Not satisfied with inventing new policies, the Tories have now launched a full-bore attack on a party that doesn't exist: the "Hung Parliament Party". They've cancelled the PPB they were going to show on Tuesday night and replaced it with this.
It is, I think, a crazy tactic. First of all, people vote for real parties, not imaginary ones. It's a mark of how difficult the Tories think it is to attack the Lib Dems that they've had to invent a fourth party to stop people voting Clegg. But really, if that's their aim, they'd be better off going the direct route.
Second, it's patronising. In an election campaign it's essential to ask for votes for your lot, and perfectly acceptable to point out the shortcomings of the other lot. But - especially in the current climate - it's suicidal to assume that voters can be bossed around.
Third, it's entirely counter-productive. The Tories think that if they carefully explain the hazardous instability of a hung parliament, wandering voters will see sense and vote for them, even if they do so grudgingly. But this is to massively misread the mood of the electorate. The voters want some instability. They are disgusted by a stability that bred the culture of expenses, and by the old two-party choice. The replacement of one lot by another at this election simply isn't going to satisfy the thirst for a cathartic event, a flood, a cleansing catastrophe that marks a juddering rupture with the past. The more the Tories build up the prospect of a hung parliament as a disaster, the more people will think, bring it on. (The mood is similar, by the way, to that of Democratic voters in 2007/2008, for whom the replacement of Bush by Clinton came to seem inadequate to the size of their anger. In these circumstances, Obama's very "riskiness" became his appeal).
Yesterday one of my friends told me she was thinking about voting Lib Dem for the first time, with the intention - eloquently expressed, I thought - of "stirring shit up". Conservatives shouldn't under-estimate the "stir shit up" motivation, even if they deem it irrational. If voters want to wreak some havoc on May 6th then they bloody well will, despite politicians telling them not to. Because politicians are telling them not to.
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And fourth it looks desperate. The exact opposite of a sealing the deal approach.
Posted by: Will M | April 27, 2010 at 12:58 PM
It's just so Tory putting a noose on things. What next? Pamphlets about pike and musket crime?
Posted by: CC | April 27, 2010 at 11:56 PM
Ha ha yes good point.
Posted by: Marbury | April 28, 2010 at 11:57 AM