The Autumn Statement isn’t until Thursday, but already it’s clear what the attack lines will be from both sides. As James explained earlier, the Tories and Lib Dems will want to focus on the ‘responsible recovery’, which means fewer giveaways than a Chancellor might be tempted to make at this stage in a parliament and which feeds into the Conservative narrative that voters should let them finish the job by re-electing them in 2015.
From Labour’s part, it’s that this Autumn Statement was written by Ed Miliband at his party’s conference in Brighton. Labour MPs are now very keen to talk about Coalition politicians dancing to Labour’s tune. Meanwhile, Ed Balls is quite keen to talk about naked politicians. He told Pienaar’s Politics this morning:
‘What’s happened today is that David Cameron and Nick Clegg – in a rather bizarre joint article in the Sun – have decided they’re going to try and engage Ed Miliband on Labour’s territory: pointing out the cost of living crisis; the failure of action on energy prices; the fact that most people are worse off – not better off – compared to 2010. But they’ve raised the issue and they’ve not got an answer, and therefore David Cameron and Nick Clegg both look together a bit naked today.’
Fortunately, as Danny Alexander protested from the studio that he at least was fully clothed, Balls hastily added ‘that was a metaphor, by the way – that was a metaphor. It was not intended to be more than a metaphor’.
Balls clearly wants to argue that Labour is already influencing government policy from opposition. That may be true, but it doesn’t necessarily connect to voters believing that a Labour government would be a credible and safe option. He can talk about naked politicians as much as he likes, but all his own dithering over high-speed rail and rumours in the party that figures who may or may not include Balls would like to ‘shrink’ the party’s offer in 2015 so it doesn’t promise too much underline that the Shadow Chancellor knows that voters might just see Labour’s own promises as being as credible as the emperor’s new clothes.
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