Earlier this week I highlighted how Nick Clegg’s speech laying out the foundations of the Liberal Democrat general election manifesto was based around four steps in which health and crime did not feature. Those two policy areas have been dominant in the party’s campaigning over the previous three general elections – in particular in marginal seats.
However, whilst the party seems to be at least dallying with downplaying the emphasis on those two issues from the key national headlines, Labour is headed in the opposite direction. Labour’s 1997 five pledges included one each on health and crime, whilst their likely pledges this time round will include two on health and one on crime.
The economy clearly needs to – and is – featuring far more in the party’s campaigning than in the past, but unless there is a clearer and higher profile story about how the party will improve public services the party’s national message won’t be hitting the right notes with the electorate.
How the party’s manifesto is shaping up in that respect is something I’ll return to shortly with an update on the manifesto process.
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7 Comments
Yes; But you still haven’t said that you will CATEGORICALLY NOT support a minority Labour Government.
If you did, I expect many of those reluctantly having to vote Tory to ensure Labours demise, would switch to voting for you.
Most folk just don’t want to run the risk of another corrupt Labour Government getting in again – with your help!!!
And as you have been told absolutely every time you pop up with the same boring old line, Clegg has “categorically” said that he will not rule this out before the election. This was boring after the third time you said it. Why haven’t you gone and joined the Tories yet, since you’re so obviously keen to do so?
Clegg is right to sit on his hands, and once the election is over can the Lib/Dems say what they are going to do, it is not down to just the leader.
Yes; But you still haven’t said that you will CATEGORICALLY NOT support a minority Labour Government
Neither have the Conservatives. Given that they have made clear they believe politics should be about two big parties competing for government, and support the current electoral system because they believe it leads to that, the natural and honest way they should play it out, should Labour win more seats than the Conservatives but not a majority, would be to say “Labour has won the election” and not vote down a minority Labour government.
Correct procedure, under that scenario, would be for the Queen to call on Gordon Brown first to try and form a government. If we are talking about CATEGORICALLY making statements about what they would do in that situation, it’s just as necessary for Cameron to say as it is for Clegg. So why aren’t media people asking him?
Hear hear, Matthew Huntbach!
It may be for the first time ever, but I’m with you on every word.
Excellent response.
It baffles me why Tories don’t get this.
Nick Clegg has in fact been very clear about this – as clear as he could be without us being seen as a semi-autonomous appendage of Labour or the Tories. The Party will, in a hung parliament, support the party with the ‘greatest mandate.’ There IS some wiggle-room here (the difference between the greatest number of seats and the greatest number of votes), but not very much.
If Labour is as unpopular as the Tories say and the opinion polls show, why are they ‘running scared’ by demanding that the Lib Dems forsware a coalition with Labour beyond what they’ve said already? They have a commanding position, and will probably receive some sort of majority. And if Labour DOES have more MPs/percentage of the vote, it would seem to me completely unfair to prop up a laughable Conservative party that despite all its advantages has been rejected by the electorate. Certainly as bad as propping up a discredited Labour government (which Tories would be the first to complain about, ad nauseum).
Julian
Hear hear, Matthew Huntbach!
It may be for the first time ever, but I’m with you on every word.
Excellent response.
Thanks. It has been hard work, but I am just beginning to see that some of those I have sparred with here are now getting the deeper points I am trying to make in most of what I write.
It baffles me why Tories don’t get this.
Because they are Tories, the cream of England, as the old slogan says (the follow up is left to be filled in).
I used to think the people who ran this country (I mean the people who really run it i.e. the big business people, as well as those who nominally run it, i.e. government) were getting it wrong but at least knew what they were doing. Since the crunch I have been reeling about with my mouth open (metaphorically, but more literally than it could be), with the discovery that no, they don’t know what they are doing either. Take someone like Cameron with a 1st in PPE from Oxford – I used to be a bit intimidated by that. Now I am not – it’s not an act, he really doesn’t get it, and that’s because he is what cream is.