We’ve had a good, strong week and the campaign is moving our way.
We have stayed focused and positive. In the second TV debate David showed he was ready to be Prime Minister in two weeks time. He clearly won on the big foreign policy issues – Afghanistan, terrorism and Europe. He explained how a Conservative Government would stand up for Britain in the EU and was the only leader prepared to say that all politicians have to take responsibility for the expenses scandal.
Throughout the debate David showed passion, conviction and leadership. Qualities that have been on display as he travels the country talking directly to people about the change we need. Our new Party Election Broadcast brings together some of his speeches at recent rallies, setting out his positive vision for our country.
Yesterday Sir Philip Green – one of Britain’s most successful businessmen – backed our economic plans to cut waste and spoke out against a hung parliament. In response, after a lot of Twitter excitement, Labour have revealed their secret ‘big name’ … an Elvis impersonator. An appropriate choice as according to the polls the public are fast reaching the conclusion that Gordon Brown should leave the building.
In fact Labour’s campaign is now in disarray. They have been reduced to briefing journalists that Gordon Brown is going to be meeting more “real people”. Unfortunately for them, the more people see of Gordon Brown the more they are convinced that they don’t want another five years of him.
This was the week when Labour’s negative campaign was exposed for all to see. One of the most powerful moments of Thursday’s debate was when David exposed Gordon Brown on Labour’s shameful scaremongering leaflets. For too long Labour have been trying to scare pensioners by saying we would scrap the Winter Fuel Allowance, cut pension credit and other key benefits, end free bus travel fo pensioners and get rid of free TV licences for the over-75s. As David Cameron told the whole country in the debate, none of this is true.
Having been found out, Gordon Brown could only respond with the extraordinary claim that he hadn’t approved any of these attacks. Yet many of them were included in Labour’s election broadcast and on their website. Once again he is taking the country for fools.
We’re picking up rumours that Labour are going to get even more negative next week. If true, this will be just another sign of desperation as their campaign continues to collapse.
This was also the week when the Lib Dems’ policies – on immigration, on the economy and on national defence – fell apart under the spotlight. In the face of the scrutiny that his party has avoided for so long, Nick Clegg was unable to defend his confused and contradictory manifesto promises. And in a debate with me and Alistair Darling, Vince Cable also showed that he could not stand up to sustained scrutiny.
Labour’s collapse has opened up new opportunities for us that we will be making the most of in the week ahead. We are expanding our battleground against Labour and now have a good chance of winning many more seats where they are haemorrhaging votes, including Ed Balls’s seat in Morley & Outwood. In many seats Labour seems to have given up.
Today David was in Thurrock where Jackie Doyle-Price is running a fantastic campaign. We are also targeting the next door seat of Dagenham & Rainham as well as seats in the North of England like Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland. And we are keeping up the pressure on the Lib Dems in seats like Romsey & Southampton North and Winchester in the South, and in towns like Cheltenham and Harrogate & Knaresborough and across the South West.
Our positive message of change is resonating in seats like these and all around the country. This week we launched our new poster campaign with positive examples of the change that a Conservative Government would bring: stopping Labour’s jobs tax; National Citizen Service; cutting benefits for those who refuse work; better schools; funding new NHS cancer drugs; and scrapping ID cards.
Next week we will be explaining the clear choice on the economy at this election. People know that Labour have failed and that all they offer is a jobless recovery from a weak government. But we’ll also be explaining why a hung parliament would bring economic paralysis that would put the recovery at risk. Only a Conservative majority will bring the leadership that we need to deal with our debts and get the economy working for everyone.
If anyone you know is in any doubt about how important a decisive Conservative government is for our country, please make sure they watch this short video – 1 minute of Labour.
We have had an incredible response to the Pound A Day campaign – over £150,000 raised from thousands of individual donors in the last seven days alone. Your donations are really helping us to combat the Lib Dems and to take the fight to Labour in new seats that are now winnable. Please keep giving what you can, the campaign depends on your support.
