As relaunches go, this was anything but drastic. Following the hammering that both their parties got in the local elections on Thursday, David Cameron and Nick Clegg chose the suitably austere setting of a Basildon factory to reaffirm their mission, but they had little new to offer.
While the setting was a far cry from the (in)famous rose garden, the words were not. The pair said that the economy was in a far worse state “than anyone thought” when they took over, and that they would do “whatever it takes” to get it back on track.
Cameron reiterated that deficit reduction would continue to be the coalition’s “guiding task”. He used several phrases that will be familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to politics over the last two years. The nation’s credit card is “maxed out”; you can’t solve debt with more debt; welfare should reward people “who do the right thing”. All of which begs the question: what exactly has changed?
ITV’s Chris Ship was on hand to ask exactly that question. Cameron said that they would focus on the things that matter the most. Heading the list was – you guessed it – the economy. He said that the main focus for him would be “what we can do to get our economy moving”. But while he acknowledged the problems with living standards and jobs, there were no new measures, no shift of focus on offer. Clegg added that the coalition would redouble its efforts to govern for the whole country after taking a beating in local elections in Scotland, Wales and the north.
That takes us to the crux of the issue: this wasn’t about policy, it was an attempt to show that the coalition is in touch with the concerns of ordinary voters. Suffering in the polls and struggling to recover in the eyes of the public from George Osborne’s toxic Budget, this was intended to show that the government is listening.
But it is hard to see how anyone could be reassured by today’s appearance. Blaming the recession of 2008 for all the problems of governance is starting to sound hollow in 2012. As my colleague George Eaton pointed out earlier today, the government’s commitment to deficit reduction above all else has in fact led to higher than expected borrowing. The two leaders did not even put a new spin on old ideas, let alone consider new ideas. Don’t hold your breath for an economic Plan B.
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