The next General Election

[Zod]

The three main parties all advocated cutting income tax. Labour and the Conservatives did not specify the exact thresholds of income tax they would implement but the Liberal Democrats did, claiming they would have income tax starting at 20% with a top rate of 50%.

The Labour campaign reiterated their support for the National Health Service and full employment and focused on the damage they believed the Conservatives would do to the country. In an early campaign broadcast, Brown asked: "The question you will have to consider is whether we risk tearing everything up by the roots". Towards the end of Labour's campaign Brown claimed a Conservative government "would sit back and just allow firms to go bankrupt and jobs to be lost in the middle of a world recession" and that the Conservatives were "too big a gamble to take".

The Conservatives campaigned on economic issues, pledging to control inflation and to reduce the increasing power of the unions who supported the mass strikes. They also employed the advertising agency M & C Saatchi . The Conservative campaign was focused on gaining support from traditional Labour voters who had never voted Conservative before, first-time voters and people who had voted Liberal Democrat in 2005. Cameron's advisers co-ordinated their presentation with the editor of The Sun. The Sun printed a series of articles by disillusioned former Labour ministers. Cameron explicitly asked Labour voters for her support when he launched his campaign in Cardiff, claiming that Labour was now extreme. An analysis of the election claimed that the Conservatives gained an 11% swing among the skilled working-class (the C2s) and a 9% swing amongst the unskilled working class (the C1s).


This is actually a record of the 1979 campaign with the names switched for the modern ones. Can Cameron get the Sun onside? Nowadays I feel that Murdoch just backs the party he expects to win in order to be able to claim the glory, as opposed to making a push to persuade the Sun readers to vote for a party.

[JagLover]

There are many parallels between the 1979 election and this one.

However I think it is too early to call a Tory victory. The Tories are still on a decent poll rating (40%), but Labour have clawed their way back to 37%.

A fault line seems to be developing between those who recognise that Labour's wasteful spending needs to be curtailed to prevent bankruptcy/tax rises and those dependent on it.