Brown Implodes Mandelson's Campaign

Been reading a few hand-wringing blogposts around and about reinforcing the idea that after that truly appalling rant at the weird, "Citizen UK" rally, Brown had somehow found his voice at the eleventh hour. Of course, it's in the nature of the media that these things become self-reinforcing narratives leading, usually at breakneck speed, to some sort of settled view or consensus, however totally detached from the truth - or reality - it might be. In fact, you could argue that the general election battle is a battle not just for a vote, but to influence that mercurial, flowing media narrative and try to alter, if you like, the course of the discourse - so to speak.

So in one sense - this sense - one could say that Brown sort of succeeded. He has shifted the narrative slightly - maybe - with the BBC on this morning's Today programme being willing accomplices, typically, or even the initiators of this latest little change of tack. But we know that the whole narrative, whichever way it is leaning, is generally nonsense anyway; that the reality is rather different, regardless of whether it influences people's minds or not.

The reality is that Brown, with his back against the wall and his campaign leaders pulling in three different directions, telling their own voters to vote for other parties (David Blackburn was pretty amusing on this in the morning), has decided unsurprisingly to get all atavistic on our butts; to go back to the old irrational, deceitful, Tory-hating, prehistoric Balls-Brown fake dividing line that Mandelson and Darling worked so hard to move away from and onto less toxic, less risky ground. They tried to decontaminate brand Brown. It seems they failed.

But they at least could see the bigger picture that concerns the whole future of Labour. I figure they calculated that if they allowed Brown to lie about phantom Tory cuts/ equally phantom Labour spending, won the election and then proceeded to cut everything in sight having been ordered to by the IMF, they would lose the next election (which would probably come soon afterwards anyway) by a country mile, be truly obliterated this time by a livid electorate, and secure 25 years of Tory government into the bargain without David Cameron even having to break sweat.

So, the upshot is that, despite the direction in which the media narrative is currently veering, apparently and irrelevantly, the fact is that Brown has got it disastrously wrong. He's not only reverted to type (who could have doubted that he wouldn't - that's all he is, after all), but he's actually going to lose the election on the back of it too, so we can skip the brief period of the total turmoil of a Labour government winning on a lie and collapsing within months as the economy tears itself apart and move straight onto the Tories.

All in all, the couple of more rational members of the former Labour cabinet must be tearing their collective hair out (that doesn't include Liam Byrne, naturally) gnashing their teeth and generally wailing a lot. Thanks to Gordon Brown, the whole, elegantly triangulated (and exquisitely dishonest rather than brutally deceitful) Mandelsonian election campaign strategy has now totally imploded and will suck the party down with it.

As I've said before, they only have themselves to blame. They could have removed Brown a long time ago. Hell, they never should have taken the piss out of the electorate by giving the auld wrecker a coronation in the first place. But that's all history now, and so is Labour. The one silver lining is that if there is any justice left in this world, or, indeed, sense left in this country, then even if Labour aren't kicked into third place and kicked into touch for a generation - even if they manage by some miracle to keep Cameron down to a minority government - Brown will be gone.

Even I, ever the optimist who still firmly believes in the clear Tory triumph - if by some horrible, perverted twist of fate I'm wrong, even I would happily settle just for the end of Brown if I can't have anything else. That outcome would be by no means satisfying, or even satisfactory, but it'd be one hell of a relief.

Thirteen Years Was All It Took...

...for New Labour under first Blair, then Brown, to ruin Britain. It's worth watching this again just to remind yourself why you're not voting for Labour - and why you shouldn't risk voting for the Liberal Democrats.


The only party that can be trusted to make a start on rescuing the British economy, and securing genuine recovery, is the Conservative party.

The Final Push For Power

Outstanding. In every way. Powerful and thought-provoking and, of course, all true - something the Labour/Libdum campaigns can't boast. I hope this one makes its way onto the telly.

The Spectator has blogged on this already, having been ringside at its launch about an hour ago. Peter Hoskin of that esteemed organ writes:

It was a good nine minutes long, and might as well have been titled The Downfall of New Labour. The opening shots were of Blair and Brown in 97: "a new dawn," and all that. But Blair's image soon faded to black-and-white, and we were bombarded with a montage of headlines, quotes and images which highlighted the failures of the Labour years. 10p tax. Falling education standards. MRSA. The misdemeanours of Peter Mandelson. Defence spending. Purnell's resignation. Gillian Duffy. Even Manish Sood's comments today. Depending on your disposition, it was all gorily nostalgic stuff. Negative, yes. But quite powerful nonetheless.

