What have Labour got left to say?

The news that a ComRes poll for tomorrow's Indy shows a strong Conservative lead on the NHS, despite Labour's summer attack on the issue, shows again that the old political narrative is dead. Labour have tried to convince people that the Tories wish to privatise the NHS - let us assume for a moment that people believed this. What does the poll then tell us? This narrative, alive since 1997, has simply said that reduced spending equals less services (or fewere schools'n'hospitals, as Blair would say). Parties who want lower tax and less government spending also want to sack Nurses and Teachers. Now, it is all change.

People no longer wish taxes to continue to rise; most believe they should be lowered.

People no longer believe cutting costs means sacking frontline workers; in fact teachers, policeman and nurses would be the last thing to be cut out of the education, police and health system (believe me, there is plenty of bureaucracy to choose from first).

So if people do believe the Labour spin and still trust the Tories more with the NHS what does that say - other than another Labour line is dead. What now do Labour have left to say?

Of course the Tories don't wish to privatise the NHS. David Cameron, who of course has made a pledge to increase NHS spending despite overall cuts in government spending, now has people on side - he ought to take this chance to lay out in clear detail the reform which needs to accompany it.

Why the Tories are making the running on tax again

The issue of the total tax take in the UK is set to become one of the cornerstone issues at the next General Election. When the economy was good, people shrugged off Labour's various tax hikes with a sense that at least they were paying for the investment in "schools 'n' hospitals" that Blair told us all was vital. The new electoral rule was that tax cuts were a vote loser; because any tax cut could be expressed not in pounds and pence but in the number of schools shut or nurses sacked. And it worked.

Now the chickens from the last 10 years are coming home to roost and improvements in public services are clearly not coming fast enough, people are starting to query all this tax. Residents on the doosteps are starting to ask a few harsh questions of the government - why are we paying so much tax, why has it had to go up so much and ... more importantly, can I keep more of the money I earn?

Because without better public services, people are finally challenging the last reason they had for putting up with tax rises year-after-year. I hope Cameron does put the focus on the reform of public services rather than just the funding of them.

I now think the conditions are right for the Tories to talk about tax cuts without being accused of being service-slashers. The rules of the game have changed. Labour convinced people that tax cuts mean service cuts. Cameron now needs to convince people that tax cuts mean a fairer society and reform leads to better services.

I think that residents are now willing to listen to Cameron and the arguement is on our side.