Number 10's flawed plan
James Forsyth 2:27pm
Andrew Grice has an interesting column in the Independent today laying out Number 10's plans for an autumn fightback. The six-step strategy is as follows:
Now, one can pick holes in every step. But I think the biggest problem for Labour is point six, the public - as the reaction to Brown's Afghan speech demonstrates - have just stopped listening to Brown. One can't imagine him inspiring or leading them now."1. Labour will focus on the policy choice between the two main parties because the Tories are more vulnerable on policy than their current opinion poll lead suggests. The Tories are perceived by the public not to have any policies.
2. The focus on Labour's record and future plans will allow it to close the poll gap.
3. As an economic recovery begins, the Government's approach will be seen to have stopped recession turning into depression.
4. Labour must then show how the recovery will be sustained, where the jobs of the future will come from, and how investment in frontline services (health, education and the police) will be protected, while accepting that both efficiency and across-the-board savings are found. (In other words, the Prime Minister should eventually accept the need for spending cuts.)
5. Labour will argue that Britain's future cannot be built without this continued investment, combined with public service reform and a credible plan to reduce future debt without cutting into the fabric of the services that affect people's daily lives.
6. Labour must offer leadership which convinces and inspires, which means focusing on what really matters to the public, offering fewer but more substantial big interventions and a clear policy message."
Previous
TrevorsDen
September 5th, 2009 2:45pm Report this commentIf I were Labour I would not focus on their record. Mind you this is all the more reason that the likes of Fraser needs to highlight Browns lies.
How can labour admit there will be cuts yet still say they will invest.
Anyone can say they prevented something happening if it did not happen.
There is nothing original about this 'strategy' -- it has been Labours 'strategy' since 1924.
There will still be too few helicopters in 2010 in Afghanistan but there will be a few more mine protected vehicles so deaths in Afghanistan may slow before the election - but the govts performance over Afghanistan has been woeful. I thing it is a drag anchor on govt trust.
Verity
September 5th, 2009 2:47pm Report this commentPoint 6. "Labour must offer leadership which convinces and inspires, which means focusing on what really matters to the public ...".
So they'll be discussing mass immigration and repatriation, then?
lawrence greek
September 5th, 2009 3:09pm Report this commentHow many 'fightbacks' is this now? Is this the sixth relaunch? Or the tenth? I just don't know. I have heard all of the above regurgitated in one form or another every three months for the last two years. They can plan as many fightbacks as they like but Brown and Labour are terminally incompetent at executing them. This one will be no different. They're like a broken record, and sh*t one no one wants to listen to.
Boudicca
September 5th, 2009 3:26pm Report this commentWhich is why they WILL get rid of him.
Brown's McCavity act and the debacle of Labour's response to the Megrahi release showed Labour MPs very clearly that, despite promises made in June to do things differently, Brown has not and cannot change.
Darling has now announced that Labour WILL cut public spending after the election (despite months of Brown telling us they won't). Mandelson has gone to ground.
I think he'll be pushed out soon after the Irish have voted again on the LisbonConTreaty - whichever way it goes.
john miller
September 5th, 2009 3:26pm Report this commentGrice says that the Tories count six Brown relaunches. This may therefore be number seven. Since Brown became PM Parliament has sat for about 20 months.
That's a relaunch about every 3 months.
So, we can expect two more before he stands down.
I can barely wait...
Pete-s
September 5th, 2009 4:11pm Report this commentAh! point 6 leadership: Well Straw showed McDooms idea of leadership and trust.
Straw in an interview torpedoed McDoom's statement that there was no double dealing over Megrahi's release. Only a few days ago McDoom stated that his government did not do any deals with Libya over Megrahi. The timeline of events involving Staw's letters make it clear that a deal had been attempted. Straw in an interview has now openly admitted that the prisoner transfer release and the oil deal were intentional.
McDoom LIED again, the contempt with which he treats the citizens of this country is breathtaking. However he will not resign, he has no courage or morals. He will brazen it out by keeping silent or going AWOL, keeping Macavity company. Just because his deal failed is not the point, McDoom attempted the deal and LIED to say he did not. What great LEADERSHIP!
mitch
September 5th, 2009 4:21pm Report this commentMost people never started listening to brown in the first place.
As for relaunches hah! he has had more than the space shuttle.....all to no avail.
Ray
September 5th, 2009 4:24pm Report this commentThe one crucial card that New Labour has left to play in the coming general election is how well it can mobilise the huge client state that it has created over the last twelve years.
The first group of clients are the swollen army of welfare-dependents and others whose lifestyles are subsidised to greater or lesser extent by the state (pensioners enjoying their new free bus passes or free swimming sessions, for example).
The second group is the substantial numbers of first generation immigrants who have arrived here thanks to Labour's open doors immigration and asylum policy (especially those from the Third World, who may also be welfare-dependent clients as well), and who will in all likelihood prove pliable to whichever party will continue the kind of largesse that permits them to bring other dependent family members into the UK as well.
