Osborne wooing blue collar workers on welfare
George Osborne has been in blue collar country to beat the drum for his welfare policies. Today he came to Sittingbourne in Kent.
This area swung hugely from Labour to Conservative at the last election. It’s packed with low and middle income working families, “strivers” as the chancellor calls them (though he’s dumped the “skivers” tag for those on benefits – in part, I’m told on advice from Lynton Crosby).
Kent has always had Tory heartlands in the middle but long had swing seat coastal towns round the perimeter. The decline of the docks peppering Kent’s coastline wasn’t replaced fully with anything so stable.
Mr Osborne came to a new Morrisons distribution centre which serves supermarkets all the way to the Isle of Wight and even down to Gibraltar.
It’s typical of the new industrial estate work that keeps the area going but many struggle to keep their heads above water.
Some workers listening to the chancellor were on £12,000, some I met were on £21,000. All of the workers I spoke to afterwards warmed to the message on welfare and thought the system was too generous.
Not all of them were ready to plant their “x” next to the Conservative candidate at a general election – several said they were watching and waiting to see what happens with the economy.
Labour might have lost a lot of seats around here in 2005 but UKIP saved their bacon by pinching Tory voters. They’re still a relatively big force here and three of the four questions George Osborne took from workers touched on Europe.
His delivery was a bit nervous, the format a bit awkward, delivering a near 25 minute mini-conference speech to 100 workers from a text on a lectern set up on a warehouse floor.
Not the jacket-off no-notes approach all 3 party leaders now deploy in settings like this and not one moment of the off-the-cuff mateiness they would all attempt.
But Mr Osborne’s team say we should expect more outings like this. As some backbenchers plot his downfall, the chancellor’s is responding by raising his profile a bit.
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