David Cameron has had a spectacularly good couple of weeks. For Gordon Brown they have been catastrophically bad – probably his worst since becoming prime minister (although there is a fair amount of competition for that title). You may think that these two closely related facts are simply attributable to events: the release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al Megrahi has done a degree of damage to the reputation of everyone who presided over it – or who could conceivably be implicated in it – that is apocalyptic in its scale. So naturally, Mr Brown has been hit hard while Mr Cameron has benefited. Cynics might suggest, therefore, that the Cameron advantage was gained purely by default. Or that Mr Cameron just exploited the Brown disadvantage with enough opportunistic gusto to maximise its effect.
I do not think this is the case. I believe that there was a significant reason why Mr Cameron did so well over this period – and conversely why Mr Brown did so horrendously badly – and that there is a salutary lesson in this for the Conservatives. As always, with a truly disastrous political event, the outcomes for individual politicians depend not so much on the incident itself but on the handling of its aftermath. What will remain in voters' minds, even after their anger over al Megrahi has dimmed, will be the subsequent performances of Mr Cameron and Mr Brown and what they believe it has taught them about the characters of the two men.
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