Politics

Fraser Nelson

Wednesday, 5th November 2008

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

To be sure, Mr Obama won with a message of change — but he was also able to augment this with a firm and quantifiable promise: I will make you better off. This was ‘retail politics’, aimed at those who have no partisan affinity but ask simply what they will get in return for their vote. There are a sizeable number of such voters in Britain and they are open to persuasion. A fifth of George W. Bush’s voters switched to Mr Obama. But they needed a firm, attractive pledge. Their counterparts in Britain will support the party which most credibly offers a good deal.

At last month’s Conservative conference in Birmingham, the slogan was ‘plan for change’. But as one shadow cabinet member pointed out, ‘this is an instruction, not a description. There is no plan for change.’ Tax cuts may be a traumatic issue for the Tories, reviving painful memories of old internal battles, but as Mr McCain found to his political cost, they are not a weapon exclusively reserved for conservatives’ use. The most left-wing senator ever to run for the presidency has just been elected as a tax-cutter. There is nothing to say that Mr Brown will not now attempt to do the same.

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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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