Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Curbing Enthusiasm.

The pessimism of the Tories' electoral message, which is basically that the country is in trouble and painful spending cuts are necessary to fix it, is not one to fill voters with wild enthusiasm.

The recent decline in the fortunes of Barack Obama suggests that this might not be such a bad thing, the enthusiasm that Obama generated in some quarters was never likely to be fulfilled by actually governing, so the reality has disappointed many of his supporters.

Keeping expectations realistic is a much more likely route to maintaining public goodwill in the long term.

3 comments:

James Higham said...

The I love me Davism is even more worrying.

Jim said...

I've always said the Tories should be as blunt as possible with the truth about the financial state of the nation, down to spelling out what the cuts and tax rises will be. Then no-one can complain after the election. If it results in a lower majority, so be it.

If it resulted in a hung Parliament, equally good - they could let Gordon try to reduce his own deficit. The IMF would be involved within months and savage cuts imposed. The Tories would then be totally vindicated.

Worse than that would be to downplay the severity of it all now, and then change their tune after the election. People don't like being mislead. Even worse if they try to muddle through after the election, they run the risk if the IMF being called in on their watch. Despite it being all Labour's fault, they would get the blame.

Ross said...

"I love me Davism"

Not sure I follow.


Jim- yeah I'd agree with that.