Ed Miliband arrived well armed at today’s PMQs: food-bank use has tripled, pay growth is at its lowest level on record and the number of people working part-time because they can’t find a full-time job has reached a new high. But after last week’s floundering performance, David Cameron put up a better defence. He was able to boast that unemployment had fallen in every category and that there were now a million more people in work than in 2010 (a statistic you can expect to hear every day from now on). The PM also finally settled on a line of attack against Miliband’s proposed energy price freeze, branding it a “price con”. It is doubtful whether those forced to choose between heating and eating will agree, but this appeal to cynicism is an improvement on last week’s red-baiting.
In response to Miliband’s questions, all of which were on living standards, Cameron strikingly argued that the best way to improve voters’ incomes is to “cut taxes”. As was reported earlier this week, the Tories are set to mimic the Lib Dems and pledge to raise the income tax threshold to £12,500. But for voters who are seeing their wages fall by an average of 2% in real-terms, a promise from the government to take a smaller chunk away is unlikely to prove sufficient. The Tories need a plan to increase the minimum wage and to spread use of the living wage, a subject on which they remain oddly silent.
If he wants to dismiss Miliband’s energy policy as “a con”, Cameron also needs to devise an attractive policy of his own. He currently boasts that the government is ensuring consumers are put on the lowest tariff but figures show that only 10% will benefit from this. Others in his party pin their hopes on a bonfire of green taxes and regulations but these account for just a fraction of the average bill. Polling shows that 75% of the public don’t believe that rising bills are due to green levies. Miliband also delivered an effective riposte to the charge that his environmentalism was to blame for excessive prices: “They’ve been floundering all over the place and they blame the last government and green levies. Who was it who said: ‘I think green taxes as a whole need to go up’? It was him as leader of the opposition … I look back at the record on the energy bill of 2010. Did he oppose the energy bill of 2010? No. He supported the energy bill of 2001. You could say, Mr Speaker, two parties working together in the national interest.”
Until Cameron devises a policy with as much appeal as Miliband’s price freeze, it is still Labour that will look like the party with answers on living standards.