A new poll out from Politics Home shows that the Balls and Brown attempt to claim that the next election will be a choice between Labour investment and Tory cuts isn’t doing Labour any favours. When asked which party is being most honest about tax and spend, Labour came third on 16 per cent behind the Tories on 37 and the Lib Dems on 28. Not even a majority of Labour supporters think their party is being straighter than other parties about its plans. Among non-aligned voters, only six percent say the Labour party is the most honest.
The smartest strategy for Labour on cuts would have been to make a big show of making some and then claim that any further cuts would dangerously reduce frontline services. This bit of triangulation would have put the Tories in a strategically tricky spot. But, instead, Brown and Balls decided to make a claim that just isn’t credible.
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