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Wednesday 9 July 2008

Politics

Now Gordon Brown has been found out, the Tories should think twice about copying him

The Potemkin Chancellor might be found out now that he is Prime Minister

George Osborne may very well be next to drink from this chalice. He is mindful that oppositions do not always benefit from economic malaise (witness Neil Kinnock in 1992) and until recently David Cameron suspected the same would be true for the Conservatives. One of Mr Brown’s infuriating accomplishments was to be perceived by the public as the man one would trust in an economic downturn. The Tories could swear and spit, but in the summer the polls were unequivocal: Mr Brown’s reward for sending the economy south would be re-election so that he could fix it.

Those days are over. For the first sustained period since Black Wednesday, Labour has lost its lead over the Conservatives for economic competence — a measure which is normally key to winning an election. Yet the Tory leader’s strategy has been to match Mr Brown’s spending plans, and to offer the electorate the same ideas without Mr Brown himself. The question facing Mr Cameron this Christmas recess is whether this is wise — given that Mr Brown’s policies are manifestly failing.

Mr Osborne’s instincts remain to stress ‘stability’ rather than tax cuts (this is in order of emphasis — he has, at long last, given up pretending there is a contradiction between the two). For now, his priority is winning over the business world and persuading the City that the Northern Rock debacle would not have happened under the Tories. He is betting that events will continue to conspire against Mr Brown’s reputation as the custodian of ‘stability’, and that the Tories’ best chance is to pose as the safer bet.

Mr Osborne believes that Mr Brown’s hardy perennial line — ‘Tory cuts’ versus ‘Labour investment’ — will lose its potency this time. Yet the shadow Chancellor is not minded to amend his proposal to outspend Labour on the public services. This would, at any rate, put rocket boosters under Tory education policy — enabling the Cameroons to offer £6,000 per pupil to any body that would open up a new school in the state sector. As for defence, it is likely to have an even smaller slice of the Conservative pie than its ever-shrinking share of Mr Brown’s budgets.

All Tory roads lead towards a May 2010 election (the date which is now becoming orthodox in Westminster). Mr Cameron’s plan is to spend next year wooing business, and look at personal tax only in 2009. This underscores the safety-first approach to Tory policy (save for radical education and welfare plans, to be outlined next month). The guiding principle is to look mature and ready for government, and do nothing that would help Mr Brown portray the Tories as a risk.

For most of his time in No. 11, Mr Brown regurgitated the joke that there are two types of Chancellors: those who fail, and those who get out in time. Yet he has hardly escaped by moving next door to No. 10 Downing Street: there is no one else to blame for a Britain which today suffers the highest inflation and worst deficit in western Europe. Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne calculate that this is not their battle. That if the roof does indeed fall in on the British economy next year, it will be a personal matter between Mr Brown and the British public — and that the best thing the Tories can do is stand well back.

More articles from: Fraser Nelson | this section

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