Why the Tories Won: The Inside Story of the 2015 Election by Tim Ross

Author:Tim Ross [Ross, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785900075
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2015-10-11T23:00:00+00:00

Miliband said he would cut taxes for businesses like Miss Shuttleworth’s. But she said she was not satisfied. ‘That wasn’t the question I asked you,’ she told Miliband. ‘Why on earth should I trust a Chancellor who thinks that a letter like that was a joke? If he worked in the corporate world he would have been fired and he would not be allowed back to do that job.’

After a friendly question about abolishing the non-domicile tax status, a man asked Miliband another question on the economy. ‘I’ve just got a really simple question. Do you accept that when Labour was last in power, it overspent?’ In the eyes of his own team, Miliband’s blunt answer went some way towards sealing his fate. ‘No, I don’t, and I know you may not agree with that,’ the Labour leader said, to gasps from the audience. ‘Let me tell you – because there are schools that have been rebuilt in our country; there are hospitals that were rebuilt; there were Sure Start [children’s] centres that were rebuilt, which would not have happened; and so, look, I don’t agree with that.’

The Labour team had prepared Miliband for such a question. It was an obvious line of attack from Tory supporters in the audience. But unlike the near-perfect performance from Cameron, Miliband failed to deliver the nuanced and carefully phrased answer that he and his team had planned. It became a defining moment. Under immense pressure, the Labour leader – who had performed better than expected until this point – fluffed his lines. As he stepped off the Question Time stage at the end of his half-hour, Miliband stumbled. It was a moment that seemed to symbolise the trajectory of his campaign.

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