TRAPPINGS OF SUCCESS COME IN ALL GUISES
WELL, well; what a difference 24 hours can make. This time yesterday, we had a perma-grinning David Cameron hopping about the country like a kangaroo on speed, the impeccably-dressed Samantha at his side, while the blue camp awaited their chance at a Tory majority, hearts in mouths.
We had Nick Clegg bouncing around like an excitable younger sibling on Christmas Eve, impatient to stay up late and give the big boys a run for their money. And we had dear Gordon, under-eye crevices deeper than the gullies of the Grand Canyon, hobbling painfully towards what everyone could only assume would be the bitter end, dragging the ever-dignified Sarah meekly in tow.
Fast forward to today, and the picture has transformed itself. Cameron’s cronies have gone awfully quiet on their impeccably-rehearsed PR message, while I hear the atmosphere at Conservative HQ is positively icy. Clegg, battered and bruised after his unprecedented hammering in the polls, is standing firm and parroting about unfair voting systems.
But Brown? Ah, Brown. Gone was the haggard, dogged look when he stepped off his plane from Edinburgh this morning and drove back to London, jumping out of the car like a man reborn, grinning from ear to ear and clapping his allies heartily on the back.
We’re told that he popped back into the cosy kitchen of Number 10 – still very much home, y’know? – for a family breakfast with his young sons, before catching a quick forty winks on the sofa and rising up to fight another day.
Success is all relative, as they say.
TIED DOWN
Speaking of what happens now, it seems Unite’s political chief Charlie Whelan – Gordon Brown’s former spokesman – is keen to stick his oar into the hung parliament debate.
“Nick Clegg has got a red tie on!” tweeted Whelan this morning, excitedly.
Shouldn’t someone point out to him Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg’s pledge that Cameron, with the most seats and votes, should be first to try and seek to govern?
LAP OF LUXURY
With half the business world wobbling around precariously today after a chronic lack of kip (and an excess of partying) last night, you’d have thought there’d be a few little luxuries kicking around the offices of the City.
Yet I hear it wasn’t to be, not even left over from the early hours of the morning on the fixed income desks.
“It was completely crazy,” IG Index’s chief market strategist David Jones tells me. “Thursday saw the biggest volumes we’ve ever had in 30 years of business – we did 420,000 trades over the day, or five trades per second! But no, we didn’t have any champagne to celebrate – we had bags of satsumas and hobnobs instead.”