Labour's turnout in the Norwich North by-election was so bad that even its candidate didn't turn up. It is hard to think of a more symbolic contrast: Chloë Smith, the beaming, fresh-faced Tory victor – at 27, the youngest MP in Britain – and her Labour opponent, Chris Ostrowski, struck down by swine flu and represented at the count by his wife. The fates seem to be conspiring against the governing party. These days, even the H1N1 virus votes Tory.
It is traditional at this point in any analysis of a by-election to point out how unique the circumstances were; how useless a guide the result is to the state of national politics; how entirely local issues, or astrological factors, or the pollen count on polling day mean that it would be reckless to draw broader conclusions. On this occasion, however, the opposite is true: Labour got well and truly thumped, for reasons that suggest it will, in due course, be well and truly thumped in a general election.
For a start, the by-election campaign was fought on lines that will be replicated in every constituency when Gordon Brown finally goes to the country. On the doorsteps, Labour warned of savage Tory cuts and terrible damage wrought to schools and social services. The Conservatives parried with their greatest asset: David Cameron himself, who visited Norwich no fewer than six times. In a general election, he will scarcely be able to repeat that act in every constituency. But the national battle will indeed be one between a person (Decent Dave) and a relentlessly repeated message (the Tories are evil).
Mr Brown is too cadaverous, too damaged, too bloody unpopular to be a campaign asset. He will be on the stump, of course, standing on his equivalent of John Major's soapbox, saying things like: "And because it is right that…" But Labour knows it cannot win a popularity contest between its own leader and Mr Cameron. Its only hope is to poison the Tory well with a high-pressure supply of bile, fear and suspicion. In this sense, the general election will be oddly asymmetric, as it was in Norwich: personal charisma will be pitted against impersonal alarmism.
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