With every policy launch during an election campaign, it is worth asking why a party has chosen that policy and why it is launching it on that particular day. This is generally because answering those questions helps you work out what message a party is trying to send and whether they are on the defensive or offensive. But today it is worth asking this question simply because it would be nice to get an answer: why have the Tories launched two completely unconnected policies which don’t sound very Toryish on the same day?
One of these policies is the freezing of rail fares, which begs the question, why did the Tories expend so much energy criticising Ed Miliband’s energy price freeze? The second policy sees the return of the Big Society, in the form of a requirement for employers of more than 250 people or who are in the public sector to provide three additional days’ paid leave for their staff to volunteer. Mandatory volunteering is a paradox in itself, but it is even more confusing that it is the Conservatives who are slapping more regulation on business.
Eric Pickles certainly struggled to muster much enthusiasm or indeed detail on either policy when quizzed about the announcements on today’s Daily Politics. The Communities Secretary bumbled through questions about the rail fares freeze and then rather undermined the volunteering announcement by repeatedly declaring that firms were already doing it, which rather begs the question of why on earth the Tories want to force them to do it.
The best answer to why these two policies, which do not complement each other, have cropped up today is this: the rail fares may have been long-planned as a good retail offer to make voters feel as though, under the Tories, the good times will roll while the long-term economic plan whirrs away. The volunteering stuff is a riposte to claims that the entire Conservative campaign is negative. This makes the announcement a defensive one, which comes at the end of a week which the Tories have not managed well. Given this was supposed to be the week when voters started engaging with the election, it was not a good time to run a messy campaign.
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