HARMAN: Big bad Tories will cut your funding, but so might we…

The basis of Labour’s local election campaign, launched today, is puzzling.

Harriet Harman came out with a list of local community groups which she said would have their funding put at risk if the Tories got in.

Think “Blythe Players Amateur Dramatic Society” – odd groups to base an election campaign on. To be fair there were some worthy causes – local disease support groups and so on.

The problem is that if your message is ‘Tories will cut community funding’, you also need to be able to say ‘Labour will not’.

But when Harman was pressed she couldn’t guarantee that Labour also wouldn’t cut the funding of each group.

That leaves the party’s message as ‘the Tories might cut your funding, but so might we’ – hardly election winning stuff.

I’ll post a couple of transcripts of her answers later.