Have they learnt the lesson of Cameron’s easy ride?

Interesting piece from the Speccie’s James Forsyth in the Mail on Sunday on the coalition’s attack plans for when Dave or EdM is elected on the afternoon of September 25th.

He writes: “This desire to launch an instant strike is a product of David Cameron’s own experience. When he became Tory leader in 2005, Brown wanted to go for him straight away but Tony Blair overruled him, arguing that they needed to see what kind of leader Cameron would be. This, in the words of one Tory insider, gave the new leadership ‘the breathing space we needed’. The rest, as they say, is history…

…The Tories remember how Labour made their new leaders William Hague and Iain Duncan-Smith look like losers within months of them taking on the job and want to do the same to the winning Miliband.”

The focus will be on trying to get them to answer two questions: Why didn’t they do more to stop Labour from building up the deficit and what’s their alternative?

In many ways the leaderless Labour has had it easy since the election. There have been very few concerted attacks on their position apart from reminder of what Liam Byrne wrote in his famous handover note.

I agree with Forsyth’s conclusion that only when the new leader is in place will the real politics begin. Maybe the Miliband-led Labour will find it harder to get a consistent polling lead after all.

Mike Smithson

Was Osborne’s aim to stop Labour doing this again?

For me the above Labour PEB was by far the best piece of campaigning by any party at the election. It was designed to sow doubts about what a Tory government would do by focussing on key issues that affect middle income voters. The child credit was its first main point.

If there was a single reason why Labour recovered so well in the closing days campaign it was because they got this message over.

In an absolutely must-read feature in this week’s Spectator James Forsyth looks at the role of Osborne and how cutting benefits like this was the first stage of his strategy to secure an overall majority at the next election.

He writes: “…During the election campaign, nearly every Tory candidate despaired at how so many families on £50,000 a year were voting Labour to protect their £545 child tax credit — despite the overall cost of a Labour government to them being far higher than that. Osborne’s Budget dealt with this directly. Within two years, no family earning £30,000 a year or more and with one child will receive tax credits. That class of wavering Labour voters, so irritatingly prevalent in marginal seats, will be no more.

Labour may well pledge to restore the tax credits. But they’d also have to explain how they’ll pay for it — and Osborne plans to make sure that they do. In the same way that Brown and Balls translated every proposed Tory tax cut into the number of nurses and teachers that would have to be laid off to fund it, the Tories will claim that every Labour move will lead to a rise in tax..”

Later on Forsyth writes: “..During the coalition negotiations, he told Tories who were jittery about governing with the Liberal Democrats that only from inside government could the Tories tilt the country in their direction. The argument was that the coalition was a necessary stepping stone on the way to a Tory majority. To him, that has always been the prize…”

It’s an interesting concept - take away a popular benefit that Labour threatened would happen in the hope that this takes away a key part of Labour’s armoury.

What’s intriguing is how being in government, if only in coalition, was to central to Osborne’s plan. No wonder they were ready to offer so much to the Lib Dems.

Mike Smithson

For me the striking thing about Labour’s final week campaign is not the effectiveness of the poster itself but who it it aimed at. For study after study has shown that the group most detached from the political process are younger working class women.

Not only are they less likely to vote than working class men of the same age but they are also much less likely to have any political allegiance.

But how do you get to them? In countries where political TV advertisements are allowed the campaigns would be piling money into targeted advertising linked to the programmes that this group most watches. But that’s not possible in the UK because of restrictions.

So full marks to Labour for seeking to engage this group. But why have they left it so late and is this poster really going to get the message through?

Mike Smithson

SkyNews

What does this do to “Vote Yellow get Brown”?

In the eleven days since Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats emerged as a force at the first debate the blue team’s main line of attack has been “Vote Yellow get Brown”.

Given the ongoing unpopularity of the Prime Minister and the desire for change being shown in the polls this had a lot of potency which would have dominated the Tories’ final week’s campaigning.

That has been knocked on the head by Clegg’s TV comments yesterday and, more importantly, the way it is being reported.

For the LD leader did not exactly say what the headlines are suggesting - he was referring to what could happen if Labour finished up with most seats even if it was in third place in terms of votes.

The move comes after a week when the Tories have made progress in the polls and now, across the board, they have reasonable margins.

So what do the Tories do now? How can they contain the yellow surge? A real problem is the apparent scale of Clegg’s popularity even after a period when all the focus was on him. Just look at the latest approval ratings from YouGov.

These figures are extraordinary even though they are a bit lower than a week ago. We’ve had the warnings on the threat to the currency, the concerted tabloid attack and “Vote Yellow - Get Brown”. Now the latter has been neutralised what do the blues’ say?

My betting view remains - BUY the Yellows on the spreads. The latest SportingIndex figures were 85-88 seats.

Mike Smithson