Tory MPs have rushed to defend their leader denouncing Labour for the “gutter politics” of these attack ads that are focusing on the Tory leader in the run-up to next month’s local elections. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey says "I think it's wrong when people attack individuals personally, particularly over subjects which are so sensitive, which are so important to the British people". Even some Labour MPs have expressed doubts about the new social media campaign including John McDonnell, the former Shadow Chancellor. McDonnell, who likes to pose as a left-winger, piously says "this is not the sort of politics a Labour Party, confident of its own values and preparing to govern, should be engaged in. I say to the people who have taken the decision to publish this ad, please withdraw it. We, the Labour Party, are better than this".
But the Labour leader is unrepentant. Sir Keir Starmer says "I make no apologies for highlighting the failures of this government. They've broken our NHS, they've broken our economy. And this argument that because they've changed prime minister five times, that somehow the prime minister doesn't bear responsibility for 13 years of grief for many, many people, I just don't think stacks up...behind these adverts is a basic truth - that they have broken our criminal justice system, broken our NHS, and broken our economy".
We need not trouble ourselves with the bleating of the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. These were the people, after-all, who had no qualms in targetting Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-semite and a supporter of terrorism throughout his leadership of the Labour Party. But adverse comments from Labour MPs, no matter how misguided they may be, have to be taken seriously.
It’s not a question of personal attacks or taste. The political power invested in the leaders of the mainstream parties inevitably makes them fair game for public scrutiny and
smear campaigns by their very nature are invariably in bad taste. What they achieve is, however, debatable.
No one doubts the power of the media when it focuses on the foibles of the high and mighty. The truth is nobody likes them. When politicians are exposed for departing from the bourgeois moral standards of the day or as venal corrupt chancers they go down and rarely come up again. But when one falls another always takes their place.
Denigrating Sunak may make a change from attacking Corbyn but it’s no substitute for genuine election pledges that reflect the demands of the labour movement as a whole.
Smear campaigns only work up to a point. This one may put some off voting Conservative at the next election but it won’t in itself bag more votes for Labour. Disaffected Tories are more than likely to turn to the Lib-Dems or even the Greens rather than Labour. And at the end of the day they do little to mobilise your own supporters at election time.
To do that Labour should restore the ‘Welfare State’ and defend the health service, champion the unions fighting for higher pay, lift the limits on councils to let them build vast new estates to end homelessness. All of this could be paid for by restoring the tax levels and the public sector existed until 1979 and cutting the wasteful arms expenditure that is crippling the economy. This is what Starmer should do. But he won’t.
Labour hasn’t won a general election since 2005. Now there’s a surprise...
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