President Rubio?

When Marco Rubio scored his attack hit against former mentor Jeb Bush in the recent Republican debate, he may have been signalling that he was running against the old families of both parties.  For a long time observers and commentators have worried that the presidential election of the world's first democracy might end up being a slug-fest between two names who have come up before - Bush v Clinton.  What would it say about the nature of the American democracy if its two parties' best options were to produce the wife and son/brother of former presidents?  Well, Hillary may be sleeping easier at the moment as she continues to sail through the Democratic campaign, but Jeb Bush has never been a front-runner in the Republican one and the hot money is already gathering around Marco Rubio.

Rubio does well in debates, and his put-down of Jeb Bush - "someone convinced you attacking me is going to help you" - was further evidence that, unlike the senior politico, he can actually do politics and is an articulate candidate to boot.  Yes, the Republican race at the moment remains dominated by the extraordinary - as in extraordinarily ridiculous - Donald Trump, with retired neuro-surgeon Ben Carson in second place.  But there still exists a sense that when the votes start being cast, Trump might flounder, while Carson's lack of political experience is already causing him problems.  Then the Republicans will start looking for their serious, Hilalry-beating candidate. And at the moment that is looking like the senator from Florida.

Rubio is young, fresh, runs to the Republican conservative base without sounding or appearing overly wacky, and as the son of Cuban immigrants has a Latin appeal that is electorally powerful.

The Bushes deride him as a "GOP Obama", but that might seem to those outside the Republican bubble as a positively good thing.  Just as the fresh young senator from Illinois dispatched a member of his party's political aristocracy, it looks as if Rubio might just do the same.  If he does, Hillary really should be worried.  After all, her track record against dynamic incomers is hardly encouraging.

Lessons for Cameron from Denis Healey's "Greatness"

David Cameron could be forgiven if he enters the Tory Conference week thinking about his place in history.  This, after all, is a man who doesn’t have to win another election, since he’s given himself a final term firewall against any future electoral catastrophes.  Not only that, but he’s been able to witness Big Bad Jezza Corbyn’s utter catastrophe of a party conference over the past week, with possibly only a few hours off to mull over the deteriorating quality of western foreign policy (currently sub-contracted out to the country formerly known as the Soviet Union).

Corbyn is a delight in many ways.  He’s not quite as different as a party leader as some hopefuls are suggesting, admittedly.  George Lansbury and Michael Foot were also bizarre lefty true-believers with a lofty disdain for practical politics, and both proved electorally disastrous for the Labour party, albeit from a better intellectual vantage point than the fuzzy minded Corbyn.  But Corbyn is the first of that mould to appear in the age of constant media, and his disdain for the “media commentariat”, coupled with his notoriously badly structured, dull black holes of speeches have all gone to contribute to the carefully spun image of a man who is “authentic”. 

Corbyn’s conference was a sheer joy for David Cameron.  The Labour leader’s select-a-policy style, and his refusal – or inability – to have his shadow cabinet speaking from anything like a single song-sheet, must all be making the current leasee of No. 10 Downing Street giddy with the prospects of his future greatness.  And Cameron has to think about his future greatness as he has no more general elections to win.

What he does have, though, is a referendum to win and if he is to finally rest on the front bench of Great Tory Leaders (Andrew Roberts examines the competition in this piece for the Spectator this week) he will need to ensure that he persuades the country – and much of his own party – to stay in Europe.  Whatever the Euro-sceptics say, Cameron doesn’t see leaving Europe as much of a triumph for his avowedly internationalist approach.

Musing on possible future greatness might have led Cameron to read more carefully the obituaries of Denis Healey this weekend.  Whether great or not – there is plenty of scope for debate – Healey was one of the best known politicians of his era.  He was an early example of the “celebrity” politician who could probably be recognised by the average don’t-care-about-politics-they’re-all-liars voter in the street.  Bushy eyebrows may have helped, and the fact that he was thus easily caricatured by the greatest performing impressionist of his day, Mike Yarwood, but Healey was also well known because he was trenchant.  He rarely expressed modest views and wasn’t shy about condemning his opponents.  His reference to Geoffrey Howe having all the savagery of a dead sheep in his parliamentary attacks has been well recorded.  Less often noted, and more scathing, was his outraged condemnation of Margaret Thatcher as a prime minister who “gloried in slaughter” during the Falklands War.

The problem for Denis Healey – who has received universally positive obituaries – is that his greatest achievement was born out of disaster.  As Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer during the awful 70s he had to advise a recalcitrant party that the days of ambitious spending were over.  He began – in the teeth of massive Labour opposition – a sharp programme of austerity.  It was forced upon him by the fact that he was the first – and to date the only – Chancellor to ask for a loan from the IMF to tide the tanking British economy over. 

I doubt that, when he entered politics after a heroic military career during World War II, Healey envisaged his claim to greatness resting on such a terrible reversal of fortunes.  He spent the rest of his active political career trying to persuade the Labour lefties of the need for responsible policies and a need to appeal to centrist voters.  He failed in this. 

Perhaps that is the lesson from Denis Healey’s career.   Cameron can muse that even if the worst happens, and the country votes to come out of the Union he thinks we should maintain membership of, if he should live long enough afterwards even his failure might be perversely turned into some sort of triumph.