When Gordon Brown has nightmares, what does he see? I suspect it’s something pretty close to Ken Cox’s brilliant cartoon to accompany my cover piece in this week’s Spectator. It shows Cameron and Osborne in their Bullingdon Club outfits jostling Brown, taking a leg each, until borrowed cash is falling out of his pockets. Like all confidence tricksters, Brown will live in fear of being rumbled, having gotten away with so much for so long so far. And I think that – after an agonising period of faffing about – Cameron and Osborne are finally on his case . There are five reasons why the PBR plays into Tory hands. Here they are:
1. Brown’s so-called splurge is a more of a squirt. Cutting VAT to 15% won’t make a blind bit of difference to the violent trajectory of the recession and this will be painfully obvious by Easter.
2. In the same way that a waitress is more offended by a 5p tip than no tip, the public are more angered by this pathetic excuse for “helping people” (as Brown calls this) than by nothing at all. I did the Richard Bacon phone-in on Five Live on the night of the Budget, and none of his callers had a good word to say about it. These are the people whose verdict Brown should fear the most.
3. His Budget forecasts are simply unbelieveable, and he’ll have to tear them up in the April budget with a greater borrowing forecast. And what’s he going to blame that on – another unforeseen world event?
4. He’s abandoned the two founding planks of New Labour: balance budgets, and don’t threaten tax rises for the rich. As an economist, Brown will know the 45% tax would being in no extra money. But his thirst for Tory blood is always the strongest emotion, and always leads him into his worst misjudgements
5. He’s let loose the dogs of class war. He’s licensed backbenchers to shout “toff” at Cameron and Osborne and make wealth jokes, As Quentin Letts says in the Mail today, the more this happens the further from the centre ground Labour becomes.
If I were Cameron, I’d keep as quiet as possible. Survey this rapidly-changing territory, occupy the centre ground Brown is foolishly vacating and encourage as many of these class-based attacks as possible. He needs to provoke; to have Brown come at him with the greatest class-based fury this selectively-educated Prime Minister can muster; to wear a suit to PMQs that closely resembles the high white lapels of the Bullingdon kit, just to push Brown over the edge. This weird, retro, class war agenda is Brown’s biggest weakness. It has led him to kill New Labour, the greatest Tory-crushing machine ever invented, and it will lead him to more errors. Cameron just needs to light the touchpaper.
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