Politics

Labour’s NHS Attack Ad Exemplifies Our Rotten, Uninspiring Politics

Samuel Hooper12 Comments

General Election 2015 Labour Party Campaign Attack Ad NHS Public Spending

 

Today we saw the publication of the Labour Party’s first election poster of the 2015 campaign, and it is a nasty, negative little piece of work.

Designed to appear like an X-ray image, the poster shows a broken arm, and the warning “Next Time, They’ll Cut To The Bone. The NHS Can’t Afford The Tory Cuts Plan”.

There’s no point wasting space pointing out that this is not a very promising start from a party that promised to wage a relentlessly upbeat, positive election campaign – that point has already been well made. And it’s a fair point, but perhaps not the most important one.

What is really depressing about this Labour attack ad – and all of the negative campaigning we will soon see from the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and UKIP too – is the lack of vision, of imagination, of anything resembling a positive outlook for Britain’s future.

Ed Miliband is fervently hoping that he can squeak across the finish line and into Number 10 Downing Street on the back of the British public’s fear that our precious public services will be cut back or degraded under five more years of Tory rule. Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats hope to stave off electoral annihilation by likewise preying on the fear of a Tory majority, and by promising that returning a sufficient number of LibDem MPs to Westminster will help to soften the edges of a future coalition as they did in 2010.

Meanwhile, UKIP, for all their anti-establishment fervour and sometime happy warrior image, will be busy preying on fears and resentments about immigration and injustices inflicted upon helpless Britain from Brussels. And David Cameron and the Conservative Party will desperately hope that their own negative campaign ads, designed to make the British public fear the uncertainty and economic chaos that a profligate Labour administration would bring about, will convince us to allow them another term in government.

The common thread? All of the campaigning between now and May 7 will be negative.

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The Tories Are Fighting The 2015 General Election On Labour’s Turf

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

2015 General Election Tory Conservative Campaign Public Services Austerity

 

Defend our precious public services! All hands to battle stations in defence of our vital public services! Did you know that the 2015 general election is all about our public services?

The endless platitudes about the vital importance of “public services” to all our lives are starting to sound a lot like the ludicrous list of new government-approved slogans and phrases for the North Korean people to shout in praise of their Dear Leader.

Following George Osborne’s 2015 Budget, yet another let-down for small government conservatives and believers in fiscal responsibility, this blog took the Conservative Party to task for failing to extol the virtues of a smaller state and greater personal liberty during the election campaign. And today’s latest motivational email from the Conservative Party only serves to hammer home the extent to which David Cameron’s Conservative Party are on the ideological back foot.

From the latest Conservative Party fundraising email:

Together we can deliver.

A Britain that lives within its means.

Reducing the deficit so we can keep investing in vital public services.

Newsflash, CCHQ: life is not all about public services.

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With The 2015 Budget, It’s Finally Time For Labour To Put Up Or Shut Up

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

George Osborne Ed Balls Budget 2015

 

David Cameron’s Conservative Party may only be pretending to care about small government, strutting around in the borrowed robes of fiscal responsibility. But in their feeble reaction to George Osborne’s 2015 budget, the Labour Party – much like the proverbial emperor – have been caught wearing no ideological clothes, and possessing no real principles at all.

We have now experienced nearly five years of coalition government, a Conservative and Liberal Democrat joint venture, and throughout that time the Labour Party has squealed and bitterly protested every single action taken by the government to restore Britain to any kind of good fiscal balance.

One might therefore reasonably expect the Labour Party to be ready with a compelling, explainable and measurable alternative raft of policies to fix Britain as the 2015 general election rapidly approaches. But not only does it seem that Ed Miliband’s Labour Party have no alternative vision for Britain beyond carping about Tory meanness, neither are they willing to commit to reversing any of the coalition government’s spending plans, including those announced in yesterday’s Budget.

