Sailing towards the next election

FROM this side of the pond, the way the Americans choose their presidents looks like a painfully long, drawn out process. Although no one casts a real vote until November 2 of this year, the jostling to succeed George W Bush started in the dogdays of 2002 when people who weren't candidates said they wouldn't be standing.

As 2003 rolled in, people who everyone knew would stand said they would be standing. As it rolled out, there had been so much jostling for position that everyone was certain that Howard Dean would be the Democrat to take on Mr Bush.

Then 2004 opened with its long round of primaries, caucauses and conventions, and by March, Mr Dean is out of the race, John Kerry is in pole position and Mr Bush is running scared.

It is still another seven months before anyone casts a vote in anger, but this election has been hogging the headlines since 2002. A US president spends four years in office. The US people spend more than two of those years working out who is going to succeed him.

In Britain, of course, we'd never do anything as foolish as that. Our election campaigns are a maximum six week frenzy after which our Prime Minister immediately gets on with running the country for the next five years. But all of America's worst ideas cross the pond. Just like McDonald's, obesity, Britney Spears and bombing Iraq, it'll catch on over here.

Because yesterday was the first primary preparing the ground for the next British General Election. It may not be held until May 2005, it may not be due until June 2006, but here in March 2004 we have laid out before us the themes and ideas over which it will be fought.

In fact, already ringing in our ears are some of the electioneering slogans with which the political parties will attempt to beat each other senseless.

It was, said Conservative leader Michael Howard, a ''a credit-card Budget from a credit-card Chancellor''. Just to make sure we got the message, he immediately followed it up - a double whammy, if you like - with: "It is a borrow now, tax later Budget from a borrow now, tax later Chancellor.''

(Former Darlington Conservative MP Michael Fallon, now representing Sevenoaks in Kent, later re-invented the slogan as ''a dead end budget from a dead end Chancellor''.)

Gordon Brown didn't respond with anything as catchy. In fact, having started early doors with a "symmetrical inflation target", he bored his way through 53 minutes of announcement-free budgetry.

He did not even bother to steady the ship because, in his mind, the ship does not need steadying. With his telescope eye firmly fixed on the election on the horizon, and probably his place in Number Ten Downing Street after, he steamed steadfastly on, pouring money into health and education, blindly ignoring all the rocks that the Conservatives were pointing out.

The biggest rock is the one that Mr Howard hopes will hole Labour below the waterline: some analysts believe that in a couple of years' time Mr Brown will be £10bn short. How does he intend to cover it?

At the 2001 election, Labour shifted uneasily when asked a direct question about whether it planned to put up taxes. It fudged a reply, saying that income tax would not go up. This left it free to put up every other imaginable tax without technically breaking its manifesto - even going so far as to increase National Insurance, which is effectively income tax by another name.

Having been hit by these stealthy taxes, will the public accept another shifty Labour tax pledge?

Yet Mr Brown has a defence. Although his figures and projections may look fantastical to some, he has for the last seven years been right. He gloated about how the Conservatives had last year accused him of presenting "a deliberate misrepresentation" of Britain's economic prospects which "destroyed credibility".

At the time, the Tories seemed on firm ground. But, yet again, Mr Brown has been proved right.

He allowed himself another gloat. "In the Pre Budget Report, I told the House that Britain was enjoying the longest period of sustained economic growth for more than 100 years," he said. "Mr Deputy Speaker, I have to apologise to the House.

"Having asked the Treasury to investigate in greater historical detail, I can now report that Britain is enjoying its longest period of sustained economic growth for more than 200 years...the longest period of sustained growth since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution."

This is an extraordinary claim. But whom will the British voters believe? Tony Blair's trustworthiness may be shot to pieces, but the solid, dependable lump of granite that is the Chancellor of the Exchequer must score believability points up against Mr Howard, whose economic competence extends to introducing the poll tax.

And Mr Brown is an extremely clever politician. Yesterday, he simply stole the Tories' best ideas. Mr Howard had been planning to keep expenditure down by reducing waste: yesterday Mr Brown told him how to do it - by cutting 42,000 back room civil service jobs (callous capitalists lay off their workers by text, fax, radio or television, but a caring Labour government dismisses them by despatch box).

Mr Brown also previewed this summer's spending round by promising that defence, security and transport will all get more money (this, of course, means that lesser departments like culture, environment and trade will be getting less).

So the challenge to the Tories is clear: if Mr Brown's figures do have a £10bn hole in them and if they are committed to keeping tax down, what will be cut? The perennially popular health and education? Defence and security - when there's a war on? Transport? After the mess of privatisation of the railways, they wouldn't dare.

THIS election debate will spill into other areas raised by yesterday's Budget. For example, Mr Brown promised to increase the number of new homes being built. He spoke of brownfield sites, but it will inevitably mean greenfields are gobbled up - in the shires, in Middle England. It will be controversial, but if houses are to be affordable for first-time buyers and rural dwellers, what is the alternative?

Mr Blair appeared to enjoy the idea of domestic issues for a domestic election. He grinned his way through Mr Brown's speech having just wiped the floor with Mr Howard at Prime Minister's Questions.

In recent months, PMQs has been an ordeal for Mr Blair. Iraq has weighed him down, and Mr Howard's forensic mind has skilfully picked him off.

Yet yesterday, once the opening solemnities about Madrid had passed, Mr Blair visibly grew younger as Mr Howard questioned him about broadbrush tax and spend. It grew into a rip-roaring roustabout which ended with Mr Blair laughing at his own joke before he had even delivered it: "Let me tell my honourable friend that if I could only work out what the Opposition's policy is, I would attack it!"

Which brings us to the other fascinating facet of the next election. It will pit tax and spend against some form of cuts and privatisations. But it's not simply how the Conservatives perform as an alternative to the Labour Government. Just as importantly, it is a question of how old-style Labour supporters, be they backbenchers, unionists or stay-at-home voters, perform.

They are disillusioned by the drift New Labour is taking into foundation hospitals and top-up fees, although that alone would not be enough to stop them voting.

But Labour is still led by Mr Blair. Not only do they see him as betraying their principles, but now he is the only leader in the world left standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a right-wing Republican president in pursuit of an unpopular war.

So the importance of yesterday's boring, boring Budget is that it sets the election battlelines between Labour and Conservative, and it also throws down a challenge to traditional Labour voters.

Despite Mr Blair's unpopular war, will they still vote, support, campaign and finance his party which, as Mr Brown showed yesterday, remains steadfastly committed to public services from the SureStart to the £100 lump sum for the oldest pensioners?

Given that we face an election campaign of American proportions, they have a long time to make up their minds.