Fear and Dishonesty Emerge As Labour's Main Tactics

We have been warned that this General Election campaign could turn nasty and at the end of the first week it has. The Times reports that the Labour party has targeted 250,000 women with leaflets suggesting that treatment for breast cancer will be inferior under a Conservative government. As if that is not appalling enough there is a question around exactly how these tawdry leaflets were distributed. And there have been widespread calls from leaflet recepients, the Tories, Lib Dems and SNP for Labour to apologise.

What we need to know is, who authorised this campaign? Was it Andy Burnham the Health Secretary who today defended the leadlets and did Gordon Brown know about it?

Even if Labour didn't illegally use private medical data to select their victims audience, as they claim, Labour sources confirm to The Times that they did use "socio-demographic research". They also have access to the Mosaic database from Experian, which includes "anonymised hospital statistics, including postcodes and the diagnoses of patients, to identify the likely addresses of those with particular illnesses". Along with all this, they used Tangent Communications to distribute the leaflets. Tangent are said to specialise in “highly targeted marketing”. Tangent Communications clients include the Department of Health and Cancer Research UK.

Of course, even if you believe that they didn't target sufferers of, and those vulnerable to cancer directly, the prevalence of the disease means there are few people who have not been affected by it in one way of another. Labour knows the fear it strikes into the hearts of millions and this is what they seek to exploit.

Labour's objective is to focus on the Conservatives intention to drop micro management by government ministers using politically motivated targets. They paint this as some kind of lessening of a commitment to quality healthcare that would adversely affect cancer treatment. In order to maintain that impression they need to ignore that fact that the Tories intend to replace these targets with a system that judges health care providers by far more relevant, measures focussed on actual outcomes. This makes more sense to me. I don't care how long whatever phase of my treatment, a government minister decides is important, takes if I know that the overall care I will receive maximises my chance of survival with as little adverse impact to my quality of life as possible.

Far from reducing information available to patients about health care the Tories pledge to increase it, and that pledge it pretty much central to their vision of moving to a more patient focused system where we'd have a choice where we go for treatment. If you want more detail on their plans, the Conservatives will be publishing their Manifesto on Tuesday. However, the Draft Manifesto they published earlier in the year sets out their plans as well. I suggest skipping the blurb at the start and jumping straight to page 8.

Now, you may not agree with this approach. Fair enough, that's a matter of opinion. The best way to deliver health care is a big question and there will be many different theories and proposals. But to suggest that your political opponents are setting out to deliberately damage health care is wrong and to target the fears of women about breast cancer is utterly contemptible.

Time To Make Our Minds Up

Today's opinion poll (albeit a bit of an outlier) claiming the Conservative Party's lead over Labour is down to just 2% might seem like bad news for them, but I think it is the kick up the backside they need and also a timely reminder for the remaining apathetic, potential voters that have yet to make up their minds.

Many people have assumed that there's no way Gordon Brown could win the next election. Now they will see there is a real danger of five more years of Labour. My hope is that it will motivate people to look at the real and very serious issues facing this country at the moment. Whether they focus on issues related to the economic crisis, social cohesion, broken democracy, honesty in our government, I am sure most, not wedded to big state socialist ideology, would come to the conclusion that now really is a time for change.

In 2005 I felt that the voters of Britain made a fatal mistake by returning a Labour government that had so clearly been lying, spending too much and achieving too little for eight years. One of the lowest turnouts for a general election ever, pointed to the apathy many felt at the time. Only 61.4 % of those eligible to vote felt it worthwhile, Blair won with just 37% of that vote to the Tories 34%. Although I'm sure Cameron is wishing it were possible for the Tories to win on such a slim lead right now!

So, Blair wasn't popular and most knew you couldn't trust a word Brown said about the economy (or anything else for that matter). His budgets were a running joke with all the double counting and you had to wait a week or more after his speech to actually find out the truth about his plans from the small print and leaks. Although the government was renowned for spin and dishonesty it was sustained in power by the luck of governing during the longest period of global economic growth ever and a seemingly disunited opposition with a lack of charismatic leadership. As a result of Labour's 2005 victory the political establishment lost respect for the electorate. It confirmed to the likes of Brown, Campbell, and McBride that lies and spin would always win the day.

The Tories need to get back to showing the people that they are different. Not just in policy terms but that they are more trustworthy and less likely to lie and cheat their way through their tenure like this lot have. The "airbrushed" poster, while containing a positive policy based message, allowed Labour's spin machine to leap into action and portray Cameron as nothing more than a slick salesman. For me this showed how Labour are more fixated on the image (Cameron's face) than the message (the actual words on the poster), but their campaign was effective and has probably contributed them closing the gap in the polls.

For an opposition party the Tories have put a lot of effort into defining what it is they stand for. Anyone saying they don't know what the Tories stand for or that Cameron is "policy light" needs to start paying attention or stop towing Labour propaganda lines. Their draft manifesto is available on their web site, George Osborne is getting positive reviews for his plans for the economy and while Cameron may well be a better communicator than Gordon Brown that is hardly a reason to criticise him. Labour would do well to start defining it's plans for the next 5 years in as much detail. They, after all, are in government with armies of civil servants at their disposal to do the work at tax payers expense.

But if the Tories really aren't for you that's no reason not to vote. Choose the party best placed to beat the Labour candidate in your constituency. Because, unless Labour lose the next election and lose it big, the whole political establishment would have been right to hold us in contempt as an electorate. No opposition again will attempt to set out its stall in a positive way and our transition to a US model of negative political campaigning will be complete. Labour called their conversion to it in the mid nineties "Clintonisation", that was until Clinton was caught sticking cigars up female interns.

Clintonisation is the very last thing the people of this country need more of. That is unless we really are all just a bunch of pussies.

From Hope To Dope

The Independent On Sunday is running a list of possible political posters made up by various ad agencies. Some of them are very funny. My favourite being one based on Obama's 2008 "Hope" poster...

As funny as the Independent posters are, they are all negative. Sadly, this is probably an accurate sign of things to come but I hope not. The contrast between a positive and negative message in the Hope/Dope posters above is certainly stark. At the General Election it would be great if the parties could focus more on why we should vote for them rather than why we shouldn't vote for their opponents.

The Independent's posters remind me of my favourite Economist front cover lampooning Brown's pathetic class war strategy to regain Labour's core vote. A strategy that seems to be splitting the cabinet.