This blog has consistently argued that a Conservative Party prepared to tell you the hard truth about public spending versus a Labour Party determined to cover up the truth about inefficiency and waste in the public sector is a contrast that will really resonate. And boy does that argument look good today. Labour has got itself into a terrible bind on the spending issue. There really are only two ways out of this argument for them. One is to admit the lie, the other to double down and push the line even harder. Either option plays directly into the developing meme of Tory truth versus Labour lies. By embracing the argument of this blog and others that they should frame the debate in the terms of honesty versus dishonesty, rather than investment versus cuts, the Tories have laid a massive elephant trap for Labour.
Of course, the first isn’t a real option at all. Admit the lie? Cannot be done. So they are going to have to tough it out. The damage this will do to Labour credibility on the spending issue is incalculable. Gordon Brown and Ed Balls, supposedly the two ‘towering intellects’* of this administration, are in danger of throwing away what little credibility on the economy Labour has left.
The problem Labour have is that the lie just doesn’t play. It doesn’t play in the blogosphere, it doesn’t play on TV, it doesn’t play in the mainstream newspapers or in the Dog and Duck. It doesn’t even play in The Guardian, consistently the most hawkish advocate of public spending of all the main papers. If Labour cannot find a way to make their argument on spending play, it is all over for them. Sitting here today, I simply cannot see how they do it. The sums just do not add up. If the Tories are prepared to push it hard enough, this will prove a very, very profitable line of attack for them indeed.
The next trick for the Tories is to use this developing meme to break through the stifling orthodoxy on public spending and build a base of support for their wider agenda. The Tories have to look beyond winning the election and start building a base of support for what are going to be some tough spending rounds. Otherwise, what support they have could erode very quickly indeed. Cuts in the abstract are one thing, real cuts working their way through into the real economy are a different proposition altogether. More on this developing argument later, for now let me just say that today is a very good day to be a Tory - a very good day indeed.
*Copyright © Polly Toynbee, circa 2007