The post-Budget attack lines for Labour were clear in Ed Miliband’s speech on Wednesday: his party will allege that the Tories have a ‘secret plan that dare not speak its name’ to cut the NHS in the next Parliament. To underline that claim, Labour has this morning published its first election poster, threatening that the Conservatives would ‘cut to the bone’.
Ed Balls, who is understood to have major input into this poster, said this morning:
‘After five years of David Cameron, our health service is going backwards. Our NHS just can’t afford these extreme and risky Tory cuts. And after their broken promises on the NHS in this Parliament nobody will trust what the Tories say about the NHS.’
The Shadow Chancellor said that ‘the cuts to public services like police, defence and social care under these plans would be so deep they’d be almost impossible to achieve. People will conclude that to make their sums add up the Tories will end up cutting our NHS.’
This is clever because Labour is saying that people will ‘conclude’ that the Tories will cut the NHS, rather than that the Tories definitely will. David Cameron promised his party would protect health spending at the Conservative conference in 2014.
Labour likes to complain about a Tory campaign of ‘fears’ and smears in this election. But this poster suggests that the party is rather partial to a bit of negative campaigning too. It’s going to be a rough old election.
Comments