Tax bombshell alert

The battlelines for the political debate over the coming year will be drawn on Monday when Alistair Darling delivers his pre-budget report.

Bookies have cut the odds on a 2009 general election over the last 24 hours, although I am still of the view that a snap contest is highly unlikely - and that is a point of view which Ben Brogan from the Daily Mail is also backing up.

Nonetheless, the Tory campaign will be ratcheted up a notch or two next week and Martha Kearney from Radio 4's World at One programme is claiming an exclusive in the WATO email newsletter which has just arrived in my inbox:

"Westminster will be showered by bombshells on Monday. No, I haven't been watching too many episodes of Spooks. The Conservatives will be blitzing Labour in a new campaign with a distinctively retro feel. In 1992 the party's tax bombshell poster and election broadcast had a devastating impact on Labour. Who came up with the idea? Why, David Cameron's current head of strategy Steve Hilton who was then a young whizzkid at Saatchi and Saatchi."

Jonathan Isaby

Comments

[Wearside Tory]

3 reasons why there won't be an Election in 2009 - Labour is broke, it has very few bodies on the ground (so to speak) and Brown is a bottler!

One reason why the tax bombshell campaign might not work. In 1992 it was the fear of the unknown - "tax and spend Labour bogie man". in 2010 the electorate will have had 13 years of Labour - fear of the unknown no longer stands.

My worry is sometimes that the electorate can't see what is in front of their face - namely Labour economic incompetence and 13 years of Labour selling the family silver!

[resident leftie]

I think it very unlikely that Labour will call an election until 2010. The positive effect of the fiscal stimulus should have kicked in by then, but it won't be enough.
There might be a small positive blip in the polls for Labour between now and next June, but not enough for a snap election, and the Euro election is likely to be very bad for Labour. There is also likely to be an "event" which damages Labour. Brown doesn't have Blair's master touch with the electorate.

Then, if the Tories can keep their house in order and relearn their terrifying lust for power through unity until the GE, I predict what used to be considered a decent majority, perhaps 50, for the Tories, and God help us all.

[Teck]

"My worry is sometimes that the electorate can't see what is in front of their face - namely Labour economic incompetence and 13 years of Labour selling the family silver!"

Wearside Tory [at 16:02], that is exactly what we must do - put the evidence and the reasons clearly before the public and with the right sense of concern.

[Norm Brainer]

In 1992 it was the fear of the unknown

Yes, people are too keen to keep the status quo most of the time... you can tell them till you're blue in the face that labour are royaly screwing everyone over and they'll just say "Yeah, that's life, what you gonna do about it" so you say vote conservative and they'll say "they're all the same, better the devil you know, voting makes no difference" etc - the "resigned" feeling that Boris was talking about before his election and they way that it's very british to be find comfort in being sad.... but very occaisionally they will burst to life and act to change something, so let's hope they do.

[Eveleigh Moore-Dutton]

The only reason Labour would call an early general election would be in an effort to cut their losses. If economic and polling forecasts showed the economy and Labour support approaching meltdown the bottler would cut and run.
We know that the economy is bad and that many of the jobs being lost are going now because there have been years of Brown's burdens on businesses that have left them too weak to survive recent shocks. This is not about to reverse.

[Raj]

I think wearside is right that it's a good idea not to assume what worked in 1992 will work again here. As he says, Labour were unknown then - people are pretty much used to them now.

A campaign like this might work, but only if people are made to understand that it's a result of Labour's recent borrowing plans. Perhaps a quote from a government source where they've admitted taxes will have to rise could be used (though that might be better for TV ads than poster campaigns).

Also at this point it's difficult to say how much taxes will rise by, so there's no useful figure to use.

[David Belchamber]

As Teck so rightly points out at 16.49:

"Wearside Tory [at 16:02], that is exactly what we must do - put the evidence and the reasons clearly before the public and with the right sense of concern".

It was interesting that the audience at QT last night appeared to be under no illusions about the part Brown has played in getting us into this mess. The Labour chap of course stuck to the party line that our economic woes stem solely from the sub-prime fiasco in America, while as far as the Lib Dem was concerned Gordon Brown was entirely to blame.
I don't remember Philip Hammond's view.

The truth must surely be that both contributed to the mess and we have get the public to accept our version of events.

We could ask one obvious question: most of our banks are in a terrible mess, so why has the regulation of the banking sector failed so abjectly?

We could suggest that restoring to the BoE its previous responsibility for the oversight of the whole banking sector might help to restore confidence and also tasking the MPC with the job of adjusting interest rates both to control inflation and avoid recession, based on a meaningful index of inflation (i.e. not the CPI).

[Philip]

BBC reports Gordon Brown saying we can discount stories of an election in June next year, that he's focussing fully on the economy etc. He may be bottling again, but this doesn't actually say the words "there will not be an election.." So I presume we'd better be ready and continue to warn that all this spending funded by borrowing is unsustainable and will lead to a tax bombshell etc etc

[The Bishop Swine]

Labour were unknown then - people are pretty much used to them now.

You would be suprised at how many don't want Labours sinister snoop and pc lies mentality.
The notion that the next general election is lost dosn't wash to well with me. I think we under estimate the British publice intelligence. I know how many people out there are scared by labours underbelly of numeric cultism.I have the heart in me for a fight...so if the PCP inspires cofidence which it sometimes almost appears to we have a hope and the means to win.

[Andrew S]

I'm sure he's clever enough to have a good reason for reusing this slogan. Maybe private polling suggests that such a message will be well recieved/understood by the public. Especially in these "uncertain times".

[Hawkeye]

"BBC reports Gordon Brown saying we can discount stories of an election in June next year"

That means nothing. He could keep that 'promise' whilst holding an election in any month except june... like February!