It’s the first day back for MPs and even though we are still months, not weeks, away from the General Election, the parties are all already launching themselves down the campaign roller coaster. Ed Miliband is launching his General Election campaign today and the action will start to shift from the now dull and empty House of Commons to seats around the country.
Both sides have spent the past few months predicting a dirty and tough campaign, and if today’s diary is anything to go by, they’ll all be utterly shattered by polling day too, with a tough pace to keep. We have a speech from Ed Miliband, a press conference from a good chunk of the Tories on Cabinet and Nick Clegg’s press briefing all before lunchtime. Yet no-one seems to be planning to say anything new. The Tories want to warn about Labour’s unfunded spending pledges, Labour wants to warn about the NHS and the Lib Dems want to say they’re more reasonable than anyone else. The newest thing is Ed Miliband’s call for four million doorstep conversations between his activists and voters over the next four months. But even that tells us no more than that Labour will be placing a great deal of emphasis on campaign organisation and less on Miliband himself.
The difference in language between the Labour leader and David Cameron is striking. The Prime Minister turned up to his Marr interview determined to pump out a series of phrases about his leadership over and over again, referring to ‘my record’, ‘my leadership’ and so on. Miliband will say today that he will be leading those doorstep conversations, but naturally his focus is more on his party’s vision and values than on Miliband the man as the former is more attractive to voters than the latter. He had Andy Burnham emoting about the NHS on Today this morning to help with the campaign launch.
But Burnham’s interview told us a great deal about the way both parties plan to campaign. The Shadow Health Secretary faced repeated questions about whether his warnings about privatisation were really sincere given his own record in government, while the Tories have struggled over the past few days when confronted with accusations that they are not being entirely clear on deficit reduction. Burnham sounded a bit like he was going to cry in parts of his interview as he made claims about the danger the. NHS is in, while the Tories hope that slick posters and an impressive Prime Minister pumping an interview with soundbites will distract from their failure to meet any of their own targets on deficit reduction. Both clearly hope that if you say something forcefully enough and often enough, voters will believe it to be true.
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