Brown hands Cameron the election
Posted by Christie Malry on April 5, 2010 at 8:11 am
As if the Gene Hunt pwn goal wasn't enough, it looks like Labour is preparing to parcel up Parliament and hand it to Cameron on a plate.
Gordon Brown will launch a make-or-break assault on Conservative economic plans today as he seeks to re-energise the Labour campaign after its worst week of the year.
With 24 hours to go before he is expected to call the election, the Prime Minister will accuse David Cameron of threatening to plunge Britain back into recession. He says the Tory leader will take £6 billion out of the economy without knowing how he will pay for it.
The Conservatives must be delighted. Because both sets of politicians are trying to chart a dangerous course between an economic Scylla and Charybdis. Increase taxes too much and the economy will collapse back into recession under the millstone weight of too much government. Don't increase them enough and our creditors will walk away, leaving us broke.
What Brown seems to have done is mixed the two up, by making recession the inevitable consequence of lower taxes. This is daft, because as well as being economically incompetent, it's unlikely to play well with the public. People instinctively like lower taxes - it means more money in their own pockets - but fear the cuts in public services that typically accompany them. Brown should be levelling with the public and arguing that we have to put taxes up again because, if we don't, the IMF will come knocking.
Put another way, we're back to Osborne's killer blow of a couple of days back. Brown is arguing that the economy is desperately fragile, but only a further round of tax increases can nurse it back to health. He's clearly lost his mind.
Update: Fraser Nelson agrees.
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