The Tories have another election broadcast out tonight that builds on the message of their manifesto: that they are for hardworking blue-collar people and that if you want sunshine, vote Tory. To that end, every outside shot in the film is bathed in sunlight, and everyone is in a pretty good mood: laughing as they work, smiling fondly at a newborn baby, grinning as they climb up the stairs (a child).
Most of the attacks on Labour are framed as positives: that the Tories are freeing people from ‘mountains of debt’ and that businesses ‘aren’t held back’. But there is a direct reference to Labour, which is in the section featuring the Prime Minister, in which he says:
‘Now Labour would put all of these things at risk with their plans for more borrowing, more debt and more taxes.’
Tories do feel as though they have got their campaign back on track in the past few days, though I have still picked up one or two gripes from senior ministers who don’t yet feel there is much vision or excitement. One was unimpressed with the minimum wage announcement, saying it would ‘inspire no-one’ and ‘we should be showing how Britons stand to earn higher and better salaries in a Conservative-managed economy, not just make the minimum wage bearable’.
A colleague in a marginal seat says he was very happy with the document, which was a ‘real-turbocharged kick-start focusing on a positive reason to vote blue’, but that he worries about the strength of the ground war that the Tories can wage in many seats. And this is the worry from now on: the Tories may have just the message, in spite of gripes from some quarters and they may have just the election broadcasts. But if they’re not as good at contacting those voters who will swing the election and talking to them, finding out where they stand and following them up, then they will struggle.
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