We’re coming into the final straight, and we’ve got to keep fighting for the change our country needs. Thank you for all your hard work and long hours over the past week. With less than two weeks to go, it is more important than ever that we stay focused, energised and determined. Let’s work flat out for change. With your help, we will win this.
( 16 comments ) Tags: EU, Gordon Brown, Labour, Lib Dems, manifesto, Nick Clegg, Sir Philip Green, TV debate
Comment by Peter Farrington on April 24, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Should membership of Equality 2025 and EHRC Disability Committee be directly accountable to the wider disabled community via a democratic process rather than being appointed if they ever presume to speak for us as a group?
Nomination to such national forums could be via locally elected panels who would act as representatives on all issues linked to disability including but not exclusive to ensuring compliance with the Disability Equality Duty in full proactive cooperation with relevant local authority departments and/or other public bodies in their area.
Election would be by democratic ballot of existing local service users and those requesting to be registered as disabled and/or their carers to confirm and endorse the individual membership of such local and national panels at regular intervals to ensure full accountability and promote wider participation by disabled members in politics generally.
Comment by Alan Skyrme on April 24, 2010 at 9:13 pm
Thirteen years of Labour mismanagement will surely come to an end. The electorate may of course remein undecided and vote for Labour again! God help us if they do! Straight batting and good strategy will win the day. Despite the Clegg surprise we should see Mr Cameron in Office next month …. but keep up the fight to ensure a good majority.
Comment by Andrew Innes on April 24, 2010 at 10:24 pm
With thousands of British people still stuck abroad why are you not making more of this incompetence on behalf of the government? Brown is still in charge and he is responsible.
The basic duty of the government is to protect it’s citizens and they are not doing this.
You should be making more of this
Comment by Dave Sandy on April 24, 2010 at 10:41 pm
It is well worth my Time! Every year that Labour have won a general Election I have either been depressed or unsettles. I hope 2010 is not one of them. Time for Brown to be shoved by mugs as he treats them. Me and you the Electorate.
Comment by Steve Willis on April 24, 2010 at 11:27 pm
Voting Liberal Democrat will:
1. Prop up Labour.
2. Show unquestioned support for the EU.
3. Support an amnesty for illegal immigrants.
4. Raise taxes.
5. Free criminals earlier.
6. Increase smugness in Parliament.
Is anybody this stupid?
Comment by Dave Atherton on April 25, 2010 at 10:27 am
I have to say that is the best video I have seen in this election so far, well done.
Comment by Mike Collier on April 25, 2010 at 11:41 am
David needs to stress that you are not removing £6B from the economy this year, what you plan on doing is not wasting £6B something the electorate will like. He should put it in to context by stating at the end of his opening address on Thursday exactly how much waste there has been in the previous 90 seconds and in his closing address how much there has been in the last 90 minutes. He should if possible break it down to a figure for every citizen over the coming year. Be strong, we can do it!
Comment by Peter Willsher on April 25, 2010 at 11:56 am
I am an ex-banker…the oldfashioned type that borrowed long and lent short. I heard Clegg on Andrew Marr this morning talking more like a Communist than a Liberal. ‘We have to tell the banks to whom they must lend and all basestsorts of other nonsensical controls. We want the banks (who are now global anyway!!!) to make profits so that the taxpayer can be repaid what has been put in and also the shares have to be sold at a good profit. DC has gone for Brown on PMQ on the subject of the disastrous gold sale and the £100 bn raid on the pension funds so on Thursday repeat this and go for Clegg on his financial and economic naivety. We all want an outright win DC so go for it.
Best wishes
Peter Willsher
Comment by Sean Malone on April 26, 2010 at 11:48 am
Dear George
Well done on the campaign so far.
There is one big point which I think David should focus on during your next TV debate.
When you listen to what Gordon Brown is saying it can be summed up as: “vote me back into power, or something bad will happen.” It’s essentially the language of the playground bully: “do what I tell you or you’ll regret it.” The content of some of the Labour Party leaflets are simply an extension of the same subtle, underlying threat “we’re in power and you better not try and vote us out, because if you do something really bad is going to happen to you.”
Big point: Gordon is frightening people because he is bullying them.
