Keeping the faith

March 2, 2010 — admin

Time for a decisive, DC - what's it to be?

It all seems as though it could go terribly wrong after a YouGov poll found that the PM was on course to claim another five years in power, something unimaginable even four weeks ago. DC gave his speech on Sunday in Brighton to a generally good reception but couldn’t avoid a look about him that was rather too close to someone living out their nightmares. I thought it was a solid speech and nothing more – designed to steady the ship and motivate the crew rather than inspire a nation through new discovery. But I remain confident that Cameron the performer will outshine either of his rivals whenever he gets the chance.

What he needs to start to do is give people a reason to vote Conservative – something I’ve been telling the party locally for a number of months now. Gordon Brown remains our biggest asset and I have no doubt that whatever the polls say, he will not win the election. But that doesn’t mean a Conservative victory – as the Times put it, it is isn’t that people don’t think DC is capable of being a good PM, it is that they don’t understand why he wants to do the job.

I know that DC feels the desire to reform our country, he is deeply interested in social justice, cares hugely about health and education and wants to address Britain’s copious social problems. He wants to foster an economy that allows people to reach their potential and steer a dignified course on the world stage. Why? Because it’s the British Way – fair play, compassion, reward for the successful and support for the struggling. I think the term “patriotic duty” was taken out of context by the press but it wasn’t the most wise; I know what he meant but I’m not sure it was the best way to express it. He needs to express it how the man on the street would ie the country at the moment is in a mess – unfair and injust after 13 years of Labour failure. DC wants to be the person to put that right.

But we need to spell out in practical terms what the Direction of Travel is and how that’s done. And we need to give people some reasons to vote Conservative as opposed to reasons to vote against Gordon. I think DC’s policy of attacking the PM has reached its optimum effectiveness and has now started to decline. I want to see less barracking and more focus on what a Tory government will deliver. Cllr Richard Lowe, an emminent Tweeter, collated the following:

1. A cut in net immigration of 75%

2. No more early release for convicted criminals

3. A two year freeze in council tax

4. The abolition of inheritance tax for all families except millionaires

5. Cutting politics with 10% cut in the number of MPs and 5% cut in pay

 6. Headteachers to be put in charge of school discipline

7. Restoring the link between the basic state pension and earnings

8. New laws that will give householders more rights against burglars

9. The budget deficit cut in half by 2014 so future generations don’t live in debt

10. Abolition of Labour’s expensive ID cards

I’m more comfortable with some things than others on that list but politics isn’t an all-or-nothing craft. These would be 10 reasons that if nothing else explain to a public fed up of waiting what the Conservatives stand for. And most of them represent current policy - not that you’d think it from our reticence in coming forward. So come on DC, let’s hear about them and let’s have a bit of fearlessness. Ignore those who say that we are losing support because we’ve gone to the left and keep to the centre ground. Stop bashing Gordon – tempting though it is – and start selling yourself, selling the party and its promises and selling a Conservative Britain as a place that has voted for change and is fairer for all.

I don’t believe that Labour will win the election, the polling in key marginals is still heavily in our favour. But we must show some mettle, some work ethic and a willingness to let people into our confidence if we are to finally summit the mountain we have struggled for so long to conquer.

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Wobbling over Wolsey

February 26, 2010 — admin

The purchase of Wolsey Place has attracted a lot of debate in various places, including local Lib Dem blogs and a dismal Facebook group set up by UKIPpers, who have taken a break from blaming everything on Europe.

I’m disappointed that having agreed to it in council, some Lib Dems in Horsell are trying the old “we don’t have to follow the party line” gag just as they did over county hall. No – you don’t have to follow the party line on a Horsell issue such as development in the village or bus service cuts. But this is nothing to do with Horsell specifically and it’s a major financial commitment that the council has signed up to on a cross-party basis. For local activists to now try and wriggle out of their party’s official position on Wolsey Place is opportunistic and disingenuous. If they were so concerned, did they lobby their leadership against cross-party agreement?

For what it’s worth, Horsell West councillor Tony Branagan voted against the purchase but now the matter has been resolved he is committed to defending the council’s position, even though it wasn’t his own. How very easy to abdicate responsibility in the face of hard questions – to me, elected representatives need more fibre than that and Tony has it in spades.

