Kreuzberger wrote:Up thread. Agreed, Canus. The "spend. spend, spend" jibe can be countered with "protect, reassure and stop letting their mates salt away billions in untaxed wealth because there is more than enough cash if it is used decently and equitably."
The C1 and C2 voters who, from the 80's to the 00's, became used to the idea of their social and economic mobility will be waking up to the very real fact that that mobility can cut two ways. All around them, they will be seeing colleagues, family-members and neighbours. A rising-C2 who had every reason to believe that "jam tomorrow" was a realistic possibility would be plain daft to even assume that the bread itself will be there in the morning.
Perhaps, one of the coalition's greatest mistakes was to tie itself to a fixed five-year term because as every day passes, more and more of the individuals and family groups that come together to make real-life voting decisions will be staring at yet another example of incompetence or fraternal redistribution that proves that the Tories are simply neither willing nor capable of delivering.
Bollocks to the feral Tory press. NewLab tried to felate them during Blair's first term and we saw what good that did. But the press of now and the press of a decade ago is a very different and emasculated beast; as we have seen over the last few days, they are preaching to a shrinking core constituency. They have been reduced to playground tribalism. Trots, lefties? Really lads, is that the best you can do? Well yes, actually it is and that's because they simply don't have the fire-power to counter all the disenting voices.
Clippetty-clop, here comes my favourite hobby-horse. C1's and C2's generally (and virtually all 16-24's) will not listen to those they perceive to be on-message politicians. They will listen to their mates and take soundings from those they consider to be in their broad interest groups. So, the key battleground has to be social-media.
Succinctly put, Kreuz, the defining point
is Social Media. Thankfully the clowns at TrueBlue HQ haven't got a clue how to get themselves across well on the net, and as the myriad of blogs shows, the 'Lefties and Trots' have got it well stashed. We on the Left have an annoying habit of talking ourselves out of the game when quite frankly we should be capitalising (!) on the downward tumble these b'stards are on. My fear is the fringe - like you said, the C1s and 2s are the types who are swayed by electronic media, the Facebook generation if you will, who will read the latest scaremongering bullshit from Fartage and co, and still read shit like Murdoch's arsewipe.
And I still wouldn't write off the LumpyDims.
Yet.