Kind regards
Sean Malone
Comment by Tom I Balmain on April 27, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Let us hope that someone will tell the correct figure for cuts next year which I consider will be between 20% to 25% not the figures being put forward at present. Only the Conservatives can sort this mess out. Certainly not Gordon Brown or Nick Glegg but Some how George you need to be bolder and spell out this message. We need you in Number 11 on the morning of the 7th May 2010.
Good luck.
Comment by J Fanshawe on April 28, 2010 at 8:42 am
I have always voted Liberal Democrat, because, by and large, they offer the most intelligent and sound solutions to the problems that exist in our society. This time, because of our electoral system, I am not so sure: I do not want this “New” Labour Party to get into power ever again, but I am not sure that the Conservative policies will actually get us out of the mess we are in. I have 3 children all about to enter the jobs market, and despite 2 of them being at University, I have no confidence that my children will be able to get decent jobs. I am appalled at the vast, unbelievable amounts of public money that is being wasted, literally squandered in the public sector – and I cannot see how the Conservatives will really change any of this. David Cameron and George Osborne really need to address the legacy of Gordon Brown’s economic and fiscal mismanagement over the last 13 years and tell the electorate of his total incompetency and stupidity in managing the public finances. I feel nothing but despair for the future of this country, unless we introduce some massive sea changes in the way the state and the people work together to correct the mistakes of the past 13 years – are the Conservatives brave enough and capable enough to do this?
Comment by John Smith on April 28, 2010 at 6:51 pm
why do you continue to let Gordon Brown say that he is going to halve the debt in the next four years when in fact this is not true. I f I am correct, his manifesto says he is going to halve the rate of increase of the debt which will result in a doubling of the debt over the next four years.
Comment by David Ellerton (York) on April 29, 2010 at 3:24 pm
George Osborne talks about giving a clear message on the economy. What a large proportion of voters do not understand is that the only way out of any recession is to legislate to give the private sector the boost they need to take on more employees, and to encourage more businesses to start up. They do not understand that it is the private sector who pays the salaries of all public servants, and that by increasing the public sector, Gordon Brown is only increasing the debt mountain. How many of the last tranch of jobs lost were in the public sector I wonder. Probably none.
On the subject of immigration, is Nick Clegg really saying that when they find those illegal immigrants who have been here ten years, using our services and paying no taxes whatsoever, they are going to be rewarded with citizenship? What a message to give to all those would be immigrants across the channel? What a message to all those people who have been denied jobs due to their presence?
Finally, please someone explain that the inheritance tax was originally designed as a tax on the very rich, and it is only by restoring levels to where they would have been but for Gordon’s fiscal drag, that the Conservatives are keeping many ordinary voters out of the system.
Comment by Nigel Kilner on April 29, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Gordon Brown prides himself on his handling of the economy, the labour party espouse this and the media seem to agree. I think we need to remind the public of the good state of the economy when labour took office, point out the reckless things he has done i.e. how he has damaged pensions and what that means to people in real terms, wasting money by selling gold at the bottom of the market. In addition, when labour & Libs go on about inheritance tax reform, instead of remaining silent point out that this is beneficial to the average person not just the well off and that less death tax means more money goes into the economy as a result boosting sales etc. above all dispell this myth that brown has made a good job of the economy.
Comment by Edward Nugee on April 29, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Peter Willsher is right, of course; but I have heard far too little from George Osborne or David Cameron about the huge overspending by Gordon Brown since 2001. It is that, as much as the sub-prime mortgage crisis, that has put our economy into such a terrible state. David MUST get it acroiss this evening that, far from being the saviour of the economy, Gordon Brown is very largely responsible, through his reckless overspending, for the enormous annual deficit with which we are now faced. Gordon did handle the banking crisis quite well, and don’t deny it; but he himself is the main cause of our economic plight, far more than the bankers are, and he has shown few signs that he has any idea how to get us out of it.
Comment by Arnold Whittle on June 20, 2010 at 10:38 pm
I watched George Osborne on the Andrew Marr programme this morning, and I agree with all points made the content of information given sounds fine and I look forward to a more informed budget report on Tuesday