Tories find solace in miserable music

It's a sure sign that a party is in trouble when its leaders make films to prove they are regular people just like us.

Britain's Tories launched their annual conference with a film asking their top people about their tastes in music, hobbies, and early brushes with romance. Party leader Michael Howard stayed on safe ground, listing David Starkey's book on Elizabeth I as his current reading. Other responses were cringeworthy, like Tim Collins saying he'd bought the Will Young CD 'for his wife', or Theresa May refusing to talk about her first kiss in front of her husband.

Most of it simply provided material for various jokes at the Tories' expense. So David Cameron mentioned Pulp and The Smiths as 'miserable' music he found 'strangely uplifting'. Since he is the party's policy coordinator, his attempts at reaching the 'Common People' have clearly left him feeling that 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now'.

But perhaps the biggest hostage to fortune was Nicholas Soames expressing his admiration for Dido. Having changed their leader last year in a desperate attempt to reverse their fortunes (to no avail), Dido's biggest hit to date, 'White Flag', certainly seems to capture the mood among today's Tories.

Tories say what rocks their world, BBC News, 3 October 2004