Speaking afterwards, and in response to questions, Jeremy Hunt was keen to emphasise two things: that a (tactical) vote for the Lib Dems could mean five more years of this, and that the Tories also have a positive message. The latter point is undeniable – as demonstrated by Cameron's contract with voters this week. But it's striking that the party has chosen to round out its campaign with an all-out assault on Brown and his compatriots. Deep down, you suspect, they always knew he was their biggest asset.

Yes, but there's also nothing like telling it like it is. People are crying out for honesty - and, yes, for change. Show me someone who really believes that with five more years of the wrecker and divider Brown, or with Labour's little, yellow mini-me bruvvas and sistas, the Illiberal Democrats, you will get change and I'll show you either a liar or an activist or a fool (or all of the above rolled into one).

Whatever the impact of this broadcast will depend on its circulation, of course. But if it were to be widely seen, then I think it would have a big effect on polling, but not because, as Hoskin suggests, Brown is the Tories' biggest asset, 13 years of Labour dishonesty and failure is.

Tolling Bells

Seems to me that just about all the polls, dodgy or not, are showing that the Conservatives are pulling ahead. But the Angus Reid one (and they're the most trustworthy pollster, we are led to believe by some) today in the Express, should send shockwaves through the Labour party. It is Labour's worst poll since 1918 and, if repeated, would represent the eclipsing of Labour by the Liberals - who knows for how long. The marginals poll, as reported in the Spectator, confirms the trend too: the bells are beginning to toll for Labour.

Generally speaking, therefore, from now on, it is pretty clear that the best Labour can hope for is to limit the damage in this general election as far as possible, and try to come out of it with at least its core vote just about in tact. As for the blame game, I think that's already started with party loyalists not having to look too far for the main culprit. The only problem is that in blaming Brown for an atrocious campaign and for dividing the party, Labour MPs also condemn themselves. It was them that arrogantly installed him unchallenged as leader in the first place, and the electorate knows that.

A strong element in the causes of Labour's dwindling support must be the punishment factor. I can tell you pretty confidently that people I know, for instance, have never forgiven Labour for inflicting Brown on us without even a leadership election for them to have a look at him first. They simply do not believe Labour any more, with good reason, and if not exclusively, then partly, because of this. They feel they've been taken for granted, and made fools of by a party that's completely out of touch.

Hang on, there's someone at the front door and my dog's gone bananas...

Well, now. That was timely. Labour activists delivering yet more leaflets, this time in person. I've got a stack of them now. They must really think this ultra-safe seat's become marginal, and that is truly extraordinary.

My dog. Cairn terriers do not like activists

But, a brief glance at the campaign literature handed to me by the jolly, red rosette wearing man and the drop dead gorgeous Labour woman (maybe they've done some research on me!) tells me that they still just don't get it. Nothing in the pamphlet will change people's minds that they cannot be trusted to tell the truth. Quite the reverse, actually - it just confirms people's suspicions in that it contains, sadly, the same sort of now-familiar Brownite smears about, for instance, the Tories planning to eat pet cats or something (well, abolishing bus passes for OAPs, which is a lie). It's very depressing, desperate stuff and a strong indication to me that they are on the way out in Wales for the first time ever.

My money is therefore still on an earthquake election, with Labour being hammered into third place and, if not Liberal-style oblivion, then a truly shocking reverse. Good news, if you think they deserve it, as I and an awful lot of other people plainly do.

They only have themselves, and Gordon Brown, to blame.

Dale Destroys Labour's Latest Lies

The latest PEB from Labour represents a new low in hate politics, exploitation and smearing propaganda, even for them. This is it:


Fortunately, Iain Dale, having highlighted it in the first place, in one of the most apoplectic posts I've ever seen him write on his blog in the two years or so I've been reading it, quickly destroys the claims too. A GP has emailed him cataloguing the lies underpinning the most dishonest campaign video in British political history. Read it here.

Well done to him and to Mr Dale for knocking it down before it has a chance to gain any kind of traction. I trust this will be all over the MSM tomorrow - with the story being not only the Labour lies and filth about Conservative health and child support policy, but the abject bankruptcy of the Labour election campaign as a whole.

Mind you, they are totally desperate so they will probably get even worse.

Sharpening The Message

Guido has highlighted a new, public-sourced, 'anti-politics' (whatever that actually means - politics is politics isn't it?) anti-some other stuff attack page designed to reveal just how major and sustained a disaster the Brown years have been for Britain.

