Cutting with credibility

June 8, 2010 — simonashall

The PM speaking at MK

The PM’s speech in Milton Keynes was among the most important of his political career so far. It defined his position more clearly than anything previously on the defining political question of the decade – how to get Britain back into business.

We can take from it several things – firstly that the PM will lay it on very thick about the economic crisis being Labour’s fault. I think that’s no bad thing – particularly because they are starting to come out with some pretty outrageous criticism of the coalition on a situation they helped, at least, to create. But I think he’s got to be careful and not get too free with this tactic. He needs to be the consensus man, the leader, the unifier and the solution, not the “new” problem.

Secondly, the PM is happy to tell us just how bad it is, unlike Labour. Not everyone will agree with him but it is obviously in his interest to make things seem as bad as possible. I don’t think a great deal of exaggeration is necessary – things are very, very bad – but the openness he is in a political position to afford could be something of an advantage. I think if played well, far from Mervyn King’s prediction being correct, the public could be sympathetic to the Coalition for some time to come. Honest actions go a long way in politics nowadays and the public recognise favourably politicians who are prepared to do the right, if not popular, thing.

Thirdly, Danny Alexander will be right next to him – all the way. There’s no way that the Liberal Democrats are getting off the hook with this one as full members of the Coalition and I don’t think they want to. NC has said that there will be a “cut with kindness” policy that will shield some of the most vulnerable from the worst of what needs to be done but that can only do so much – they can’t be protected from council cuts in many areas.

Nor do I think it’s a good idea for George Osborne to widely consult the public on where to save money. This is a very risky strategy that could puta very considerable rod in his back when Labour organises a Twitter campaign to get people to respond in a particular way. The results could then be FOIed and may not be where the final decision needs to be made. It could look like the public has been consulted and ignored – not great PR.

The simple answer here is that, a bit like Masterchef, this new economic future is going to “change our life”. There are opportunities for efficiency, yes, and looking at different ways of providing services. But the bottom line is that we need to get a £170bn deficit down and there’s a lot of money to hack off budgets. It must be done, it must be done quickly and there is a certainly amount of political risk that is going to come as the pay-off of winning the election (sort of).

I think the Coalition needs to remember that the public has a great deal more of a problem with dishonesty than ineffectiveness. If the government tries to mask the problem, if it breaks its promises over what it is going to cut, if there is a suspicion that certain groups are being unjustly protected or if there is any underhand treasury regulation as with the last government, the considerable goodwill that the public holds will drain quickly.

If the government is straight, calls a cut a cut and acts responsibly for the best interests of the nation, it might just find itself laying down a legacy of decency – if not prosperity – and a chance in 2015 to lead the country properly back into the new world economy with its head held high.

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Medicine Cabinet takes shape

May 13, 2010 — simonashall

The Medicine Cabinet

As the PM named his cabinet today, there are one or two surprises but also a good deal of talent that I hope will mean that this cabinet is able to heal and address the multitude of problems that we face.

The Foreign Office has been preparing for William Hague’s arrival for five years and I’m very pleased that this pleasant, intelligent, articulate and skilful man with such a mastery of politics has finally achieved an office that will do him justice. His last government post was as Welsh Secretary and since leaving the leadership in 2001, he has become one of the most significant and gentle voices in Conservatism. Immensely popular with the grass roots, he has got a significant challenge to extracate us from Afghanistan and head off Iran.

I’m delighted too that Michael Gove is Education Secretary and will get the opportunity to enact his reforms to improve standards and give more autonomy to teachers. He is a generous and thoughtful man who understands the value of education and its ability to transform lives. Iain Duncan Smith makes a very welcome return to the front line after working on policy at his Centre for Social Justice. His work on how to build a better society and his personal convictions on this subject will be an invaluable contribution.

We all thought that Ken Clarke was a successful chancellor but actually he has been a QC since 1980 and the post of Justice Secretary will allow him to take a step back from the economy for the time being. The appointments of Jeremy Hunt - who visited Woking two weeks ago and is a really nice guy as well as a great MP - and Sayeeda Warsi, who helped give Nick Griffin such a pasting on Question Time, are also reasons to be happy. I hope both will be successful and grow into even more prestigious offices in the future – but for the Lib Dem presence, undoubtedly both would have featured more prominently.