I’d prefer a world where Woking Borough Council was debt-free, as it was six years ago under Jim Armitage. But that isn’t the council we’ve got and only a firesale would restore that position. In the circumstances, the best place to spend the borrowed money is on appreciating assets and generating revenue. So let’s look at Wasteful Woking and see just how inaccurate the UKIP information is.

“Not only do they splash out 68M for Wolsey, they also just announced a 2.5% council tax increase. It’s time to take some control back!”

And just think how much more your council tax would be without £1.5m in revenues next year from Wolsey Place. This is a totally misplaced statement based on the notion that Woking Borough Council itself has written a cheque for £68m.

“It will take the council 50 years to pay back the loan for Wolsey Place, a development that will probably be beyond it’s usab…le life within 20 years. That means a major capital expenditure to either rebuild or upgrade the current site. “Invest to save” is a phrase usually best applied to upgrade work or repairs that will lower future bill and fixed cost base. Not buying a leaky old shopping centre and half occupied office.”

What is wrong with taking 50 years to pay back the loan? People with mortgages usually pay them back over half that and they usually borrow a good deal less than half the money. As time goes on, the value of the repayments will decrease while the rental income keeps pace with inflation ie the value of income over repayments will increase hugely over 50 years. If the centre is sold on, the loan could be paid back or if the site is sold in say 15 years, it will be most likely be worth a great deal more than was paid for it and will cover substantially the amount of the loan outstanding.

Whatever the author’s view of the shopping centre, actually looking at the books (rather than guessing wildly) revealed a sound basis for buying. In addition, there is potential for development in the future, although that’s not something I think would be considered for some time. For the record, floors one to five of Export House are empty, with six to 15 occupied. The internal decor and facilities are very good and I know that because I work on the 14th floor.

Elsewhere, we’ve had concerns about maintenance, unforeseen legislation and all sorts of other things that really scrape the barrel. There are always risks associated with everything – given all the information available, councillors on all sides took the view that this was worth doing.

Finally, there are Lib Dem concerns about the process, about the fact that the deal was done with press and public excluded (Part II). I’m no fan of Part II and as a journalist I fought tooth and nail to find out what was going on “behind closed doors”. But consider this – councillors are elected by the people to take decisions. As residents, we’d no doubt prefer everything to be decided in public but just because the press and public are excluded doesn’t make the process less democratic. These are still the same councillors making the same decisions under the same constitution in the same way that magistrates confer in private rather than open court. And the Lib Dems, who have to a person all been involved in Part II items in the past, know that perfectly well.

In his blog Denzil Coulson claims that the Lib Dems have helped rescue us from a financial disaster this year by backing Wolsey Place. If that makes him happy, so be it - but he is right that the financial outlook for 2010/11 is a lot better because of this purchase. Remember that net of repayments, net of tax, net of maintenance the council will get £1.5m a year from the Wolsey Place purchase – it pays for itself and a lot more besides.

So t’s time that UKIPpers stopped spreading rubbish about the deal that was done for pure electoral gain and that Lib Dems locally had the bottle to agree – as Denzil seems to want to say – that this deal was the very best of the bad job that Woking’s borrowing is.

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Wasted opportunity for change

February 25, 2010 — admin

The debate tonight in council over whether to change the voting system in Woking to one all-out election for councillors every four years instead of the contrived thirds system we have at present was a frustrating experience. I had hoped against hope that the sensible cross-party voices of David Bittleston, John Kingsbury, Peter Ankers, Ric Sharp and Richard Sanderson would pursuade some of those with fears about all-out elections to take the plunge.

It was a big ask and needed a two-thirds majority (24 out of 36 councillors) to get through – in the end it was defeated 16-17 by those wishing to stick to the current system. There were some really good points, ranging from the structural ie that all-out elections provides a period of election-free space to encourage longer-term thinking and decision-making by councillors to the equitable ie that resident in three-member wards such as Horsell West get to vote three times as much as those who live in one-member wards like Brookwood.

There are also questions of clarity for voters, of being able to spend less time electioneering and more time engaging with residents and of the £100,000 three-years-in-four cost benefit. But the sticklers, of whom the “radical” Liberal Democrats formed the backbone, won through, obviously worried about their seats and the prospect of four years in the wilderness. Denzil Coulson told the chamber that in 2011 he was sure the Conservatives would be unpopular and thrown out of administration – and then proceeded to defend the thirds system by way of it being more “democratic” because it forced people to work together and gave councillors contact with residents.

