Towards the end of last week, the Tories were looking a bit miserable. Their slow response to Labour’s non-coms announcement, coupled with a ‘dead cat’ response from Michael Fallon which made the party look rattled and unpleasant had left the Conservative campaign looking unusually disorganised and slow-witted.
But ministers have tried to pick things up, and some of their announcements in particular have left Labour in a similar mess. The story that David Cameron’s party will meet the £8bn demand for health funding from NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens has left Labour hopping around looking a bit cross and awkward. This was not how the party had planned things: only weeks ago it had released a scary poster claiming the Tories will ‘cut to the bone’, and now their opponents are outgunning them by £5.5bn (Labour has said it would put £2.5bn in).
The Labour response was that the Tories hadn’t set out how they would fund this £8bn, and therefore no-one would believe it. They’ve had a few weeks to work this line out, as Jeremy Hunt actually revealed it in an interview with the Sunday Times at the end of March. And their response isn’t particularly good. Here’s why.
It is indeed true that the Tories haven’t set out how they would fund the pledge: on today’s Pienaar’s Politics, Priti Patel said:
‘What I would say… on something as important as the NHS when we look at what we’ve done in government and the competence around our economic plan and how we’ve managed the government as well in terms of public finances, we know perfectly well that through some of the decisions that we have made, we have been able to secure spending in key public services and invest more in the NHS while dealing with all of the other issues, you know, consolidation across government departments, tackling welfare issues…
‘It’s not an apparent willingness, it’s a fact, we will make it happen and we have been committed to the NHS during the course of this parliament as well.’
So basically the Tory line on funding this £8bn for the NHS is the same as the line they use when asked about the detail on how they would cut welfare in the next Parliament: trust us because of our record. Now, you can quibble about whether or not that record always stands up to scrutiny, and we on Coffee House do enjoy a good graph or two that suggests it’s not as shiny as the Tories like to say. But the fact is that the Tories out-poll Labour on the economy and therefore enjoy more goodwill from voters when they say ‘trust in me’. And that’s what makes it so difficult for Labour to counter, even on an issue where they make the running: when the Tories say they’ll fund something, voters do tend to trust them.
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