Grant Shapps: I've built my own business - something Miliband has never done

 
New brief: Mr Shapps has put up a general election Countdown Clock at Tory HQ
GLENN COPUS
WEST END FINAL

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There is only one way to greet the new Tory chairman after weeks of controversy about him having an alleged double-life: “Good afternoon, Mr Green,” I say.

Grant Shapps just laughs at the use of his business alias, Michael Green: A big toothy open-faced laugh that tries to suggest “nothing to hide” despite weeks of controversy about his get-rich-quick publishing ventures.

But more of that later. More urgent is the Conservative conference which starts this weekend in Birmingham. With a drumroll, Mr Shapps revealed the slogan this year is “Britain Can Deliver”, which was chosen to recall the national triumph of the London Olympics and give an optimistic hint that the country can deliver on the economy too.

“It’s so easy to be down on your country but actually we have just delivered brilliantly on the toughest event the world puts on every four years,” he said. “Britain, together, delivered. And when you are going though the daily grind, trying to make ends meet with the cost of living so high, Britain delivering means we can also get on top of these debts, and compete with the best in the world.”

The Conservatives now have to respond to Ed Miliband’s claim in a memorised 7,000 word speech to have stolen their One Nation clothes. “It was a reasonable speech from an oratory point of view,” he said, adding: “If there’s no substance, it’s easy to remember.”

He accused Labour’s leader of launching class war by harking back to his comprehensive schooling, in contrast to David Cameron’s days at Eton.

“I went to comprehensive school but I don’t hammer on about it, or try to make it a dividing line in British politics,” said Mr Shapps, who attended Watford Grammar School for Boys, a state school that takes boys of all abilities and did not use the 11-plus. “His background is hardly that of a pauper growing up in the mines.”

Miliband’s speech also had a jibe at Shapps for having “a false name”.

Suddenly, Mr Shapps gets passionate and tears into the Labour leader.

“I’m absolutely not embarrassed about having done something that Ed Miliband has never done – which is to build up a business from scratch,” he said.

“I know what it’s like to get up early and graft – and to put my house on the line to buy the next printing press, pray it works out, and pay my employees at the end of the week.

“It’s easy to make speeches saying ‘I know how difficult it is for working people’. But I have actually been a working person.

“Some of us did stuff before we went into politics. Miliband has no other experience at all. He’s the one who must think he was born to rule because he never went for any other job.”

The attack is fluent and deadly - and a reminder of why Shapps, with his everyman background, is tipped as a future Tory leader.

Patiently, he answered a dozen questions, including why he attended a 2004 conference in Las Vegas wearing a badge with the name Michael Green on it.

“It was a conference joke,” he said. “Everyone knew who I was. It was not a secret, never was.” Green was a pen name he chose for a series of business books he wrote for a publishing business started with his wife when he was ill for a year with Hodgkins lymphoma, a form of cancer. “Authors using pen names is normal,” he said. “Nigel West is really Rupert Allason [ex-Tory MP and spy writer] and people didn’t care.”

But isn’t he embarrassed by titles like “How To Get Stinking Rich”? No because “big, brash titles” were necessary for the US market. And the book Mr Miliband attacked, about surviving the recession, was written by a freelance. He also flatly denied buying Twitter followers and said he only ever edited his Wikipedia entry to make it accurate.

We talked in a bare white room off the open-plan “war room” at Tory HQ, where screens display the Countdown Clock, a Shapps innovation, showing 945 days, eight hours, 17 minutes and 45 seconds until polling stations close in May 2015.

“It really focuses the mind,” said the chairman, who revealed that supporters will soon be able to download it as a screensaver.

He arrived tieless, but two ties were hanging on the wall. Were they his famous £4 ties? A sneaky look reveals an odd thing: The makers’ labels were missing, like spies’ clothing in early Le Carre novels.

Boris Johnson savaged the Government’s aviation delays yesterday and on Tuesday the Mayor will probably upstage David Cameron again at the conference. Was the Boris phenomenon getting irritating?

“No, I love Boris, actually. I love the fact that you see Boris bikes around, and that the Olympics were a great success. He’s a great, great guy. And I’ll tell you what: I’m glad he’s a Tory.”

OK, we get the message. So is Boris a PM in waiting? “I have no idea. My view is we have a great PM. The two of them are actually great friends, they text each other all the time.”

Shapps had good news for Tory activists eager to kick their Lib Dem coalition partners. He revealed “about a quarter” of 40 planned target seats would belong to sitting Lib Dem MPs. “I can’t tell you the list but I can tell you there will be no mercy,” he promised.

In addition, he revealed that Mr Cameron’s controversial A-List brought in to boost the number of women and black MPs is being quietly abolished.

“I think we are now in a place where we have been selecting as a party a lot more women and more people from black and ethnic minority backgrounds, so we have in many ways crossed the rubicon,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve taken a definitive position about it, but we want all our candidates to be A List. In other words, just to have great candidates.”

And what would Michael Green’s advice be for the party conference hall? The big grin opens wide: “I don’t think he’ll be saying anything at all.”

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