Lib Dem leader Ian Johnson too said that the council was best when it worked together on projects and made out that all-out elections would somehow preclude this, allowing one party to bully its agenda through. Other thirds supporters opposed the idea of too radical a change in the council’s makeup after a four-yearly election, with it taking time to retrain new councillors. Yet successful authorities like Guildford, Elmbridge and all the Berkshire unitaries – as well as all London boroughs – are elected this way and seem to overcome these issues.

More to the point, the strong leader model adopted by the council tonight also seems to point to the need for a all-out election, as the leader’s four-year term should co-incide with the council’s. By keeping thirds, members have essentially nullified the strong leader idea and kept the system we have now. Woking is a good council but it is not helped by its marginal and shifting control. It needs a stability and permanance that at present only the officers of the council enjoy.

A number of members felt that those in safe seats were more in favour of all-out elections because they were less likely to find themselves booted out for four years. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – as someone who is standing for election in a marginal ward, I’d rather lose the seat and not have the opportunity to stand again as a consequence of the best system than win it and have to work within a second-best model that hinders strategic thinking and bold decisions.

It’s a shame that I have to get party political but I think that the Liberal Democrats have let the borough down by not being bold enough to embrance this change. It is only fair for me to mention Cllrs Ian Eastwood, Ric Sharp and Richard Sanderson as the honourable exceptions to this – they voted against the rest of their party in the free vote and also Independent Peter Ankers for coming down on the visionary side too. Interesting to note that Lib Dem PPC Rosie Sharpley, your agent of change if the Lib Dem literature is to believed, didn’t feel able to vote for it on this occasion.

The next opportunity to get rid of our thirds system is 2015. By then I hope the case will be clear.

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Constitutional choices

February 16, 2010 — admin

Away from all the excitement of electoral mud-slinging, there are some very important changes being debated at a meeting of full council on February 25. They surround whether a) the council should be run by a strong leader and cabinet or have an elected mayor and b) whether the council should elect all its councillors every four years or, as it does now, elect a third of councillors three years in every four.

Last week, the executive took the decision not to endorse any one of these options and to allow the full council to have a debate and free vote on the issues. The understanding I have formed from the discussions I have had is that councillors will not vote for change and will keep a strong leader model elected by thirds – but they could of course prove me wrong!

In the first matter, they are entirely correct to eschew an elected mayor, who would have the power to appoint members of the executive committee from any party regardless of the wishes of councillors. This is in fact nothing short of amateurish political engineering by Labour – hoping that they can claw their way back to power in local government by getting a few Labour (or “independent”) mayors elected in what usually amounts to a silly popularity contest and running the council contrary to the wishes of members genuinely elected locally by their communities.

In such instances, the mayor would be able to pack the executive with members of minority parties and potentially run councils with as little as 20% of the council membership. Clearly that sounds quite attractive to the PM, but has he thought about areas outside London that might be fruitful ground for the BNP and how this silly mayoral idea could help that party control its first council? I hope that members reject this senseless scheme outright – Woking simply doesn’t need and wouldn’t benefit from an elected mayor.

On the second issue, I believe there are compelling reasons to favour all-out, once-every-four-years, elections. It saves money, saves people voting every single year and gives administrations a proper four-year term to get things done rather than worrying about the electoral consequences all the time. In addition, it aids member independence and makes it more difficult for officers to start running the policy show.

But among political parties, it’s not so popular. It means that they get out of the campaigning habit and have to re-invent the wheel every four years. It also means that if any member gets voted out, they have to wait four years for another go – and the same goes for overall control of the council. Losing your seat in a local election contest is a grisly business – I’m beginning to properly understand the work that needs to be put in and for all that to come to nothing must be dreadful. 

But there are worse things than being in opposition as a councillor – it’s an opportunity to re-group, reassess the area’s needs and your policies and to come up with something worth fighting on. I’ve seen all-out work well in Surrey Heath, Guildford and Waverley and I believe it is right for Woking too.

