The curious tale of Iain Dale

Dale tale.   Pic: LBC

Declaration of interest: broadcaster, publisher, author, one-time legendary blogger and would-be MP Iain Dale once had dealings with this blog.   

Background:  for those who are not familiar with this chap, Dale first came to widespread attention as one of the trio of major-league early-adopter rightwing bloggers, along with Guido and Tim Montgomery.  With blogging first a real phenomenon in the mid years of the Blair/Brown regime, they (and their very many BTL commenters) had plenty of stuff to get their teeth into.  Blogs like C@W, and several more that are or were broadly on the right, grew up in their shadow.  Lefty blogs were nowhere.

All of these three titans, unsurprisingly perhaps, were approachable up to a point – but pretty sniffy (to the point of being prickly) about outright competition.  Big, big egos all round.  CU and I were on lunching terms with Guido but C@W ultimately disagreed with him about how things might move forward collaboratively (which we all thought was fair enough).  Montgomery is IMHO essentially a loner.  But to a degree, Dale initially included us within his plans for building a big tent of like-minded players.  He linked to us quite a bit[1], and when he branched into radio – for which, with his extensive current-affairs knowledge + huge network of carefully-cultivated contacts he seemed pretty well suited – he twice invited me on, as a guest voice, to the occasional shows he ran before he got a full-time slot .  But on the second occasion, he fed me a question to which I didn’t give the answer he evidently expected and wanted.  He immediately threw the switch on my microphone, and signaled to a flunky to escort me gently from the studio[2].  

Dale’s obsession – not even remotely hidden beneath his vain attempt at insouciance – was to be a Tory MP.  It was pretty obvious that his strategy was to become so well known via blogging and radio that he’d breeze through the selection committee in some safe seat.  Well, he certainly achieved the high profile: and he used his platform relentlessly for heavy-duty wheedling and lobbying in his own cause, even if he tried to do it all with a light touch.  Fair enough: that was his strategy[3].  But somehow, in seat after seat, it didn’t quite work out: you are probably getting the picture.   The one time he found a berth (2005), it wasn’t the longed-for safe seat and he was beaten by a LibDem.  Eventually, in utter despair, he accepted a full-time slot as a politics jock at LBC, a role to which, as noted above, he seemed really well suited.  He also moved very successfully into publishing and writing generally.

Fast-forward to 2024:  anyhow, it turns out that, all these many years later, the obsession with being a Tory MP has never gone away.  He and his husband live in Tunbridge Wells and the seat came up for grabs.  He was shortlisted, and was thus within a whisker of his life’s ambition!  All that media and publishing success, and maybe a safe seat too!  Happy ending or what?!  Characteristically, he publicly announced his revived political intentions and flamboyantly resigned from LBC.

And then … it quickly came to grief.  A couple of years ago, he’d said of Tunbridge Wells in a podcast that he “couldn’t stand the place“!   End of story – he’s out on his ear.

Dale’s is a very odd tale indeed.   Quite the micro-tragedy.  Some people just can’t engage brain before opening mouth – however politically aware they are, and however much is at stake for them[4].  What an entertaining MP he would have made …

ND

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[1] Ah, those were the days.  C@W used to be perma-linked by FT Alphaville, and frequently linked on Peston’s BBC blog which, in those early days, was rivalled only by Michael Crick’s as an MSM personality blog.   Then the Beeb blacklisted us (seriously!), and the FT dropped us too, as these MSM platforms – at first, just experimental – started to get jealous of their amateur rivals & unwilling to direct traffic elsewhere.

[2] No amount of protest on my part will convince many folks that I don’t harbour a grudge against Dale accordingly.  Well, I don’t: life is too short and Dale is too much a figure of fun.  The only grudge I bear is against Gordon Brown, and that’s enough.

[3] On the other wing, Paul Mason is trying the same thing: he keeps reinventing himself in different parts of the country.  It’s comedy gold.

[4] And not just opening the mouth.  There’s a very funny film of him fighting a bloke at the seafront a few years ago.  Did I say ‘figure of fun’?