Tuesday 5 January 2010

Election promises and Wales

The next five months are going to be dominated by claim and counter claim. Is their a back hole in the Tory proposals of £34b, or was Labour's presentatation based on a 'dodgy dossier'? Mature politics it ain't. But for certain, the election campaign is well and truly underway.
How the campaign pans out,we will see. However, those that see it developing into a class war are widely off the mark. Labour kept losing elections when they only appealed to their traditional constituency. The election will still be about winning the vote of middle England. So we'll hear a lot about opportunity, choice and fairness.  The campaign of both the main parties will be aimed at the aspirational vote. The economy, health and education will dominate the campaign  as they appeal to this section of the electorate.
The difficulty for us here in Wales is that many of the policy announcements and the intentions of the main parties are in areas that are already devolved.
And there in lies the rub. Although the policy announcements are not relevant toWales, most Welsh people will  think that they do apply. Such is the state of the media that there is little information about the difference between England and Wales at the best of times, in a fast moving election campaign there will be even less differention made.
So many Welsh voters will be buying a pig in the poke. Voting for a party that promises a policy but then they are disappointed to find that it was worthless promise as that party's policy writ does not run in Wales. It is precisely because of this, that the Nationalists have a case to be included in the main leadership debate alonside Brown, Cameron  and Clegg.

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