George Osborne is choreographing his autumn statement week to make things as difficult as possible for Labour. At present senior ministers are travelling the country handing out nice things to voters as they unveil details of the 2014 National Infrastructure Plan. Yesterday’s roads bonanza has been replaced by a garden city, better flood defences and a tidal project in Swansea today.
You can almost hear the Chancellor singing ‘roll out the barrel’ as he and colleagues indulge in American-style pork-barrel politics by handing out many of these goodies to seats they want to hold or win (read Seb’s piece yesterday). But though Labour can accuse Osborne of a cynical focus on marginal seats, they also know that this show of apparent generosity from the Coalition government is rather awkward as this is the sort of thing that Labour governments like doing.
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