The third group (which the Spectator has majored on in this week's edition) are those extra millions who now work in either the Quangocracy or the bloated public sector, ever-anxious to protect their jobs and non-jobs.
Unfortunately, Cameron will have to an axe to all of these client groups - both in the interests of controlling public spending and promoting a more beneficial work ethic - something hardly likely to win him their undying admiration, at least in the short term.
Alan
September 5th, 2009 4:28pm Report this commentAutumn fightback? Autumn countdown exit plan more like.
Putting Gordon Brown to one side, as most people seem to have done already, a complete reversal of everything done by the Labour party would still not suffice and more of the same is unthinkable. I shudder to think of what Harman has up her sleeve. I honestly can't identify a single good that has come out of this government. Prescott rallies for Go4th (and multiply) to drive home the Labour achievements Ha! I challenge him to tell us what they are. No, I am affraid that no end of relaunches, reshuffles, fightbacks or personality transplants emerge I made my mind up last year during the Lisbon treachery, now convince me I'm wrong Mr Brown.
D K McGregor
September 5th, 2009 4:32pm Report this commentIf they get in again , I am leaving these shores, life is too short . God help us.
Alan Douglas
September 5th, 2009 5:09pm Report this commentAlan, that is unfair. Brown HAS had a personality transplant. From Clunking Fist to Incompetant Hulk. Makes the Great Sulk, aka Ted Heath, look positively benign.
Alan Douglas
David Ossitt
September 5th, 2009 5:39pm Report this commentNumber 10's plans for an autumn fight back. The six-step strategy is as follows:
It is point six that gets to the very heart of the matter.
"6. Labour must offer leadership which convinces and inspires, which means focusing on what really matters to the public"
Point six has three parts:
1. Offer leadership which convinces; this is just the usual labour ‘mumbo jumbo’ who would they be offering leadership to? It can’t be us the public; we already have them as leaders and they are fully aware that we do not want them.
Convinces? Convince us of what? What they really mean is they want us to change our minds, to love them again, to trust them and believe in their constant lies.
2. Inspire; to what. Will one of his aids please tell Gordon that when he speaks, he does inspire many of us to have feelings of nausea if not to actually vomit?
3. What really matters to the public?
This is the big one; he really does not get it, in no particular order.
MP’s expenses nobody has been charged found guilty and sent to prison, why?
Ditto the above it is still going on; thieving is still rife in both Houses of Parliament.
A General Election; now.
A referendum on the EU treaty; now, depending on the result of the referendum a referendum on the desirability of us leaving the EU.
A referendum for the English; on giving the Scots the full independence that they keep on shouting about.
Put a stop to further immigration.
Bring back the death penalty for men and women who torture and murder their own children.
Get rid of all of the Police Services together with the Blunkett’s plastic pretend police and bring back proper Police Forces.
Give those found guilty of crime real punishment.
Bring our troops out of Afghanistan.
Make it a criminal offence for ministers to lie in the Commons and the Lords.
The criminal amount of wasted money that this government keeps on pouring down the drains.
Andy
September 5th, 2009 6:34pm Report this comment"...others whose lifestyles are subsidised to greater or lesser extent by the state (pensioners enjoying their new free bus passes or free swimming sessions, for example)" It may interest you to know, Ray, that while I may qualify for a free bus pass (free swimming lessons are not provided at my local pool) I don't have one. Neither will I vote Labour. I've survived Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan and now Blair and Brown. I, at least, have learned from history.
Nicholas
September 5th, 2009 10:05pm Report this commentCan't believe the media report all this so seriously without rofl their a off. The man and his party (I won't dignify them by calling them a government) are a joke. After almost 13 years of their unrelenting crapola they have the audacity to talk about their plans as if they have just been elected.
And as for their record and future plans closing the gap in the polls? You cannot be serious Brown! Your record is abysmal and your future plans consist of more 1960's East German nonsense designed to burden the long-suffering English with more yokes of regulation gloom and guilt.
We've had enough of you. We don't want you. Just go and take your ghastly gang with you - that goes for all the bearded lefty Mr and Mrs useless public sector quango spongers living off and lording it over the taxpayers too.
It's a shame that the traditional English salutation of rotten eggs for useless and hated politicians is now a criminal offence enforced by your nasty politicised police because, Brown you bounder, do you ever deserve a cartload of them.
Whoever gets in next year, as long as it's not you and your rotten party, it will be like the Restoration after Cromwell.
David
September 6th, 2009 10:11am Report this commentRay, "The one crucial card that New Labour has left to play in the coming general election is how well it can mobilise the huge client state that it has created over the last twelve years."
Most people in the NE say they will not vote labour because Brown is Scottish, also Newcastle'council gone LibDem. Some hope.
Stepney
September 6th, 2009 11:02am Report this commentThe fact remains that there comes a time when you've pissed off just about every sector of society, the scales have dropped from the publics eyes and people look to the astonishing waste of their taxes and simply say "enough is enough".
Labour could send us all on holiday for the next 6 months with copious pocket money and lots of sweeties and we'd still boot the buggers out.
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