In my weekly piece for the Telegraph’s Brassneck blog I analyse David Cameron’s use of his tax speech to communicate multiple messages to distinct groups:
"The current stage in project Cameron of course affords him with the opportunity to convince those within the party who remain sceptical; those who see clear commitments to specific tax cuts as the only way to win a conservative victory at the next election (because it’s worked so well in the last couple). But in attempting to convince the doubters Cameron is forced to walk a perilous tightrope; a tightrope below which there is no safety net. To fall would mean undoing all the work which has come before this point.
To walk this tightrope Cameron has employed one of the oldest tools in the political workshop: saying different things to different people, using exactly the same words."
You can read the whole piece here.
May 24th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
He’s clearly hoping that the Conservative Party does not win a majority at the next general election. The difficulties inherent in transforming a single set of variably interpretable words into multiple actions to appease disparate groups, and without creating irreconcilable differences between them, have defeated better men than he.
Lincoln had something to say about it.
Should the poor fool have the misfortune to win the next election (which I think unlikely) we’ll be treated to the sorry spectacle of an idiot trying to explain his multiple failures in a not dissimilar fashion.