Has anyone noticed Tory tanks rolling onto Labour’s lawn?

It’s unfashionable to talk about the battle for the centre ground these days. The fight to win political credibility is conducted through a new prism. Populists versus the establishment, centralisers versus decentralisers, radicals versus those in favour of shrinking the offer. But the fundamentals remain the same, and much of the hard-fought credibility that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown earned during Labour’s three General Election victories is now the target of sustained Tory fire. And my worry is that Labour’s not taking it seriously enough.

The last Tory Government used to speak in strident, right wing terms. ‘Unemployment is a price worth paying’, ‘the homeless are what you step over when you come out of the opera’ are some of the most memorable examples. So when Michael Gove calls the Conservatives ‘the party of social justice’, Grant Shapps attempts to rebrand the Tories as the ‘workers’ party’ and George Osborne champions the national minimum wage and full employment, this is a deliberate attempt to steal Labour’s clothes.