Saturday, January 09, 2010

Obscurantism over...

They have seen the light! The blatant lying and disingenuousness has come to an end (we hope): "Darling and Mandelson win election policy battle with weakened PM". Alistair Darling has warned that Britain faces its toughest spending cuts for 20 years if Labour continues in office. [Times Online] Despite what I said yesterday - 'was the coup to dethrone Brown a storm in a teacup on a good day to bury bad news' - perhaps this was the reason for the oh-so-botched leadership challenge, a way to force Brown's hand.

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3 comments:

Paul said...

"Mr Darling and Lord Mandelson were upbeat yesterday after urging the Prime Minister to show the country and the money markets that Labour was more serious than the Conservative Party about slashing public debt and enhancing its credibility with the middle classes."

This worries me to be honest because the spending cuts that will be made will not affect the 'traditional' middle classes as deeply as the Labour heartland. What it means is that Labour will be concentrating on the floating voters, that mythical middle England that switched horses in 1997 and now can't decide which way to vote. Let's be honest the Conservative voter who gave up on Major isn't under the same pressure as the low income family who are suffering because of wage freezes and low paid immigrants.

The Conservatives don't want the traditional Labour voters and in truth can't appeal to them. Labour is pinning all its hopes on pulling some giant white rabbit (or elephant) out of the bag.

Will the Conservatives win in May or is it a case of Labour's corner throwing in the towel before too much blood flows.

Span Ows said...

Well said; some good points and I think what will throw the election (one way or the other) is how many of Labour's traditional core voters stay at home. My guess that with a third of "middle England" in the public sector and a third of "the working class" on benefits it'll be a close call!

Paul said...

I think this weeks events have been the beginning of the end for Labour. I know Cameron really cocked-up on Monday over the NHS and married couples but he can't really do serious damage to anything but his reputation at the moment. The fun will start once the date of the GE is announced.