Skuds has an example of a the following phenomenon:
- Before the election, Labour gets wind that the Tories have some policy that we think people won’t like.
- Labour puts out a leaflet suggesting that the Tories may do this thing
- The Tories go apeshit, claiming that the leaflet is lies and scaremongering
- The Tories form the next government in coalition with the Lib Dems
- The coalition starts to suggest or even roll out the very policy that they denied they were thinking of and accused Labour of underhandedness for talking about
This one is about the new proposals to stop the use of secure tenancy for council housing:
There was also the refusal by Cameron to promise to keep to the two weeks to get an appointment if you have a suspected cancer.
And the whole thing about how the cuts will affect frontline services even though the Tories denied that they would.
I’m sure there are more. This is not new, either. Before the 1979 election the [i]Daily Mail[/i] printed a list of ‘Labour Lies’ from campaign literature. Several of them turned out to be pretty much on the mark. One that was not quite as predicted was that the Tories would double VAT. They increased it from 8% to 15%, which is of course a whole 1% short of double.
The middle of the line 
August 4, 2010 at 20:23
You may not have seen another, more local, variant.
Last week’s local paper had a big spread about leisure services, including the possibility of handing over the Hawth for private management and charging for entry to Tilgate park.
Not quite the sell-offs we were accused of scaremongering about, but in that general direction. The Hawth would remain as a council asset – but bokkings would be a lot more commercial with less scope for all those community groups that bookit.
August 4, 2010 at 20:27
The Tory response will be that we said there were secret plans and there were not – this is just an ‘idea’ being floated by Dave and not any sort of policy.
To which I would say ‘cobblers’.
At the time the local Tories were suggesting that such things were unthinkable. Now we are seeing that it is far from unthinkable and this is just the initial proclamation. Still waiting to see when the other part comes along – increasing council rents to be in line with private rents.
August 5, 2010 at 19:08
Well, on the leisure things, they will claim that we were saying they’d be “sold off”, when what seems to be being proposed is that they are leased to profit-making private companies.
But still, the effect would be similar when it comes to how they are run, except that there wouldn’t be a capital boost for the Council.
On the council tenancies – personally I never bought into the idea that council houses were to be subsidised and provided for the poor. They were designed to pay for themselves (which they do), and to be plentiful enough to be available to all kinds of people, creating a mixed community rather than ghettos of poverty.
The main housing subsidy for the poor is through Housing Benefit, which of course is more expensive for people in privately-rented accomodation.