LabourVision.TV launches tomorrow – a crowd sourced effort to produce an online anti-party, anti-political election broadcast. Details revealed tomorrow of how your video can be part of Gordon – the Disaster Movie premiering on May Day. The bar is high. Come back tomorrow…

The page can be found at the link in the quote and will be well worth a visit, not least because we have the tantalising prospect of the May Day movie, coming soon to a blog near you.

If this outstanding first effort is anything to go on, the results of this project could be pretty damaging for an already severely wounded Brown-Labour campaign.



I think this is what you call 'sharpening the message' and hats off to Guido for doing it. Tory campaign HQ should take note.

Toddler Tax? What About Brown's Baby Tax

All people need to know, and all the Tories need to do to counter this latest bit of lying Labour misrepresentation, is to remind them that every baby born for a generation or more will be in debt, from birth, to the tune of £32,000 and quickly rising (see counter at the bottom of this blog). The excellent Tory poster from January 2009 is now that far out of date. In 15 months, Brown's baby bill's nearly doubled.

It's Brown's baby tax, created as a consequence of his crazy scorched earth, debt-fueled spending spree after his mega-bust, and it's one of many reasons why he deserves nothing less than the total political oblivion to which the nation's about to consign him. And good riddance.

And let's hear no more pathetic, desperate lies about some phantom Tory 'toddler tax'.

There's only one conclusion worth reaching in this general election, and it's becoming clearer to people by the minute: it's time for the Tories to come in and clear up another fine Labour crisis. Failing that, it's just time for Brown to go.

Why We Vote

General Sir Richard Dannatt, whom the Labour party attempted to smear not that long ago just because he disagreed with them, has written a piece for tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph that resonates. In it, not only does he show us (diplomatically) what's gone so horribly wrong with defence and foreign policy management under Labour, he reminds us why nailing your colours to a particular mast is so vital when a general election comes around. This last part of his wise words is especially telling:

...what if the electorate were to decide that, with the political class discredited through their abuse of their own remuneration system, they will not vote at all, or will use that vote to punish all and sundry? What message would that send to our young people on the front line in Afghanistan risking life and limb for our security? It says: we actually quite like the idea of those votes that are cast producing no clear answer – but meanwhile, you go on risking your all so we can sit at home doing nothing and deciding nothing. Frankly, we owe it to ourselves and to our servicemen and women to do better.

Here here. It seems to me that General Dannatt also suggests a point that, while wrongly perceived these days as somehow old-fashioned, is nevertheless more significant now than it's ever been: a vote is a precious thing, and to use it when the time comes isn't just a right, it's a duty. And you must vote according to what you believe is in the best interests of your country, and not according to some kind of inherited political prejudice and certainly not because you think you're 'angry with the system'.

If you have any doubts, (and I no longer do), about the party to which you should lend your vote, then you should be aware that the party that best fits Dannatt's criteria for honest, patriotic voting is, currently, the Conservative Party. And this is no time for a hung parliament.

Right, having uttered all that well-intentioned claptrap, I would however like to add that wherever you are, in this real world, any chance that you get to kick Labour as hard as you can, take it. They deserve to be annihilated and, after all, ultimately that's what voting's really for. I admire and aspire to high-minded democratic principles and all that as much as the next knighted general. But, for our nation today, we all must vote and, if necessary, vote dirty. First to get rid of Brown, second to install a strong government. You can't do that by voting Lib Dem, Libertarian or UKIP. That's just true.

And even if, on the face of it, his standards seem unreachably high, I think that between the lines, that's precisely what Dannatt is saying.

So well said he!

One Minute Of Labour

The latest Tory viral attack ad that popped into my inbox a few minutes ago, connected to a pretty powerful campaign summary signed by George Osborne, is damn good. But it's damn scary too.



Anyone contemplating voting for Brown - or that Clegg person (which could amount to virtually the same thing in that it would split the vote and lead to a hung parliament, possibly with Brown still in power - and still unelected) - should examine these facts very closely. And then vote Tory. Every minute Brown-Labour remain in charge of anything is another minute of calamity for Britain. That's a powerful reality.

Btw: is that Christopher Ecclestone doing the voiceover? Didn't know he was one of the honest. If it is, good on him.

Right Target, Wrong Ammo

If you want to take out a troublesome enemy tank, in this case an obsolete knockoff Russian T62 (also known as the Liberal Mk1 Main Battlebus), you don't use a bunch of tracer bullets. However accurate the rounds might be, and however many you loose, not only are they simply going to bounce off the turret of the lumbering, sputtering war machine (in this case the 360 degree swivelling Nick Clegg), they will give away your position too. The newspapers that profess a bluish bent have done just that with their suspiciously timed, well-aimed but poorly armed, poorly co-ordinated full frontal assault. Over the top, chaps!

