Is Dave Ducking Again?.....New Tory Election Broadcast

Has David Cameron bottled out again....?

The Conservatives were due to produce an election broadcast for today, and it was a swipe at Labour: a full blooded attack, as some of David Cameron's advisers were saying only yesterday.

But today he has abandoned the already completed film (not done lightly, these films cost lots of money to produce) and instead he has done a "straight to camera" piece targetting the Lib Dems. Only the Tories can bring change, apparently, and only a full-face Cameron can carry the message.

It looks like a cop-out to me. The PEB itself is weak, with  a set of almost repeat shots of Cameron talking to invited audiences, and the message, which Cameron wantd to be "only I have the strength to bring the change you want", is usurped by the fact that sudden changes like this in mid-campaign look like a panic reaction to events which you cannot control.

The actual message I got from the broadcast was: "we're panicking in the face of the Lib Dem poll surge". Rather than focusing the spotlight on the Lib Dems, the tactic has the result of focusing on the Conservative unease at the current state of the polls. It looks like they've been blown off track and had to change their tactic at the last minute, which gives the appearance of being very weak indeed.