Sorry to be militaristic. This is the signal that the Royal Navy used to make it a supreme force in the world two hundred years ago.
What is the one factor that is preventing thousands of electors giving the Tories another turn? It is fear of what they did last time. It is fear of Margaret Thatcher’s impact on unemployment and on essential services.
Cameron’s main objective has been to move this stigma from the brand – cut’s in services, dole queues, the nasty party.
This morning Osborne admitted on the Today Programme that he will be ‘Tougher than Thatcher’.
Already the Today programme is leading its web page with the headline
“Osborne will be ‘tougher than Thatcher’.” Note the quotes. He has pinned his colours to the mast.
Ken Clark had admitted recently that in percentage terms the cuts would exceed those of any previous modern government, more than those introduced by Margaret Thatcher. Asked if he agreed with that, Osborne said “Yes, tougher than Margaret Thatcher.”
This is a key test of the Party’s campaigning ability. How will we respond? Will be lead on this admission? Will candidates throughout the country be pointing constituents to the real nature of a future Tory Government. Painting a vivid picture of what life was like from 1979.
Will they be using their email and text contacts to get this message across?
Will they be writing now the single issue leaflet splashing the admission and putting it through as many doors as possible by Sunday evening?
Will the Campaigns Department and ALDC be providing material for them to do so?
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7 Comments
“This is a key test of the Party’s campaigning ability. How will we respond?”
Probably by attempting to outflank the Tories on the “savage” side, if past experience is anything to go by …
By putting those quotes on leaflets targetted to Labour voters in areas where the fight is between us and the Tories, of course. I don’t think you have anything to worry about; this is stuff we’ve been doing for years.
“By putting those quotes on leaflets targetted to Labour voters in areas where the fight is between us and the Tories, of course.”
The implication being that it’s only Labour voters who would find it disturbing?
This needs to be hung firmly around Osborne’s neck. Clarke has tried in vain to project a more balanced view and admit the forthcoming tax rises, but he’s not going to be the Chancellor. Cameron has also tried to calm Osborne down, and all that has achieved is that he has become even more shrill and insistent.
Let’s be fair, Blair and Brown waited until they’d governed together before they started screaming at each other!
The implication being, Anthony, that on average Labour voters are more likely to vote to stop Tory cuts than Tory voters. If the squeeze message in the aforementioned leaflet is effective, they’ll get (1) Tories will cut public services (2) Labour can’t win here (3) Only a Lib Dem MP will fight to stop the cuts.
Of course, the message needs to be finessed, but one of the advantages of being a smaller party is increased independence from the central line for our MPs. So they can genuinely claim to be fighting to stop cuts to services in that particular constituency, even if our policies may result in overall cuts.
It’s also why when we’re finally in a position to become contenders for the governing party, we’ll need to fire everyone currently in the Campaigns Department, because the approach I’m giving here doesn’t work when we can’t allow our MPs that degree of independence. Just look at how ridiculous Labour MPs appear when ‘fighting’ to stop post office closures.
Well, if nothing else you deserve credit for the openness with which you display your cynicism!
I will never vote for the group Mrs Thatcher led. Never. Her policies destroyed my city. And it is still in a woeful state.
I was handed my redundancy notice under her government in the 1980s at the age of 16. When I landed that job, I thought I was lucky to have it. And then it was gone. Almost all of the fathers in my area were put out of work, men who were skilled tradesmen cast off and in the process we lost the very people who should have been handing on those skills to those who should have been their apprentices.
They never recovered, not really. When you take hardworking men and destroy their self-respect, their dignity, you are setting them a tough task. Those men were tough men, but they struggled to survive the effects of the shrill Margaret Thatcher. It doesn’t help when you compound that stress with rare low-paid jobs and the word ‘scrounger’. The unemployment was created as a means to an end. It could be argued the unemployed were the political sacrifice. Those sacrificied were shown no respect. They were berated like naughty little children before the headmistress.
Before Thatcher my parents, our neighbours, my elder brother could walk away from a job and pick up another easily. If it took 3 or 4 weeks to find a new job they thought things were bad, really bad! As an adult that is an alien concept to me.
They moved from destroying industries to turning on communities, depicting the unemployed communities as lazy. Remember the ‘Get on your bike’? There was no apology, no attempt at compassion, no taking responsibility for political decisions or expressions of regret.
I’m sure I saw a documentary, I think it was Panorama, many years ago, based on the investigations of a student who had set about analysing the TV adverts aimed at demonstrating the government effort to help people back to work. I’m pretty sure the findings demonstrated most of the money was spent to ensure those with jobs in high employment areas saw the adverts after their evening commute, while they were shown less frequently and in the middle of the night in areas that had high unemployment. I’m sure I saw that, though it might have been only a nightmare for all the evidence I’ve got to back it up.
Now it seems we’ve gone even further in the distaste and resentment we in this country show towards the poor and the unemployed. If I had the time, I’d spend some time looking at the news over the past two years and count how many times a politician mentions benefit cheat every time they talk about benefits for the poor. We’ve heard endless chatter about work/life balance but very little concern about those who have jobs working more and more hours unpaid as they desperately try to hold onto their jobs. Surprisingly it seems I rarely hear or see them discuss tax avoidance and tax evasion while they discuss what they are doing for businesses.
We hear about training. What training can JobCentre provide that graduates need? We asked our fathers to retrain from being joiners to being shop assistants or working in a call centre. They learned their trade at the expense of their employer. The price they paid was in lost pride and self. Now, we have graduates who have paid handsomely for their education, yet we are asking them to try something new; regardless if they are half-way through their careers or at the threshold. -respect. How on earth will these younger generations recover a career that has yet to begin? We should be ashamed. And everyone should be concerned at resentment appearing.
People are terrified of unemployment. I am. Aren’t you? Too many people from too many walks of life have problems finding work. The recession has brought the reality of that fear to too many people, to people who thought it wouldn’t happen to them. Too many people have lost hard earned careers. Again. Why on earth would anyone think returning to anything like the politics of Thatcher is a good idea? Thatcher was the queen of deregulation. Look at where that wonderful bag of ideas has brought us!
We wondered why we couldn’t easily find a plumber or a joiner. It won’t be too long until we are wondering why sons and daughters live hundreds of miles away from their elderly parents, elderly parents who could be doing with some help to get to the shops etc. Some scars don’t heal. Most scars that do heal are visible, if you take the time to look carefully. They frequently leave weaknesses, weaknesses we will all discover given time.
What the LibDems must do is make it clear what being even remotely like Thatcher means let alone tougher than Thatcher to those who have no memory of that woman and her days in power. For those of us with a few miles under our belt, we know what it means. We know it doesn’t mean destroying the financial industry in quite the same way as heavy industry was destroyed! We know it does not mean ensuring those responsible for this economic disaster are held to account and asked to put their hands in their pockets. We know it means the rich will get richer while everyone else will get poorer. Something about big cats with spots comes to mind. But will the younger voters?
It means bullying and berating those on the receiving end of the stick.
This should be an easy election to increase votes. You are competing with a party promising to be tougher than Thatcher and another that reportedly dreamt up the idea of charging a magnificent 26% on crisis loans to the poor; an idea so magnificent it apparently made it all the way to the PM before being binned!