You'll Win On Health - Just Get It Right

There are three subjects that the electorate care about - health, crime, education. Get those three right and no matter what else is happening you'll win the election. Other issues will have an impact but if you don't get these three core issues right then you're dead in the water. William Hague knows that - about 90% of the country backed the Save the Pound campaign in 2001, people queued up to sign the petition but in the end it didn't change their vote. People care about the environment but will choose who to vote for based on who'll get the yobs off their streets, not who'll save the polar bears. And try being in the line of fire when parents don't get their first choice schools - county councils change hands over these issues.

David Cameron is absolutely right to take Brown on over the Health Service. It's in a shocking state and people care and will choose who to vote for based on who they trust on health. Telling people that despite the spin local hospitals and services are under threat and pledging to protect them is a winning strategy. As long as people have faith you will act on it. Nicola Sturgeon can vouch for that one.

But for god's sake get it right. You had a great start to the week - I bet members loved the thought of a bare-knuckle fight on such a key issue, then it all went wrong. Turns out the research wasn't good enough, local MPs weren't fully on board and then an idiot researcher (probably the same one who bollocksed up in the first place) got bullied into apologising. Things like this detract from the strong central message.

A couple of tips - get your research right from the start and double check the work of 17 year old Emily and Tarquin, make sure the local MPs/PPCs know what's going on in their area and are fully behind it, know that the vested interests (the Trust managers) will come back at you and be ready to take them on too, never apologise to them and for god's sake keep going. Use Andrew Lansley more - he's attractive and appealing to the general public. Oh and yes - keep banging on about health.

Health, crime, education. Might never be the causes de jour - but will always be the things the swing voters care about.

In defence of David Cameron

Since I left the Conservative Party two years ago (at roughly the same time as David Cameron became leader but not because of that) I have undergone a real change in attitude towards it. When in the past people told me that the nasty element so often seen was the face of the party I argued against that, but I came to realise that they were right. Not that every member is nasty, in fact some are fantastic and there are some elected representatives who are fantastic and who I would vote for, and even work to see elected again. But the truth is that the real face of the Conservative Party is too often the smug, sneering, nasty, frothing-mouthed, Daily Mail reader that we're all used to.

And boy has is reared itself up over David Cameron and his trip to Rwanda. The howls from the loony wing of the Party have been deafening. How dare he go to Africa and find out what's happening around the world? Why do we care what happens to the colonials? The Rwandans don't vote - why bother? Why wasn't he in the country looking at the flood?

Well, let's take the last point - yes, for some people the flooding this week has been devastating. But really - do they want some politician to fly over them in a helicopter tutting and rolling his eyes? If he didn't have a bucket and a mop to help clear up then he wouldn't be of any use to anyone. But on the other hand, he had already visited flooded areas in his own constituency before he went to Rwanda. A Prime Minister must be able to concentrate on several urgent issues at once, running the country and fulfilling international duties cannot stop because of a crisis. Instead our leaders must be able to juggle lots of balls in the air.

And it was a good thing going to Rwanda. If we want to stop genocide happening in the future we have to understand what happened and why. We must learn to read the signs. No genocide ever starts as a genocide - it starts with name-calling, it starts with exclusionary policies and it starts with labelling people as different. If we can recognise the first stages then maybe we can help stop the second, third stages taking place. And if we can stop genocide occuring, if we can help people to be safe in their own countries, maybe we can stop so many coming to the UK (shameless nod to right-wing sensibilities).

13 years ago the world stood by and allowed a genocide to take place in Rwanda. And the genocide is still taking place there - women and children are still dying of AIDS; people are still dying from their wounds and killings are continuing. I'm delighted that David Cameron went to see for himself what is happening in Rwanda. It can only make him a better politician and perhaps even a better Prime Minister.