Sunday 11th October 2009

All three main political parties have now held their Autumn conferences and the polls strongly suggest we will have a Conservative government after the general election, with the Tories holding a healthy 19 point lead.

However, David Cameron will not take this for granted and he should know that he's not guaranteed his place in Downing Street. It is going to be extremely difficult for Labour to cling onto power, but I think they can still limit the damage. As I discussed earlier this week, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne's proposed public spending cuts did not seem to go down very well, so there are definitely Tory weaknesses.

A very good point was raised on Question Time on Thursday that the Conservative slogan this week has been "we're in this together", yet they plan to raise the inheritance tax threshold to £2 million, so only the richest will benefit. Leading on from this, Home Secretary Alan Johnson attacked Cameron this morning on the Andrew Marr show after the leader of the opposition blamed big government for social breakdown. Mr Johnson pointed out that these remarks harked back to Thatcher's "laissez-faire" ideology of the 1980s. This constant reminder of Thatcherism may be Labour's best strategy to deter the electorate from voting Conservative. I wasn't around in the 1980s, but know for a fact I would not like to live in a country where there is little state intervention and the rich only get richer whilst the poor only get poorer.

I appreciate Cameron's honesty when he said in his keynote speech this past week that there are tough times ahead, but I'm still weary we may one day again have Tory government like the one in the 1980s that attempted to destroy socialism. At least Cameron has tried to distance himself from Thatcher by acknowledging that society does indeed exist.

Gordon Brown can take consolation from the fact that he has the full support of key members of his Cabinet, including Peter Mandelson, arguably the star of this year's Labour party conference and Alan Johnson, who has always been popular within the partty and is Brown's likely successor as Labour leader.

Left wing magazine The New Statesman recently pointed out that the shadow cabinet is hugely unrepresentative of Britain, with 18 of its 32 members being millionaires and they seem to be protecting their own interests by announcing the proposed inheritance tax threshold increase mentioned above. As well as this, one or two of them don't seem to be too well informed, after shadow home secretary Chris Grayling called the appointment of Gen Sir Richard Dannatt as a defence advisor a "political gimmick from Labour". Dannatt was appointed by the Conservatives, so Grayling is obviously not in the loop, but maybe that's for the best!

There's still a long way to go before the election. With Labour trailing so badly in the polls it would be suicidal for Brown to call an election any time soon and will probably want to wait until the latest possible date, so it looks as though we'll be deciding Britain's future in June 2010. With the football World Cup in South Africa also kicking off in the same month, next June should be an exciting time to look forward to.