No, what you need to do, tactically, is to bide your time, choose the correct ordnance and then open fire with the radar-guided, state of the art heavy guns. A battery of that nature would be (would have been/will be?) decisive; the fireworks delightful and the result, devastating. So Iain Dale and John Ward are dead right in their assessment, that the attack was ill-conceived, will backfire and the Tories should have nothing to do with it.

Having said that, I recognise the possibility that a charge of hypocrisy might be coming my way. Well, so what? It would be unfounded. What I deposit here is personal opinion. And I stand by my opinion that nothing has happened to alter my long-held view that Nick Clegg is a two-faced, overhyped, establishment lightweight that no one in their right mind should ever consider as prime ministerial material. He's benefited from the anti-politics thang, for sure, and the TV media's desire for a Close Run Thing (hung parliaments mean higher ratings), but that's it. On policy he's nowhere. At least with Labour you just have universally bad ideas, most of which have been discredited already after thirteen lost years, and involve, if we were to have to suffer five more lost years of them, plunging an increasingly authoritarian UK into social and economic oblivion.

With Clegg's Libdums, you get either conflicting policies, badly thought-out policies, unfundable policies or policies (and these are the really interesting ones) that will lead us to being kicked off the UN Security Council, subsumed by a federal EU and relegated to third rate power status (see Simon Hughes). I'm not entirely certain anyone in this country is quite ready for any of that particular brand of 'change', or ever will be.

But it's up to the Tories, and the pisspoor papers (if they can get their heads out of their collective fundaments) to make people see that.

PS:
One online rag really does provide a case in point:

Nick Clegg dossier reveals his Martian roots

DAS BUNKER, Whopping, Tuesday (MSBBC) — Your Super Soaraway SUN has found the blueprint for Nick Clegg’s top-secret TV debate strategy in the back of a CAB, revealing he is a MARTIAN INVADER.

It reveals the Lib Dem leader STOLE DNA from David Cameron to DUPLICATE his style and cover Britain in a ROBOT ARMY OF CLEGGS, with BlackBerrys to be installed in all citizens.

“It’s very SLOPPY to just leave it in my CAB in a locked and alarmed SUITCASE,” said the cab driver, Andy Coulson,” and I thought people should know. That’s why I SOLD it to The Sun.”

Clegg DISGRACED himself in the television debate last Thursday, winning a mere 37% in BIASED COMMUNIST POLLS, while TORY SUPERSTAR Dave “Dave” Cameron topped the charts with a SURGE to 31% — despite foolish commentators claiming Clegg was less terrible than GORDON BROWN attempting to SMILE or the picture of DAVE CAMERON someone had PHOTOSHOPPED onto the screen.

“I used my PSYCHIC POWERS to talk to ADOLF HITLER after the debate and he would DEFINITELY vote Lib Dem now,” reveals luscious, pouting MYSTIC MEG in her political opinion column on Page 3 today.

The Tories have responded by DISTANCING themselves from the Liberal Democrats’ WASHED-UP, SOCIALIST POLICIES and put out new posters blaming the recession on the people responsible: POLISH ASYLUM TERRORISTS on THE DOLE.

“The Conservative Home web forum got out MS Paint and came up with some great stuff,” said Tory webmaster Andy Coulson. “Though they thought we should distance ourselves from those WISHY-WASHY, NUT-CUTLET-EATING LIBERALS at the Daily Mail, who are SOFT ON VOLCANOES and soft on the CAUSES of volcanoes.”

An article in the Völkischer Beobachter on Sunday by Andy Coulson REVEALED Clegg’s SPANISH wife, RUSSIAN grandfather and MARTIAN allegiance, and how he would definitely fail a proper Tory BRITISHNESS test.

“Fuck,” said Rupert Murdoch, speaking to his editors about the ACTUAL poll numbers.

I mean, shocking scaremongering!

+Update+

This is what Clegg really said (just in the spirit of accuracy, you understand - no smearist I):

“Watching Germany rise from its knees after the war and become a vastly more prosperous nation has not been easy on the febrile British psyche.”

“All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still.”

“A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off. We need to be put back in our place.”

Hmm. The change we need.

