Which PR cards do the Tories play now?

Any sportsman will tell you – it’s easier to be the underdog. And for the first time since the 1987 general election (yes 22 long years ago) the Conservatives find themselves as the bookies favourites coming into an election campaign. Suddenly Cameron, Osbourne and Andy Coulson are entering a game with everything to lose. So what now? Well, Labour had a few choices on their own this week and they seem to have come up with a plan: A) Go with Brown for the election. (Not sure they had a choice on this but...) B) Argue that the voters have a genuine choice between experienced Labour and the clueless Conservatives. C) Continue to dream up endless policy ideas/gimmicks to grab a headline. (Someone with more resources than us should do an investigation into the correlation between Browns new policies and resulting actions.) D) And as a result from C, continued emphasis on “happy” spending, rather than realistic cuts. So where does this leave Dave? Tricky. Clearly Mandelson is no fool and there are a few traps here for Coulson to navigate through. First of all it’s difficult for any party that hasn’t been in power for 12 years to argue that they have the experience required to run the country. So the Tories will presumably try and override this fact by talking about the government’s poor record. Problem is that this will lead to ever growing calls from Mandelson for Tory policy details. And because everyone knows that there is no money, it’s difficult to come up with a spending plan, without outlining some pretty fiendish cuts. And cuts ain’t popular. But neither is the idea of bankrupting the country. The Tories problem is that it’s normally the government who have outlined the detail and the opposition fire away criticising the status quo. What Mandelson is attempting is to present voters with a choice, but also he’s using the old New Labour trick of endless policy announcements to mask the black hole of the UK’s debt. The problem for the Tories is that by pointing this out to the voters, the next question will be, OK, what would you do and where would you make cuts. 2 – 0 up with 30 minutes to play is always a tricky score. If the Tories score quickly next week it’s all over. If they score an own goal, try telling Mandelson it’s not game on.