Politics

Fraser Nelson

Wednesday, 5th November 2008

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

Of course the tax issue was simply the last of the campaign messages Mr Obama used — as much as anything, his victory reflects his awesome campaigning abilities and his talent as the best public speaker for perhaps a generation. Yet almost every tracking poll has identified the turnaround in his campaign as the moment when Lehman Brothers collapsed in September. The financial crisis has worked for the Democrats in a way it has emphatically not for the Republicans. Mr Obama not only had a tax cut message to put centre-stage, but he was able to link the turmoil to misjudgments of the last eight years of government.

When the crash came, it was Mr Obama who was able to articulate a plan and Mr McCain left lost for words. In Britain it was Mr Brown who had an instant explanation, and lost no time driving home a message as clear as it is misleading. The Prime Minister repeatedly refers to the ‘global downturn that started in America’, so as to absolve himself from blame. It seems to be working. The Tories have been mystifyingly incapable of linking his reign of error at the Treasury to the debt crisis Britain faces now.

It is as if conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have been grasping for a message on the economy, having not considered it too important beforehand. Mr McCain felt able to confess that ‘the issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should’, a weakness that was painfully apparent during the campaign. Mr Cameron was until recently saying that General Wellbeing (GWB) was at least as important as GDP. How frivolous this message now seems with a tsunami of unemployment, negative equity and repossessions about to hit Britain.

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Hugh McLachlan

November 7th, 2008 10:56pm Report this comment

Politicians, like merchant-bankers, pull their resources.

paul hill

November 9th, 2008 11:37pm Report this comment

Problem is that Osbourne is not a gut tax cutter

Ben

November 10th, 2008 2:00pm Report this comment

...and the Tories will be left behind the curve AGAIN. Honestly, they always seem to be reacting to events not shaping them.

They slavishly follow Blair at just the time Blair becomes widely trashed, they ditch tax-cuts and embrace ever greater public spending - at precisely the time we enter a global recession.

A party that is terrified of its own shadow, which is paraonoid about its' opponents, and lacks the courage to stand up for what it believes in, will be treated with disdain and contempt by the rest of the country.

The Tories must get up off their knees and start making a robust and coherent case for the millions of people let down by this miserable government.

otherwise we'll have another 5 years of Gordon Brown. I think I'd expire.

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