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As the party conference season starts, Robert Hill considers the positions of the political parties in the run-up to the general election. September heralds the start of the political party conference season. This year, the Liberal Democrats are off to Bournemouth, Labour to Brighton, and the Conservatives to Manchester. Delegates to the three events will pack their bags against a backdrop of a remarkably-consistent pattern to public opinion over the summer period. At the beginning of September, the poll of polls – which provides a weighted average of the main five opinion polls – had Conservatives on 42, Labour on 26, and the Liberal Democrats on 18. Those numbers would be enough to give the Conservatives a majority approaching three figures, if there was a general election tomorrow. So, Labour will go to its conference knowing that time is running out. And fast. Opinion against the Government and the prime minister seems to be consolidating. The crushing defeat for Labour at the Norwich North by-election at the end of July showed just how much Labour has to do to recover the voters' confidence. The electorate's biggest concern, according to Ipsos MORI, remains the economy. That might give ministers some hope that if the economic recovery gathers pace and unemployment peaks, public sentiment might start to turn in their favour. But it would be a brave Labour strategist who relied on this turn of events. Unlike the dog days of the John Major Government, Labour is not running out of ideas and policies. Arguably, it is producing too many initiatives and not enough strategy – although the Energy White Paper and the Green Paper on reforming adult social care, published shortly before the summer recess, are powerful, thoughtful documents, worthy of any government in its pomp. As for the Conservatives, they will go to Manchester in good heart – but perhaps with a niggling worry or two. Labour's attack during August on the Tory approach to the NHS rattled them for a week or so. The fact that David Cameron had to reiterate, once again, that the NHS would receive protected, real-terms increases in spending showed how keen the party is to neutralise health as an election issue. Public spending is the other Conservative headache. The election looks like being a battle over which party can best be trusted to restructure public spending. So far, the Conservatives seem to be winning this, but they face a dilemma. First, how far to reveal in advance what they plan to do. If shadow chancellor, George Osborne, decides to publish scant details of his public spending plans, he will lay the Conservatives open to Labour charges of hiding their real intentions. If, on the other hand, the Tories start to identify ways they would cut budgets significantly, they risk stirring up vested interests and diverting the political argument away from the main issue. For example, the Conservative spokesman on work and pensions, Theresa May, has hinted at scrapping tax credits. Labour will pounce on that and exploit what it means for the poorest families in work. The issue is not easy for Labour to handle either, since rising unemployment and lower-than-projected levels of tax revenue continue to force up borrowing. PM Gordon Brown has apparently abandoned any pretence that there will be no spending reductions, but has yet to articulate clearly Labour's position on future levels of public spending. Rumour has it that the prime minister might identify some programmes which would be chopped, and then seek to contrast a costed and restrained policy on spending, with a wild Tory ‘slash and burn' approach. For the Liberal Democrats, the challenge is rather different. The agenda for their conference is stacked full of policy documents to be debated – including proposals for cutting taxes for the lower paid and raising them for high earners, and investing in a whole host of new projects while restraining public spending. The issue for their leader, Nick Clegg, as he battles to contain the threat from the Tory revival on the one hand, while seeking to exploit Labour's weakness on the other, is to forge a distinctive identity and message for his party. By the end of the conference season, the smoke from the first election skirmishes will have cleared and we should be able to see more clearly the shape of the emerging electoral battleground. Robert Hill works as an independent public policy analyst and is a former No 10 advisor

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WHITEHALL

Conference calling

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