Anthony Painter

This Conservative party campaign has become as slippery as an oily fish smothered in Super Lube. There have been campaigns that travel light before but nothing quite like this empty, evasive, and desperate Tory campaign. At least they had a clear economic policy. That was the one thing that could be said. It was completely mad. But it was a policy.

No longer. As of the weekend they no longer have an economic policy either. Realising that the spectacular idea to slash public spending in the early stages of economic growth was both economically illiterate and politically disastrous, David Cameron performed a sharp U-turn at the weekend.

Apparently, we have a debt funding crisis (which we don’t), our credit rating is about about to be slashed (which it isn’t) and we are facing a Greek-scale disaster (which we are not) but despite this nothing ‘particularly extensive’ has to be done. It’s a nonsense. It’s scare-mongering. It’s incoherent. It’s a mess.

Never missing a trick, Tory central office are straight on the front foot. All you have to do in the face of political adversity is argue that black is white and, hey presto, coal becomes ivory.

So bearing this mind, Tory press man Henry Macrory has announced that the campaign is to launch a Labour ‘chaos on cuts’ attack.

At least they have a sense of humour. This is the beginning of the Tories’ campaign a day strategy. Tomorrow, Cameron attacks Gordon Brown’s air-brushed billboards and on Wednesday Lord Ashcroft is kicking off a campaign to outlaw non-domiciled donors.