Great poster, Dave - but you may be missing an opportunity

Mrs Campbell

Spot on - there are two demographics which the Tories should be biting on: the grey vote (the savers) and the young who will be voting for the first (or maybe second) time. They are the ones really carrying the can in terms of the effects of the recession but also of paying for the solution and the Tories should be hitting on them over and over again

geoff

But the whole anti-debt campaign is rubbish. Cameron has no plan to pay down the debt.

And we just hear today that he is supporting this 500m scheme to get people back into work (saying it was his idea). This alone adds 500m to the national debt, as part of the fiscal stimulus.

Its a nice idea, but he has no policy to back it up, so he will quickly come unstuck

Nick Kaplan

The problem with trying to appeal to 20- somethings is that this age-group is far more labour inclined. Lacking as they are in life experience most are unable to sort the wheat from the chaff and consequently Labour’s bogus promises to help people will be far more appealing to them than any Tory message of controlling government spending and debt. In most cases (though certainly not all) it takes a good many years of life experience to realise the grand promises of the left are so much hot air, whilst sounding appealing (especially to the naive) they are ultimately unachievable and come at the expense of wide-scale coercion according to some procrustean plan. The reason Obama is popular among this age group is the same reason why this group will predominately vote labour; naive leftism is far more appealing to the inexperienced than is harsh reality.

Far better to try to win the votes of the elderly, who are, incidentally, far more likely to turnout on Election Day.

Verity

I don't know, Pete. Even people who don't have children yet and aren't contemplating having any for five or ten years, probably plan to have children at some point and don't want their notional babies born loaded with debt. I think it's a poster that will hit everyone.

Slim Jim

Geoff - you really are falling for the party line aren't you? If Dave was in power, he'd not borrow the money, he's just not spend it on useless quangos, diversity muppets and ID cards.

James

Labour tax jobs
Labour tax jobs
Labour tax jobs
Labout tax jobs

It's true and needs to be shouted from every rooftop.

Carol

I agree with Verity. The poster resonates, whatever one's plans for having children. The point is that this debt which Brown has landed us in, is anything but short term.
BTW, I think 20 somethings are all too aware about debt, given the cost of their univerity education, houses etc and aren't fooled by short-termism. The poster points out the longevity of debt under Brown, and no one can escape that.

oldtimer

This ad will work for people with children and grandchildren. That is a big chunk of the electorate that actually turns out to vote.

The ad works on its own terms. It seems to me to be pointless to criticise the ad for not appealing to a particular and narrow sector of the electorate. The issue of the day is the credit crunch and the extra debt that Brown is piling on in his hope to mitigate the recession. This ad, concisely and effectively, draws attention to the meaning of what he is doing.

Alison

Quite right - not forgetting paying off student loans whilst saving for a deposit and not being able to afford saving for old age because of all the taxes I'm paying...And I earn a very good wage for my age, I dread to think how others manage.

The Watcher

Poll in The Times

Con 43 +4
Lab 33 -2
LD 15 -2

Nicholas

Five or six strong and repeated messages. This is one. It may not appeal to the 20-somethings so make sure one of the others does.

Geoff, the Conservatives have more strategic thinking about the future of this country than anyone else. They flounder to get the message across partly because the media coverage is so bigoted. Anything the Tories do or say will be twisted and used against them, or blatantly stolen. Labour meanwhile is given the softest of rides by a media leadership who must have a death wish for Britain and should be ashamed of themselves. When did these leaders of opinion decide we need to become a totalitarian, communist state?

Policy, especially policy on the hoof, is useless without soundly conceived strategic imperatives. Labour do policy from one day to the next without any coherent strategy beyond trying to bribe votes and win short term popularity. The knee-jerk "policies" based on their dodgy ideology (which they confuse with strategy) have been disastrous. Had a look at any of the big IT schemes recently?

Norfolk decided bugging bins didn't work so binned them. Government re-thinking this as a result? No, they've given the go ahead for every barmy left-wing council to go ahead. And this is policy?

Do you really think sound strategy and good policy needs to be leaked day to day? Of course not. These people are student union clowns out of their depth.

If there is no coherent message from the Tories, Labour is just a cacophony of incoherent babble. And the master of incoherent babble, Milburn, has just been brought back inside the circus tent to add to the din.

10p tax? Policy? Strategy? And you have the nerve to carp about the opposition?

Nicholas

Alison, Labour have amply demonstrated that there is no point in working hard, generating or acquiring wealth, or saving for the future. Bone idleness, envy and a chip on your shoulder are the things to aspire to in New Labour's Wonky Chocolate Fireguard Factory. Oh, and you need to feel offended a lot.

teledu

Great ad. (What short, punchy ad could appeal to every section of the electorate eh?).
20year-olds with no thoughts about having kids will still get the meassge - that this debt is here for a long, long time.

Verity

Old Timer - Agreed. No ad is going to appeal to every strand of voter, but I think this poster, although it will obviously speak the loudest to parents and grandparents, comes close to universal resonance. I think it will cut a wide swathe through the national consciousness.

