While the Tories’ worst nightmare was busy launching his very own end-of-the-pier show in Clacton this afternoon, the Home Secretary was also taking in the sea air with a campaign stop here on the Kent coast.
It’s not often we get the big beasts roaming the streets of Folkestone in the run-up to polling day. Pigs in blue rosettes, and all that. This seat is traditionally as true blue as they come. But James Cleverly was in town to lend his weight to the campaign of Damian Collins, who looks to have a real fight on his hands against the Labour party.
The first stop was a new high street ice cream parlour, recently opened in memory of a little boy who lost his life in a road accident. Local party bigwigs and a handful of press milled about outside, with Mr Cleverly’s imminent arrival given away by the sudden presence of a posse of stern-looking chaps with sunglasses and earpieces.
He strode up Sandgate Road and greeted Mr Collins with a warm handshake and much bonhomie, describing the local man as both “a very good friend and a fantastic candidate”.
Every inch the seasoned campaigner, he slipped effortlessly into the spiel about big choices, a government with a plan and the looming threat of going back to square one if the nation hands Sir Keir Starmer the keys to Downing Street. There then came the warning that Labour “don’t have a plan”, but even if they did, and they don’t of course, then that plan, which doesn’t exist, would have to be funded by taxes and debt. Which are very real. Unlike the Labour plan. Got it? Good.
Plan or no plan, the polls make extremely grim reading for the Tories, with the latest seat-by-seat analysis pointing to a complete wipe out of Conservative MPs in east Kent. Could the polls be proved wrong come July? “I have no doubt that once again the people of Folkestone and Hythe will reward Damian, who has been a fantastic local MP,” the Home Secretary insisted.
Boilerplate answer duly dispatched, he returned to the broader, national picture. Apparently the government has a fantastic record of bringing down inflation and growing the economy, and we’d be mad not to recognise that.
Mr Cleverly was then warmly greeted by the handful of party members who had turned out to welcome him to town.
Soon after, he was ushered inside the dessert parlour to meet Will Brown, who opened the new business in memory of his seven-year-old son, Will Brown Jr, killed in December when struck by a car in Sandgate. The pair spoke privately for a while about this painful incident, and what could be done to tighten up the laws around deaths in road accidents.
Before leaving for a stroll through the Creative Quarter in the summer sunshine, Mr Cleverly was furnished by Mr Brown with an ice cream for the walk.
The Home Secretary opted for a scoop of blue bubblegum, in a blue cone, with blue sauce. A little too on the nose? He’ll just hope that the huge figure of a dropped ice cream he walked past on the way out doesn’t prove a symbol of the Tories best-laid summer plans ending in tears in a month’s time.
After a quick viewing of Folkestone’s Banksy, and one selfie with a woman on the Old High Street, the Home Secretary was about to be whisked away to his next engagement when he was politely yet passionately accosted by a chap who wanted to question him about arms sales to Israel.
For just a moment it seemed he might be caught a little on the hop as the stage-managed procession through town suddenly went off script. “Are you going to stop selling arms to Israel,” his questioner enquired. You could almost hear his mental Rolodex whirring as he looked for a well-honed answer. Government line deployed, and his interlocutor seemingly unimpressed, he opted for the agree-to-disagree approach for ending an unwelcome argument – and just like that he was gone, whisked away by his waiting car.
Pacing back up the Old High Street, Mr Collins offered a rather lukewarm take on the campaign so far. A lot of people he meets on the doorstep are undecided, he said, they want to see the small boats stopped, and they are not aware of a credible scheme from the other parties.
Polling day may still be a month away, but the Tory campaign is certainly going to need to heat up if Labour’s lead in the polls is to melt away like ice cream on a summer’s day. If not, it looks like the Conservatives – both in Folkestone and Hythe, and nationally – are on course to be left out in the cold come July 5.
