Thank goodness for...the Lib Dems?

Having seized the initiative with his plan to halt Labour's planned National Insurance increase George Osborne, somewhat irritatingly, has been winning the media war all week, rolling out legions of businessmen supporting his position and convincing the electorate that they, rather than the Dear Leader, know how to stimulate economic recovery. This despite the fact that his plans, as per usual, are completely uncosted, and, also as per usual, will screw the poor by leading inevitably to a rise in VAT. But winning elections often has little to do with the merits of policy and rather more to do with controlling the message.

Imagine my joy, then, at the decision to fight back. Tomorrow's

Guardian headline reads, 'Cable attacks 'nauseating' businessmen', with dear old Vince describing as 'utterly nauseating all these chairmen and chief executives of FTSE companies being paid 100 times the pay of their average employees lecturing us on how we should run the country'. Finally! The Independent, too, leads with a firm 'Mind your own business' article. Until now no-one has seen fit to ask with what credibility big business - the practitioners of which recently led Britain to the verge of financial meltdown - speak when it comes to the economy.

I'm disappointed, though, that the attack has come from the Liberal Democrats. Alistair Darling, the Dark Lord Mandelson and the Great Leader have confined their criticism to pathetic mumbling about how the £6bn hasn't been adequately worked out rather than getting to the heart of the problem: it's the same old Tories protecting the same old big business interests at the expense of the lowest-paid.

Johann Hari has written a fantastic article explaining why Labour might be reluctant to go all-out attack [http://johannhari.com/2010/04/09/if-youre-looking-for-class-war-you-can-find-it-in-david-camerons-policies]. Once again, he says, it relates to spin rather than substance. Any Labour criticism of the Conservatives is painted as a class war by a media which peddles false assumptions about how wealth should be distributed. The fact is that class is an important factor in this election. David Cameron's background makes it much harder for him to understand the struggles and hardships faced by ordinary people. It's even harder when you consider that his acolytes are drawn from the same social circle; of the 34 members of the Shadow Cabinet 19 were privately educated. It's not surprising, then, that Cameron comes out with policies that reflect his ignorance. He has no idea, explains Hari, about modern life. Thus you get idiotic policies such as marriage incentives.

But rather than take on the Tories and inject a bit of fire into the campaign Labour prefer to occupy the middle ground. Thank God, then, for the Liberals; they decried marriage incentives as 'patronising drivel that belongs in the Victorian age'. It's amazing the truths you can speak when you're not desperately trying to avoid offending anyone.