Sketch: Cut wars
Alistair Darling v George Osborne
Also In The News
|
By Matt Hallam. |  |
Tuesday, 06, Oct 2009 03:35
It's first blood to the Tories at the end of the phoney war.
By Matthew Champion.
The chancellor and his shadow today went head to head in the opening salvoes of the cut wars.
After the early exchanges, George Osborne has emerged, bloodied but unbowed. Alistair Darling is yet to deploy his reserves, if he has any at all.
George Osborne speech in full
Analysis: Osborne breaks free
Full story: Osborne sets out shadow budget
Full story: Shadow chancellor outlines pension age hike
The chancellor's hopes to have trumped Osborne's planned hike of the state pension age by announcing a freeze or one per cent rise on public sector pay next year was a tactical disaster.
Because the shadow chancellor went more than a little bit further, flooding the contested ground with troops to espouse an outright freeze on the salaries of all public sector workers earning more than £18,000 for one year.
What looked like a drastic offensive by Darling now seems a bit of a damp squib, unsupported and not properly reinforced.
Osborne's blitzkrieg assault has managed to paint the Tories as the party prepared to take the difficult decisions, be honest, and stick up for the poorest paid.
Darling's attempt to seize the initiative has made him look like the archetypal general quaffing brandy on a distant mountaintop while his troops do the dirty work.
Osborne's gambits have raised the stakes, establishing some genuine battle lines for the first time in this parliament. For a party seemingly on course to cruise into London, they are desperate gambles.
If you're rich; the 50p top rate of tax is staying. If you work in the public sector; your pay isn't going up next year. If you're aged between 48 and 57; you're working an extra year to get your state pension. If your family earns more than £50,000; your tax credits are getting cut. If you're the Bank of England governor, the director general of the BBC, the chief executive of Royal Mail; you have to see the chancellor if you want to earn more than the prime minister.
Oh, and don't forget to vote for us.
The Tories were angry this morning by Darling's surprise attack during their conference. But in the heat of the general election battle, which Tory chairman Eric Pickles declared begun on Monday, anything goes, while more specifically convention goes out the window.
Darling's move was certainly calculated to lessen the impact of his counterpart's assault, and the reason for the hollowness of his own address to the troops at Labour's conference last week now seems clear.
What is also clear is the lengths the parties have convinced themselves they need to go to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the electorate.
But could Darling's punitive operation be a rouse, a double bluff to tempt the Tories out of their bunkers? By resisting pressure to specify where the axe will fall they have led the Tories into a trap where they have exactly done that.
Finally the government has got the opposition where it wants it; exposed in all its public spending cutting glory. Eight months before the general election the battle lines are finally being drawn.
The cut wars have begun.