Friday 23 April 2010

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has the scariest leaflet of them all?

The Conservative Party's big idea this morning is to have a debate about "leaflets" - and the charge of Labour"scaremongering".

It is difficult to see why Labour should not have been challenging on free eye tests: indeed Brown's challenge got an important 'on the feet' policy shift last night. David Cameron under pressure committed to keeping free eye tests for pensioners, having not included that in either his manifesto or his initial debate answer. Isn't the lesson there that campaigning and scrutiny works?

But the Tory party's creative team may think their leader is conceding the "scaremongering" territory rather too quickly - and might ask for there to at least be a call for nominations first.

Tory campaigners might well want to insist they have put rather more effort into trying to keep the voters' awake at night than Labour. Surely this deserves more recognition from their leader?

The Conservatives message this week has been that famine, pestilence and plague will visit the land if they are not given an overall majority.

An early frontrunner for most scaremongering leaflet in a supporting role might go to this Tory leaflet - with a bloodied machete and an bogus statistic.

As The Staggers reports, violent crime is down 41 per cent since 1997 in the British Crime Survey: Tory claims to the contrary have led to official warnings from the chief statistician, and been thoroughly debunked by the BBC Home Affairs Editor).

What about the Tory tombstone poster, surely aimed at elderly voters.

Now Gordon wants £20,000 when you die: Don't vote for Labor's new Death Tax

Saremongering or not?

Clearly, all parties can get it wrong locally. A credibility test is whether activists and bloggers can never admit fault on their side, while only lambasting their opponents. Many Labour voices were critical, as Next Left was very strongly, of Roger Godsiff's leaflet on prisoners' votes, which the Labour party pulled.

But can anti-"scaremongering" Conservatives defend the machete and the tombstone?

2 comments:

Old Holborn said...

Daniel Zeichner, Cambridge has a picture of Gordon on his.

Now THATS scary

Guido Fawkes said...

Socialists eat babies. Well known fact. Look at Prezza, how many babies has he eaten?