A Downing Street guest caught Gordon Brown smiling to himself yesterday as he walked along a corridor after Cabinet. “Not a beam or a smirk, just a quiet twinkle,” she said. “He suddenly looked more like Father Christmas than Scrooge.” Sarah Brown seemed more relaxed too: she and her children spent the weekend “splashing in puddles”, according to her tweet.
After a storm-buffeted November when he was humiliated by his European counterparts and Britain remained the only G20 country still in recession, the Prime Minister seemed rather jolly as he waited for the Christmas tree to be delivered.
This isn’t just because the Tories are faltering in the polls, it’s because the man finally has a plan. His ministers may discreetly be making inquiries to headhunters but the Prime Minister has had a new burst of energy. He finally seems to have decided how he wants to handle the Pre-Budget Report next week and if that works, the general election.
Mr Brown knows that this time he cannot run a Tory tax cuts versus Labour spending campaign; instead it looks as though he has decided to return to class war. “The rich always betray the poor,” will be his theme.
When George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, says: “We’re all in this together,” the Prime Minister would like to be able to shout back, “Oh no we’re not.” He wants to make it clear that Labour is for “the many not the few” while the Tories are acting as reverse Robin Hoods, taxing the poor to pay for their friends, the rich.
During the Queen’s Speech debate a fortnight ago, the Prime Minister, revelled in dismissing Tory plans to increase the threshold on inheritance tax. “The biggest group of beneficiaries will be in one area of the country — Kensington and Chelsea, which, of course, includes Notting Hill,” he said. “This must be the only tax change in history where the people proposing it — the Leader of the Opposition and the Shadow Chancellor — will know by name almost all of the potential beneficiaries.”
Mr Brown’s neighbour, Alistair Darling, seems to have accepted this line of attack. “The Tories are going out of their way to give rich people whatever tax relief they can,” the Chancellor said this week when the Tories announced that they were still planning to allow married couples to share their individual tax allowances, so helping “ladies of leisure” rather than working mothers.
In a recession, it’s a compelling argument now that bankers and businessmen are so disliked. Some of the Tory tax plans do sound elitist: a tax cut for the minority lucky enough to inherit considerable wealth grates when the deficit is so large. If the Government announces that it is going to freeze the inheritance tax threshold, the Tories will have to decide whether to follow suit. If Mr Darling announces a reduction in the starting point for the new 50 per cent income tax band to £100,000, Mr Osborne will have to decide whether he would increase it.
Class warfare was the tactic that Mr Brown, when he was Chancellor, always wanted Tony Blair to deploy. “It’s as though Gordon has found his favourite old jumper that we thought Sarah had binned, and slipped it on again,” said one Blairite.
Indeed, Labour high command did try to use it last year at the Crewe & Nantwich by-election but attacking the Tories for being toffs was too crude. In the past year the electorate has discovered that the Tory leader has wisteria growing up his house and that Tory grandees still have croquet lawns, moats and chandeliers. Yet it hasn’t made them rush back to Labour.
Mr Brown’s decision to attack the Tories on tax cuts for the wealthy is craftier. If he can paint the Opposition as the party that tilts the tax system in favour of the rich, then Labour activists have something to sell on the doorsteps, Harriet Harman, the deputy leader, will remain happy and only Lord Mandelson will be worrying about what to say at the next shoot dinner.
For the Tories this is dangerous. They are beginning to sound defensive. All the talk of asking candidates to drop double-barrelled names rings true. Zac Goldsmith’s admission that he was non-domiciled is an embarrassment.
Michael Spencer, the Conservative Party Treasurer, didn’t help when he announced that he was “hopeful” that a Tory Government would axe the 50p tax rate.
It’s no surprise that Mr Cameron has been talking a great deal about the poor recently. “He needs to sound like Cinderella not one of the spoilt ugly sisters,” said one aide. Last week the Tory leader embraced Phillip Blond, the “red Tory” who talks about poverty rather than profit margins. Next week he will address the AGM of Gingerbread, the charity that supports lone parents. Mr Osborne can shrug off Labour demands to know whether he will reverse their proposed tax increases on the rich.
The problem is that the Tories don’t yet have a symbolic policy that directly helps the worst off.
But Gordon’s smile may be premature. His tactics are deeply opportunistic and people may not want politicians playing games when their jobs are on the line. The Prime Minister is in danger of using the Pre-Budget Report as a political tool when it should be used as an economic lever to help to pull Britain out of recession.
It is also an acknowledgement of defeat. His plan will help to rally the core Labour vote but will alienate the aspirational voters he needs to win a majority. It’s a tacit admission that what he is hoping for is a hung Parliament. He has deserted the “squeezed Middle England” that he was trying to woo at the Labour conference in October and has given up trying to reassure them that he is on their side. The danger for Labour is that by moving to the left, the Prime Minister leaves the Tories as the party of the centre — from where Tony Blair won three general elections.
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