Tories SNP Scare Desperation

Desperate times call for desperate measures: Young Dave and the Rt Hon Gideon George Oliver Osborne, heir to the seventeenth Baronet, have clearly decided to pile up all their chips and stake them on scaring everyone south of the border into believing that the Scots are coming to get their jobs and their investment. To this end, both these first-rate charlatans are saying whatever it takes to push their message, however dishonest.

So it was that the less than dynamic duo fetched up in Crewe this morning, but this was not the 2008 by-election Tories, so they were not in the town centre, and Cameron was certainly not helping shoppers in Asda bag their groceries. No sirree, the Tory convoy had gingerly negotiated its way along the narrow track that leads off Weston Road and across the tracks to the Arriva Traincare depot (prop. The Government. Of Germany).

Don't tell the locals we're here, says Dave

Here, among a selection of rolling stock which had been wheeled in for attention, the autocue was programmed, and the apocalyptic message was rammed home to those invited guests whose votes would not be swayed in any case, seeings the PM and Chancellor are avoiding the ghastly prospect of having to interact with the lower orders. And that message was that the SNP was after Our Money (tm).

As prescribed by Lynt-you-know-who

There was, told Osborne, a huge amount of investment on its way to Crewe. This was news to many who have been waiting for its arrival; perhaps it had been waylaid by one of those all too frequent snarl-ups on the M6. The investment, he warned, was in danger unless all assembled voted Tory, which those present who lived in the Crewe and Nantwich constituency were probably already intending to do anyway.

Here's the opening frightener ...

And just in case this was not enough to frighten the punters back to The Blue Team, he asserted that, were the Tories not to be returned to power, there would be no new HS2 station for Crewe, which the town does not need and has not been consulted on. We’re quite happy with the station we have, thanks - having it ripped out of the town, and dumped out in the countryside near Basford, Crewe needs like a hole in the head.

... and now see it change!

Then he upped the ante by saying that Labour supported by the SNP would mean no HS2 at all! This would be news to Mil The Younger and his team, who have given their unequivocal support to the project. And there, folks, is the Tories’ desperation in one: in the space of a few minutes, they have changed their excuses on the hoof, with no justification offered. One of them must have lied - because the other said so.

Perhaps the lack of honesty caused fate to intervene: as Radio Stoke’s Phil McCann observed, staging the event at a location where you need to cross running lines meant a 20-minute wait for a large enough gap between train movements before the Crewe Signalling Centre could release the barrier to let the PM and his pals out. That’s the downside of obsessively shutting out the public.

The more significant downside is that, before they left, the world knew that Cameron and Osborne are prepared to lie as blatantly as they deem necessary in order to frighten the punters into voting Tory. What a complete, total, and utter shower they are.