Towards the end of last week, the Tories were looking a bit miserable. Their slow response to Labour’s non-coms announcement, coupled with a ‘dead cat’ response from Michael Fallon which made the party look rattled and unpleasant had left the Conservative campaign looking unusually disorganised and slow-witted.
But ministers have tried to pick things up, and some of their announcements in particular have left Labour in a similar mess. The story that David Cameron’s party will meet the £8bn demand for health funding from NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens has left Labour hopping around looking a bit cross and awkward. This was not how the party had planned things: only weeks ago it had released a scary poster claiming the Tories will ‘cut to the bone’, and now their opponents are outgunning them by £5.5bn (Labour has said it would put £2.5bn in).
The Labour response was that the Tories hadn’t set out how they would fund this £8bn, and therefore no-one would believe it.
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