Losing seats and control is all part of politics and members must make a decision on this for the good of the borough. My feeling is that four-year terms are conducive to better decision-making and member-led authorities. That may not be the decision that will be reached – but I hope that it if is not, it will be for concerns other than members of all sides fearing the effects of losing power. If that were the case, Woking would be missing an opportunity – and not for the best of reasons.

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Lord oh Lord, Lib Dems get personal

February 16, 2010 — admin

Jonathan (centre) at Woking Community HospitalThere may still be two months to go before an election is called but already the Liberal Democrats are beginning to show that they are far more comfortable talking about personalities than policies. The latest attempt to smear our excellent parliamentary candidate Jonathan Lord comes from Spiderplant Land, where a load of hackneyed drivel masquerades as an informed piece of opinion.

The blogger in question has already got the number of times Jonathan has stood for parliament wrong, amusingly confused Jonathan’s current place of residence five miles away with somewhere 25 miles away and stated quite catagorically that he knew nothing about Woking, despite the fact that she has never met him. She then sought to blame our literature for the faulty information! The Lib Dems really need to learn the difference between blogging and blagging.

In addition, the “anonymous” comments that she quotes from ConservativeHome (and which have now been removed) originate from someone know to be a compulsive fibber, who is not a Guildford party member and doesn’t even appear to be on the electoral roll in Guildford or Waverley. Still, that’s about the standard of reasonsing that underpins most Lib Dem policies, so expect to see these fake “quotes” used again.

I have stated before how impressed I have been with Jonathan’s commitment to Woking since he was adopted as our candidate. Last week, he visited Woking Community Hospital to emphasise our commitment to the NHS, something I know he feels strongly about. This weekend, he is campaigning – by which I mean knocking on doors rather than tweeting friends like @RosieSharpley – in opposite ends of the borough because he wants to listen to concerns and articulate the Conservative message of change and recovery.

People who have seen Jonathan at events and visits will tell you that as well as being a great communicator he is usually the last to leave, wanting to spend time with the hosts who are usually busy during the event itself. Jonathan is a dynamic, intelligent and experienced man with a record of getting things done in the public and private sector. He has fantastic connections within the Conservative Party that will help Woking – should he be elected – get its voice heard at the highest level.

After 13 years of being punished by Labour for being in Surrey, Woking deserves that opportunity once again. Don’t be seduced by Lib Dem untruths and heresay – it may suit them locally but it is not in the best interests of the constituency or the country.

Update 16/2: For those that can stand it, Spiderplant Land has responded at some considerable length here.  It’s typical baseless Lib Demmery. But it gives me a good indication of what we can expect going forward. For the record, I have not smeared Rosie Sharpley above – I’ve talked about Jonathan, save for plugging Rosie’s Twitter account (I think Twitter is marvellous but a very limited campaigning tool).  She’s right though - it’s not worth responding to. So I’m going to get on with our Horsell In Touches instead.

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Fiddling the system

February 3, 2010 — admin

Tony Blair talked about it after his win in 1997 but soon kicked it into the long grass when civil servants pointed out the advantage that it could potentially give him during the next 10 years. I am of course talking about the first-past-the-post voting system, which has served the country well for 150 years by delivering strong governments in a two-party system.

Yes, it tends to flatter the winning party – enabling them to get legislation through that would otherwise be compromised by protracted negotiations with coalition partners. We haven’t had a hung parliament in this country since 1974 and you have to go back to 1929 for the one before that. In that time, the country has undergone radical economic and social change and the fact that we’ve had governments able to push through their legislation – both popular and unpopular – has been one of the factors that still allows us to be competitive nearly a century after the onset of post-Imperial decline.

Now Gordon Brown wants to change all that.  Isn’t it interesting that having thought about it in 1997 as Chancellor only now is he coming to realise that perhaps it might be a good idea after all? Or, more likely, isn’t he just after a chance to gerrymander the electoral system? He knows that if he wins the election in May, he’s very unlikely to deliver a fifth term for Labour in 2015 because governments just don’t stay popular for that long. So, he reasons, let’s change the system to make it tougher for the Tories, if they don’t win in 2010, to get in at a later point.

