Suddenly it never rains but it pours for David Cameron. He began by spouting some marketing gush about letting sunshine win the day, but, on the eve of the general election, carries the disgruntled frown of a man with wet socks, annoyed there’s a hole in his Guccis.
Lord Ashcroft’s enforced tax-dodging admission is the latest piece in a jigsaw creating the picture of a party fundamentally unchanged. Nasty as ever and motivated by elitism, presenting the interests of a few as the duty of the many, the wheels are wobbling on the old banger with a spray job.
The Tory spring conference in Brighton last weekend was haunted by fear – the fear that Cameron will lose in 2010 as Michael Howard did in 2005, William Hague in 2001 and John Major in 1997. Gone are the cockiness, the arrogant belief that victory was in the bag, the swagger and the smiles. The closing polls tell the story of an electorate scrutinising the Tories and deciding they aren’t convinced by what they see.
The most telling political soundbite of recent months was Gordon Brown’s appeal in Warwick for the electorate to take a second look at Labour and a long, hard look at the Conservatives. In that sentence, he expressed a credible political strategy, acknowledging the election needed to be turned into a choice if Labour was to have a cat in hell’s chance, disrupting the Tory strategy of a one-party contest by running a referendum on a rickety Government showing wear and tear after
13 years.
The Cashcroft affair is a gift which doesn’t require a “long, hard look”, because people on low and middle incomes, plus doubtless a few high earners without access to offshore accounts, understandably resent billionaires avoiding tax while the party in which they hold a prominent position is preparing to scythe public services. When voters look longer and harder, I suspect their nervousness will grow not lessen.
Cameron’s Conservatives remain a band rooted in Thatcherism, making a fetish of cutting services and retching at the very thought of public spending. The “Vote for Change” slogan may be borrowed from Barack Obama, but the Old Etonian David Cameron – who backed Republican John McCain – offers none of the vision, hope or energy of the winner in the United States.
Obama recognises and attempts to harness the potential power of the state to improve lives. Cameron identifies the state as an enemy, a force for bad to be shrunk and bypassed. The role of government remains a dividing line between Labour and the Conservatives – the “helping hand” which helps us stay healthy, teaches our kids, guarantees employment rights against avaricious employers, keeps us safe and 1,001 other things we perhaps only truly value when they’ve gone.
With admittedly a lot of help from stumbling Tories, the Labour Party has become unexpectedly successful at spotlighting Conservative failings, but what do voters see when they take that “second look” at Labour?
Certainly, the Government’s record isn’t anywhere near as bad or the Prime Minister as incompetent as the Cons recklessly misrepresented him when foolishly underestimating a wily campaigner.
I’m as angry as Billy Bragg over the billions expended on banksters as greedy as ever. However, without the autumn 2008 rescue, masterminded by Brown and Alistair Darling, the entire financial system would have collapsed – the recession just gone lingering as a job-destroying great slump.
Yet to kick on, to entice voters to put an “X” next to a Labour candidate’s name, Labour still has to construct a programme and tell a convincing story. Playing the fear card to warn what the Tories would do is all good and well, but it will ultimately fail – and deservedly so – unless Labour sketches out a future worth going to the ballot booth for.
Fairness needs to be at the heart of every policy and statement. Missed goals and own goals since 1997 are no reason to be shy of restating the party’s historic goal of creating a more equal society.
Social justice is a political dividing line between the two main parties, blurred over the decades for sure, but the widening gulf between the country’s poorest and richest – with the lot in the middle nearer those at the bottom than the top when wealth is measured – means it remains the most powerful clarion call of all.
Because to produce a manifesto promising all pain and no gain would disappoint those taking a second look at Labour and make them think a gamble on Cameron is a punt they might take.
The cliché that oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them contains a ring of truth. But Labour is back from the dead and clawing its way back into the race. So it is better to be bold than to invite defeat through paralysis and self-doubt, which are ultimately self-defeating.
Party discipline would see a train timetable or similar endorsed as the manifesto when the Clause V meeting is called, for the Cabinet and National Executive Committee to do the dirty deed. But it would be better to pass something worth voting for instead of a bland, safety-first document. The problem is, despite all the policy forum sessions, I for one have heard little to be excited about. So far.
