Politics

8 November 2008

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

There was something almost comic about Gordon Brown and David Cameron’s rush to associate themselves with Barack Obama’s victory, each offering their own quite different interpretation. The Prime Minister declared that people are looking to government to help them during the economic downturn. The Conservative leader, with no less confidence, asserted that people are obviously hungry for change. But neither British party leader will have felt comfortable with the slogan which the Democrats were pushing in every swing state until the last possible minute: ‘Obama-Biden for tax cuts’.

The Conservative leadership persuaded itself some time ago that elections are not won with such a message. The view, held in some Cameroon quarters with almost religious fervour, is that the British thrice rejected tax cuts and should not be offered them again. When George Osborne’s political capital was greater, he would speak about ‘educating the party’ on the issue of tax cuts. Yet at the last Tory conference, I met some delegates only half-joking about an ‘educating the Osborne’ session, in which they would teach the shadow chancellor how to fight a spendthrift government with a tax-cutting message.

Mr Obama has just given a rather spectacular lesson in how to do it. While John McCain seemed a little squeamish about his offer of tax cuts (which would, after all, increase the deficit) Mr Obama was utterly unapologetic. It became one of his core pledges to America, placed at the heart of every major speech and rally address — and it had a galvanising effect. When asked which of the candidates was the ‘real’ tax-cutter, polls showed that Mr Obama beat Mr McCain three to one — even though the Republican plan was, in fact, the better-formulated and further-reaching of the two. Obama thus stole a key issue from his rivals, as George W. Bush once did with education, and Bill Clinton with welfare reform.

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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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