Some Things Never Change

I agree with Guido Fawkes that some things never change, so for the Conservative party not to be offering significant tax breaks, while the Libdums laughably are (however dishonestly) does indeed look like a spectacular own-goal. Guido goes further, though, and lays blame for the strategic error, in this case firmly at the door of Danny Finkelstein, erstwhile election mastermind and now well-known Times bloggist who delivered for the Tories an extremely well-managed, crushing defeat. As Guido says:

Danny Finkelstein and Guido had a bit of Twitter spat about this last night. Guido holds Fink responsible for accepting the Balls/Brown dividing lines and helping to foist on the Tories their “no tax cuts” position. A policy position that Guido sees as cowardice in the face of the enemy.

Quite. People are following the money. Some things really do never change, even in this time of what we are being led to believe is some sort of new era of a woolly-headed progressive consensus. The people, it seems, disagree. You'd think "Conservatives" would be sensitive to that. Real ones would - and are.

Blindsided

I have to admit it, and I don't like having to do it, but I've been blindsided by the anti-politics surge the Libdums have enjoyed. I didn't see it coming and it caught me by surprise. But I can't just dismiss it as a freak - it's too significant, too important to write off as a mere coincidence and too ominous for the Conservative-minded, like me, to ignore. What's more, if I'm being honest (for a change), Cameron was surprisingly disappointing in that debate thing, and he shows no signs of recovering his momentum - yet. (I reckon he will, though.)

So what's the problem? Well, it ain't the Libdums. They're still a pack of political mongrels as far as I'm concerned and, in that, about as appealing as Monster Raving Loonies. Mind you, at least the Loonies know they're nutters and do it for the fun. They know who they are, the Libdums don't.

On the one hand, the Libdums (especially their ex-Labourist grandees, like that grammar school destroying, arrogant bitch Shirley Williams) are a party of the Left, who believe that stealing people's money can always be justified because society (which they confuse with 'body politic', as all socialists do) always comes first, and taxation is the means by which society's 'behaviour' can be 'modified' (they really use those terms - them and the BNP. Sinister, ain't it?).

On the other hand, they are what Margaret Thatcher might regard as Tory ultra-wets, or, in less colourful terms, old-style 'radicals' (in the revolutionary American sense), but who believe in the post-war consensus, managed decline, the intrinsic desirability of European transnationalism, country-not-court and beard growth. Believe me, electoral reform comes last on their list of priorities, whatever they say to the contrary, especially if they annihilate Labour in the general election - which always should have been their aim in the first place (duh!). Count the younger members of that party among the 'radical' number, including the leader, Vince Clegg (whatever).

In other words, it's a bizarre pushmepullyou party of Heathites and Bennites, of bleeding heart, self-banished, auto-flagellating young Tories and superannuated, pseudo-intellectual, old Labour defectors whose pomposity is ony trumped by their vanity.

The problem is not the Libdums. They'll take care of themselves, eventually. The problem is the amount of damage their antipolitics surge is going to do to the outcome of this general election in that there is a distinct possibility that Cameron is dead right - vote Libdum and get Crash Gordon. The only consensus I can discern in Britain at the moment, not only from reading the internet tealeaves, but from every one of my friends, acquaintances and colleagues, is that five more years of Brown would be an intolerable imposition on a country that never wanted him, never voted for him and never liked him. A split vote letting him in would be a total catastrophe, after the damage he's already inflicted on it, for a nation that is just about getting through the year in tact, and is seriously worried about the next few.

It's not just me that's been blindsided by this Liberal surge, though, it looks to me like the country has, too, especially the people seriously entertaining the notion that the way to punish politicians is by voting for the underdogs, thus letting the worst offenders of all of them back into power. Confused? I am. And so are, I imagine, the Tories.

However, and this is a big rider, if this really is one of those earthquake moments in British politics; if Labour are about to be (rightly) smashed down to third-party status by the Liberals, after their 90 long years in the wilderness, then so be it. It's an outcome I suppose I can live with, as long as Brown is gone and Labour do receive the massive kicking at the polls that they so richly deserve. (It's already happening in a slightly different way in my town, where Plaid look like they almost certainly will oust the sitting Labourist MP for the first time in the town's history ever.)

Guido Fawkes has kindly provided us with a thought experiment illustrating how this "Change Coalition" narrative might flow. It's well worth the read. Personally, I don't think a government like that would last six weeks. The Libdums' severe internal ideological contradictions would destablise everything within days. But, nevertheless, it does sort of look like a grownup solution that would satisfy apparently shifting public political appetites - and it would tick my top two boxes, too:
1) No more Brown
2) Labour crushed

It seems that some clouds might have two silver linings.

It all depends on Clegg, though. But I don't think he can be trusted because I don't think he's got much authority over the party we are supposed to believe he leads for the reasons I've already given.

