Electorate Off Message

Labour have launched a campaign to save Sure Start centres from Tory cuts. Labour have no more idea as to whether this will happen than I do as the Conservatives have not specified whether they will or not. I can see the logic in Labour's strategy:

There can be no better way of winning over the electorate than by focusing on beneficiaries who are still crawling – this at a time when a new baby boom is under way and fertility rates are the highest since 1973.

However something I heard today indicates what I believe is a flaw in the strategy, a youngish mother explained to her colleagues that she was going to vote against the government because she had heard that they would close the Sure Start centres where her child went, no one demurred from that position. When a campaign is aimed at people with very little interest in politics, then the message that actually gets through often bears little resemblance to what was intended and can just as easily be the precise opposite of what is supposed to be conveyed.