On the doorstep for the local elections the common refrain is: it’s time for a change

26 April 2008

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

Tory central office has produced a brutally effective leaflet spelling out how voters ‘will be hit by Gordon Brown’s tax on hard-pressed families’. Bar staff: £67 more. Typists: £110 more. Road-sweepers: £49 more. Shop cashiers: £227 more. The Prime Minister, the leaflet says, is ‘kicking people when they are down’. Tory activists cannot get enough copies of this leaflet. The effect on the doorsteps is simply devastating.

Mr Brown’s surrender to his backbenchers is too complex to take any sting out of this attack. And in sending a message to his MPs that the laddie is for turning, he will invite several more such rebellions. If today’s opinion polls were tomorrow’s election results (admittedly a big ‘if’), a quarter of Labour MPs would lose their seats. Many had no proper job before politics, and are wondering what they would do after it. In such circumstances, a sense of self-preservation eclipses the sense of loyalty to the party leader.

Mr Brown is not entirely without luck. A very small number of councils are up for grabs this time around, so damage will be limited. He is also defending a low base. Since 1997 Labour has gone from having 48 per cent of council seats to 28 per cent — a figure unlikely to get much smaller. In the expectations-lowering game which always precedes elections, the scenarios the Tories now talk about involve winning just 80 wards (against 911 last year) with Labour taking about 100 and the Liberal Democrats losing about 100.

But for Mr Cameron, the real objective is to make ready a fully staffed party machine — replacing the atrophied apparatus. He is almost there. The Tories will next week be the only party to fight every ward in Yorkshire. It has more candidates in the north-west than Labour. There will be just one more set of local elections, next year, before the real test of a general election. And then Mr Cameron will see just how far he can depend on his new friends in the north.

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Nigel

April 25th, 2008 7:40pm Report this comment

It was never "time for a change" in 1997 (Major was a far better PM than eithe Blair or Brown). I get rather fed up with that cliche after a government's been in power for 3 or 4 terms.

jon livesey

April 25th, 2008 8:44pm Report this comment

I've been thinking recently that Cameron should be a bit worried if Boris loses in London, but a lot worried if he wins.

TrevorH

April 27th, 2008 2:50pm Report this comment

Its perfectly right for people to ask 'what will the conservatives do for me?' and right for you to criticise a woolly answer.

However - we should all remember that such is the cats cradle of means tested credits and benefits in the monumental edifice which Brown has built that any ANY attempt to undo it to simplify it to incentivise it will inevitably create losers as well as winners.

The current system is plain wrong. Conservatives need to change it, but it will create losers. I would abolish all the means tested pensions benefits and winter payments and give a massive increase to the basic pension, but surely some would lose out? Possibly if we had a simpler system we could save on bureaucracy and use that to pay even more.

But you tell me how do you sell that? One promising bye product of this current 10p mess is that the electorate probably see the flaws in Browns post neo classical endogenous growth model now.