Shadow Chancellor George Osbourne has come out and claimed Labour are now the new ‘nasty party’ in a reference to the reputation of his own party for the past few decades.
While I’m not going to defend Labour’s campaign in Crewe & Nantwich, which was peurile at best and at worst did have some uncomfortable echoes of xenophobia with the lines about foreign nationals carrying ID cards, is it on a par with the things the Conservatives did to earn them the reputation in the first place?
In the 1960s the Conservatives sent out children to hand out leaflets in neighbourhoods with the message ‘If you want a n*gger for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour’ (Presumably this isn’t on their recent archive of campaign material of the 20th century). In the early 90s (I think) a minister stood up at a party conference and sang a song about single parent benefit scroungers while the audience cheers and laughed.
These are the sorts of things that earned the Tories the nickname the ‘Nasty Party’. Labour haven’t covered themselves in glory with their campaign, or some of their ‘tough on crime’ policies but I reject the notion that we’re now the ‘Nasty Party’ in the same way the Tories were. Osbournes comments will probably stick though, because the Left has been so disappointed by the tone of Labour’s campaign they’ve used the term themselves, and the Right have completely turned on the government whatever they do.
So yes, Labour’s campaign was bad, but to put it in perspective the Conservatives have historically been much worse.
Update: Well it seems the tag is sticking. I still stand by what I say. I suppose you could argue from a neutral perspective it’s good that to be labelled ‘nasty’ these days you just have to call a Conservative a ‘toff’.
I have to note though, that it’s Andrew Rawnsley writing the article linked above, and he’s the editor-in-chief of the website that ran the survery, PoliticsHome. I know he’s commented on his conflict of interest before but it seems a bit ridiculous that the Guardian have a situation where their chief political commentator is basically being paid to write about his own website.
