Originally published @ 8:57 pm, Sun 2nd Jan 2011
The new year has brought lots of appraisals including from UK Polling Report and the Observer who thinks Ed Miliband needs to have a cunning plan.
"Well, perhaps" as Blackadder once said.
But Labour is creeping into the lead, and that's before people have grasped the scale of the cuts that are coming.
This whilst the ConDems are trying to celebrate what new spending they can appear to create, even though their ideological drive is public spending is too high.
A line that we can mitigate cuts through efficiency is of course true for any administration. But the scale of the cuts will not allow improved services, nor will it encourage their idea of the Big Society as the voluntary sector looks set to be hit badly in loss of grant. The new politics is blown as well, as Clegg has destroyed the concept of an individual making a pledge and Cameron strutts ever higher during Prime Minister's Questions.
Labour's average 3 point lead has come at the expense of the Lib Dems and the swing is not uniform regionally. But it does mean that the governing parties' traditional post-Election honeymoon has been short. Not to be sniffed at.
So the idea of a low profile whilst the government hangs itself has got a lot to commend it.
OK, it's not enough. But crucially, neither of the articles cited and offering advice make the basic point about developing a set of policies that are right for the country and for the world.
The vision will count, and a clear way of exemplifying the values that inspire it will matter. And it's worth working that up properly and not to meet any arbitrary deadline that the media and otehr commentators may choose to set.
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