Saturday 27 March 2010

Could sunshine win the day?

Gordon Brown gave a punchy and passionate speech in Nottingham to launch Labour's key election pledges.

It's not wrecking the economic recovery, stupid.

The pledge card is the central tool of a political age in which we campaign in prose more than poetry. John Rentoul has a point when he wonders whether "strengthen families in communities" is English or Dutch.

But isn't the sunshine image on the pledge card very interesting too?

Remember the central message of David Cameron's first party conference as leader in 2006:


Let us show clearly which side we are on. Let optimism beat pessimism, let sunshine win the day.


Or George Osborne


The Conservative Party mustn't sound like the old man on the park bench who says things were better in 1985, or 1955, or 1855.


Yes, there was cynicism. But many commentators thought it was smart. Andrew Rawnsley wrote:


This is the sharpest, most significant and yet also one of the least remarked-upon breaks that David Cameron has made with his party's past. William Hague, IDS and Michael Howard told Conservative audiences that Britain was going to hell in a handcart. They painted a dystopian picture of the country.


Not Dave.

Yet David Cameron has ended up running on broken Britain, the debt crisis and the age of austerity.

He may even have left Gordon Brown taking up the sunshine side of the argument!


If we get it wrong, we face what they themselves call an age of austerity. If we get it right, we can achieve an age of shared prosperity. The economy is more central and the choice more serious in this election than any time in my lifetime.


Funny old world.

1 comment:

Robert said...

yes forget the back stabbing the lies the expenses the fraud and vote new labour, the wars are nothing an accident.

Vote Gordon...