Reading the commentary on Andrew Lansley's Today interview from yesterday one would think he had said that Conservatives' policy was based around slaughtering the first born. It is ludicrous. Whilst the interview may present short term "headline issues" for the party today all Andrew Lansley has done, albeit unwittingly, is tell the truth about Labour's spending plans and started a proper debate of the true tracjectory of public spending beyond the next election. Labour lies now need to be nailed.
Over recent elections Conservatives have been understandably paranoid about discussing spending plans. A fear of the successful Labour smear campaigns about Tories shutting down schools and hospitals has fuelled this. We have been reluctant to discuss the detail and explain the problems of out of control spending. Superficial assessments by lazy journalists and damaging headlines have led to a lack of clarity over expressing our intentions.
The memorable ambush by Nick Robinson at the launch of "Tory cuts" poster campaign in the 2005 election managed to force Blair and Brown to admit Tory spending plans implied that spending would rise less quickly than Labour's - and would not mean cuts as their ads were claiming, was a breakthrough. But too often superficial journalism has led to a lack of truth in this critical debate.
The recent economic crisis has changed all this. The old rules on the politics of tax and spend will be redundant. Brown's political crisis and the deep recession has thrown into focus both the lack of sufficient postive outcomes derived from vast swathes of Labour's public spending but it has also made people realise how the spending Labour have directed has led to unsustainable debts - with nothing left in reserve to see us through a recession. It was fine when salaries were rising, jobs were available and house prices were rising. People are less sure about spend, spend, spend today! What they want is smart spending to meet their real needs... not more spending, regulation, debt and initiatives.
From this point on we need to describe the true position with confidence and clarity. It is Labour themselves who have committed to spending cuts and, in terms of the vital public services of Schools the NHS and International Development, it is the Conservatives who are protecting more of the spending. Yes there are implications elsewhere and this may not have been the intended time to start talking about it. But what is clear is that the politics are different now. The country grasps that Labour has blown the budget, cooked the books and we are on borrowed time. An honest description of the choices we need to make, the full truth on what this means will be better received from a public that has record high levels of cynicism.
The key challenge remains for the Party to describe why protecting this massive spending will deliver better outcomes for patients and pupils. More money alone isn't always the answer....