And it’s interesting that a graphic in the Guardian today shows how the House of Commons would have looked if the AV system had been in place already. We can see that while it appears to bolster the interests of the largest and smallest parties at the expense of the one in between, that isn’t really what happens. What happens is that Conservative voters are far more likely to vote Lib Dem as their second choice, Lib Dem voters far more likely to put Labour as theirs and Labour voters also likely to vote Lib Dem as a second preference. So with Conservative shorn of the majority of second choices, they have to win on the first preference votes alone, whereas the other two parties are more likely to win on second choices.

It, in effect, seals an unofficial electoral pact between the Lib Dems and Labour – even though a good many people who vote Lib Dem do so because they don’t want to vote Labour or Conservative and have little idea what they are voting for – except they “think that Vince Cable is ever such a nice chap”.

There is an issue with the first-past-the-post system in how it works in a three-party, not two-party system. The largest party is inflated, the smallest party negated. But the Lib Dems have always called for proportional voting out of self-interest and not because they believe it enhances democracy. I don’t remember it being quite so far up their list of priorities 100 years ago when they were forming governments on the back of the FPTP system.

Thankfully, not everyone is taken in by the PM’s Saulian conversion to the cause of electoral reform. I’m heartened to see that the BBC reports (I’ll quote becuase it’s a long way down):

“Campaigners for democratic reform give a mixed reaction on Mr Brown’s proposals, with some, such as Power 2010 saying it did not go far enough: “Without troubling the public for their views, ministers hand-picked the voting system they favour in a cynical exercise aimed at wrong-footing the Tories ahead of a likely election defeat.

“The future of our democracy is far too important to be decided by empty gestures such as this.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

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Economy’s off the scale

January 26, 2010 — admin

Well, don’t you feel better now? The UK is officially out of recession (link to The Times because the BBC’s coverage reads like a Treasury press release), so we can all get back in our cars, go back to shopping in Waitrose and start thinking about re-mortgaging the house. Not quite. Because the government has been pumping so, so much money into our economy during the past 12 months that anything other than growth – however pitifully small – would have been utter humiliation. It’s also worth pointing out that we still have January and February’s figures to come before Q4 2009 growth is confirmed.

I believe that 0.1% is rather convenient for Gordon Brown and will be revised downwards in a few weeks when the fuss has died down. But there is a fundamental distinction between the two parties on how to maintain recovery – and remember that a second “after-slump” in the face of first recovery is something that has characterised nearly all the post-war recession. Labour wants to continue to prop up the economy with taxpayers’ money and there’s nothing particularly wrong with that in such dire circumstances.

The BBC's graph is stastically nonsense

But at some point, the props have to be taken away – and at the moment, the whole thing would come crashing down if that were the case. This is the graph that the Treasury and the BBC wants people in Britain to see. It looks like we are out of the woods. With another 18 months of quantative easing and borrowing, the figure could quite easily be pushed up to 2 or 3 percent and the government given credit for not just a full recovery but a new boom.

The Guardian's graph not only shows us where we actually are but compares with other recessions

This, though, is the Grauniad’s somewhat more realistic assessment of the situation that shows the recession has wiped out all the growth in the British economy since 2005. I have heard both George Osborne and Phillip Hammond in the media today say that the only thing that will keep us out of recession is the private sector’s profits, jobs and tax revenues and that interest rates must stay low to stimulate that growth. We need to cut the defecit to bolster our credit rating and boost our floundering currency.

A rise in interest rates, which would have an adverse affect on people’s spending power, is the most serious threat to our sustained economic recovery – apart from a fourth term for Labour. More borrowing could mean a softening of Britain’s credit rating and devaluing of the pound, which would make government guilts and bonds less attractive to investors. The government desperately needs to harden these investments to pass Britain’s debt onto those with the money to buy it; cuts in spending alone coupled with tax increases will not be enough to pay off our borrowings.

I want to see Ken Clarke and Phillip Hammond blast through Labour bluster about recovery and remind people that whatever Labour has done to bring us out of recession – and you can argue about the effectiveness vs cost of that – it’s nothing compared to the damage they have done to British business and trade, as well as landing us with a huge debt to pay off. I want to see people reminded about this until Gordon Brown doesn’t want to talk about the economy anymore. Brown’s plans to continue to spend his way out of recession and worry about the economic consequences later should convince that he can’t be trusted on this.

