JUST when you think that life cannot get any weirder, it does. The Labour Party is now paying someone to dress up as a giant blue lizard and stalk David Cameron. I am not making this up. The human-sized “Dave the Chameleon” was outside the venue yesterday before Dave’s much-trailed “family-friendly” speech.

The costume is terrific and must have cost a fortune. We are talking thousands here. I thought Labour was broke. Apparently not. Anyway, the money has been wasted, for the main problem with the lizard is that it is too cute to become a hate figure. Soon people will be wanting its autograph.

Dave the Person was a bit of a disappointment after the lizard. The speech was called “The Importance of Family Life” and was sponsored by Vodafone. He referred to Vodafone quite a bit. Did you know, for instance, that the company is very keen on helping parents and children to communicate via mobile phones? Yes, I know, it’s amazing news.

This was verbal product placement and it made me realise that in future the Tories might want to have their policies sponsored by companies. We wouldn’t just have a Childcare Green Paper. It would be the Vodafone Childcare Green Paper. Ministers could wear logos on their suits and, eventually, they could look just like motor racing drivers.

The room was small and packed (the two facts are not unrelated). The audience was made up of parents from the National Family and Parenting Institute. These included Fiona Millar, who is the partner of Alastair Campbell and used to advise Cherie Blair. Dave noted this and wondered if it was Ali C in the lizard outfit. Then he beamed. He is really very good at beaming.

But beaming is not a policy. We were all there because we had heard a rumour that Dave might use his family-friendly speech to give birth to a real live policy. He has been leader now for nearly seven months and so it was about time. But he is being coy about it. Maybe he will be like an elephant and take yonks.

Dave says he is developing something called “the new politics”. Apparently this is where there is a “we” as well as a “me” in life and no man is an island. So far, then, the new politics is all about clichés. He kept floating ideas: clearly this is the yellow-plastic-duck-in-the-bath approach to policymaking. The first duck was the idea of giving money to parents to pay for childcare any way they want. The next was to find ways for parents to love each other more, or at least hate each other less. Finally, he quacked, more fathers should be at the births of their children. Yes, Dave, but what about the birth of their policies? Isn’t that important too? But Dave just kept on beaming and quacking. He was asked about work-life balance. The thing to do, he said, was “big up” and “celebrate” what worked. “We’ve got to big up those companies that go for this, like Asda!” he said.

He kept repeating the phrase “bigging up”. Perhaps this is the beginning of a “bigged-up” policy (sponsored by Asda, surely). But there were no more details because Dave had to rush off to catch a plane to Germany for the match. I tell you, it’s all rush, gush, rush. The policies will have to wait.

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