"Same old Tories" doesn't tell me much

This article was originally published on Labour Uncut: http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2011/03/28/same-old-tories-doesnt-tell-me-much/#more-8605

Really, Ed, really?

“Same old taxes, same old Tories”. Ed Miliband’s response to the chancellor’s “budget for growth” last week was characterised by an aggressive, knowing ennui. It was as if Miliband had cast himself as an aging prima donna reclining on a (red) velvet chaise-longue, warning her child away from an only seemingly reformed no-good suitor. “I know what they’re like, you know what they’re like”, he seemed to be saying. Don’t be fooled by “friendly” George’s marriage proposal, also known as his budget for “growth”. He’s still the same man who stole your money to buy a dead puppy as a present for your sister.

The presumption Miliband and his speechwriters are making is that we do know what the Conservatives are like; that we will easily remember what they’re like if we cast our collective minds back to 1997 when they were last in government (or when they last proposed to us, depending on how long this analogy can be dragged out). This message was clearest during one of the speech’s defining moments, in which, against a supportive background of taunts and cheers from buoyed-up Labour ministers, Miliband described Osborne as embodying the “hubris and arrogance of the early 1990s, the same broken promises…he’s Norman Lamont with an iPod”.

Big words. In fact, pretty funny words, if you know who Norman Lamont is. Presumably the majority of MPs can remember, but during the time of the last Tory government I personally was more interested in learning to read and tie my shoes up unaided than in keeping abreast of party politics. That’s not to say that it takes longer than three seconds to google Norman Lamont, but, in terms of making what should be an easy appeal to an increasingly large base of dispossessed young voters whose political consciousness wasn’t fully formed during the 90s, he shouldn’t think that “same old Tories” hits hard without proper explication. He can’t assume that we all have politics degrees, particularly now that nobody can afford a degree.

Of course, for every potential young Labourite for whom “classic Tory con” means at least a week in the (soon-to-be-closed) library, there are many more who internalised Thatcher-hatred, if not Major-hatred, with their mother’s blissfully unsnatched milk.

Neither should Miliband focus only on the young to the exclusion of anybody born before 1970. But if the point is to win over those wavering in their support for the coalition, he should consider that reiterating that the Tories haven’t really changed speaks only to those who were won over by Cameron’s “progressive Conservatism” election campaign. Nobody who has read a newspaper in the last year can be fooling themselves that there is anything progressive about this government’s programme.

Miliband needs to find more imaginative ways to convey more clearly exactly what the broken promises and economic deceits of this government are. A great example of this in his anti-budget speech was the line he nicked from the institute of fiscal studies, that the budget gives with one hand, and “takes away with lots and lots of other hands”. This calls to mind an illustration of the government as an amorphous, ACME-white-gloved-hands machine which is figurative enough to give some substance to figures about fuel duty drops and VAT rises. The slogan “too far and too fast” is also relatively credible, however much it sounds like an adolescent sexual encounter, or the working title of the misogynist car-chase film The Fast and the Furious.

As well as pointing out what the problems with Tory-Lib Dem policy are, a better, clearer explication of Labour’s economic alternative to the “budget for growth” would be most welcome. Indeed, the huge support that resulted in at least a 250,000 person turn-out for the march for the alternative is not at all surprising. It is clear that if there are alternatives. We want to hear about them, and we want to hear about them in a detailed, extensive, well-publicised way, preferably published in the form of a weighty tome that can be used for the purposes of hitting Nick Clegg.

“Same old Tories” preaches only to the converted. In a time of opposition, this is not enough.