The Indian bicycle market

There are a lot of baseless preconceptions about UK political parties: being charitable about this, Labour is for the workers, equality and redistribution; the Tories are for a smaller state, self-reliance and law'n'order: and the Lib Dems are the protest vote party.

OTOH, we all know perfectly well that politicians are compulsive liars. When it comes to promising the moon-on-a-stick; lying about their abuse of expense allowances, drug and alcohol ab/use or extra-marital affairs, fine, the sensible voter just ignores it. Similarly, they tell lies about the other party. That's fine as well, nobody believes this either. What has puzzled me is that the party being lied about never actually defends itself.

To take a specific example, the Tories suggested increasing the Inheritance Tax threshold to £1 million, levying a £25,000 charge on non-doms and increasing 'green taxes' (whatever they are - I work in tax and a lot of it is grey areas). The Lib Dems promptly accused them of "unfunded commitments" and Labour yapped on about the 'cost' of these proposals (somewhere in the region of £2 billion per annum) meaning that 40,000 nurses would have to be sacked, or some such made up figure.

Notwithstanding that Labour have since more or less adopted the Tories' original suggestions, why-oh-why did the Tories at no stage say words to effect of "We won't reduce the number of nurses, or coppers or teachers!! There's at least £100 billion of waste in the system each year! The quangocracy! The EU contributions! The tax system that takes from the poor and gives it back to them as Tax Credits!"?

I can only assume, for want of a better explanation, that we are looking at an 'Indian bicycle market' scenario, which in outline is as follows ...
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When I was at Uni, one of my classmates did his talk on the Indian bicycle market. I am paraphrasing and ornamenting here, but the basic gist was as follows:

There were originally three bicycle manufacturers in India (this is pre-Partition), let's call them BSA, Raleigh and Triumph, for sake of argument. Each made a more-or-less identical bicycle that would do any job and was a good all-round bike. But of course, with a homogeneous product, there was eternal competition on price, quality and service - easy for the customer to judge. Thus none of the three companies was particularly profitable.

So, the three decided to segment the market:

a) One manufacturer positioned the cross-bar further down, added softer tyres and saddle, wider mudguards and a front-panier. This was the Lady's Bike.

b) The next manufacturer added drop handle-bars, harder tyres and saddle and reduced the size of the mudguards. This was the Gentleman's Racing Bike.

c) The last manufacturer added a comfy saddle, front and back paniers and solid rubber tyres. This was the Delivery Boy's Bike.

Of course, no Lady wanted to ride a racing bike or a delivery boy's bike, so she was prepared to pay more for a Lady's Bike. The Gentleman Racer wouldn't be seen dead on a girl's bike or a workman's bike, so he was prepared to pay extra for a Gentleman's Racing Bike. And the delivery boy saw the other bikes as mere fripperies, and was prepared to pay extra for the solid, Delivery Boy's Bike.
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Getting back to 21st century British politics, this is what we have. Three parties offering more-or-less identical 'products' dressed up as three completely distinct things. They are not! The so-called differences between the parties mask far larger similarities! 

Let's look at why our three main parties never refute the accusations of the other parties - under the bicycle analogy, if the manufacturer of the Lady's Bike lied and said something like "The suspension on the Gentleman's Racing Bike is much too hard!", the manufacturer of the Gentleman's Racing Bike was perfectly happy to allow this preconception, as it guaranteed that the Gentleman would wish to prove his mettle and all-round manliness by eschewing the Lady's Bike and buying a Gentleman's Racing Bike. The manufacturer of the Gentleman's Racing Bike had no interest in blurting out The Truth, to wit "Hey! Your suspension is no softer or harder than ours!" as this would have just given the game away!

Similarly, when the manufacturer of the Gentleman's Racing Bike derided the Delivery Boy's Bike as being "slow and heavy", the manufacturer of the Delivery Boy's Bike was quite happy, as he knew that his target market would interpret this to mean that the Delivery Boy's Bike was in fact solid and reliable - even though it was no heavier or more reliable than the other two brands. And so on.

In other words, the Tories are quite happy if Labour accuse them of wanting to "slash public services" - the Tories have not the slightest intention of doing so, but this sort of double-negative advertising means that voters who'd like to see smaller government and lower taxes will vote Tory. Similarly, Labour are quite happy if the Tories accuse them of wanting to "tax the rich" - Labour have no intention of doing so, but at least this double-negative advertising guarantees Labour the votes of people on low- to average incomes, who imagine that taxes on the rich will benefit the low- to average earner. And so on.

Exactly this strategy enables the three main parties to carve up their 'market' (our votes) into segments - far better for each party to have a 'core vote' and do the occasional token battle over a few 'swing voters' (without too much blood shed on either side) than to have a proper debate over fundamental things like what on earth the rôle of "the State" is in the first place, for example.