Susan Hill

There is an argument that says people only care about future generations so far ahead but no further. It works when they talk about 'climate change' and all the rest of the eco-nonsense having a grave effect somewhere way in the future.. people may care what happens to their children and a bit, though less, their grand-children, but after that they stop caring. I wonder how many people actually worry about saddling their children, actual or putative, with some sort of vague 'debt' ? They care about their own debts but I am dubious about the strength of this 'we are handing on debt to our children' argument. It all becomes a bit theoretical.

Andrew McPhail

Let me tell you right now. David Cameron will never mobilise the 20-something block. Barack Obama has an overwhelming cool factor, because he is a mindblowing orator with a great vision for his country. The same cannot be said for Davey C. Barack Obama is so cool that he doesn't even have to say what music he likes, on the other hand Davey C is compelled to tell everyone what pop culture all too often in order to snatch fleeting interest from the youth vote.

David Bouvier

The point is not policy logic but advertising emotion.

It needs to stand up technically for sure, but the goal of the ad is to put a dagger in your heart.

It should make you feel that the debt increase is wrong, un-loving, mean, selfish, creepy.

Gordon Brown's Labour, it should make you feel, is not something you want to be affiliated with.

Things can not only get better.

Change, hope, blah...

Michael Doyle

Its a great ad.
A good idea though is to use a theme. This 'saddling your children debt' works. But use it with something like Gordon Brown is a second-rate Blair and they are both from the Arfur Daley School of Eckonomicks.

Keep reminding people of Blair by the way ... some erstwhile Labour voters/supporters still have an enduring hatred for Blair and still want to hurt the Labour HQ.

David Bouvier

Andrew McPhail - what actually is Obama's vision for his country? (in even remotely concrete terms). I fear you have had your mind blown.

Great politician; huge charisma; capability as yet untested.

Pete Hoskin

Right, I guess I should have been clearer! I wasn't trying to directly criticise the Tories' latest poster/campaign - as I said above, it's superb. And I wasn't trying to say that it should be replaced by one aimed at 20-somethings, or that one aimed at 20-somethings would be better in and of itself.

Basically, I wanted to point out that politicians can - and should - try to go beyond the "our children" rhetoric; there are both economic and political gains from doing so. That doesn't mean scrapping these campaigns which will have more mass appeal, but it does mean coming up with new, tailored campigns in future. In the case of indebted 20-somethings, I think it's a near-untapped voting bloc, and Gordon Brown's given the Tories the perfect message to reach out to them with.

Or maybe I'm just bisaed because I'm one of those 20-somethings myself!

Nicholas

Crikey, Peter, you're a twenty-something? I imagined from the way you write that you were at least 50+ (that's a compliment btw).

No wonder you guys sometimes get drawn in by the dark side and find it difficult to twist the bayonet once you've lodged it in New Labour's guts.

Hysteria

So Andrew - you fell for it too.........!

The wheels are already coming off the Obama truck here - and he ain't even in the WH yet!

Verity

Andrew McPhail, Obama is not a great orator. He is a very good deliverer of the lines other people write for him. So was Laurence Olivier and I wouldn't have wanted him running a country, either.

Andrew McPhail

Verity

Please note that the definition of an orator is a public speaker. Not a speech writer. Thus meaning the Obama is still a great orator.

You tell me a heavyweight politician that writes his/her own speeches nowadays.

Obama mobilised the youth vote because he offered them tangible economic thought and policy. Compare that to the Tories policy which currently incoherent.

Being 17 with friends who care about political issues, I can tell you that David Cameron is doing nothing to mobilise the youth that voted in droves for Obama.

He represents the old breed of the Conservative Party and has done little to distance himself from them.

Also,Crazy Dave tries too hard to impress the youth vote with Radiohead themed donation schemes.

Verity

Andrew McPhail - Your source for your definition of 'orator', please? People who successfully speak the lines of others movingly, or inspiringly, are what we call 'actors'.

Orators are people who speak their own words and thoughts, sometimes extemporaneously, as in Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson.

"You tell me a heavyweight politician that writes his/her own speeches nowadays." Off the top of my head, Ronald Reagan who, although deceased, is of our time. Jesse Jackson. The Danish Prime Minister, Anders Vogh, Dutch politician Geert Wilders. George Galloway (I know, I know! But he speaks effectively to his constituency and it's all off the top of his head.)

Obama's an actor. He speaks scripts.

Verity

Also, Master Andrew McPhail,there is no old or new breed of Conservative. It is not a laundry detergent. It is a social and economic belief system.

Andrew McPhail

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/orator?view=uk

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=55829&dict=CALD

http://www.wordcentral.com/cgi-bin/student?book=Student&va=orator

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/orator

Boom.

And it's all very well naming a handful of politicians from Denmark and the Nertherlands and our very own George Galloway. Yes there are a few like Reagan but not many, and that was a while back.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1837368,00.html

Turns out Obama writes a large proportion of his speeches anyway. Guess he's a Verity Dictionary Defined Orator now.

Verity

"Turns out Obama writes a large proportion of his speeches anyway."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! I have an oil well I'd be willing to let you have cheap. For cash.

Obama didn't even write his own book. It was written by William Ayers.

Andrew McPhail

Wow, I pity your research.

Not do you not know what orator means but you genuinely believe that William Ayers wrote Obama's book.

I advise you stick to the politics of Denmark and the Netherlands.

Debate terminated.