Unfunded spending
Matthew d'Ancona 5:15pmMy prize for comment of the day goes to CS responding to my earlier post on Patricia Hewitt: "Just saw Old Pat on the TV slagging off her opponents' 'unfunded policies'. If the government has a budget deficit which it keeps having to revise upwards, doesn't that mean that its own spending is unfunded?"
This is a simple but brilliant point. We will hear the mantra “unfunded policies” from Labour more often than I care to mention: at present the figure alleged by Gordon and co. is £10 billion-worth of such Tory measures. But – even assuming this is an accurate figure - £10 billion is small potatoes compared to the deficit the Labour Government has already chalked up. One of Paddy Ashdown’s more effective attack lines before the 1997 election was to refer all the time to the “John Major Debt” and the cost of servicing it. The Tories should do the same to Gordon. As more voters go into overdraft, they will feel the sting of the national debt too if it is pointed out to them often enough.
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TGF UKIP
March 12th, 2008 7:02pm Report this commentCS has Coffee House and you, Matthew, have Coffee House, The Speccie and The Sunday Telegraph to register such a well made point. On their much larger stage why can't your mates Dave and Boy George make the point even more loudly and tellingly?
Tiberius
March 12th, 2008 9:10pm Report this commentThe point about the deficit is made frequently, TGF, even sometimes on BBC News. Cameron included it in his response today. Labour is able to avoid the charge sticking because they are still instinctively seen by many as the best representatives of the underdog or the underprivileged (the flip side being the Tories still risk being seen as the opposite). A supplementary question is how many swing voters understand the implications of a tabulation like Fraser's? Shouting loudly will not make the point any more successfully. It will just turn listeners off. Labour has managed to avoid anything as definitive as Black Wednesday, and without one of those the Tories continue to face a struggle infinitely more difficult than the one Blair had in 1997.
TGF UKIP
March 12th, 2008 11:54pm Report this commentTiberius, it really all is about political communication. This, pre 97, New Labour were brilliant at - it was the particular genius of Campbell and Mandeslon to package the phrases and then get them chanted by every front and backbencher in every medium. Even though Dave's only "proper" job was as a PR man, your boys just can't relate or communicate with a large chunk of Britain especially outside London and the South East. If the situation were reversed, as I have been posting for months, the phrase " Gordon Brown's Mountain of Debt" would never have been off the airwaves. "You tell them, then you tell them again, then you tell 'em what you've just told 'em and then you tell them again." Blair and Campbell understood, Cameron and Hilton don't - they're far too sophisticated for that. Lucky, lucky Gordon
Nicholas
March 13th, 2008 11:00am Report this commentFor once I agree with TGF. The Conservatives are not creating the mantra of soundbites necessary to pillory New Labour.
SC
March 13th, 2008 12:23pm Report this commentWhile I'm in no way reluctant to bask in a bit of brief praise (and from the editor of all people), honesty compels me to admit that I pinched the line off Eric Pickles swattting Yvette Cooper last year in the Commons (8th Nov). Although Mr Pickles' comedy Northerner accent (as a Northerner I'm allowed to say that) can sometimes distract, it has the advantage that, when he really is angry, it sounds much more impressive and Old Testament than a Home Counties accent would speaking the same words. One of those moments which blows away the cobwebs and leaves you kicking yourself for not having seen it before.
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