1929 Conservative poster – Wikimedia Commons

Could this still have potency – 80 years on?

While idly surfing the net over the weekend I came across this wonderful poster from the 1929 general election which seemed to resonate with the current political mood.

For Labour seems most vulnerable when the Daily Mail, and it is usually the Daily Mail, finds some new law or regulation that could have consequences way beyond the wrong that it was trying to deal with.

Remember last month’s rows about the requirement for massive extension of the number of adults to have CRB checks because of their proximity to children when doing quite ordinary things like driving them to school

I think that this is the sort of theme that Cameron had in mind with the “anti-big state” rhetoric in his Manchester speech. Somehow the Tory leader’s words on that occasion didn’t quite ring true and left him open on other issues.

How widely the poster was used in the 1929 campaign I do not know – but it didn’t seem to harm Labour. The party led by Ramsay MacDonald put on 136 seats and became the largest Commons group in spite of losing out in terms of votes to the Tories.

Mike Smithson