Skipper

It's a bit hard to discern the motives for the press conference yesterday, paid for by the coalition(so it was essentially a 'political' event), in which Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne and Tory Chairperson, Baroness Warsi offered a curious double act. They both combined in an attempt to demonise the forthcoming public expenditure incisions as 'Labour cuts' when they are announced 20th October. Warsi condemned the Labour leadership candidates for not coming up with their own plans for reducing the deficit and demanded they repay their £20K ministerial severance pay.

While the latter is straightforward political attack rhetoric, the former is risibly false in that Labour has a plan- it was Alastair Darling's and has been articulated by him several times since the election: introduce cuts at a slower rate and remove the deficit by 2016-7 rather than two years earlier as the Tories-Lib Dems have decreed. Moving onto the main charge that these cuts are 'Labour cuts', the accusation is so palpably absurd it won't stick for a moment. Most voters must be aware Labour preferred and offered a more sedate route to eliminating the deficit and those with some insight into the events of the past tweo years will know a significant proportion of the deficit was the result of the necessary 'fiscal stimulus' to catalyse the failing economy, the need for which was occasioned by the US originating banking crisis 2007-8.

I had rather liked Baroness Wari hitherto as a bright new talent, but this shameless exercise in, effectively, lying to voters is deeply disappointing. To try to pin the blame on Labour for the recession when they supported the major planks of most of what Gordon Brown did as Chancellor, plumbs depths of political cynicism of which even I doubted the Tories capable. Allegra Stratton in the linked article suggests the initiative was caused by a worry that, despite being leaderless, commands a respectable 33% in the polls which is too high for the coalition's comfort.