Last December, after one of the most brutal PMQs this Parliament has seen, David Cameron was walking through the corridors of the Palace of Westminster to address a 1922 Committee meeting. Ed Miliband had subjected the Prime Minister to a real savaging, and Labour backbenchers had loyally joined in, raising a constituent’s suicide and describing Cameron’s government as ‘grandeur for the few, the workhouse for the many’. It had been a bleak session.
Heading for Committee Room 14, the Prime Minister bumped into a junior minister, who was keen to reassure him that everything would come out in the wash. He told Cameron that ‘they can go for the emotional attack, and we can always come back at them with statistics’. Cameron agreed with him and continued on his way to address the parliamentary party.
That junior minister was probably trying to impress the Prime Minister, but his prediction that the Conservatives would be able to counter Labour’s Dickensian pessimism with statistics seems to be coming true in a most satisfying fashion for the party, with a flow of good stats on the economy, crime, immigration and other key policy areas. If you’re a real optimist, you could even, at a push, view today’s news that house prices are rising as a good thing for the party as it might provide relief for voters currently trapped in negative equity.
But while it is satisfying to watch the Labour party flounder as it realises that it can no longer predicate its political attack strategy on the Coalition continually cocking up and on continually bleak news, the Tories need to be wary of growing complacent for a number of reasons.
The first is that Labour has modified its attack to focusing on the cost of living, asking voters whether they really feel better off than they did five years ago. This week’s immigration policy flop from Chris Bryant means Labour has little option than to talk repeatedly about living standards. They even shoehorned it into their response to the Electoral Commission’s release on party donations, with Sadiq Khan saying ‘hardworking families are seeing their living standards squeezed, with prices rising faster than wages. Meanwhile David Cameron shows how out of touch he is, standing up for the millionaires who fund his party.’
And today’s inflation figures show that this remains a rich seam: CPI inflation was 2.8 per cent year on year in July, down from 2.9 per cent in June. This drop is welcome, but it still means that prices are rising. Inflation remains above target. And food price inflation was 4.4 per cent year on year in July from 3.9 per cent in June, with overall inflation for food, drink, tobacco and energy rising to 5 per cent from 4.7 per cent in June, the highest since early 2012. This means voters paying for their groceries may feel the answer to the ‘are you better off?’ question is clearly a ‘no’ at present. Citi predicts that food price inflation may continue to rise in the next couple of months. And today’s RPI figure means train fares will rise by around 4.1 per cent from January, although many tickets could see a 9 per cent rise. The Tories know that suppressed wages mean they must continue to emphasise what they have already done to alleviate the pressure on family finances, and continue to unveil as many policies as they possibly can over the next few months. This year’s Budget focused on the cost of living: the next autumn statement and 2014 Budget will need to do the same.
The second is strategic: if Labour has struggled with the new landscape of things going as well as one might hope for the government, the Tories could find themselves similarly struggling to cope when Labour stops cocking up too. It’s not clear when that will come: Ed Miliband wants it to be his conference speech, but his shadow cabinet (probably featuring shiny new faces after an expected reshuffle early in the autumn term) will also need to knock it out of the park at the Labour autumn conference to at least give the impression of a tough fighting team. But even the most optimistic of Tory MPs will accept that at some point Labour will do something that is vaguely impressive. Last year we all underestimated Ed Miliband before his party conference, and he then pulled an impressive speech out of the bag that surprised everyone. Underestimating an opposition did for Gordon Brown in the run-up to The Election That Never Was, so the Tories need to keep their wits about them for a change in Labour’s fortunes too.
Cameron also needs to ensure that worries in his own party about Ukip continue to be addressed effectively. Lynton Crosby reassured many in his briefing to MPs in the summer term, but anxiety about next year’s European elections is building, and the party will need to see a coherent plan in place to prevent all-out panic before polling day has even arrived.
For the time being, the Conservatives have polling suggesting they’re moving into a more secure position on the economy, and the retort that yes, times might still be hard, but do you really think Labour would make them any easier? Miliband still seems reluctant to offer any suggestion of how his party could make things easier. And so that junior minister and his colleagues have a good opportunity to fling a few more statistics at their opponents with good effect, for the time being at least.
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