Osborne and Clarke could hold the key to election success

It’s been a strange time in national politics during the past three months. There’s no doubt that Charlie Whelan, Alistair Campbell and PM represent the most devastatingly effective political propaganda team in British history. The results of their work are seen in every media outlet, regardless of its official persuasion and sometimes more so, strikingly, in outlets that are not government supporting. There has been a real gusto about the Labour press campaign during the past three months that, had it been waged by the Conservatives, would undoubtedly have “sealed the deal” for DC.

Meanwhile, my reflections on his performance during the same time are probably best left unstated. The PM remains shatteringly unpopular and won’t survive the election either way. He has led us into a recession of drastic proportions and other than the press management outlined above, his government team is utterly hapless and bereft of ideas – as well as the money to enact any meaningful change or reform. There is simply no reason for the Conservatives to be within striking distance of Labour in the polls.

That we are is down to two things. Firstly, people are fed up of waiting to be told what Conservative policy is. They have waited for three years now in the belief that when the time came, DC and his team would be straightforward and clear about how the Conservative Party would seek to re-shape and change Britain in 2010-14. I can see that we have made some attempts, particularly on education policy, to get these messages across. But too often the position on taxation, family values and criminal justice has overshadowed the NHS and education. That’s partly to do with Labour’s art; but it’s also politics and an experienced team like Andy Coulson and Steve Hilton should foresee the tactics of opponents and build these into Conservative planning.

Let’s take for example the Piers Morgan show on the PM, sycophantic and soporific in equal measure though it was. If the DC team thought that a late-night Sunday show with Trevor McDonald would pull in the same crowd either in numbers or demographic, one wonders what kind of analytics they are using. As it happens, there has been some good poll news today (on the front of the Guardian) but I doubt that was much to do with Sir Trevor. And there needs to be a sea-change in Conservative tactics if it’s to stick.

I’m puzzled that the one issue that will decide the election – and the one that the Conservative are traditionally strongest on – is the one issue we seem to be handing to Labour. Gordon Brown has been given licence by his media friends to paint himself as the experienced hand on the economic tiller, which is akin to the Cray twins applying to the magistracy. This PM has no right whatsoever to claim such a thing – he has shown himself as the most politically expedient of Chancellors and PMs.

There is a clear opporunity for contrast here. A Conservative Party that will plan for 2010-18 rather than just for four years, a Conservative Chancellor who will make the tough decisions necessary to secure long-term prosperity, a Conservative Prime Minister who will formulate policy around what we can pay for rather than what we can borrow against and a Treasury team of Ken Clarke, Phillip Hammond and George Osborne that is both more able, more popular and more trustworthy than Mandelson, Byrne and Darling. To my mind, we have the tools – what I don’t understand is why we are not taking the initiative.

It’s a fluid situation – the level of deficit cuts and savings needed will fluctuate with each pronouncement on how recovery is going – or whether we slip back into recession. But the budget presents an opportunity to brush aside what will be a populist, shameless and cycnical piece of propaganda designed to win votes and create difficult questions for the opposition. We have a clear opportunity to make some assumptions, to take a snapshot of the economic climate and to make our own proposals for the British people.

Without their confidence on the economy, it will be a struggle for DC to gain a majority in parliament. The upcoming industrial action may play into his hands and he needs to capitalise with a clear understanding and strategy for the economy; these two things may alone prove decisive.

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.

Gordon practising his left hook

It was almost inevitable that following the allegations of bullying contained in Andrew Rawnsley’s book appeared to be backed up by the National Bullying Helpline, the Labour machine would turn on Christine Pratt and her organisation and try to claim that it was motivated by political malice. The allegations contained within Rawnsley’s account were so potentially damaging that only the robustest of defences was ever going to be considered.

From PM’s point of view, you have to manage the crisis by not making the story about the PM and his treatment of staff – which, frankly, is an open secret far from the Westminster Village. Instead, the government spinners are trying to make the story about a dodgy charity launching a personal campaign against the PM at a time when they believe people have more capacity for sympathy than they have in the past. To a point, they have succeeded.

But let’s cut through that. The fact that three patrons of the NBH – including Conservative MP Anne Widdecombe - have resigned because Ms Pratt chose to reveal that her charity had fielded calls from Number 10 staff demonstrates that by all accepted standards of ethics, she shouldn’t have made public information about her clients. I’ve listened to her on the radio and she seems very passionate about her cause – but she can’t sustain a charity that is nominally about confidentiality while sounding off to the press if she thinks it is in the public interest.

So yes, Ms Pratt has a case to answer. But then, she’s not Prime Minister. And nothing that she has done (I believe she was so incensed by minister after minister lining up to defend someone she knew ran an office where there was a problem that she let herself be drawn into an error of judgement) detracts from the central allegations.

Let’s look at the evidence. No-one has denied that No 10 staff phoned the charity, even if they were wrong to say so. Sir Gus O’Donnell’s statement roundly leaves open the possibility that he approached the PM and warned him about his behaviour. And both PM and Harriet Harman’s use of the euphemisms “demanding on others” and “he gets frustrated” along with the PM’s “I get angry with myself” all pointedly don’t rule out the account of Rawnsley.

