Brown Bashing

One name was on everyone’s lips this weekend...No, not David Cameron...No, not even George Osborne...William Hague?...Of course not. No, the name that appeared at least once in every speech at this year’s Conference was Gordon Brown. It seems the electoral ploy this time around is to ignore the Labour Party, or the Cabinet, and place every failure of the last few years solely at the door of a so-called weak, dithering, bullying Prime Minister.

I can understand the reasoning. Public opinion definitely supports the idea that Gordon Brown is an unpopular leader, and when voters cast their votes on May 6 (or whenever polling day is) the thought of five more years with him at the helm will sway a good number of undecideds. I'm not sure, however, that they need it rammed down their throats with quite so much force.

The danger with all of this Brown bashing is that the Conservatives slip back into the being seen as the ‘nasty party’ and play to fears of the more right-wing, strident Conservativism of the past. Modernising and softening the Tory message has always been the hardest part of ‘Project Cameron’, but it has been achieved with some success. The challenge is now to enlighten an electorate who still aren’t quite sure what his Party now stands for, and at the same time to allay those ‘same old Tory’ fears. To lead with personal attacks on the Prime Minister won't help achieve this aim, particularly if we are truly to sell the Conservatives as the party to mend the country’s ‘Broken Politics’ in the coming election.

Talking about Gordon Brown might stop people marking an ‘X’ next to Labour at the election, but will it make them want to put it next to the Conservative tree? This is the second half of the equation we need to solve come May. I would argue that driving home attractive policy messages with a decent level of detail is the way to do it.

Marketeers and head-hunters alike always talk about push and pull factors. It’s all very good pushing voters away from Brown and the Labour party, but without a matching pull to the Conservatives we’ll never get the election result we want, and the country needs.