David Cameron's corporate chums stake their claim

If the Conservative leader's grasp of facts looked shaky, the interests of his backers were more solidly

After allowing the Tories and what Vince Cable calls their "nauseating" corporate chorus to set the campaign agenda for the first few days, Labour seemed finally to be staggering off the back foot yesterday, if not exactly landing many blows.

Things started well for David Cameron with a spectacularly soft interview on the BBC's Today programme – in startling contrast to John Humphrys's roughing-up of Gordon Brown the day before. Might the Conservative leader care to tell us who his favourite prime minister of the past century had been, Today presenter Evan Davis sweetly inquired, at one point.

And when Cameron justified his poster campaign of Saatchi-scale cheek, highlighting the widening gap between rich and poor under Labour, the open goal of a challenge that begged to be made – would he commit a Conservative government to narrow the gap? – was duly missed.

From then on, though, things went downhill for the Tory premier-in-waiting. His attempt to convince Guardian readers that Conservatives are the new progressives fell embarrassingly flat, as it transpired he had wrongly claimed the living wage commitment flagged up for Labour's manifesto had been pioneered by Boris Johnson in London. In fact, it was first introduced by Ken Livingstone in 2005.

Then shadow home secretary Chris Grayling was forced to grovel for having given "the wrong impression" that B&Bs should "have the right" to turn away gay couples, while Brown and his transport secretary Lord Adonis teased Liberal Democrats with talk or hints of tactical voting.

Labour swatted away its own mini-gaffe by dumping a no-hope candidate in Moray for describing elderly people as "coffin dodgers" – among other choice insults on Twitter. Meanwhile, Brown's attempt to upstage the Tories' benefit (not tax) fraud crackdown posturing by suggesting Conservative DNA database policy would have allowed the killer of Sally Anne Bowman to escape justice turned out to be shaky.

But the real development of the day was the shift in focus from Cameron's agenda of big business backing for his plan to reverse Labour's national insurance hike on to the evident flakiness of most of the Tories' £12bn "efficiency savings" meant to pay for it – and the threat to 40,000 jobs the real cuts they've flagged up would mean.

Attacks and counter-attacks were traded throughout the day over what is, in reality, a relatively minor part of the far bigger cuts programme all three main parties have, to different degrees, damagingly endorsed. But the scale and timing of cuts, as well as the threat to public services and jobs, should be more favourable territory for Labour. So, potentially, could the growing Tory enthusiasm for tax breaks (the latest is their £150 marriage allowance), if it weakens their economic credibility after months of dire warnings about the public deficit.

Friday's Daily Telegraph front page headline, "Tory win best for economy say top bankers", was a neatly unintended reminder of precisely what sort of corporate interests are now throwing their weight behind Cameron's Conservatives – and why.

Seumas Milne
guardian.co.uk
10 April 2010