So, ultimately, as far as I'm concerned, it's business as usual for us Conservatives, despite the blindsiding: Cameron has got to come out fighting and go in for the big win.

There is no alternative.

Exit Brown Stage Left

The Tories' super-fast propaganda reflexes could prove quite decisive as this GE campaign drags on. The Spectator says it's all about their cash advantage. I don't thinks that's entirely right (or fair), though.

Having fresh ideas, solid party unity and genuine support from a collegiately spirited team helps too, all three of which the man being shown the door above ran out of the moment he stole the prime minister's job off the man rightly or wrongly elected by the UK electorate to do it, and probably long, long before.

No amount of money will cure that. Just look at the size of the country's net debt liability! Brown tried. And he failed miserably, with our money.

We're all now going to have to pay for his disasters, but we will damn well make sure that he will be first. With "his" job.

Let's Talk About Debt

Who would have thought it? After years of denial Brown finally admits, sort of, responsibility for the banking collapse by deregulating them 'in the nineties', thus proving, incidentally, that the Tory banking regulatory checks and balances worked perfectly. If it ain't broke, Brown fixes it. Now Britain's broke.

Speaking of which, I am hoping tonight that Cameron nails Brown on the scale of the debt crisis this country faces and that his policies caused. The fact that the mainstream media can't seem to grasp this, nor most of the bizarre economic 'expert' commentariat of this country (the Anatole Kaletsky-types), should not frighten the Tory leader. He must make it plain to all that we really can't go on like this. Brown can't blame the banks for making him cave in on deregulation 'in the nineties'. And, as Dan Hannan I think said yesterday, if the banks' advice about deregulation was wrong - and Brown shouldn't have listened to it - why did he decide to listen to the same bankers over the public, trillion-pound bailout? Fool me once and all that. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Debt. Cameron's got to talk about it, not just to demolish Brown, but to be straight with the electorate about the scale of the challenge Brown's scorched earth policies have left for a Conservative government to repair and for future generations to pay off. We are, indeed, all in this together. Everyone. So what is there to be done?

Well, the first thing to do is to face up to reality. The other two parties can't do this because they are wedded to a particular ideology of big state interventionism, so the Conservatives, as always, will have to do it on their own - with a little help from the population. The reality is that public spending is bankrupting the country. I'm not saying that Cameron should be specific about where the axe will fall, but fall it must - hard and often. He's got to level with people, but in a positive way: a little pain now; pleasure later. Reform everything, abolish waste, get more bang for your buck and fix the public finances, starting with Labour's nightmarish overspending, currently putting us at a humiliating 20% bankruptcy risk (five times higher than France, Germany or the USA).

Labour's all about pleasure, pleasure, pleasure -now, now, now - until there's simply no money left to pay for it. That's just infantile.

If the infants are returned, therefore, with "economy killer" Brown at the helm, this country will effectively be bankrupt within a few years.

As it is we already face a period of Labournomic, fake growth (where every £1 of expansion in the economy actually costs the taxpayer £2 in 'stimulus' money. Hey, that's just what the figures say.) As it is we already face a period of stagflation. As it is we already face what could be another lost decade, just like the last time Labour was in charge.

Anyway, those are the sorts of things Cameron needs to talk about, along with all the optimistic stuff, obviously. People want an effective leader, not just a charming one.

Brown is neither. Cameron could be both.

The Great British Public: Too Thick For Change?

Of all the many posts written about the LibDum double act (Cable & Son) and its nonsensical, lightweight, irrelevant manifesto, I have enjoyed not a single one. Mainly because by their very existence they operate from an implied premise that it's worth engaging with these Yellow Tit-coloured, failed Labourists/Tory rejects.

So I won't be saying any more about that. What I will talk about instead is a pretty startling post by Daniel Finkelstein on his Times blog this morning about a poll for that newspaper which shows that the majority of people had no idea that it was the Tories who were offering to abolish the National Insurance hike for businesses and low/middle earners. They thought it was Labour (the party responsible for the rise)! But are the Fink's conclusions sound?

Think what this means.

First, that most voters are not following the argument one little bit. For a week this was headline news, yet they still ascribe the policy to the wrong party.

Second, and further to many past posts and many arguments, voters see policy only through their understanding of a party's values. The only policy of eight that was correctly attached to a party by the majority of voters was the marriage tax one.

According to him, therefore, all the great British public's political perception amounts to is a mixture of blissful, bored, complacent ignorance and a kind of passive awareness of propaganda terms associated with parties ("values"), rightly or - as is far more often the case - wrongly.

