Telegraph Column: Is Cameron's First Defection About to Come Over?

Political commentators have become so obsessed by opinion poll leads as the best sign of political success that they have stopped looking for other signals. The revelation over the weekend that George Osborne had made a serious attempt to lure the LibDem Work & Pensions spokesman David Laws to the Conservative benches was a sign of great confidence on the Tory benches but the fact that Osborne made it public revealed a degree of political naivety and overconfidence that needs to be banished.

 

People fall in and out of love with their parties. In these days where all three parties appear to share a similar outlook it is not to be surprising if the odd member of the tribe finds a rival tribe more attractive. So while individual defections may create headlines, it’s the trend that can help shape the political weather.

 

Since the 2005 election seven former LibDem Parliamentary candidates and one former Labour candidate have defected to the Conservatives, with only one going in the opposite direction. The trend is clear, but it’s when a serious figure swaps sides that the political commentariat will sit up and listen.

 

Two years ago, Mark Oaten - then seen as a rising star in the Liberal Democrats – told a leading Conservative that LibDems of his generation were hungry for power and they wouldn’t sit around waiting for power to come to them - they would go out and seek it. He had just published The Orange Book with his political soulmate David Laws and been taken aback by the approbrium it had attracted from left of centre Liberal Democrats.

 

It was at that point that some of the Orange Bookers started to think about their long term future. Several found the prospect of twenty years on the LibDem benches a pretty soul-destroying prospect. Their policy positions on many issues – tax, welfare reform and public services - were not poles apart from those being adopted by liberal Conservatives.

 

Mark Oaten told me recently that he came close to defecting to the Conservatives in the autumn of 2005. As LibDem Home Affairs spokesman he had become frustrated by his party’s opposition to his tougher approach on crime, and in particular terrorism. But the Tory Party was in the middle of a leadership contest and Oaten’s bargaining position was weak, so he stayed put.

 

Two months into his leadership David Cameron nearly claimed his first scalp. Rumours had been swirling around Westminster of an imminent LibDem defection. I wrote on my blog that David Laws was about to jump ship. It was then that I received a phone call from someone close to the Cameron set who asked if I could tone it down a little as things were “at a delicate stage”.

 

If Laws is to be believed George Osborne’s attempt to lure him across – then, or later - was less of a political seduction than a ‘wham bam, thank you m’am’.

 

Laws has been telling Tory MPs this week that Osborne asked abruptly, without any political foreplay, whether he wanted to defect or not. He was so taken aback that he spluttered ‘not’.

 

In a GMTV interview last weekend Osborne confirmed that he had held discussions with Laws and that he was also talking to Labour MPs. The first rule of political defections is that you not only keep any discussions secret from your own side, you don’t talk about them on television. Afterwards, Osborne knew he had made a mistake, but the damage had been done.

 

The Tories and LibDems are becoming allies of convenience on many issues where they have common ground. Nick Clegg, the LibDems Home Affairs Spokesman and leader-in-waiting has been astonished at how similar his views are to those of David Davis, who he had previously regarded as a hardline right winger.

 

Cameron confidante Ed Vaizey has been deputed to cosy up to the LibDems and build relations with them. His recent trip to the Arctic Circle with Nick Clegg may not have resulted in a defection, but eight hours a night in an igloo can hardly have failed to bring them closer. On second thoughts, banish that image from your mind. Vaizey then discussed their musings on his blog.

 

The Cameron inner circle ought to remember the second world war maxim: ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’, except they should replace the word ‘Lives’ with ‘Defections’.

 

They should study the New Labour roadmap and examine the various write-ups of the luring of Shaun Woodward from the Tory benches in 1999. It was a classic, highly secretive, undercover operation, planned and executed by Alastair Campbell. The slow, gradual seduction, which included meetings with Tony Blair himself, made Woodward feel he was among soulmates. He was promised all sorts of rewards (none of which have materialised) and made to feel wanted. But at the last minute he wobbled and the seduction turned into a brutal rape. Campbell told Woodward that if he backed out Labour would tell the Tories what had been going on and he would be ruined. Woodward succumbed.

 

The first parliamentary defection to the Conservatives is not far off. Whether it is from the LibDems or Labour it will be seen as a crucial signal that the Cameron bandwagon has shifted gear.