The sight of five cabinet ministers (George Osborne, William Hague, Theresa May, Nicky Morgan and Sajid Javid) taking the stage at the Tories’ first press conference of this election year was a rather odd one. As I noted on Twitter, it looked like a leadership hustings with Boris strangely absent, or the reformation of an aged pop group. But the quintet were all unambiguously singing from the same hymn sheet. The choice, we were repeatedly told, was between Tory “competence” and Labour “chaos”, between sticking to “our long-term economic plan”, or returning to “the mess” of 2010.
The event was held to mark the launch of the Conservatives’ attack dossier on the opposition’s spending plans. The 82-page document (decked out in Budget red to lend it spurious authority) claimed to have uncovered a £20.7bn black hole in Labour’s programme (alleging £23.26bn of spending commitments against £2.52bn of cuts/tax rises). But it quickly began to unravel under the mildest of scrutiny. As several journalists noted during the Q&A, the document falsely equates criticism of cuts with a commitment to reverse them. For instance, nowhere has Labour suggested that it will cancel £3.35bn of local authority cuts, or £83m of Arts Council funding reductions.
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