I'm back!

They say "politics is show business for ugly people" and with the exception of Andrew Bowie, I suspect this is true. So when dozens of people approached me at CPC18 and said "we miss your blog" or "when are you going to start blogging again" the inner egotist couldn't resist.

So I'm back. And to mark my return I want to tell you a story. 

It was Monday 11 July 2016 and a somewhat motley group of radicals, Libertarians and insurgents had gathered in a splendid drawing room of a Georgian terrace in Cowley Street. We were Andrea Leadsom's Campaign Team. None of us had previously worked on a national leadership campaign and I suspect if truth be told we were all slightly more nervous and apprehensive than we admitted (either to each other or to ourselves). 

Almost all of us had worked in some capacity on the Vote Leave campaign and we all knew each other by reputation if not in person.  Man for man. Woman for woman. Skill for skill, we were as good as Team May.  Although slighted daunted by what I was taking on, my job "Campaign Director in the Field" was a comfortable fit for my background and experience. It would have been my responsibility to get Andrea around the UK in front of Conservative members in the constituencies. Each member of the team (covering digital communications, speechwriting, policy and development, finance and compliance, logistics, broadcast and print media etc) had equal experience; all we lacked was experience of working together. 

I will leave that story to another time, but last week in Birmingham I was honoured to welcome Andrea to a private dinner I hosted for friends and clients of my consultancy Andrew Kennedy Campaigning Ltd. As I introduced Andrea, I recounted an amusing story from that fateful morning. 

Our Campaign HQ was based in the home or Sir Neil and Lady Thorne in Cowley Street, the same property which had been used for John Major's "back me or sack me" leadership campaign in 1995. 

At about 10am Lady Thorne called me into her study.  "I'm just wondering what you chaps are doing for lunch?" she enquired. Before continuing, "When Mr Major was here in 1995 I arranged a rota of 'cabinet wives' to cater for lunch, but that soon fell flat, so most days Viscount Cranborne would send around a Fortnum's Hamper, which was delivered in his Rolls Royce by two liveried footmen."

It was at this time I realised just how the Conservative Party had changed when I heard myself say, "Oh please don't worry Lady Thorne, we have a lunch rota too, and today it's JP Floru's turn to pop around to Tesco Express to buy the sandwiches."

And so it was.... at 10am JP did indeed pop out to Tesco to buy the Team Leadsom sandwiches, and when he got back it was all over. Perhaps we should have organised the Fortnum and Mason hamper after all. 

One day I will tell the story of the end and how we managed to totally destroy Angela Eagle's Labour Leadership Press Conference.... watch this space.