The Tories’ final push

Fresh from David Cameron’s victory in the final TV debate, the Tory campaign has taken another assured step this morning.  As Tim Montgomerie reports over at ConservativeHome, they’re going to flood the doorsteps with the leaflet, ‘A contract between the Conservative Party and you’ (pdf here).  Inside, a list of clear policy commitments from “publishing every item of government spending over £25,000,” to “reducing immigration” to the levels of the 1990s – meaning tens of thousands a year, instead of the hundreds of thousands a year under Labour.”  And, on the back page, a refutation of some of Labour’s most misleading claims about the Tories.  Clear, simple and direct.

You might well wonder why the Tories haven’t done this earlier – and it’s true that they could have been much less opaque about their policies over the past few months.  But, on some level, they’ve set out their agenda fairly well during the campaign itself: the Big Society framework may not have persuaded many voters, but most of the individual policies within it have each received a decent enough airing.