He’s been saying for ages that the Conservatives have made the wrong call on the economy every time. It’s not true and it’s time we hit back. He wants to continue to mollycoddle the nation and extend the pain for longer. The Conservative approach is not just a self-flagellating short, sharp shock; it makes absolute economic sense and it’s about time we said so.

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Lurch to the right

January 25, 2010 — admin

DC has plenty to think about - but voters still don't want Gordon Brown as PM

There’s no mystery as to why the Conservative lead in the polls has narrowed. In fact, reading PR Week this morning, it was quite refreshing to see Alex Hilton spelling it out for any reading Conservatives who may not have realised yet. And if we look at the polls, we don’t really see any massive increase in Labour’s polling – they are steady at just under 30% – but a decline in support for the Conservatives.

The tipping point was the Lisbon Treaty being ratified by President Klaus of the Czech Republic. For the first time, DC and his team looked like they’d been caught out – like they had thought that the wily old Klaus would hold out for them and they didn’t look as though they had really thought through what would happen next. Or perhaps they underestimated the level of opinion within the Tory grass roots and had expected them just to swallow the whole debate being kicked into the long grass.

In reality, there wasn’t much alternative, as I argued at the time. A referendum on the treaty is a totally pointless waste of time and the activists’ posturing on it just that. But the question of whether to put Tory grass roots ahead of country as a whole was a particularly poignant one for him because voters see that question as the benchmark as to what kind of PM he will be. In the end, he chose neither and pleased neither.

Since then, we’ve had some cracking grass roots-pleasing policies. Punishing people for not being married is one. For goodness’ sake, we’ve had 13 long years of a government telling us how to live – from the beef we can eat to detention without trial, people want a Conservative government that will leave them alone, not tell them they’ve got to march to the Register Office or else. Marriage doesn’t automatically equal childhood bliss as we’ve seen in Edlington; please DC, just let it go.

Next we’ve had the Tories arguing about strengthening the law to allow people to defend their homes. The simply fact is that we have to have some kind of trust in the rule of law and the police to distinguish us from the animals. You are already entitled to use reasonable force – which may include deadly force – to defend yourself and your loved ones in your own home; there is no for any further “clarification” of this fact. By banging on about it, Chris Grayling and everyone risk succinct exposure by the legal profession.

Then DC had a pop at teachers and told them that they would need to be cleverer in future. I happen to agree with his view on this but saying such a thing was never likely to endear him to the NUT, BBC, or the many parents who are potential Tory voters that have a healthy respect for the teachers at their childrens’ school. There is an issue with teaching standards in this country but he’d have been better leaving it to Michael Gove to say so.

He’s also playing a risky game engaging the government over the raising of the UK Terror Threat to “severe”. The public do not like to see politicians making political capital of national security. Yes, DC means well but he needs to engage his PR brain a bit more to see how these things may be perceived. Is Andy Coulson on holiday?

DC’s greatest political achievement has been to drag a tired old party kicking and screaming into the 21st century. I and many others waited 10 years for someone to do it and it remains a great achievement – but it’s only a starting point. And with Lisbon, he has been a victim of circumstances trying to do the right thing – but hey, that’s politics. Now is the time for DC to be fitfully stubborn and stand his ground – the centre ground.

He must, must not allow the party to do what many of its activists want and move back to the right. He needs to focus back onto the left of politics – to talk the language of inclusion, of accessibility and of aspiration. He must ignore the threats of UKIPper defections – he needs to stay focussed on the mainstream of society, the probables, the Liberal waiverers, the people who are looking for him to uphold their vision of a small-c conservative society that celebrates success and achievement but makes this possible for everyone. I’ll fight and fight for the party forever – but I’ll feel a lot better about it if I hear more of this and less Monday Club rhetoric.

Labour won’t make it easy – they are focussing on Gordon Brown the statesman with the War on Terror, the Northern Ireland process, they are talking about banking bonuses again and tax will be an issue too. There are probably brighter economic figures to come. DC needs to stay strong, to regain confidence in his ability to be the Prime Minister of everyone, not just his own party.

The time for him to become PM is approaching fast and his margin of error is narrowing. It’s now or never and he needs to get a grip once more.

