It seems to be a well-established practice
that all spending pledges made by the Labour Party must be accompanied by a detailed
analysis of where the money will come from, whilst Conservative politicians are
allowed to make wild promises as and when they wish, depending presumably on an
assumption that the magic money tree only works for Tories. The media, by and large, play along with
this, and the Labour Party make themselves vulnerable by dutifully falling in
with the requirement rather than arguing that government finances simply don’t
work that way.
The front leader in the Tory leadership
race has duly obliged by promising to reduce taxes for higher earners. Some of his opponents have criticised
him for this pledge, but I wonder if that’s mostly because of regret that they
didn’t think of it first. It’s been made
clear that the main beneficiaries of his proposal would be rich
pensioners. By a curious (and I’m sure
entirely unrelated) coincidence, the final choice of leader will be made by members
of the Conservative Party, a group in which rich pensioners are extraordinarily
over-represented. To be blunt, what did
people expect of someone whose only interest is himself? Trying to win a context in that particular electorate
by promising to increasing
the living wage shows a remarkable lack of awareness about the concerns of
the target audience. For what may,
perhaps, be the first time in his life, Johnson is being brutally honest – he’s
identified those who can make the difference to his chances and is deliberately
setting out to buy their votes. What the
rest of his opponents – let alone the public at large – think of that is
irrelevant to him.
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4 comments:
I am not clear from your post, if you are in favour or against members of a party voting for a leader. It is true that the Tory Party in the past had a “soundings” system that was quite successful, but its success was based on the fact that the power rested with the Associations throughout the realm, but Little Billy Hague killed that off and centralised power.
I always believed that if you are presented with a set of names, there should be a choice of “none of the above” and if the winner gets less than the total votes in this section, then the process starts again, without those that stood the first time.
To be presented with the choice of the Boy Johnson and Little “Charlie” Gove , then the Boy gets it as they are looking for a person that can win elections and he has some previous on this issue- no matter what his policies might be ,as getting power is the name of the game.
I'm in favour of party members choosing their party's leader, but I'm not in favour of the candidates bribing them to vote in a particular way using my money.
There is a big assumption behind your reply – that politicians when they get into office keep their promises or have the ability to enact them.
Plaid Cymru party leadership contest was a classic, three very ordinary candidates went about telling those who were going to vote for them, what their views were on taxation and all other kinds on nonsense that they would never be empowered to enact. Cleverly, this burnt up air time on the very issues that they had power and could enact, such as the structure and where power should rest within the party.
So, party leadership contests should be viewed in that light and what they say should not be taken seriously.
"There is a big assumption behind your reply – that politicians when they get into office keep their promises or have the ability to enact them." That's not the assumption that I'm making here at all - I have little expectation that politicians will keep their promises. Insofar as there is an assumption, it is that those being offered a bribe to vote in a particular way might believe that the promise will be delivered. Whether bribery ceases to be bribery if the payment is never made after the paid-for action is delivered is a moot point. It seems to me that that simply turns a transaction based on bribery into one based on fraud.
"Cleverly, this burnt up air time on the very issues that they had power and could enact, such as the structure and where power should rest within the party." I broadly agree with that, but it seems to me that it is a consequence of fighting an 'internal' election through 'external' media, and trying to convince the internal audience to vote for the candidate who gets the best response with the external audience.
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