The Telegraph reports that Ed Balls will not commit to undoing a single Tory spending measure should Ed Miliband win the keys to 10 Downing Street on 7 May:

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, admitted that Labour would not reverse George Osborne’s Budget measures, including the flagship measures on savings and Help to Buy.

Speaking in response to yesterday’s Budget, he said “nothing had changed” because the Chancellor had produced an “quite empty” Budget, meaning Labour “wouldn’t need to reverse any of it” if the party was successful at the general election.

“There’s nothing … I need to reverse. What I will reverse are deeper spending cuts in the next three years than the last five.”

Pushed as to whether he would retain Mr Osborne’s widely welcomed plans to spare millions of savers tax and to provide new “Help to Buy Isas” – savings accounts for first time buyers which would be topped up with government cash – Mr Balls told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he would, adding: “I think the Help to Buy Isa is an interesting idea. We’re not going to abolish it.”

This leaves two rather burning questions: why would anyone in their right mind vote for Labour now that Ed Balls has admitted that he would copy all of George Osborne’s ideas? And isn’t it about time the Labour Party apologised to Conservative and right-wing voters for having said such horrible things about the Evil Tories when they secretly agreed with David Cameron and George Osborne the whole time?

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Why George Osborne’s 2015 Budget Was Such A Big Disappointment

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

BRITAIN-BBC-MEDIA-STRIKE

 

Budget 2015 was yet another let-down for fiscal conservatives and opponents of big government, not that this beleaguered group have come to expect any better after five years of Conservative-LibDem coalition rule.

The fact that the Tories are actually happy that the media is reporting that government will “only” shrink back to 2000-era levels (when New Labour ruled the roost) is definitive proof that Britain is not still in thrall to Thatcherism and pro-market conservatism, as some left wing commentators suggest, but rather is clinging petulantly and fearfully to Gordon Brown-style Big Government largesse.

This blog has little sympathy with a modern Conservative Party too afraid to forcefully make the case for small government and lower public spending, and will continue to criticise David Cameron and George Osborne for their timidity in this regard for as long as they remain in office. But the Conservative Party does not operate in a vacuum, and should not bear all of the blame.

When in government, Conservatives have to deal with a public that is used to big government, collectivism and intrusive state involvement in almost every aspects of their lives. Britain never had the pioneering, fiercely independent spirit that characterises America, and the modern institutions that emerged from the post-war consensus (the welfare state and National Health Service) only shifted our political centre of gravity further to the left.

Thus, the BBC’s Robert Peston can ask with a straight face, when analysing George Osborne’s 2015 Budget (emphasis added):

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George Osborne’s 2015 Budget: From The 1930s to the ’60s, And Beyond

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

George Osborne Budget 2015 Conservative Party

 

“Out of the red and into the black, Britain paying its way in the world again!” boasted George Osborne, pounding the despatch box with satisfaction as he finished delivering the coalition government’s final, 2015 Budget.

This was wishful thinking at best. But by any reasonable measure it constitutes wilful deceit.

From the BBC’s summary of Budget Day 2015:

Setting out his plans in the Commons, Mr Osborne said: “We took difficult decisions in the teeth of opposition and it worked. Britain is walking tall again.

“Five years ago, our economy had suffered a collapse greater than almost any country.

“Today, I can confirm: in the last year we have grown faster than any other major advanced economy in the world.”

He said he would use a boost in the public finances caused by lower inflation and welfare payments to pay off some of the national debt and end the squeeze on public spending a year earlier than planned.

In 2019/20 spending will grow in line with the growth of the economy – bringing state spending as a share of national income to the same level as in 2000, the chancellor told MPs.

The BBC’s Robert Peston said this was a move aimed at neutralising Labour’s claim that the Conservatives would cut spending to 1930s levels.

But nothing did as much to condemn the Conservative Party’s half-hearted attempt to restore fiscal discipline to Britain over the past five years as Telegraph columnist Dan Hodges’ verdict on Budget 2015, the budget that “killed Labour”:

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