thetorydiary

Nick Wood gives his daily take on the campaign.

"There are no big new spending commitments," says Gordon Brown in the foreword to Labour's manifesto.

That's a relief then. After a spending spree of historic proportions, which has bankrupted the economy and left us virtually defenceless in the face of the most savage recession of the post-war era, Brown has turned the taps off.

And what a spree it has been. In cash terms total public spending has doubled from £318 billion in 1997 to £644 billion this year. In 1997 the state swiped 40 per cent of national output, today it takes over 50 per cent.

And the public sector payroll has ballooned by around a million workers in the same time, boosting Labour's client state. The annual deficit stands at an eye-watering £170 billion and total national debt is around £1 trillion.

Nonetheless, the Prime Minister seems to think we should be grateful that he has finally seen the light, wittering on about his determination that every penny spent in future will be used wisely.

Really? So why doesn't he start by taking a look at the front page of today's Daily Mail, highlighting the fact that scores of health bosses, with salaries in excess of £100,000 have enjoyed pay rises of almost 7 per cent - more than twice the increase enjoyed by nurses. Scope for some savings there?

Nick Wood gives his latest take on the events of election campaign

More than 40 years ago, amid a bout of leadership speculation, Harold Wilson was asked what was going on. "I'm going on," retorted the Prime Minister, and so he did, clocking up four election victories in all, and only one defeat.

David Cameron should remember Wilson's riposte. The Big Three, as the BBC ludicrously portrayed them, (Brown, Darling and Mandelson) spent much of yesterday trying to demolish the arithmetic behind the Tories' pledge to scrap the tax on jobs.

And legions of BBC "experts" seemed to spend even longer trying to demonstrate the impossibility of employing efficiency savings to shave £6 billion off public spending of some £650 billion this year.

They are wasting their time. It is self evident that a state so bloated as ours, fattened by more than a decade of Labour force feeding, must be awash with potential efficiency savings. And, more pertinently, that's what most people believe. Sir Peter Gershon, Brown's own efficiency expert, can fill in any gaps.

So Dave should not concern himself too much with the nitpickers. With the Government spending half the nation's annual output, a quarter of which is borrowed money, now is not the time to cripple the recovery by slapping a new tax on jobs.

He should just go on  - hammering home the message that Labour's job destruction programme is the last thing the country needs. Meanwhile, the polls are ticking up as more of the public get the message that Brown will put their living standards at risk.

The media cycle will turn of its own accord anyway. By Sunday the papers will be looking for trails of the party manifestos due to be officially launched next week.

And Dave has the married couples' tax break up his sleeve. A bit like the NI scrappage scheme, it is as much emblematic as a matter of arithmetic. Cameron's thesis is that Britain is broken - economically, politically and
socially. At the core of social breakdown is family breakdown. A simple measure designed to strengthen the family, to send a signal that marriage matters, will seem like common sense to many people alarmed by the fraying of the nation's social fabric.

And at around £600 million for transferable tax allowances restricted initially to married couples with children aged 3 and under, the measure will not cost much.

He will be attacked - idiotically - for discriminating against single mothers or penalising cohabiting couples. To which he can retort that nothing he is proposing will cost either group a penny. He is offering a carrot, not a stick.

Cameron has made the weather in week one of the campaign. He must not let up.

Nick Wood, Managing Director, Media Intelligence Partners Ltd.

Nick Wood gives his latest take on the events of election campaign

New Labour's big tent is looking more like a wigwam this morning. You can hardly move for fear of being trampled underfoot by captains of industry stampeding for the elegant marquee erected by Mr Cameron on the manicured lawns of Tory Towers.

Make no mistake. The campaign has begun well for the Conservatives with the row over national insurance.

Cameron's pledge to scrap much of Gordon Brown's planned NI rise next year is dominating the front-pages today, three days after the commencement of hostilities. The Tory Leader, fighting a commendably energetic campaign, is setting the election agenda - essential to winning the battle for public opinion.

That, incidentally, is the message of today's YouGov tracker for The Sun, which gives Cameron a clear lead on putting his message across.

Even more important, the NI story is leading all the TV and radio news bulletins, forcing Brown onto the back foot. Sir Stuart Rose, executive chairman of the country's best-loved store Marks & Spencer, is one of some 70 business leaders going public with their support for the Tory pledge.

Sir Stuart had his results out today, giving him ample opportunity to tour the studios and repeat his charge that Brown is insulting the intelligence of the business community with his fatuous claim that they have been duped by Cameron and Co.

When you are in a hole stop digging, as Denis Healey once said. But Brown was at it again today, claiming that the Tories have dreamed up their cut on the back of a fag packet. Has he looked at a fag packet recently? You can hardly write your name for all the gruesome pictures showing the perils of smoking.

Of course, there is some strategic sense in Brown's determination to prolong the row. The last three elections have all been won on Labour's core message that higher spending trumps tax cuts.