The Lib Dem presence is a positive thing. It is always difficult for the Conservatives to be representative of Scotland given we only have one MP there and Danny Alexander is rightly given the brief of Scottish Secretary. He is a skilled communicator and problem-solver who is well-placed to deal with the SNP on equal terms. David Laws, on the right of the Lib Dems, is someone who shares an economic realism that he will need as Chief Secretary - Vince Cable did well to side-step that role, which will be high-profile during the spending reviews ahead.

Chris Huhne is a principled and cerebral man who I met several years ago when he was an MEP. He will be able to argue strongly for a more sustainable future – whether he’ll be comfortable when it comes to energy policy remains to be seen. Vince Cable’s popularity will be tested as Business Secretary but his abilities are not in doubt and he has a wealth of business experience to draw on. 

I’m not happy about everything – George Osborne is still a barrier to support for many people and I believe should have been dropped as chancellor in favour of Philip Hammond. I’m not sure why Theresa May is Home Secretary and would have preferred the responsbility for women and equality to have fallen separately – perhaps to Baroness Warsi. I was never sure why Liam Fox was moved from health or why Andrew Lansley was moved into it and Caroline Spelman seems a strange choice for the environment. I regret the passing over of Nick Herbert and excellent housing spokesman Grant Shapps.

But what we have now is much better than the fag-ends of the Labour government and the pernicious influence of Mandelson and Campbell has been expunged from power. Now the work of the cabinet, which I believe is united behind its reform programme, must begin.

Update 13/5: Rightly, both Nick Herbert and Grants Shapps are now ministers according to The Times:

2.45pm The keys to the safe

Damian Green – once notoriously arrested (but not charged) on suspicion of receiving leaks from the home office – is confirmed as immigration minister. No longer any need for leaks then: he’ll be working in the home office.

And Nick Herbert will also be at the home office as the minister with responsibility for police.

Two facts about him: his middle name is Le Quesne. And he’s one of the few openly gay senior Tories.

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Deputy Prime Minister

May 11, 2010 — simonashall

Nick Clegg will be Deputy PM in the new government and it is reward for the courage he has shown in leading his reluctant party to sharing power with the Conservatives. Around mid-afternoon, he began to run the risk that people were going to get pretty hacked off with him if he kept them waiting for too much longer but despite the totalitarian tendencies of Mandelson and Campbell trying to tempt him into a deal that would probably have finished his party – and Labour – off for a generation, he did the proper thing.

I can assure him that Conservative activists are every bit as wary of coalition with the Lib Dems as vice-versa. The natural party of coalition for the Lib Dems is undoubtedly Labour, from where they trace part of their roots. But in this instance, the people of Britain wanted Labour out and if that wasn’t translated into votes quite as emphatically as it should have been because of the in-built majority Labour has retained in the voting system, the sentiment was clear enough for Nick Clegg and Vince Cable to know what was good for them – and the country.

Okay, there’s a fair bit of bad feeling between the two parties in the south especially but this is not a time for that. The issues of Europe and electoral reform will remain medium-sized animals in the room but three years – if that is to be the length of coalition – is long enough to deal with those issues. I feel that conceding a vote on AV is something the new PM may live to regret and that it is too high a price to have paid – but we are all human and removing Labour was a necessary priority.

I have said before that the socially conscious Conservative and the average Lib Dem share a great deal of commonality in social policy and in Vince Cable, Ken Clarke, George Osborne and Philip Hammond, we have a superb economic team to help with recovery. The negotiations appear to have left both parties with incentives to make the coalition work.

Neither Europe nor voting reform were big issues in the campaign – so let’s get on addressing those things that Labour has so badly failed on – education, youth engagement, law and order, the health service, social mobility and building a sustainable economy. I also hope that we will work together to create a more environmentally sustainable nation too - there may be slightly less taste for that on the right of the Conservative Party but it should be another issue where there is some common ground.

As a mark of my commitment to the new government, Nick Clegg will henceforth be NC. All that remains to be seen is the proportion of the Conservative manifesto – itself a major stumbling block for a majority – finds its way into the Queen’s speech.

