Our fourth review seeking the effect of political parties on the region around Preston. This time it’s head to head with the Conservatives and Labour. Not only head to head but neck and neck in some places.
With no major policy announcements yet it isn’t easy to know who’s really the best for this area. The manifesto’s are due out next week and it will be useful if they have snappy bullet lists like the UKIP one rather than only being long-winded multi-paged affairs.
The most interesting seat in the area is South Ribble which is a key Conservative target. Yet this seat is said to have a high number of people working in public services and this might favour the incumbents as they have created a bigger public service sector. It’s also been said, in the Times newspaper, that a seat like South Ribble in the south of England would be a comfortable Conservative seat. How many Labour voting but secretly Conservatives are there in South Ribble?
At present only the Liberal Democrats have made statements about where they might seek to balance the economy, and defence is one of their targets with the locally produced Eurofighter specifically mentioned. The other parties are shying away from such statements in case it scares off voters because they’re so close. No doubt this area has benefitted from the large amount of work in defence.
The Conservatives by not increasing National Insurance appear to have more money to make up than Labour especially when coupled with their planned inheritance tax give-away and now a marriage tax give-away. Will this mean they need to tax more and cut more, elsewhere. How painless can this be?
The Social Services budget dwarfs all other budgets and is equivalent to education, health and defence combined. Both parties are making comforting noises about health and in reality defence is so small now that to get big savings could seriously affect our capability. That could affect how consequential we are in world affairs and business. Would we make it obvious we couldn’t defend the Falklands for example and cease to court American favour for our UN, NATO and IMF positions by reducing our commitments to their support.
This leaves Social Services and Education as the only meaty budgets left. The other way is to raise money from efficiency, taxes and perhaps taking an optimistic view on growth.
Other issues such as parliamentary integrity, and if we look a bit further afield into East Lancashire can we expect any reflection from the European Parliament election when the BNP won a place, might have more influence on voting for major parties than thought as little is being said about either at present.
At this time for those who are looking for a divide between the parties it isn’t obvious beyond traditional loyalties. So do we like Gordon or David?
David Cameron seems decent and genuine and it isn’t easy for a fair person to find a bad character trait. It’s difficult to criticise someone for being wealthy because of their birth when it’s said you can’t criticise for other birth traits like poverty, race and religion. It isn’t automatic that you are of a type because you’re wealthy, and frequently such an upbringing creates a more natural leadership style. You might worry whether those behind him have the same characteristic but you could say the same about elite school Tony Blair in 1997 and those believed to be class warriors and politically correct behind him.
Gordon Brown is defending opinion about whether he’s done a good job over 13yrs and there are those who criticise his style. In many areas like health and education things are better. The economy after following the post 1991 trend did well until late and Mr Brown says the current recession is a worldwide problem. Many will believe he must take some blame for Britain’s worse than most economic predicament. Claiming to abolish boom and bust, celebrating in light touch regulation and glorying in how London was beating New York because we had little regulation seem to now have been poor judgements. Countries like Australia had stronger banking regulation and no bank problem. Mr Brown also started the run on final salary pensions with a new tax, which is something that worries many. Then turning on the spending tap too exuberantly, causing a house price boom and selling gold at its lowest price might not have been good judgement. Perhaps if you’re around so long then such a list is bound to appear.
Then you could look at the teams. Preferences in the teams could be: Mr Brown has David and Ed Miliband and Liam Byrne who regularly give strong and likeable showings. David Cameron has George Osborne and Michael Gove as good support, although George Osborne sometimes has an image problem but has done well so far in the campaign. Nick Clegg has Vince Cable who is popular but often doesn’t come over too strongly. It is to be expected that the party in power has a stronger team as they have all the information and have been on TV more. Also the current government has refused to give access to information for opposition parties.
In conclusion it seems that at present politicians are arguing about small issues when we want to know how economy will be fixed. Only the Liberals have directly threatened Lancashire jobs although all parties have hinted there are threats. We’ve had 13 years of Labour with the first half looking good and the last half deteriorating and then the party ending.
Is it 5 more years of the same, a short time of compromise, or time to give someone else a go? It’s still a close call. Will the manifesto’s and TV debates bring out anything new.