Eagle Eye
Here’s a curious thing. When the Tories were giving away few details about their policies a while back, and we all clammered for them to come clean, they were over the hill and far away in the polls.
Then when the recession hit, they came up with the austerity plan, when they admitted (finally) that things would be tough and cuts would have to be made. It culminated in the most downbeat and tough speech made by a shadow Chancellor for some time. What happened? The polls narrowed. We knew more, and we didn’t like it. And Labour used it to show the Tories were a nasty lot, intent on wrecking the recovery. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t go unnoticed by the Tory leadership. What was the result? An optimistic promise to voters – they would cancel most of Labour’s planned national insurance rise. A tax cut. Hurrah.
One problem – the pledge has left them with a major credibility gap. Already struggling to explain their determination to cut faster and deeper than Labour, they now had to find an additional £6bn – which they have done through claiming to find more of those wonderful things, efficiency savings.
It was an astonishing explanation that was as audacious as it was incredible. The party had rightly questioned the efficiency savings that Alistair Darling had already claimed to have found. But it desperately needed to stop the election becoming a referendum on them and instead become a vote on Labour’s “tax on jobs”. And so, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
So has the widening credibility gap led to Cameron’s party falling further in the polls? Not a chance. It has recovered. The depressing conclusion is that, in the fogged up reality of an election campaign, promising more and explaining less is a very rational decision. What’s more, Cameron admitted the change of tactics in his FT interview recently.
“We started the year in a very positive frame of mind and wanted to literally spend the entire time putting forward our own approaches,” he said. “But you have to remember that every election is a choice and if you don’t frame that choice, then your opponents will only talk about you.”
Will they be able to deliver the savings? Probably not.
Then when the recession hit, they came up with the austerity plan, when they admitted (finally) that things would be tough and cuts would have to be made. It culminated in the most downbeat and tough speech made by a shadow Chancellor for some time. What happened? The polls narrowed. We knew more, and we didn’t like it. And Labour used it to show the Tories were a nasty lot, intent on wrecking the recovery. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t go unnoticed by the Tory leadership. What was the result? An optimistic promise to voters – they would cancel most of Labour’s planned national insurance rise. A tax cut. Hurrah.
One problem – the pledge has left them with a major credibility gap. Already struggling to explain their determination to cut faster and deeper than Labour, they now had to find an additional £6bn – which they have done through claiming to find more of those wonderful things, efficiency savings.
It was an astonishing explanation that was as audacious as it was incredible. The party had rightly questioned the efficiency savings that Alistair Darling had already claimed to have found. But it desperately needed to stop the election becoming a referendum on them and instead become a vote on Labour’s “tax on jobs”. And so, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
So has the widening credibility gap led to Cameron’s party falling further in the polls? Not a chance. It has recovered. The depressing conclusion is that, in the fogged up reality of an election campaign, promising more and explaining less is a very rational decision. What’s more, Cameron admitted the change of tactics in his FT interview recently.
“We started the year in a very positive frame of mind and wanted to literally spend the entire time putting forward our own approaches,” he said. “But you have to remember that every election is a choice and if you don’t frame that choice, then your opponents will only talk about you.”
Will they be able to deliver the savings? Probably not.
Comments
All I hear from Brown, or his henchmen,when given air time is....
"the conservatives will do this, they will do that, they will.....and then proceed to trash them. Snag is, that he's made it all up.
When, after his quixotic budget, Darling was asked to flesh out his plans beyond his 1% increase in NI he remarked that' he couldn't be more specific.....it all depended on how the spending envelope looked after a thorough post election review. Yes he did. That's what he said. That is the full extent of the Labour plan to cut the deficit.
And they have the gall to tell us what the Conservatives are going to do !
Fact is, the Labour Party have no plan, beyond - Let the Conservatives test the water then and pick the electorally least risky.
Plus ca change...plus ca meme chose with this govt. Spineless, clueless, directionless, idea-less. To be taken with regular dashes of mendacity.
will do...
you put you finger on it there Ted.
what needs to be very widely publicised at every available opportunity is that labour have bought out the lib-dems who have now agreed to keep brown in power.
most of the media have joined the conspiracy of silence about that.
it really is a 2 party system now:
zanulabour-lib-dems and the conservatives, but the ignorant don't know that the lib-dems(silly name for a silly party)have agreed to support brown.
if they knew they might not be so pro lib -dem since most people HATE brown.
it us up to us to expose the secret pact, in any way we can