The Tory plan to beat Miliband

The Tories are chuffed with yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions (the knockabout, that is, not the serious bit), and with Labour’s continuing struggle to make any impact in the polls.

Earlier this week, Lynton Crosby spoke to the parliamentary party about how they should aim to beat Miliband. He told them that while Miliband is a weak leader, the way to beat him is to highlight his areas of weakness, rather than his personal flaws. This means that the party will be focusing on how Labour is faring on welfare and the economy, rather than mocking Miliband for making his colleagues coffee (which is a line David Cameron really should drop).

So the lines to take for Tories will be about Labour and welfare and that gift of a line from Ed Balls saying ‘I don’t think there’s any evidence’ that Labour was profligate and had too much national debt. The good news for Crosby is that MPs are currently more than happy to use the lines to take: backbenchers can’t stop talking about the forthcoming reshuffle and which job they might quite fancy.