Government Affairs Blog

Sound and fury, signifying nothing

One could make the case that the last month or so was full of sound and fury but now we know it signified nothing. 

The airwaves and papers are full of analysis that is gloriously contradictory.  Brown has either blown his reputation completely or this was a Westminster village obsession that no one else cared about.

Surely the truth is we simply do not know at this stage what the reverberations of the phoney war over the November General Election will be. 

What the polls do tell us is that the two main parties have everything to play for.  They tell us the Liberal Democrats need to work hard in the seats they have. 

We also know that David Cameron and the Conservatives feel more confident.  We know that they have stated a tax policy that they will now have to stick with unless Alistair Darling does something so radically different that they have no choice but to respond.  Did Brown deliberately draw out their policy at an early stage?  Does it matter if it was deliberate or not? 

The parties are now where they are.  Cameron will claim Brown is insincere.  Brown will claim he has a vision that will make the lives of the British better and that the Tories have no vision at all.  Cameron will counter claim and so on. 

If one wants to rush to any judgement it is probably this.  There will be events outside the control of Brown and Cameron that will either help or hinder their strategies.  The General Election fever and how it was handled will be no more than a backdrop to that.  It could be a minor one, it could be major but it all depends on ‘events, dear boy’. 

Simon Goldie is Head of Communication at The Chartered Institute of Taxation – www.tax.org.uk - and a member of the CIPR GAG committee