What do the Tories believe in?
By Emma.
The Tories believe they should win the next election. Other than that I have very little idea what they believe in anymore.
Should you vote blue to get green, or is the green stuff just crap?
As you ponder that, you might want to ask how it is that the same man who promised “no more Punch and Judy politics” is the man at the dispatch box every week comporting himself in a most unparliamentary manner all at the behest of his – decidedly Punchesque – strategist Lynton Crosby.
And here’s the biggie: Are they the free market champions who have been so shocked at Ed’s “Marxist” attempt to curb market failure ever since Party conference season? Not any more if today’s announcement (and the language used about it by Osborne on the Today programme) is anything to go by. An announcement that reeks of panic on Labour’s dominance of the cost of living argument, just as Tories are also telling themselves bedtime stories about how little the issue matters.
So far, so shambolic. So par for the course for Osborne and Cameron, two people who managed convince their party they were oh so clever at politics without ever actually managing to be so.
The unravelling we are seeing at the moment is simply the latest exposure of the Tories utter intellectual bankruptcy. There is no capital left either in the Nasty Party nor in Cameron’s modernisation mirage. That is why this morning has seen them make a withdrawal from the Labour bank of policy – the one they were pretending didn’t exist until they were pretending it was a threatened Communist plot.
Any moves on reducing the pain for payday lending customers has to be welcomed. But a panicked and half-cooked intervention is not the same as a coherent strategy. It is this coherence that is emanating from Labour – and particularly from the Labour leadership at the moment.
For a long time, Ed Miliband has been criticised for either incoherence or opportunism. From the squeezed middle, to predators and producers through One Nation, Ed’s interventions were sometimes sporadic and too rarely followed up to ensure a complete narrative. But all the parts were there.
Like a Magic Eye poster from the early 90s (remember them?) the picture is suddenly looming into clarity. As I discussed in my last post on Milibandism there is now a clear, radical and electable philosophy at the heart of the Labour project. And each of the formely mocked interventions make sense in the context of that philosophy.
This is what the Tories lack and that lack is what will ultimately do for them. Because at the moment they are being forced – back foot first – onto Labour’s territory. When George Osborne – of all people – is talking about reshaping markets to work for the people – an idea direct from anyone of Ed’s speeches on the economy over the last three years – then you know the Tories have completely ceded the intellectual debate.
The Tories are running scared because their vaunted recovery is not budging living standards. For 40 months out of 41 since the coalition came to power, real term wages are down. The only month they weren’t was when the highest paid deferred bonuses pushed the national average up.
Think about that for a moment. The *bonus* payments of a few of those at the top – many of whom work in an industry so poorly run that it crashed the world economy - were great enough to change the national average pay to such an extent. While real wages stagnate, and prices go up, and up, and up.
Those who have suffered the greatest under austerity have been those who could least afford to lose. Those at the bottom of the income scale; those whose standards of living are already unimaginably tough, and those who are struggling to get by. As the economy grows, these are not the people who are seeing the benefit.
Instead, the proceeds of the much championed return to growth are those who were already more than comfortable. They money is staying at the top. No wonder polling from ComRes polling shows that Labour lead on which party will make people’s families better of by 41% to 31%.
And no wonder the Tories are starting to panic. Cameron and Osborne have always tried to be all things to all people. Cameron famously thought himself the heir to Blair, but is – at the same time – an arch Thatcherite. Few would have predicted a few years (or even months) ago that it would be Miliband’s cloak they tried to don next, but this morning this is precisely what Osborne did.
It was as shallow and as see through as all their other positioning, but it is also extremely instructive as to where the political momentum, dynamism and breakthrough philosophy lies. And that is with the Labour Party - not the government.
Tags: Milibandism
