The Conservatives have been struggling a little bit with their publicity lately. Or to be more honest they have become less popular than the Millwall football team, a dodgy estate agent, an investment banker boasting about a huge bonus, and Taylor Swift’s father put together.
So, I thought I would do the decent thing and offer them some tips about what to include in their budget and pre-election speeches. It is part of my charitable mission to help out the rich and needy.
The evidence of our own eyes …
They will already be well underway with the first draft of their election messages, which can be expected to say something along the lines of “everything has been for the best in the best of all possible worlds and it wasn’t our fault if anything wasn’t”.
Perhaps they need to build on this hugely credible world view by telling us all that the cost of living crisis wasn’t anything to do with bad decisions made by anyone in a Conservative government. Any worries that might exist about struggling to pay mortgages and rents, horrible energy bills at a time of record profits for energy companies, or stubbornly high food bills must be banished from the public’s mind.
Every effort needs to be made to try and persuade us that these things were entirely the product of the Ukraine war or Covid, not nearly as bad as we thought they were, or the result of a bout of well meant over-enthusiasm for unfunded tax cuts driven forward by someone for whose actions this government has no responsibility. Despite the fact that Liz Truss was its leader only a little over a year ago.
To prove how much the party has changed since the dither of Theresa May, the dishonesty of Boris Johnson, and the reckless dash for ‘growth’ of Truss, the current prime minister and his chancellor would be well advised to announce that they are united in their resolve to do things differently. They need to make it clear that their own unfunded tax cuts, and their own unrealistic and unsustainable promises of rapid economic growth, and their own lies about how much money they are actually providing for public services are much higher quality promises.
Don’t mention the … public services!
Given the perilous state of those public services and their severe shortages of money I feel the chancellor has no option. He must tell us all to reject the evidence of our own eyes and ask us to believe that the Conservatives have actually been incredibly generous in their support for the NHS, for local government and particularly for public transport services in the north.
I strongly suggest that no mention is made of the extent to which investment in public transport per head of population is higher in London than in Yorkshire. Spending three times less in the north doesn’t quite sound like levelling up. Instead, they must focus on promising us with a straight face that things will be very different if we elect them again.
They must make generous promises to finally build a wonderful new station in Bradford and, eventually, an electrified cross-Pennine line to connect Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds/Bradford, York and Hull. Because it would be unhelpful if voters focused on their total failure to do this for the past decade and a half, or spotted that plans to actually spend any money have very long timelines and can be cancelled more easily than HS2.
How’s about a nice moral panic?
It might also be in their own best interests for this government to try and create a moral panic about law and order and the risks we face from “hoards” of immigrants. Focusing on this might distract attention from their wasting tens of millions of pounds on a scheme that has sent no one to Rwanda and prevent questions about the war that country is currently fomenting in the Congo, not to mention the racist slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people that took place in Rwanda only a couple of decades ago, and the arrival of more asylum seekers from Rwanda into England than have been sent in the other direction. It would be most unwise of the chancellor to put any asylum seekers to work in shortage occupations whilst their claims are processed, and he certainly shouldn’t spend money on processing those claims quickly as it is simpler to waste that money on housing people in run down hotel rooms and over priced barges.
I also strongly suggest that the chancellor tells us all that he is putting forward the greenest budget ever so that we can all safely vote blue and get green. Because no one could have the remotest worry that locking Britain in to outdated fossil fuel technology for a couple more decades would have any unfortunate consequences, or that dumping an insulation scheme that was on track to save the average household over £150 a year before it was decided to “ditch the green crap” would be something that any elected Conservative minister would do. That is the job of the one from the House of Lords.
Some things can’t be polished up
Above all I suggest that no mention is made of the word Brexit. It may be tempting for the chancellor to tell us all how well it is going and to ask us to bask in the glorious sunny uplands of our new economic and social achievements. He might be better advised to just keep quiet and hope no one notices that nothing of the sort has taken place. If the Conservatives are lucky then perhaps everyone can be persuaded to carry on inflicting damage on our own country instead of admitting that the whole thing has all been a huge mistake that needs reversing at the first possible opportunity.
What do you think? Have I got a future as a Conservative speech writer? Or perhaps the more interesting question is can anyone put a sufficiently slick spin on a government that has failed so spectacularly to fool enough people in time for the election? The sooner we find out the answer to that one the better because I strongly suspect that, despite all my kind efforts to offer them free advice, no one can successfully polish quite such a large pile of excrement.
