David Cameron should become black for the 2015 elections. That's the advice of his new strategist, Jim Messina, widely held to be responsible for President Obama’s success in two US elections. “At first I thought this wasn’t great advice,” the Prime Minister told a Tory meeting on election strategy. After all, why would I identify with the very people we’re trying to frighten away with ‘go home’ advertisements and uniformed spot checks at selected Brixton and Southall tube stations and bus stops?”
But Mr Messiah persuaded the PM that becoming black would appeal to a broader, younger vote and deflect accusations of racism. “It’s brilliant advice from our new advisor, I now realise!” The PM told campaigners. “How can they accuse me of Nazi style street tactics, harassment of minorities, appealing to the hard right and racist profiling when I myself am of er mixed race and ting? We can still have the “tell-your-neighbour-to-go-back-to-his -own-country-because-he’s-a-Pakistani-terrorist” vans and the heavy handcuff mob at Stockwell tube, doing turban spot checks. I mean urban spot checks, sorry. But if all that’s going on and yet I’m visibly a black person, then how can I be blamed? I'm like: is it 'cos I am Prime Minister?”
Tory HQ would neither confirm nor deny that a new black Cameron could himself be the victim of repeated stop and search by disaffected Westminster Police. “Look we have spoken to the Police Federation about this,” one senior Tory source said. “We know the force is unhappy with government because of the cuts, Leveson, the Plebgate affair, Hillsborough and the increased cost of murdering innocent newsvendors. But we’ve told them: if the PM is going to be spread-eagled across a government Jaguar’s bonnet every time he sticks his nose out of Downing Street for no other reason than the new colour of his skin, then frankly we’ll put Ian Duncan Smith in as Home Secretary. They didn’t like the sound of that.”
The Cameron faithful also see the change as having a useful side effect in internal Tory politics. One Cameron insider said “Next to a new darker Dave, Boris Johnson will look that much more pallid. In this day and age there's not much future in the albino vote,” he joked. It’s understood a team of PR and political advisers are poring over Dulux and Farrow and Ball shade cards to decide, come the election campaign, exactly what colour Mr Cameron will be. Mrs Cameron has suggested whatever colour is arrived at could also be used on the walls of Downing Street so the PM will ‘blend in’.
