Cross-dress fad wearing a bit thin... (From The Northern Echo)

Cross-dress fad wearing a bit thin...

9:48am Thursday 18th March 2010 in

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I’M tired of all this cross-dressing. I don’t mean blokes wearing dresses – live and let live, I say – but cross-dressing in the political sense.

I find it particularly pathetic when it involves grown men trying to impersonate Margaret Thatcher in a feeble attempt to seduce our right-wing media barons.

Who can forget Gordon Brown welcoming the Iron Lady to Downing Street for tea soon after he moved in, praising her as a “conviction politician who saw the need for change”?

Did he remember, 20 years earlier, he had condemned the mass poverty her policies caused, accusing her of trying to “eradicate the right to education and health services”?

Of course, the stunt backfired when Mr Brown’s honeymoon with the voters ended.

Instead of looking clever, it became evidence that he was shifty and dishonest.

I remember David Cameron wounding Mr Brown in the Commons, rounding off criticism of some other misleading claim with the taunt: “Next, he’ll be telling us how much he admired Margaret Thatcher…”

Now, Nick Clegg is up to the same trick, trying to woo Tory commentators by telling them just how much he admired Mrs Thatcher’s success in crushing the trade unions.

The Liberal Democrat leader said last week: “I recognise now something I did not at the time. That was an immensely important visceral battle for how Britain is governed.”

Voters in marginal Durham City might choose to remember this act of Thatcherworship the next time that Lib Dem activists come calling, arguing they – not tired old Labour – are now the party of social justice.

Of course, David Cameron has been just as guilty of trying on his opponent’s clothes to the extent of looking frankly ridiculous.

If the Conservative leader is really committed to allowing worker co-operatives to run taxpayer-funded services – able to sack the boss and award themselves a pay rise – I’ll eat my ballot paper.

Yet, there he was last month, coming over all Leon Trotsky on us, shamelessly trying to steal the thunder from Labour’s own plans to extend co-operatives.

Now, I understand that all successful politicians must pitch themselves on the centreground, but there is a thin line between widening a party’s political appeal – and losing political credibility.

In the end, voters admire politicians who stick to their convictions, not those who pretend they are something they are not. Look at the outpouring of respect and affection for the late Michael Foot.

Even those of us who believe the Thatcher years were a disaster for Britain can recognise that the only cross-dressing she did was on Spitting Image.

WHEN Tony Benn left Westminster, he said he was quitting to spend more time in politics – and Harrogate and Knaresborough’s Phil Willis appears to have similar ideas.

The outgoing Liberal Democrat told Parliament’s House magazine: “From the autumn, I will become the party’s regional president in Yorkshire and I still have ambitions to be the party’s president. I’ll probably put my name forward.”

But the 68-year-old is still not reconciled to missing out on the top job, it appears. “I would like to have led the party,” he said.

“Leadership is about being in the right place at the right time and I’ve never quite been there…”