I disagree. These conclusion are based on fuzzy logic. A crisper, less politically explosive theory would be that all the poll really means is that the Tories - and this is comes as a big shock to me - have completely failed to get through to people, something that Margaret Thatcher (and even John Major) managed to do - and with, on the face of it, a far less palatable message.

The great British public is not thick, as in stupid. But it is thick, as in weighty and hard to move. Well, the Tories better start shifting their policies soon, or else...

...or else they'll wind up with a smaller majority! Boom boom.

Positive Signals

I think this is effective, and quite a contrast to that very weird Labour thing yesterday.

Positive signals all over the place from Cameron. Good.

Morning Rant: Libdums, Hague on Schools and The BBC (Again)

Dad examines little Nick's report card

It was less than I'd hoped for but no more than I expected. The sight of wall to wall BBC coverage of the father-son Libdum, Clegg-Cable double act droning on and on about bad policies that will never be enacted (thankfully) or attacking other politicians from a position of, well, what? Total, unconvincing inexperience I would say. The sight of those two, with Clegg looking over at his dad every time he needed approval for something he said about banks or tax or bonuses or shares or whatever, was pathetic. The main point, though, is about the BBC (naturally). Why, exactly, has the BBC decided that every Libdum press conference and Q/A session has to be covered without interruption? They are the third party. What is more, this is the second day in a row our senses have been assaulted by the luminous, fried-egg colour wall and this pair of twits. For a third party, they get a heck of a lot of coverage from the Beeb. And none of the scrutiny (Paxman going easy on Clegg, for instance).

A little later, by contrast, I then had the sound of John Humphreys laying into William Hague about the Tories' excellent and intelligent, proven schools policy. Preferring the sound of his own voice to that of his guest's, especially if he's a Conservative, Humphreys repeated a phrase that I am sure I have heard Ed Ballsup, among other Labourists, use before, namely "a counsel of despair". How making it far easier for parents collectively to intervene in the education of their own children, and perhaps set up a legendary new institution for posterity as well, is quite beyond me, I'm afraid. Seems like the state grant they would receive to do it, in addition to the charitable donations and private funding, amounts to an absolute bargain. Everyone's a potential winner, most of all the children.

Yet Humphrey's pushed it for all he was worth, right up until Hague came up with his hilarious put-down that if state control of anything and everything, which is the position Humphreys appeared to have chosen to adopt - the Labour position - was such a perfect thing, then the Soviet Union would have been a spectacular success instead of the mother(land) of all trainwrecks, which clearly rattled the Humph judging by his response, which was blustery and weak.

I think this policy will resonate very widely and even excite a lot of people in this country, especially if people as good as Hague are making the philosophical case for it, but mainly because it's a damn good idea that, as Hague pointed out at the end, has a proven track record of success in the USA.

The Tories are winning the argument on education. The Libdums don't have an education policy. The BBC has just lost it.

A Future Fair For All? No, Just More Labour Lies

Ollie Cromwell has done it again!

Brown's Manifest Hopelessness

The Spectator's Peter Hoskin makes some pretty telling points about Brown's hopeless manifesto launch this morning. His summary of it is fun:

"You got that, Britain? We. Are. The. Future. Future, future, future. The Tories are the past. We are the Future. The future that is fair for all. We are that future. For all."
And so, more or less, went Gordon Brown's pitch to the nation at Labour's manifesto launch. Except it lasted a good hour and a quarter.

I have looked it up now and can only agree. A longer list of manifest nonsense and partisan claptrap I have yet to hear, even from Brown. He surpassed even his own ability to use thousands of words to say precisely nothing about real, firm policy commitments while simultaneously spraying his own brand of irrational, bilious hatred of all things "Tory" (at least what he imagines to be Tory) copiously and everywhere.

So putting the hate-speak to one side for a moment, what's left? Hoskin again:

But the biggest problem for Labour, to my mind, is the absence of a flagship policy. The one which seemed to stand out today, in Brown's speech and in the Q&A session afterwards, was the cancer guarantee – but, even if you're persuaded by that, I'd be surprised if Labour see it as the central plank on which they are standing. But what is? The fear for Team Brown is that there's nothing beneath his feet but thin air.

Quite right. Nothing is coming out of his mouth except hot air. Labour's not only ruined the country (again), it's run out even of bad ideas (of which it used to have a seemingly inexhaustible supply).

This hopeless Labour document, complete with hackneyed sunrise image on its front cover (which Guido has already shown was totally unoriginal) will be forgotten by sunset, if not before. The Conservative manifesto, by contrast, I expect will be full of surprises and fresh ideas for setting the nation back on the right road - and providing it with a genuine future. You know, one that's sustainable - in that it won't cost us £500 million a day and rising in borrowed money just to stand still, leaving our children and grandchildren with a multi-trillion pound nightmare debt to repay before they've even begun life.