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Change that works for them

April 28, 2010 — simonashall

During the last few days, the Lib Dems have been playing a clever PR game by trying to link electoral reform – by which they mean proportional representation’s introduction as our voting system – with “new”, post-expenses, politics.

I’m not altogether against electoral reform. I think that the boundaries currently used for our first-past-the-post system are unfair and give Labour a huge advantage by handing them a built-in majority of about 90 seats, according to Electoral Calculus. I want to see those boundaries re-drawn and the number of seats re-calculated to make for a fairer local representative system – and that includes fairer to the Lib Dems as well.

You routinely hear commentators in the press and the BBC say that the FPTP system discriminates against the third party, as if they had done some research on it and drawn a scientific conclusion. That’s rubbish. All that conclusion is based upon is the realities and record of the system – there is no reason why the Liberal Democrats should have any more difficulty in winning constituencies than anyone else.

The reason it is biased against them is quite simple – they pretend to be a centre-right alternative to the Conservatives in London and the South and a hard-left alternative to old Labour in the north and Scotland. Their manifesto for 2010 cleverly leaves either possibility open. But it does mean that such a dual-personality party cannot hold a “core” vote sufficient for it to win constituencies in sufficient numbers to hold power in FPTP. If the Lib Dems decided what they wanted to be – rather than just pitching for whatever they think they can get away with – their vote in some areas would harden and in others soften. It’s their choice to be at a disadvantage in the system.

But they’re quite happy to overlook that. What they want to do is hold the country to ransom by demanding a referendum on proportional representation in return for offering stability in the event of no party receiving a majority. PR, of course, would not only allow them to hold the balance of power, it would help put pay to their biggest weakness – the idea that a vote for the Lib Dems is a “wasted vote”. It would also allow them to pretend to be “savage cutters” in the south and “tax the richers” in the north while scooping the maximum value from each deluded voter.

It’s not a bad strategy for them – but it should be ringing alarm bells with every single previous Conservative supporter who’s thinking of giving Clegg a chance because he came over well on telly. If you give him the chance he wants, he’ll go into coalition with Brown (or more likely Miliband). They’ll embark on a series of tax hikes and spending cuts not witnessed before in the post-war era. That’s not necessarily to their discredit because any government will have to do the same.

But if you decide after four years that you don’t like them, if Clegg turns out to be not quite what you thought (on Europe, immigration and law and order) and you think in 2014/5 that you’re going to give the Conservatives a chance after all – well, you won’t be able to. Because Lib/Lab will have changed the way things are done and neither the Conservative Party nor Labour would ever be able to govern on their own again. And guess who the beneficiaries of this gerrymandering will be? That’s right, the Lib Dems.

They may call themselves Liberal Democrats, but that doesn’t seem very liberal or democratic to me.

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Woking’s fifth choice

April 28, 2010 — simonashall

We’ve all heard about how local the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate is. She’s been variously “at the heart of our community for thirty years“, “helping people for over twenty years” and has “a strong record of local action” according to Lib Dem literature. Certainly, if the election is a “localness” competition, she would fare well.

What I’m concerned about – and it seems I’m not alone judging by the latest comments on UK Polling Report - is the ability to get things done and stand up for Woking in parliament. And judging by their hesitancy to select Rosie Sharpley in previous general elections, it appears that the Lib Dems agree with me.

Four years after Rosie was elected as a councillor, the Liberal Democrats chose Dorothy Buckrell to stand for Woking in the 1992 general election. In 1997, while Jonathan Lord’s talents were recognised by the Conservative leadership and he was given a teeth-cutting “no hope” seat to fight at the age of 34, the Lib Dems once again passed over Rosie in favour of Philip Goldenberg. In 2001, they chose Alan Hilliar and in 2005, while Rosie was “looking after residents” in Horsham by finally getting selected to fight a seat somewhere, Anne Lee was the candidate in Woking (she “didn’t even live in the constituency“, by the way).

Am I the only one to wonder why it is only now that someone who obviously wanted a parliamentary career has been picked to fight in her own back yard when she’s has 20 years to do so? And doesn’t this make her Woking’s “fifth choice”?

