Read on Twitter
There’s been bewilderment at yesterday’s @YouGov poll where a majority of Tory voters still think the government has done everything it reasonably could to protect the public, and explains why the Tories are still level in the polls.
Some thoughts about how to change this. 1/
Some thoughts about how to change this. 1/
Worth noting the YouGov question doesn’t ask whether the government has made mistakes or not. The consensus from focus groups seems to be that Tory voters think they have made mistakes, but think they are forgivable given the circumstances 2/ https://twitter.com/elliemaeohagan/status/1354367059443019777?s=20
So repeatedly listing out the mistakes probably isn’t going to make a difference.
What might make a difference is to link them to a wider narrative about the Tories, and their right-wing ideology that underlies the mistakes made both before and during the pandemic. 3/
What might make a difference is to link them to a wider narrative about the Tories, and their right-wing ideology that underlies the mistakes made both before and during the pandemic. 3/
The reason that the “Gordon Brown destroyed the public finances” narrative was so successful, was that it played into existing presumptions that Labour governments are bad with money, and that they overspent in the years leading up to 2008. 4/
Back to the present: on so many occasions, the government has instinctively been hesitant to implement necessary restrictions, but gung-ho about telling people it was safe to go back to the office, Eat Out to Help out etc. when most of the evidence showed it was not. 5/
Similarly, after the initial burst of Covid spending, Rishi Sunak has tried (tho sometimes failed) to withhold money for: Free School Meals, support for businesses in the regions, a permanent increase in UC, support for self-isolation and for extending the furlough scheme. 6/
This has had serious consequences, both for people's livelihoods and on the virus itself - poor adherence to self-isolation rules (often due to financial considerations) has helped Covid to spread. 7/
The hesitation on lockdowns, the reluctance to spend more money – comes from an ideology which is hostile to widespread state intervention. The government’s mistakes are primarily the result of having a right-wing government at a time when massive state intervention is needed. 8/
The Tories tried hard to reinvent themselves as big statists in the 2019 General Election, but their underlying small state instincts have been revealed by the Covid crisis.
Labour should be saying this loud and clear. 9/
Labour should be saying this loud and clear. 9/
Along with pointing out that 10 years of austerity not only left our public services with much less resilience to deal with the crisis, but also increased deprivation. And you only have to look at the worst hit areas and communities to see that Covid loves deprivation. 10/
Just making points about managerial incompetence in the government's handling of Covid, will get a cheer from people who already dislike the Tories, but it needs to be linked to a (true) story about how ideology was behind that incompetence, to gain a wider audience. 11/