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Not so easy now

January 11, 2010 — admin

Reality bites - Nick Clegg has ditched some of his key promises

Writing in the Grauniad this morning, a smug Michael White claimed that DC’s appearance on the Andrew Marr Show had clarified nothing and that he had not been able to give firm promises on any of his draft manifesto commitments. Well, I can’t deny that DC is avoiding any more cast-iron guarantees but neither can Mr White deny that the reason he is doing so is because of the total and utter ruin to which the government his newspaper supports has brought the economy.

Furthermore, we know that the government is being deliberately obstructive of Conservative attempts to gain access to Treasury information – both to hide the extent of their failure and deny the opposition any advantage they may derive once in government. DC knows that things are bad but he isn’t sure how bad and until he knows he’s not making any promises. Is Mr White saying this isn’t sensible?

The Liberal Democrats have been busy making quite a bit of hay over that situation in the past. But now it turns out that they too have seen the absurdity of promising free elderly care and scrapping tuition fees when the money most obviously isn’t there to fund it. It’s not the first time they’ve decided they want to scrap some of their policies (Mansion Tax, anyone?) but at least Nick Clegg is shelving these because he can’t afford it, rather than because they are rubbish.

As ever with the Lib Dems though, they don’t have to be properly costed because they aren’t ever going to be enacted. But there comes a time when promising the earth just looks silly - even when you don’t necessarily know the details of the costs involved. Such a point has been reached and Nick Clegg is using the opportunity to launch his own austerity regime.

Which just leaves Labour. The Chancellor has promised cuts, the PM used the word once but thinks he got away with it and one half of the Labour party wants class war and investment and the other half wants the middle class vote and a pair of sharp scissors. It is clear that the government is in total disarray not about the economic policy needed – because both spending cuts and tax rises are coming without a doubt – but how to present this to voters.

The Conservatives went for honesty at their conference last year and it went down well at first but started to wobble once the government comms department got hold of it. The Lib Dems tried honesty, the party didn’t fancy it and so they went back to investment but now Nick Clegg has obviously put his foot down for the sake of credibility – as far as it goes, good on him.

But Labour – Labour is a complete and utter shambles with PM, Alistair Darling and Milipede pulling one way and Balls/Cooper the other. Most of the cabinet seem to have given up, obviously completely bemused with the whole situation and the shattering lack of leadership.

They didn’t go into politics for this. Hopefully, they’ll be put out of their misery before too long.

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Faint praise

January 6, 2010 — admin

Faint praise from the future powerbrokers

A decent performance at PMQs doesn’t mean much when your own party starts tearing into you a few minutes later. The PM is in real trouble at the moment, not because people love DC or because of the polls but because a large section of his own party have no confidence in him as their leader.

Worse, some of them are so convinced that the election is lost that they are prepared to challenge him – why would you do that if you thought there was a cat’s chance that you could win? The news channels have been doing this to death all afternoon and evening, although they have been successfully spun by the government into the “Ministers back Brown” line.

Actually, they’ve been doing no such thing. While Ed Balls and Alan Johnson did give clear messages of support, it is to note that others have not. The Chancellor satisfied himself with:

“As far as I’m concerned we should be concentrating on the business of government and getting through the recession. The PM and I met this afternoon and we discussed how we take forward economic policies to secure the recovery. I won’t be deflected from that.”

Not a ringing endorsement, then. Harriet Harman, ambitious deputy leader said she the Cabinet were “getting on with our jobs as ministers in a government that Gordon leads”. She might as well have added “for now” on the end of that statement. So too David Miliband who, despite not responding at all for ages, eventually chipped in with an account of his day, saying he “was working closely with the prime minister on foreign policy issues” and “supported the re-election campaign for a Labour government that he is leading”.

For now. And is that he Gordon Brown or he David Miliband?

Balls and Johnston aside, if I were Gordon Brown, I would be really worried. Clearly most of his cabinet are sticking with him for the sake of the election rather than the fact that they believe his leadership is right for Britain. How many of them seriously believe that he would make a better leader of the country than DC? Are they prepared to guarantee that they would support his continued leadership after the election? Or even if they won it?

Lobby journalists have been busy assuring us that most backbenchers support the PM – of course they do. Lobby rumours spread quickly and no-one wants to stick their necks out to leaky journos. I’d keep an eye on this one – it’s possible that at this very late stage the Labour party can’t be bothered to get rid of the PM. But if there were two years to run, he’d be gone. And it might happen yet.

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