Political Point Scoring - Defection to the Tories

On the front of the Sunday Times today was a story titled ‘Tories steal welfare guru from Brown’. It reported the defection of David Freud, the government’s chief advisor on welfare, to the Conservative party. He is expected to be made a peer in the coming week and take up a front bench position.

After reading the story the question left in my mind was, “Have the Conservatives lured Freud to their party because he is a capable politician with a shared ethos on welfare or is this a political strategy designed to damage the government?”

The answer is probably a bit of both.

The story cites Freud as meeting with George Osborne before the defection which suggests some form of vetting and consensus building. Still, in terms of the Labour – Conservative divide this is a strange move. Traditionally the approach taken to welfare by the two party’s is polar.

But maybe political positioning in this case is secondary to the damage it inflicts on the government by being splashed across the front page of a Sunday Newspaper. Is the timing just a coincidence? Were the Conservative Party comments quoted in the article made merely off the cuff? I very much doubt it.

I remember reading about the defection of the Conservative MP Alan Howarth to the Labour Party in 1995 in the run up to the 97 election. The announcement was carefully planned so as to inflict the greatest damage possible on the Conservative Party.

It is probably not a surprise then to see the latest YouGov poll embedded into the Sunday Times article showing the 12% lead the Tories currently have over Labour. This demonstrates the toll stories like this are having on the government.

All in all it's a good day on the political strategy front for the Conservatives.