The truth about Project Volvo

IT'S got to be one of the best car-related tales I've ever been told. David Cameron is a sports car and Gordon Brown is a Volvo. Ed Balls and the tabloids told us so.

The "If you were a car, what would it be?" question's been doing the rounds in the motoring magazines for donkey's years but thanks to the emergence of - and I'm honestly not making this up - Project Volvo from the Labour party's skeleton closet it's suddenly a game that's entered the national consciousness. It's a fun way of matching up your own automotive prejudices with people you don't like very much.

It's also a fun way of wasting the next five minutes.

Project Volvo, I reckon, shows up not what people thought of Gordon Brown a few years ago but the lack of petrolheads in the last Labour government (with the possible exception of Stephen Ladyman, who owned an Alfa 156 at the time). Gordon Brown a Volvo? Not a chance. Given the task of assigning an automotive brand to our last Prime Minister, I'd opt instead for Humber. Like him, it's sturdy, reliable, well-built and proudly British. Oh, and not here any more. Perfect.

David Cameron, I suspect, is much more Volvo; plenty more street cred and always full of clever ideas, but ultimately a darling of the middle classes. Nick Clegg, meanwhile, is any car you want him to be but with the the unfortunate snag of a knackered steering rack; vaguely promising to go in one direction, but then suddenly snapping at the last minute and going in the other. Don't worry; for the sake of impartiality I've got to take the mickey out of each of the three big parties equally.

The best bit about all of this though, was that Project Volvo actually upset the Swedes so much that they went on the defensive and issued a press release distancing their cars from Gordon Brown, in which they said senior politicians are all out of touch and haven't got a clue about what modern Volvo stands for.

Peter Rask, Regional President of Volvo Car UK, Ireland and Iceland, said: "If only the Labour party had been like today's Volvos - dynamic, agile and innovative - perhaps the UK economy would have been in a better place than it finds itself today!"

We'll get the Prime Minister's reaction to that in a minute. Oh wait...