The Conservative Party is well aware that the next few weeks will be a rare opportunity for them to smash through Labour’s somewhat thinned poll lead (currently 7-10%) before the Opposition gets its house back in order next month. The Conservative Party knows that time is running out for it to regain the initiative, with the General Election now barely 20 months away. The Conservative Party understands that it has an unpopular record in Government and an unappealing vision for their second term, and so will have to lean heavily on negative campaigning to win.
Not that I’m opposed negative politics outright- I’m in the Labour Party, after all- but I do think that the point of going into politics should be the realisation of a vision of a community, nation or world that is improved in a meaningful way. Politicians should aim to inspire first, and attack opponents second. I think failure to do this is a major factor in the disillusionment of many with British politics: 1992 was won on the basis that Labour couldn’t be trusted with power; 1997 on how terrible the last Tory government was; 2001 and 2005 on the claim that the Tories are evil; and finally 2010 on the spurious claim that New Labour dragged the country into recession. We haven’t got a problem as acute as that in the US in which it seems an election cannot be won without spending billions of dollars on highly personal attack ads, but negative politics in any form will have a corrosive effect if it dominates the national consciousness for long enough.
I am thus disappointed, but not angry, that the Conservatives will be adopting a very similar election strategy to theirs in 1992. The overriding theme of theirs is that a Labour Government would hit voters heavily in their pockets. Instead of ‘Labour’s Tax Bombshell’, they have launched this website, ‘Cost of Labour‘, which generates an astronomical figure that Labour would supposedly cost you, based ona few questions on your lifestyle, if they came to power. I strongly recommend giving it a whirl, but don’t supply your real email address, unless you want to be showered with Tory propaganda emails! Now, I could rant about how they have intentionally misinterpreted Labour’s policies and how other figures were based on New Labour plans that will never be implemented, but I don’t have to. You know the facts already. What this website has illustrated to me is the fatal error of the Right in assuming that the economy is a zero-sum world.
In a fiscally conservative view, the economy will grow at a certain rate regardless of whether a government spends 40% of GDP (the average for western European states) or 25% of GDP (a little lower than the figure in Bush-era America). In their eyes, the public sector can only consume, rather than grow, a nation’s wealth. No value is placed on social goods or investment in people. In short, they advocate false economies. For example, failure to provide a good education to deprived children limits a country’s skills base, increases poverty and crime, and ultimately leads to higher unemployment. £1 shaved off tax bills in 2005 will could easily cost a country £10 over the following few decades, while wasting volumes of human potential in the meantime.
So if the Conservative Party claims that the cuts needed to avoid a 2% rise in Council Tax are justified, we need to make them think again.