That's Brown's future. And the only thing "fair" about it is that we'll all still be in his shitstorm together.

"Time for change?" Not half.

Poll Paranoia

Polls during this general election campaign, and before it, for a variety of reasons have been more frequent and less helpful than at any time before. The idea that simply doing more and more polls and then 'weighting' them with a series of arcane, largely untestable methodological tricks, usually hidden from the public (though Mike Smithson, among others, has helped to correct that state of affairs) is one that I think is simply an extremely expensive waste of time carried out by self-styled professional psephological gurus happy to take the cash. The YouGov "daily tracker" is probably the worst offender being, as it is, about as reliable as a Met Office long term weather forecast (see the Daily Telegraph from a few days ago). But it is by no means the only one.

The media loves it, of course, especially if these dodgy measurements of voting intentions suggest a close call - and a hung parliament. Big News! Sells papers and sucks in viewers. So they drive that narrative, using these non-statistics as evidence. The hung parliament trope has become the most popular recently, much to the delight of the MSM, but not, it seems to me, to the Labour party, who have been largely silent on the subject. Why? Certainly not because they are confident of winning. The more-likely reason is that they have about as much faith in these exercises in statistical soothsaying as I do.

Not so the media, however, with a new ICM poll out about key marginals, commissioned by Murdoch rag the News of the Screws and faithfully advertised by Spectator editor Fraser Nelson. Taken at face value, Nelson's argument that the 'extensive research' that took place to produce this poll might seem to make sense; that the Tories are going to need a hell of a lot more than the 5% swing they think they need because, so the poll allegedly shows, they aren't performing as well as they thought, with the LibDums nicking votes from them left, right and centre.

Aside from the fact that Nelson also works for the Screws, and therefore Murdoch, and the fact that it's the parasitic Murdoch media machine, particularly Sky News, that is pushing the hung parliament story at every opportunity (complete with a misleading poll ticker appearing 24 hours a day on their rolling news channel), scratch beneath the surface and you see that this earth shattering poll in nothing of the sort. It's hardly more reliable than a complete guess. Just look at the size of the sample, as mentioned in the small print:

Here's the small print: ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1001 adults aged 18+ by telephone on 7-8th April 2010. Interviews were conducted across the 96 (new boundary) constituencies which are held by Labour where the Conservatives require a swing of between 4 percent and 10 percent to win the seat.

As commenters on the blog have quickly pointed out, 1001 people over 96 constituencies?! You have to be kidding. That's about ten people per constituency. As I said, they might as well have saved themselves the thousands it cost to do that and just thrown a dart at a bunch of numbers pinned to the wall for all the use a poll like that is. But Nelson still banged on about it as though it was remotely meaningful, proving once more, at least to me, either that he is compromised by his connections to the News of the World, or that he's just not as smart as I thought he was, or that he just as much a fully paid up luvvie member the fourth estate as every other hack and hackette infesting this country, 'blogging' or no 'blogging'.

The point? The point is that my hunch - that the Tories are actually miles ahead, but that people simply aren't ready to admit that yet, or that these polls are so flawed, they would never reflect the reality - is worth just as much, if not more, than the polls themselves. And so is yours, dear reader. So the Tories do not need to develop poll paranoia. They certainly don't need to "panic", as Nelson helpfully suggests in the picture accompanying his dishonest/incompetent article.

The only danger is that all this hung parliament speculation, regardless of the flakey, fake stats that's driving it, will become a self-fulfilling prophesy, thus handing Labour an unexpected lifeline - and selling the country down the river. No wonder the Tories kept Murdoch's empire at arm's length when it turned coat again and came out for them. With friends like these. In addition, it's plausible that poll paranoia will catch hold in the Tory party itself, again making the whole thing self-fulfilling.

Nevertheless, despite the media's attempts to drive the outcome of this election, I firmly believe that the damage that's been done to Brown Labour, and that it's done to itself (not least by allowing Brown to become leader unopposed in the first place) is so grave, not even corrupt media organisations and shockingly crap pollsters can save them now.

Have I gone too far? I'll tell you on May 7th. Or someone will tell me, no doubt. What I suspect, though, is that on May 7th, Britain will have a Tory government with a comfortable, if not large, majority - and an awful lot of pollsters and tame journos, once the noise from the celebrations have died down, are going to have an awful lot of egg on their collective mugs.