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All hung together

April 16, 2010 — simonashall

I'd rather have the Royal Mail deliver for me than this lot

I was stopped on the street the other day by someone who wanted to talk about the economy. “Do you know where the problem started?” he said. I started on about how the banks had mixed their High Street and investment banking functions for the sake of profit. “I know all that,” he said. “You’re wrong, let me tell you when it started.”

“The Bank of England used to get payments from the banks and could control money flowing in and out of them. If a bank wasn’t performing or was lending too much, the Bank of England could control the amount that it let flow to them or demand that they pay more money into them. Then Gordon Brown decided he didn’t want that to happen any more. He created this thing called the Financial Services Authority, which didn’t have any of those powers. And with their new-found freedom, the banks went off and did all the things that they had wanted to do but were stopped by the Bank of England.”

I listened – finally getting in with “so you support then the Conservative proposal to hand back regulation of the banks to the Bank of England?”

“Yes, but it’s not as simple as that. I’ve voted Labour in the past but I’m going to support you not because of the Bank of England but because the worst possible outcome for this country right now is a hung Parliament. I think you are the only party who can win outright and it’s important that we have a majority government for the sake of the economy. A hung parlimanent would be a disaster – the uncertainty could cost us our AAA credit rating, we wouldn’t be able to sell our guilts and bonds and repay the deficit. If that happens, we’ll be like Greece.”

It’s exchanges like this that make you think how important it is that we win this election. The Liberal Democrats want you to think that a hung parliament is a positive choice and will bring change. What it’ll actually bring is no change because the Civil Service will continue along the same course it’s been taking the country for years and the Lib Dems will run with it in order to stay in government. If anyone doubts this, look at what happened when the Lib Dems were in power in Scotland - not much.

If the Lib Dems go into coaltion, it will only be with Labour and Gordon Brown would remain as PM. Make no mistake, politics is a power game and all three parties are motivated by exactly the same desire for power and the enactment of their agenda, despite the ‘fresh approach’, the optimistic promises, the ‘plague on both your houses’ populism. Britain is in too fragile a place economically and socially to risk it on the Liberal Democrats.

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Hard Graphed

March 23, 2010 — simonashall

 

Now all I’m going to say is this; the sound of the Liberal Democrats moaning about graphs on Conservative literature and claiming unfairness/inaccuracy/irrelevance is sweeter than new spring lamb with mint sauce.

How man dozens of dodgy Lib Dem graphs have we had to suffer?

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Whatever happened to savage cuts?

March 17, 2010 — admin

Nick Clegg describes how big the savage cuts are now he's had time to reflect

Having spoken at length on Conservative economic policy below and how we need a more cohesive and better communicated philosophy on how to achieve recovery and longer-term prosperity, it’s worth considering that the other parties don’t have a universally stable position on this either.

They may have St Vince of Twickenham in their ranks but the Lib Dems have been equally confused on the issue. A few short months ago in September last year, Nick Clegg announced to a somewhat bemused audience, who believed they had turned up to the Lib Dem conference, that “savage cuts” might be needed to safeguard important budgets.

Although that message was officially given support by the party at the time, Nick Clegg has increasingly turned away from that position to the point where, seven weeks out from the probably election – and the possibility of a hung parliament stronger than it was – he now won’t have anything to do with spending cuts.

Well, call me a cynic but either a) the Liberal Democrats have conducted a fairly direct U-turn on the biggest question of the election within the space of six months or b) they are changing their economic policy according to polling data. Neither inspires a great deal of confidence and I suspect the matter would be thrown into greater relief by the media were their prospects in the election better.

Getting us to a point where the deficit or borrowing requirement is neutralised so that we are not piling on more debt year-by-year is only a part of the problem. We also have a substantial standing national debt as well, which needs at some point to be paid back. That’s pretty long-term and the pain needed to achieve that is considerable. I’m not sure I want someone as changeable as Mr Clegg taking a tough decision like that, nor the PM, who got us into this position in the first place.

Nor, one might say, someone as inexperienced as George Osborne. But he has Ken Clarke and a good shadow Treasury team behind him and the strength to withstand the criticism that will surely be directed from the people who got us into this mess towards those  attempting to get us out of it. I’m not convinced the others are prepared for the political cost.

