I have decided to dispense with the rather prosaic and repetitive subject headings that I have been using thus far, and will from now on make some vague attempt at a subtle introduction to the day's discussion. No prizes for guessing what today has been about: I seem to have fallen at the first hurdle as far as the subtlety is concerned. The first manifesto launch of the campaign meant that inevitably senior masterminds of the Labour Party were out in force to propel their message that Labour is equipped to steer the country into the future (as metaphorically demonstrated by their nauseating front cover, accompanied by some ridiculous cartoon representation of policy, presumably in some attempt to make the idea of economic streamlining more cuddly).
For one horrible split second whilst listening to the Today Programme this morning I thought Tony himself had crawled back once again to lend his excessively-tanned support to the manifesto. Fortunately, Tony seems still to be advertising for St Tropez or whatever it was he went off to do, and I quickly realised that it was in fact Miliband Minor, who seems to have taken up Blair's pre-American-accent fake 'ordinary guy' whine. His exchange with John Humphrys lends itself rather well to a spot of interpretation for the sake of clarity:
John Humphrys: Where have you wasted money?
Ed Miliband: We haven't.
JH: How can you save money if you haven't wasted any?
EM: I can tell you instead where the Tories want to spend money that we say they won't have if that helps.
JH: You said things in previous manifestos that you didn't adhere to, like promising no income tax increase. Why should we believe you now?
EM: Any tax increases that we have made have been as a result of the global recession and not because we made bad economic decisions.
JH: But why should be believe you?
EM: If you're not going to let me make excuses about the past, I'll make excuses about the future. In any case, it's an academic point because if we're re-elected we'll just shift the tax rises sideways as we have before in the hope that no one will notice.
Even the argumentative stalwart Humphrys seemed to be growing tired by the end of the interview, which led to a particular highlight of irony:
JH: This is all a bit vague.
EM: What's a bit vague?
How prophetic, too, that Mr Miliband should foresee the day's controversy over three former Labour MPs claiming legal aid to fight criminal proceedings over their expenses claims. When asked by Mr Humphrys asked him to name one thing that people want but won't be able to have as a result of the inevitable post-election spending cuts, Miliband immediately responded that a reduction in the funding of legal aid would be necessary, but that the public would resist its reduction. Not so, Mr Miliband: if members of the Labour Party are to claim on this resource for their own ends, it's fair to assume that the electorate will be more than willing to forego the extra public funding it involves.
The consensus seems to be that the Labour manifesto is an underwhelming list of non-policies, most of which sound glibly familiar to anyone who was paying attention in the Blair years. The latter observation in itself may explain why Lord Mandelson described the document as 'Blair-Plus': hardly a great advert. The comment later drew Harriet Harman into an exchange with Jon Sopel along these lines:
JS: Do you agree the the Labour Manifesto is Blair Plus?
HH: I think that if that's the description that has been given by Peter Mandelson it must be right, but I don't know what it means.
You're not the only one, Harriet, although there are those of us less willing to put our trust in the Dark Lord so blindly. Douglas Alexander was the other key Labour policy maker to be in interview action this evening, the result of which was rather embarrassing to say the least for someone supposedly so closely involved with the writing of the manifesto. The highlights of the gist:
Eddie Mair: Why won't you rule out a VAT rise?
Douglas Alexander: Alistair Darling won't let me. We have never put up VAT. The Tories did. Blame them if it's too high.
EM: You put it up in January.
DA: That doesn't count, because it was the Tories' fault that it was so high in the first place.
EM: Can you guarantee that no more post offices will close?
DA: We have a good record in supporting the post office network financially.
EM: That's an interesting answer to a different question.
EM: What is the link between immigration and crime?
DA [after a noticeable pause]: I'm not clear why you're asking that.
EM: It's one of the chapter headings in your manifesto.
Oh dear.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Nick Clegg locked horns with Paxman, who optimistically introduced the interview claiming that 'in the coming minutes, we'll find out what Nick Clegg believes'. Good luck, Jeremy. He quickly returned to reality, however, opening the interview by asking: "Let's just establish what planet we're on. You don't seriously think you're going to be Prime Minister do you?" Mr Clegg refused to be drawn on whether he would support the party with the strongest mandate based on share of the vote or number of seats, although it seems as if whichever party ends up having to bargain with him may not have much of a fight on their hands:
JP: What would your priorities be for supporting another party in government?
NC: We have four criteria.
JP: So would any party wanting to form an alliance with you have to accept all four of those?
NC: No.
Excellent, excellent. Heartening to know that Clegg will defend his party's principles to the hilt [insert snigger here] in the event of forming an alliance, despite having waxed lyrical only moments before about the electorate's power and influence over a potentially-close result, and his unwillingness to enter a power-bargain after the election. Paxman went on to begin a grilling on the issues of immigration (unlike the Labour Party, the LibDems are at least refraining from fuelling the BNP's fire by not making the direct link here with crime) and economic policy:
JP: Is it acceptable that the Office of National Statistics is predicting a population of 70 million by 2030?
NC: It's a lot of people.
Ten out of ten for observation.
JP: Would you support a Tory emergency budget if it was going to cut spending?
NC: I would prefer to talk about how I could save the country by scrapping Trident (despite the fact that it's completely unrealistic) and how neither of the other parties will commit to doing this.
JP: Did you really mean that everybody would benefit from your rise in tax-free income threshold to £10k?
NC: The fact that a few high earners wouldn't benefit is a minor detail.
Paxman rightly reminded Mr Clegg that this election campaign is "all about detail". It is a loophole of logic that it seems reasonable to them to attack the Tories for not seeming to have costed their tax proposals properly, but that similar anomalies in their own claims can be dismissed in such a way. Having said that, this is, sadly, in no way a surprise. Tomorrow sees the turn of the Tories to lay out their stall. It remains to be seen whether they can present the manifestly-inspiring case for their election that was absent from the Labour Party today.
...And finally: In a bid to remain party-neutral, see here for some excellent contributions to the collection of spoof Tory campaign posters doing the rounds.
