By John Henwood LABOUR lied. Why the surprise? It is what political parties seeking election do. Anyone who has been a student of politics for more than five minutes knew Labour’s claim that it would fix things by growing the economy was baloney.
Then, when immediately after winning, they said that things were much worse than expected, the scales began to fall from the eyes of those taken in by impossible promises. It was all part of a carefully contrived strategy and now we are seeing it played out. New and increased taxes are on the way.
Wait for the Budget on the 30th of this month to learn how economically damaging Labour’s plans will be. And the deceit was completely unnecessary. Most of the electorate was utterly fed up with a Conservative government which had long lost any sense of direction.
Labour’s manifesto could have said, “We will try to do better than the last lot” and they would have still won at a canter. It was not long before allegations of sleaze, so often a Labour jibe at the Conservatives, began to emerge when it became known that Dick Decent, aka Sir Keir Starmer, had accepted a private box at Arsenal and allowed himself to be dressed in expensive suits by Lord Alli, a multi-millionaire Labour supporter, of whose ultra-luxury apartment the Labour leader has enjoyed free use. Some shiny new Labour MPs as well as Labour’s principal paymasters, the trade unions, are deeply uncomfortable with the cut in pensioners’ winter fuel support.
One, Ros.