But past performance is no guide to the future. One senses that we have reached a tipping point on the spending v tax debate and that a straitened public want a break from ever higher taxes, especially, as Sir Stuart and Co point out, when they threaten jobs.

Now the nation's best loved actor, the famously outspoken Sir Michael Caine, has sauntered into Cameron's marquee. From the Italian Job to the Election Job. One has to hope that Sir Michael - who has condemned the 50p tax rise - remembers that he is only meant to blow the bloody doors off, not tip the battlebus into the ravine.

Don't interrupt your opponent when he is making a mistake, observed Napoleon. Dave should let the NI show run for as long as there are businessmen ready, willing and able to desert the Brown wigwam. And for as
long as Gordon wants to go on insulting them.

His team have already had the wit to hold back on firing off the next bit of heavy ammunition - a tax break for marriage. That should come when Gordon has alienated every boardroom in the land.

Nick Wood, Managing Director, Media Intelligence Partners Ltd.

Nick Wood shares his observations about the first 24 hours of the election campaign

So far, style is trumping substance. And David Cameron is ahead. Employing more wardrobe changes than Lady Gaga (jogging shorts, business suit, and rolled up sleeves - just wait for the blonde wig) an energetic Dave caught the eye on day one of the campaign.

His launch, subtly distanced from the Commons cesspit with Big Ben looking on like a reproving umpire, had far more flair than clunky Gordon's parade of the Politburo outside No 10. Forget about going back to the 1980s, this was a 1950s Stalinist revival.

Is Peter Mandelson really in charge of Labour's image-making? Going back to 1997, this was a complete role reversal. A tired Prime Minister stands stiffly with his "loyal" colleagues in Downing Street while a youthful challenger sprints off the starting line. For Brown read Major and for Cameron read Blair.

This morning Dave was at it again, jumping on his bike to get to the Commons for PMQs with a couple of Special Branch heavies providing a pedalling escort. That's a couple of votes he won't get.

Nor is it entirely sensible for Brown to pose with his team, not least since a fair number have repeatedly tried to sack the captain over the past couple of years. One has to hope they were frisked for knives before being allowed anywhere near the PM.

Just in case you (or Lord Mandelson) have forgotten, Gordon Brown got his job after launching a coup against Tony Blair. And in his brief tenure in office he has been the target of two botched coups in which many of those lined up beside him in Downing Street have been implicated:

• September 2006: Brown and his chief henchman Tom Watson strike against Blair, forcing him out by the following summer.
• June 2009: Hazel Blears quits Cabinet and Alan Johnson is forced to deny he is ready to take over. Caroline Flint quits as Minister for Europe accusing Brown of treating women ministers as "female window-dressing". James Purnell quits Cabinet but David Miliband bottles out of joining him and challenging Brown head on.
• January 2010: Former Cabinet Ministers Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt call for a secret ballot of Labour MPs on the leadership. Worse, BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson reports that six Cabinet ministers (Harman, Miliband, Ainsworth, Straw, Murphy and Alexander) were within a whisker of following him. Yet all of them were to the fore in yesterday's spurious show of Cabinet unity. And Brown would love to sack Alistair Darling and replace him with Ed Balls.

It's no wonder politicians are held in such low esteem. A more toxic combination of treachery and hypocrisy is harder to imagine than yesterday's Cabinet identity parade.

Nick Wood begins his daily 'High Noon' posting for the General Election campaign.

"It was nauseating. It was breathtakingly, toe-curlingly hog-wimperingly tasteless. It was unbelievably ill-judged. If the Prime Minister sanctioned the arrangements for this dire event and if here is a Hell he will go there."

That was Matthew Parris in The Times being less than complimentary about Tony Blair's decision to launch the 2001 election campaign in a speech to 600 "bare-kneed, pigtailed London schoolgirls".

According to Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail, one girl covered her head with a pullover and another said "bunch of lies, he's a big crook".

At the time, I was press secretary to William Hague and running the media side of the war-room with my dear friend Amanda Platell. More than once, we had cause to reflect that the press coverage of the 2001 campaign was far more encouraging than the brutal state of public opinion.

Blair did not go to Hell and the perceptive political insights of the schoolgirls were sadly not widely shared. 2001 was the high watermark of Labour's popularity. It was before Iraq, before Dr David Kelly, and long before the most spectacular economic bust of modern times. Labour went on to win by 9 percentage points (Labour 41, Conservatives 32).

The polls of 2001 bear some repetition. On the day Blair explained himself to the girls of a south London school, NOP had Labour on 51, the Conservatives on 31 and the Lib Dems on 13. The following day Gallup had Labour on 49, the Conservatives on 32 and the Lib Dems on 13. Mori was even worse: Labour 54, Conservatives 30 and the Lib Dems on 13.