Looks like the Tories have already started their election campaign, spending £500,000 on a poster campaign trying to get as much spending done before the election starting gun is fired (when election spending regulations will apply for the duration of the campaign).
What is interesting about their campaign is that even the Conservative party logo was omitted from the posters, and the Daily Mail reports today that the poster of David Cameron was airbrushed.
Instead the emphasis is all on Cameron - giant photo of him, (airbrushed because he's vain and fake obviously!) with the words "I'll cut the deficit not the NHS".
It's a very risky strategy. First of all the airbrushing plays into the narrative that Cameron is a phony con-man. Slippery. Fake. The emphasis on "I" rather than "We" suggests he believes in an imperial presidency rather than parliamentary government and the giant photos of himself suggest delusions of grandeur. Even Blair at his height only had a (non-airbrushed) picture of himself on the Labour manifesto booklet, never on giant posters. And he always appeared next to the word "Labour" with our logo prominent.
Then after suggesting fakery with his airbrushing, Cameron invokes the NHS. This might have worked had there not been the sight last summer of Tories going abroad trashing the NHS on American TV, disloyally talking Britain down as well as slamming a well-loved institution - and Cameron not even feeling the need to withdraw the whip from them. Who will believe him on the NHS now? Even if he offered a "cast-iron guarantee" about it.
I am feeling more cheerful about the prospects of the coming general election than I have for a while.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
'Even if he offered a "cast-iron guarantee" about it.'
Who was it that told us 'no more boom or bust'?
Anyone seen Prudence lately?
Anonymous - Kenneth Clarke says that he was the one who coined the "no more boom and bust" phrase!
Cheerful now Hoon has been let out? Ha ha ha!
Brown's use of the phrase "No more boom and bust" was quite clear:
He would not run up a boom to win an election and then leave us to suffer the consequent recession.
So stable were his performances that we avoided the 2001/2 recession the USA led others into, despite our interdependence with the USA.
Most, perhaps all C20th recessions seem to have occurred after Tories have been at the Treasury, often while they were still there.
Nothing to say on this except thanks for the blog.
Post a Comment