Last weekend, I was at a (lovely) wedding with a bunch of people who are in similar circumstances to me – good education, good jobs, working hard to make their aspirations reality. Obviously a lot less interested in politics; however the topic of MPs’ expenses came up and in the course of the conversation, every single one of them said the same thing – ‘I quite like David Cameron, he’s not your average Tory, but I’d still never vote for the Conservatives because they’re not all like him.’
Beyond arguing that the logical answer to this is that they should vote Conservative so the party has more people like them, it got me thinking. Given what we know of the state of the public finances, and given that we know that there is certainly more bad news to come out, what impact does that have on the election campaign and the result?
I’ve seen some polling (somewhere… and I’m sorry I can’t find it but if I do I will post the link, it’s publicly available) that basically demonstrates that at the moment, voters a) like David Cameron himself and – probably more importantly – b) believe that he will do the right thing on public services, particularly the NHS.
It was no accident that the first big policy campaign after David was elected as leader was NHYes. That trust is a vital part of what has sustained the Tory poll ratings (and why we were deservedly booted out in 1997).
Given that there will have to be cuts, and given that normal people (as so clearly expressed by Tom Harris MP) are obviously not going to sit down with the Red Book and a calculator and the manifestos, it seems to me that this ‘cuts’, ‘honesty’, ‘investment’, ‘spending’ issue, except for a few people, is all going to come down to trust.
And more specifically, who do you trust to do the best he can with what is available?
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