Monday
It’s all v odd. As far as I can tell, until this week we didn’t have any tax cuts at all and people were jolly cross about it. Now we seem to have dozens of tax cuts which we are going to have to drop and people are even crosser. What I want to know is, how did we get from having a policy of no tax cuts which definitely was going to happen, to having a policy of loads of tax cuts which possibly isn’t going to happen? And isn’t the result broadly the same in both cases? So what’s all the fuss about?? I just cannot get my head around it. The strangest thing of all is why Ken is suddenly answering his phone at weekends and agreeing to our requests to go on Sunday television programmes to talk about the economy. That doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense on any level.
Tuesday
Phew! I’m just out of a big strategy meeting with Jed and am happy to be able to completely explain everything now: when Ken said we were not going to cut inheritance tax he was, in fact, referring to a general aspiration not to cut it. It was in no way a firm pledge of a U-turn. As such our policy remains unchanged: to definitely try to probably cut inheritance tax very speedily before the end of a first term if we can at all afford it which doesn’t look at all possible at the moment but you never know what could happen so we absolutely intend to keep saying we’ll do it. After all, a promise is a promise! I knew there would be a rational and deeply moral explanation.
Wednesday
Thought Ken would be locked in the Austerity Room with Mr Willetts and made to wrestle with Ikea flatpacks as part of our Be The Social Change experiment. But he was fêted like a hero when he came into the office today and even given cappuccino, which none of us have been allowed in weeks due to froth rationing.
Jed says he’s done the party a huge favour. By stupidly stumbling into a big, damaging row he has made people realise how brilliant and radical our taxcutting plans were before we had to water them down. Although any watering down is merely an aspirational watering and not really happening, of course.
In any case, no one ever went on about how radical our policies were before Ken accidentally scrapped them. So now Jed wants a list of other proposals Ken could temporarily rubbish then Dave decisively reinstate a day later, thus demonstrating conviction and authority. From small and rather mushy acorns do great strategies grow!
Thursday
Mr Hague on the phone again asking why we haven’t put out an update on his campaign to safeguard Wensleydale cheese. I said the press release had obviously got a bit lost in the system and I would chase it up. Maybe if we announced we had a hard-hitting policy on cheese and then got Ken to rubbish it, we might be able to convince people it was actually really rather super. Worth a try…
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