If election campaigns are about communication, the main parties have decided that they are talking to a nation of policy-obsessed nocturnal creatures. From the Tories’ embryonic National Service announcement and pensioners’ tax relief plan , to Labour’s bouncy letter of support from business and finance , the news cycle has shifted to late-night press releases. This might seem like a media world complaint – such announcements rob us columnists of beauty sleep and scramble newsdesks – and very few civilians feel very sorry for journalists on either count.
But it’s also a sign of how the information cycle is changing – and how our political parties see the media’s role. It does not, however, mean that they always get it right. The campaign in its early stage has been largely about catching the other side off guard.
So no sooner than Labour had announced a list of prominent business and tech supporters, than the Tories released their plans for “triple lock plus” . In essence, this is a modest tax break for pensioners, but in political terms a no-go area for Labour, whose spending under Rachel Reeves is so tight that it was reduced to a defensive posture. In truth, voters are also aware that Labour is in awkward territory here – it is vanishingly unlikely that it can be the “change” government it wants to be without raising more money ahead of a rise in GDP, for which its recipe is vague.
So the Conservative squeeze is well placed. What suffers is any br.
