The Squeezed Middle
Dan Hodges highlights what he sees as the Labour Party's difficulty in explaining its attitude towards the 'squeezed middle' - is Labour in favour of protecting the 'middle classes' or does it believe that those on middle incomes should pay more?
And how do you 'factor in' the reality of mortgage owners in the UK (many of them middle class of course) whose housing costs have fallen significantly since 2008 as a result of artificially low interest rates?
Harriet Harman has made the first major gaffe of the next election
By Dan Hodges - The Telegraph
Photo: GETTY IMAGES
We may be 10 months out, but Harriet Harman has just made the first gaffe of the 2015 general election campaign. And it’s a major one.
During an interview on LBC yesterday she volunteered the following statement:
You don’t want to have to pay to go private to get really good healthcare system. And I think that is not just for working-class people, it’s for middle-class people as well. And the same with education, you know, a really good school system that helps people from lower income families and middle income families as well. So I think that actually the idea that there are some things that help people on low incomes and other that help people on middle incomes. Yes I think people on middle incomes should contribute more through their taxes. But actually they need those public services like the transport system.
Because the reshuffle was in full swing, nobody really paid much attention to it. But some sharp press officers at Tory HQ heard it. And the phrase “I think people on middle incomes should contribute more through their taxes” got their ears burning.
When something like this drops on your lap the immediate reaction is to start hitting the phones and trying to get journalists to chase it. But those evil – and clever – Tories did a smart thing. They held it tight, trusted it would be overshadowed by the demotion of Michael Gove, and handed it David Cameron.
And at PMQs he’s just ambushed Ed Miliband with it, to devastating effect. It wasn’t just the quote itself which got the Tory benches roaring. It was the reaction on the Labour side.
Ed Miliband and Ed Balls clearly had no idea Harriet Harman had even made the comment. So Miliband’s initial response was to scoff at Cameron. Until he heard his deputy leader shouting out “It’s true!”, at which point he turned and stared at her as if she’d taken leave of her senses. Which, in a political sense, she had.
Miliband tried to brush it off with his “I ask the questions” line, but he’d just had the House of Commons chamber rug pulled clean out from under him. As he got up and ploughed vainly on, Ed Balls could be seen leaning across to his colleague and asking her, in effect, “what’s Cameron going on about?” In response, she seemed to try and laugh the whole thing off.
Well, Labour isn’t going to be able to laugh the whole thing off. The Tories are going to go for the jugular on this. They’ve been planning to run a “Labour middle-class tax bombshell” line for some time. But never in their wildest dreams did they think Harriet Harman would be running it for them.
Tory sources are already pointing out the discrepancy between Harman’s line on higher taxes for the middle classes, and her leader's attempt to pose as the champion of the squeezed middle. “They’re now saying two utterly contradictory things”, said one. “That the recession has been tough for middle-income people, but despite that they want to whack middle-income people with more taxes. It doesn’t even make basic sense.”
Over the past few months Harriet Harman has been complaining to Ed Miliband that she wasn’t being given a high enough profile in the forthcoming election campaign. The Tories are about to ensure that she has one.
