News from Labour Matters

How to get away with being a modern Tory? Keep mum

What characterises modern Conservatism? What is the baseline? What is the (lowest) common denominator? Any examples spring to mind? How about George Osborne’s slipping and sliding on the Andrew Marr show recently? This is how brazenly one of Cameron’s brightest avoided answering legitimate questions about Tory intentions – by simply saying he didn’t want the headlines:

AM: “What about some of the big capital spending issues? What about Trident? What about the big railway and motorway extensions. Those kind of things? Are they on the table at least internally?”

GO: “I don’t want to talk about individual programmes because it would just create the headline you know ‘Tories do this or that with a particular capital project’. We are looking at the entirety of government spending. We’re making sure that we are getting value for money. I want to reform public services so that you do get more bang for your buck and all I can tell you is that we are spending an enormous amount of time for an opposition thinking not just about trying to cross the finishing line and collapsing to an exhausted heap at five in the morning after the election, but how we will govern afterwards and how we will make sure that in a period of spending restraint you get the money to the frontline, that the money paid for by you and I and everyone else in this country in taxes is well spent in the public sector.” (George Osborne, Andrew Marr show, 19 April 2009.)

Meanwhile, as Cameron promises tax cuts for those who sit on their wealth and talks of an age of austerity for the rest of us, Bob Ainsworth MP, Labour’s Armed Forces Minister, yesterday wrote to Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox calling on him to come clean on the Tories’ plans for investment in Britain’s defences.

He said: “David Cameron says this is an age of austerity – but for who?

“While he is committed to cut taxes for the wealthy few, he refuses to commit to support for our armed services or for the jobs that key defence projects create.”

How to get away with being a modern Tory? Simply keep mum.