There’s been some interesting chat in the last couple of days (see Iain Dale, Political Betting and the Daily Mail) about whether Gordon Brown’s visit to Afghanistan on Saturday was timed deliberately to scupper David Cameron’s long-planned visit.
Cameron planned two months ago to visit Afghanistan today, only to see Gordon turn up there on a surprise visit on Saturday. Cameron promptly cancelled his visit, “to avoid an unseemly cat-and-mouse game and wasting of overstretched military resources.” While the official line from Cameron’s office is that they have no complaints about the timing of Brown’s visit, we know that Brown is comfortable using our heroic troops as political props. Indeed, there are strong similarities with his much-criticised visit to Iraq in October 2007. Completely against political principle, he visited the troops during the Conservative Party conference, in a pretty transparent attempt to steal the limelight from David Cameron. While there, he announced the withdrawal of a thousand troops from Iraq, only for it to emerge that the withdrawal of 500 of the troops had already been announced and 250 were already home.
Despite the obvious irritation at having to cancel his visit, there are a couple of subsequent stories which will put a smile on Cameron’s face.
Firstly, while he was out there, Brown was challenged by a young soldier as to why they have to pay tax while they are fighting abroad. Apparently American troops are much-envied for their tax-free salaries when fighting overseas, while French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch soldiers all receive ‘fighting bonuses’ – British soldiers receive nothing of the sort. Brown apparently waffled some ‘explanation’ about how soldiers are UK employees and therefore taxed back home, which i’m sure put the soldier’s mind at rest.
The other thing that will have improved Cameron’s mood is the result of the most recent voting-intention poll, as featured in the Observer yesterday:
Conservatives – 43%
Labour – 26%
Lib Dem’s – 17%
While the result is not that different to other recent polls, it comes as confidence in the economy is growing, as green shoots of recovery begin to emerge. 43% of the public expect the economy to improve in the next 12 months, compared with just 7% back in Spring 2008. Such a swing of opinion would have been expected to boost the incumbents’ poll rating, but it seems that the public are increasingly disinclined to reward Labour for any economic turnaround. This is sensible logic, for if the government said they were not to blame for the global recession, then they will presumably concede that they are not to be praised for a global recovery?
There is also a more historical precedent being followed here – the last two decades have seen an apparent end to the rule that general elections are decided on the state of the economy – the Conservatives won in 1992 when the economy was in trouble (just 5 months before Black Wednesday) and lost in 1997 when the economy was in good shape (there’s a story told that when Brown became Chancellor in 1997, an official said to him: “These are fantastically good figures – the state of the economy is much better than predicted.” His reply was: “What am I supposed to do about this? Write a thank-you letter?”). The point, though, was that the Conservatives had lost the public’s trust years previously and nothing – however great the economic recovery – could restore that trust. Sound familiar?
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