusted, called his performance ‘Rivers of Hugs’. Damian’s preference was for an advertising campaign in new EU countries telling people that, if they wouldn’t mind, it would be awfully helpful if they didn’t come to Britain for a few years — unless of course they really had to, in which case, you know, well, fair enough.

MONDAYI thought Hague was Dave’s official deputy. But today DD phones Nigel to say not to panic, he’s in charge and he’s a got a battle plan to rival Austerlitz. Hour later he turns up and gives us all a pep talk (or was it a ticking off?). ‘Listen up: it’s going to be a bit different around here while I’m calling the shots. You’re all going to do some work for a change. No more of this girly ‘wellbeing’ drivel! There’ll be blood, sweat and tears — but by God you’ll thank me at the end of it.’ Poppy so happy she looks close to fainting. She actually fell over a little bit when he said, ‘Get me the latest security D code warnings’.