Poor old George Osborne
Close your eyes and imagine this, you’ve been bred to believe you will lead your country, you’ve swallowed your pride and accepted the lesser role as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer hoping that one day you will replace your boss as leader (preferably after getting into Number 11). Your opposition has had their worst ever result since 1945 and came third in the last national elections, and your party came first with almost twice the Labour vote.
So you were sitting pretty running the Tory election campaign with a charismatic leader and the incumbent having as much charm as a corpse, then for some reason that you have yet to discern, things start going pear-shaped.
In August 2009, the Conservative Party had a 17 point lead over the Labour Government. However, even then there were rumblings from the Conservative activist base about George’s portfolio. Despite these complaints by the oiks, George remains undeterred and decides to run both important jobs of Shadow Chancellor and General Election Campaign co-ordinator. Sure he has made a few mistakes; going on holiday with the enemy proved not to be very constructive.
George probably thought that with such high poll ratings back then, he could afford to take a gamble by portraying himself as honest and by default Labour and Gordon Brown as dishonest. The “We’re all in this together” speech and the promise of an age of “austerity” as a central plank of the Conservative election manifesto would result in the oiks demonstrating that they are sophisticated enough to appreciate his “honesty” and thank him for it.
By November 2009 it appeared that the “oiks” were not enthused with his “honesty”. The double digit lead started to slip and so the emphasis changed from “We’re all in this together” to “Let’s end the big cash bonuses [for bankers and use the banks' spare cash to] help people keep their jobs.”, and managed to annoy one of the Tories most loyal constituencies, wealthy city bankers.
In December 2009 for the first time in a year the Tory lead dropped to a single digit lead, to the delight of many liberal-lefty bloggers. So Osborne responds by focussing more on the Labour government putting up taxes (National Insurance) on everyone earning over £20,000 a year but then he gets caught not being able to sort out his own expenses claims nevermind responding to the pre-budget report.
The start of the new year brought good news for Osborne, polls showed that in January 2010, the Tory double-digit lead was back after everyone had a recession Christmas and Alistair Darling’s prediction in May that the UK would be out of the recession by the end of the year turned out to be wrong.
However in February the double digit lead disappeared again, with whispers of “emergency budgets”, increased VAT (effectively a tax on the poorest) and a possible March general election, Osborne went on the offensive, pointing to the Market, Greece and the need for “honesty” (again) on cuts. Unfortunately rather then getting applause from the Market the economically neo-liberal institution, the International Monetary Fund, supported the Labour government’s position on cuts.
Now in March, the Conservative poll lead has narrowed further. With rumours of being sacked by his Bullingdon mate, undermined by being overruled on the poster campaign, louder criticisms from his own side, more accusations of failing to do basic budget sums, and now it seems only the Guardian’s political editor is brave enough to defend him. He’s probably wondering if the gamble is paying off.
Osborne now appears a bit desperate with the pledge of new tax cuts, a straightforward bribe to employers and low-to-middle income workers. But tax cuts can only mean deeper public spending cuts than Darling’s declared “more tougher than Thatcher” cuts and surely more vigorous than Clegg’s and Cable’s “savage cuts”. It is disingenuous to suggest these tax cuts are painless for the poor when the Tories who are ideologically against increased public spending, oppose the large structural deficit making the reduction of it their top priority.
I look forward to seeing Osborne digging himself out this hole tonight.
