Will handle Ed Miliband
The Independent 2, October
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the Conservatives will play the patriotic card against Ed Miliband,
claiming that he is betraying the national interest by refusing to spell
out how Labour would tackle the £155bn deficit.
But at their conference in Birmingham, which starts on Sunday, the
Tories will avoid personal attacks on him, knowing that strident
assaults on a leader barely known by the public could be
counterproductive. “We will stick to the substance,” one Tory insider
said. In his speech on Tuesday, Miliband said he was “serious” about the
deficit. The Tories, who immediately dubbed him “a man without a plan”,
say he will have to do better than that. Every time he criticises a
Coalition spending cut, they will ask him: “What would you cut?” David
Cameron rehearsed his party’s lines yesterday:
“To say what Ed is saying, and forget about the deficit because it’s
somehow pessimistic to talk about it, that would be completely betraying
the country.”
Labour’s policies will not emerge overnight and Miliband may keep the
Tories waiting for a definitive Labour approach to the deficit.
“We are not going to produce an alternative spending review,” one
aide said.
However, Miliband will inevitably be defined by his response to
“events” such as the strikes planned by trade unions against the cuts.
If he does veer left, the Tories will pounce. If he sticks to the
centre ground, they will not make “Red Ed” attacks on him that lack
credibility.
Cameron knows that Britain’s Tory-dominated newspapers will do the
dirty work anyway.
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