But while Ms Pratt is being shoved through the ringer, the PM is being given a relatively easy ride. The distraction technique has worked – apart from Nick Robinson, whose unwillingness to side with Labour is quite telling. It would be safe to assume that he knows things he’s not inclined to reveal.

All that matters, of course, is what the voters think. The appearance of a Number 10 employee to testify to having been on the receiving end would probably seal the PM’s fate. That won’t happen unless someone is planning to leave the Civil Service at the election anyway because the price of talking would be ostracism from the higher grades. Even though Labour would smear them, the weight of evidence would be too great and the PM finished – it would be poetic justice indeed.

As it happens, things are finely balanced. DC is right to back off and strongly rebut any Labour smears about opposition connivance. But it is worth saying that while Christine Pratt made an error speaking out, that doesn’t discredit the testament that she made. And a lack of self-control and respect for others is not a trait that lends itself well to the modern office of Prime Minister.

It’s not much a secret that Piers Morgan is a big supporter of Labour and his whole transition from hack to celebrity has centred around his political connections and the New Labour project that has failed Britain so woefully during the past 13 years.

What he served up on ITV tonight was something more akin to what you’d expect from the BBC - a sycophantic and unduly flattering portrayal of the weakest PM this country has had since Anthony Eden. As far as I’m aware, no other PM in modern times has had the luxury of a similar “interview”, which was little more than a party conference piece, stage-managed as it was with his silly smile and prompted audience laughter. Surely nothing the PM says is really that funny?

ITV’s dull reaction to Conservative protests has been to offer DC a spot on Piers’s show as well. No thanks. With any luck, the public will see through this carefully choreographed piece of propaganda and remember that Gordon Brown is the architect of Britain’s worst recession in 70 years, the man whose own staff and colleagues believe is incapable of leadership and should be removed and who is now using his last days in government to make it harder for an incoming government to deal with problems.

That is the reality. What Piers Morgan served up was a masterclass in re-presentation and an insipid manipulation of public opinion. No big surprise there.

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.

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.

The Home Secretary has revealed that the level of terror threat to the public has been officially increased to “severe” by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre. This comes a few days after flights to and from Yemen were suspended. Does anyone else see a pattern emerging here?

I have said before that I anticipate more and more security alerts as we run up to an election as Gordon Brown appeals to us to believe that he is the only person able to look after us.

But let’s look at how likely this really is. Today, the threat level gets raised to “severe”, meaning an attack is “highly likely”. Yet Alan Johnson accompanies this move by stressing “there was no intelligence to suggest a terrorist attack was imminent“. Eh? Of course we wouldn’t expect him to release details of operations being picked up by GCHQ or MI6 but it’s still an odd thing to say given that the reason that the threat level is raised in the first place.

In addition, the threat level has been set at “severe” or higher since August 2006. In that time, we have had one very amateurish attack on Glasgow Airport where the perpitrators were the only victims (and they were only 50% successful in that given that they had both intended to die and only one did). Another very unsophisticated attack in London was foiled - both were also probably connected to Gordon Brown becoming PM that week and so might not have happened but for that event.

Nothing else has materialised that even comes close to the level of violence seen on the mainland at the height of The Troubles. During that time, there was no terror threat indicator made public via the BBC and Prime Ministers made speeches not outlining in the gravest terms actions that were being taken against a perceived threat but of defiance in the face of enemy action and sympathy with those killed.

In my view, the decision to make public the UK terror threat level is little but a publicity device that keeps terror in the news and in people’s minds when actually the security services would be much better left to their own devices to fight the issue out of the limelight. What possible use can it serve to tell people that they are in danger when you absolutely can’t tell them why? During the Second World War, the very opposite approach was used by the government and people were told that they should simply keep calm and carry on.

And why were they not given more information? Because the government believed, rightly, that the result would be a scared and frightened population. Which can be the only reason therefore that this government has chosen the approach it has - and we ought to ask ourselves why.

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.

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.

The PM spent most of last year talking about how the Conservatives were going to cut their way out of recession. Now, with the publication of the first part of the Conservative manifesto, he has decided to try and say that we are planning to splurge our way out of it with a £34bn black hole.

Labour has form on dodgy dossiers - as we all know - and the compendium of lies that they released in response to the manifesto certainly fell into that category. But they succeeded in one way – the central message of the manifesto, the draft plans for the NHS, did not get an airing on the news. DC has to brush aside this silly question about how much of a promise is a promise and make sure that people know about our ideas and innovations for the future of the country.

As Stephanie Flanders points out, we should be mounting a two-pronged attack here – one with our own ideas and one with some serious hay-making about Labour’s own planned cuts. Where I think she is slightly off the mark is in saying that by talking about the nature of the promises rather than the content, the first day was a Labour success – DC made the point well that the promises are only tentative because of the economic mess Labour has bequeathed.

But he needs to start being more ruthless about ignoring journalists’ questions and getting his own message out. Tony Blair was a master of this art and it contributed a significant part of why he was able to seal the deal in way that DC has yet to. And Nick Robinson is as good a place as any to start.