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Don’t Mansion It

November 30, 2009 — admin
The nation's favourite bean-counter - pity his idealogy isn't as good as his maths

The nation's favourite bean-counter - pity his idealogy isn't as good as his maths

I wouldn’t like to buy a mansion from the Liberal Democrats because they only seem to price them in increments of £1million. Back in conference season, just after Nick Clegg promised “savage cuts” to assauge the thirst of the Orange Book brigade, the nation’s favourite economist Vince Cable stepped forward with a plan to surcharge people with homes worth more than £1million 0.5% of the value above the £1m threshold.

Unfortunately, the Liberals forgot that, somehow, they hold seats in places likes Winchester, Lewes, Oxford West and Abingdon, Richmond and Kingston. Many of the MPs in those areas, almost all of whom face a serious Conservative challenge at the next election, came forward to say that they didn’t like the policy much. Today, Nick Clegg made appearances on a number of popular news outlets announcing a re-think. Otherwise known as an admission that the policy was a silly idea.

Instead, they are going to charge people with homes worth more than £2million a whole 1% in tax above the £2m threshold. I can’t think of many people in Woking with houses worth that much, although I know there are a very few. This copious nonsense of a policy will affect just 70,000 households in the UK and raise just £1.7billion a year. Not only is this a paltry sum compared with the £175bn the government will borrow over the next two years but Mr Clegg is not even proposing to use this money to pay off the debt.

Instead it is part of a muddled package to increase the income tax allowance to £10,000 taking four million people out of income tax - but also giving £700 to every taxpayer, including the super-earners, each year. To counteract this, he wants to reduce the tax relief on pensions for higher earners. Fine. If you want higher taxes for the rich, you can try – but you’ll always end up paying more to get the money from them than you’ll recover in tax, which is why the 50% tax band is nothing more than classist posturing. The best way to raise the tax take is to solve our economic problems, get business booming and increase people’s incomes. When they earn more money, they pay more tax.

So not for the first time, the Lib Dems have a credibility gap on tax. I understand they want the rich to pay proportionally more tax. Yes, so do I. But the way to do that is not to single out the rich, or even “super-rich” for special treatment because wealth has its own way of avoiding penalty. You have to engage the economy, make everyone richer and give the rich a reason to stay in the country - a favourable business and earning environment – to contribute a fair share. I don’t think that 50% is too high a figure – but doing it as Labour have done will not produce anything.

Nor this shambles of a Lib Dem policy on mansions. Nick Clegg says that the changearound is not a U-turn and that the policy does “exactly what it says on the tin“. To me, the tin appears to be saying that the Lib Dems have very little idea how to get the government’s revenues flowing again.

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Mr Brown’s Lib Dem funding

November 20, 2009 — admin

A shady political donor with a conviction in his absence for fraud who channelled money to a UK political party via his company and who is still on the run. A Tory donor or one of Labour’s stooges? No, this is Michael Brown, a top Liberal Democrat funder who dealt in bogus international bonds, stole £30million from his clients and channelled it to the Lib Dems through a company called 5th Avenue Partners.

It seems that the Lib Dems are so desperate to hold on to his £2.4million donation that they went to the Electoral Commission to keep the money and today, bizarrely, they were told that despite Brown being the sole director of 5th Avenue Partners there was “no reasonable basis” to conclude that he himself had made the donation personally - rather that it being a donation from the company – and as such it was permissable under electoral law.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Look, I know that other parties have had similarly embarrassing run-ins with donors and that the world of political donation is murkier than the Solent in a storm. But this is self-evidently a case of someone using a proxy for a donation, even if that proxy is a legitimate entity.

One also has to ask the question of why the Liberal Democrats – who make a particular virtue of their supposed elevation above the funding ambiguities of the two largest parties – want to accept money from a man with such a blatantly dubious background. I would certainly oppose the Conservatives receiving money from someone with unspent convictions for fraud on such a large scale.

I suppose Bernard Madoff will be receiving a personalised edition of In Focus next with a donation form at the bottom. To me it seems clear that the Lib Dems’ claim to be whiter than white is every bit as bogus as Mr Brown’s dodgy international bonds.

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