This article is why I am feeling like I would just like to fast forward the rest of the General Election Campaign and get to the exciting part – who gets to form a government! I enjoyed the film Click where the star of the film is given a TV remote control that can fast forward and pause life! That’s just what I would like to see happen now so we can see the interactions in play.
As it the article says it looks Like the cards are stacked slightly in the favour of Ed Miliband to lead some form of government. The Tories failed to win the election in 2010 and have failed since 1992 when they had a slim majority of 21. Everything has always stacked up against them winning in 2015 so I have never quite understood their confidence (some of it actually genuine) that they might win this time.
The tones of the campaigns have started to reflect this. The perceptions of the parties on their strengths and weaknesses has hardly changed but the Tories reliance on Ed Miliband being so poor is not bourne out so far in this campaign, so they are left floundering a little. Their attempts at personal attacks and now the risk of throwing away their economic competence attributes on unfunded and frankly unbelievable spending commitments does show a sign that Plan A wasn’t working.
If today is anything to go by there tactics have shifted over the election again. Today 5 out of the 6 press releases they have put out have been about the SNP and Labour. They have a daily ritual of asking Labour to once again rule out any deals with the SNP at the same time as refusing to answer about their deals with UKIP. As we saw from the Marr show with Cameron this morning their press release campaign just doesn’t stack up as soon as their is even the minimal of push back from a half decent interviewer. But this is their calculation – in Scotland Cameron reminding Scots that the SNP will lead to Labour government answering to the SNP works against the campaign being run by Jim Murphy that the only way to get a Labour government is to vote for one. For every seat the SNP take it reduces the Labour seat tally which just might have got to the magic 326 with the 45 Scottish seats. And in England it throws up fear amongst ‘Don’t Knows’ who may just be tempted back to the Tory camp at the fear of the Nationalists dictating terms. I don’t fear it myself but have heard it played back often enough to me to see this is real.
So whilst I don’t think a great deal will change over the last 3 weeks I assume the Tories are just hoping the longer it goes on something will turn up. They hope the continued barrage of attacks from the Tory supporting press will finally wear Labour down, but as I have blogged recently this does not take into account Labour also winning the Ground war at the moment.
Plenty of twists and turns to come. I can’t wait to get to the en for the fun part.
View from the Margins 