The Tories started the political year with a campaign press conference. Leaving aside the impression of the ‘worst boy band in the world’, which the five cabinet ministers in a row conjured up, the point of the event was to signal that the Tories aim to make the general election about competence. There was real irony that the ‘report’ they produced to accompany this attack turned out to be riddled with inaccuracies. But far more serious than the misrepresentation and twisted facts in this electioneering is their five-year record of policy and delivery blundering. It is time to take on the myth of Tory competence.

Some polling and comment has suggested that the Tories are content to be seen as ‘nasty’ because they are also viewed as competent, in contrast to Labour which lacks trust on economic competence but is seen as caring and compassionate. The Tory strategy is clearly to play to this. We should not concede this ground – not least because it is untrue in reality.

Let us look at a few key policy areas. In December, David Cameron used the competence chaos lens to promote the Tory approach to immigration. But the whole Tory policy for this parliament has been based on meeting a net migration target that they will miss – not just by tens of thousands, but by more than a hundred thousand. The number of foreign prisoners deported fell from the level we achieved while I was home secretary. Remember, it was this issue which got a Labour home secretary pilloried and sacked! Just this week the inspector of borders and immigration, John Vine, stepped down early, having criticised the Home Office for sitting on reports which outlined just how badly they were handling these issues.

On welfare reform there was widespread agreement on the principles underlying the introduction of universal credit. Iain Duncan Smith claimed that it was his top priority. And yet the policy implementation has been pitiful. Despite attempts to shuffle off the blame, Duncan Smith must be held to account for promising that one million people would be in the new system by April last year, when only 40,000 actually were.

The ageing population is part of the reason for the current problems in the NHS – desperately busy emergency departments, people stuck in hospital beds when they are ready to move on. However, a botched NHS reorganisation is key to why the crisis has emerged now. The commissioning groups which were supposed to be at the heart of the new system have been conspicuous by their absence in dealing with the problems. A Tory health secretary is reduced to ringing round the hospitals with the biggest challenges imploring them to … Well, it is far from clear what he thinks the answer is, but he still tries to avoid responsibility.

A shortage of school places; rail franchising in chaos; a failed badger cull. The government has made enormous efforts to shift the blame in all these cases – onto civil servants, the European Union, immigrants, patients, the last government, local councils – even the badgers themselves. I am afraid being in government means taking overall responsibility and being held to account.

We obviously need to make a positive case to vote Labour in May. We need to criticise Tory policies when they are clearly unprincipled or unfair. We need to build faith in our own economic competence. However, we also need to hold this government to account for sheer incompetence. There are two important reasons for this. First, the political reason is that taxpayers have the right to expect that their money is being spent effectively and efficiently and we should be on their side – Margaret Hodge has excelled at doing this job in her role as chair of the public accounts committee. And, tactically, we must make sure that government ministers can not just pack up shop, walk away from their failures and devote the next few months to campaigning for another chance to mess it up. I remember from my ministerial life the energy and time devoted to accounting for when things had gone wrong. While we were in government, this was usually in response to media reports. There is not the same media scrutiny of this government’s failures so we have to do it for them. Let us make Cameron and Osborne regret choosing competence as a battleground as we show that the Tories have managed to be both the nasty and the incompetent party.

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Jacqui Smith is a former home secretary, writes the Monday Politics column for Progress, and tweets @Jacqui_Smith1

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Photo: Paulo