Forging ahead

June 17, 2010 — simonashall

The government today announced some more projects that would have to be put on hold in light of the economic circumstances we find ourselves in. Among them was the £80m loan to Sheffield Forgemasters, which sits very close to NC’s constituency.

Labour beatniks, keen to grab back Sheffield City Council from the Lib Dems and keep them out of the Sheffield Central constituency where the majority is now just 165 for Paul Blomfield, have already been condemning this move. But to say that it will cost jobs is just nonsense – no jobs currently exist; the postponement of the loan will mean that they won’t be created as planned. This money would be better spent avoiding cuts to the hundreds of other projects where cancelled government funding will mean private contractors losing revenue and having to lay off staff.

But as they are involved in the “leaching” industry of outsourcing away from union-backed in-house public sector workers, Derek Simpson doesn’t give so much of a monkey’s about them. Apart from anything else, £80m is simply far too much public money to spend on 150 jobs, whether in Sheffield, South Wales or Surrey.

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A Price worth paying?

May 26, 2010 — simonashall

Norman Lamont famously, or infamously, declared in 1991 that unemployment was a “price worth paying” to get inflation down (so much so that the Mirror ran a scare story on this back in 2008). With cuts in public sector jobs inevitable and the knock-0n effects of government cuts likely to be seen in the services area of the private sector, will rising unemployment in 2011/12 be a “price worth paying” to bring the deficit down?

This is a question that must be weighing heavily on the minds of George Osborne and David Laws right now – and probably too on the PM and NC’s as well. Perhaps Vince has got a solution up his sleeve but one suspects not – what to do with all these people whose wages Labour’s wrecked Britain can’t afford to pay right now?

Sending them onto benefits makes no sense at all and is equally ruinous financially. While there are schemes for re-training and skills, there is only so much they can do and in any case, who needs an extra 30,000 people with IT qualifications? There are plenty of other, more manual, jobs around but for most people that’s not something they want to consider. Part-time work and sharing full-time equivalents between two or even three people means that what income is available is more equitably apportioned but again, that’s not going to be able to cope with the scale of what we might be talking about.

My feeling is that as many as 600,000 jobs could be affected both in the public and private sectors during the next five years and even if 100,000 of them have the nous and entrepreneurial spirit to set up their own businesses, that still leaves half a million more people out of work. I firmly believe that this is the fault of Labour, who expanded public sector employment in a shabby vote-fixing exercise to bring more and more people into public pay and into the clutches of Unite.

The truth was we couldn’t afford them and left to their own devices they would have found other ways to contribute to the economy. Now, they will be forced to do so in circumstances not of their own choosing and with an economy that is not conducive to their efforts.

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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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Morning after the long night before

May 9, 2010 — simonashall

The need for electoral reform has indeed been highlighted by the result of the general election. Despite the electoral map turning its bluest since the 1992 election, Labour’s many small inner-city seats, the over-representation of Scotland and in-built majority of 90 have helped Gordon Brown stay in Downing Street three days longer than he should have done.

There is a clear case, not for a proportion system that will deliver permanent hung parliaments and rig the voting system in favour of the Liberal Democrats, but for a refining of the boundaries to ensure that every constituency is the same size and that every vote is worth the same. The Lib Dems suffer from this system only because their vote is evenly spread as they try to be all things to all people – it is not intrinsically more difficult for them to win consistuencies than anyone else, as we saw in Eastbourne and Wells.

It is noticeable that many of DC’s inner circle, who were in many cases picked in seats where they had no connections, fared less well than average. It’s interesting because the Conservative Party is often criticised for lacking diverse MPs. But in this case, black, gay and female candidates have been rejected not by the party, but by the electorate. It’s a shame - but hardly the party’s fault.

I believe that Nick Clegg and DC will do a deal. In a sense, the Lib Dems have little choice. If they prop Brown up, they’ll sink back to the 15% support they enjoyed under Ming. If they refuse a pact with the Conservatives, they can hardly claim to be hard done by in the voting system when they’ve rejected a chance at power. Many Conservative activists will feel a ache in the pit of their stomach at the thought of going into coalition with the Lib Dems, but I don’t. As someone on the left of the party I share many of their social aims and the fact that we spend three months each year tearing strips of each other is simply election politics, nothing else.

During times of crisis, you have to work for the betterment of the nation. I don’t believe a Con-Lib coalition will survive any more than 18 months, but neither party has the resources nor the will for another election in 2010 and we need to work to steady the market and ensure that the financial meltdown that is now potentially on the cards is avoided. The markets want the debt tackled now and as the winners of the election, the Conservative prerogative should be to deliver debt reduction. The Lib Dem influence, as I see it, is to ensure that social issues don’t get left behind in this process and keep our party focussed on economic stability, education and social improvement.

The two most burning issues of difference – electoral reform and Europe – don’t need to have a part to play during this time. I utterly oppose membership of the EU – although that didn’t stop me losing in Horsell West by a fifth of the votes that UKIPpers took off me. But even I wouldn’t argue that the time for a referendum on this is now – it can wait until we have people back in work and the country is back on its feet.

Similarly, if Nick Clegg and his party think that the most pressing issue of the day is the case for PR, he’s sorely mistaken. Sure, the British public will say they want reform in the light of this shambles of an election but when it’s explained to them that PR always delivers a shambles and that it would effectively take from them the option of a Labour or Conservative government governing alone, they soon change their mind – and I know that because I explained it countless times on the doorstep. So this too can wait for another time.

The major problem it presents for the Conservative Party is delivery – will people understand the compromises being made if they are reflected in our ability to do what we said we would do? And if there is another election in October 2011, will the fluidity of our politics have continued and where will it have taken us? Labour’s most dreadful legacy, unfortunately, is leading us to a point where views about the best forward were so utterly polarised.

Uncertain times are these - and the last thing that our damaged nation needs.

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Paper Tigers

May 1, 2010 — simonashall

Not particularly unexpectedly, the papers continue to turn on Gordon Brown as Labour heads for utter wipeout at the election. The Times, which has backed Labour for the past three elections, returns to the Conservatives along with the Sunday Express but interestingly the Grauniad and its sister The Observer is backing the Liberal Democrats, presumably in order to force a hung parliament and keep DC away from Downing Street.

It will also push Labour voters tactically into the hands of the Lib Dems in a reverse of 1997.

What previous Conservative voters thinking about chancing one on Nick Clegg have to consider is this: do they really want to be voting along with Guardian and Observer readers who’ve been happily voting for Labour since 1979? I’ll be the first to admit that the Conservative Party isn’t perfect and I’ve posted before on how I think that is but really, take the thoughts of the Times – which hasn’t supported the Conservatives in 18 years – on board and think about what Britain needs right now.

A hung parliament and Nick Clegg’s promise of change, which means different things depending on where you live, or David Cameron’s visionary and responsible blueprint for Britain that is backed up by a depth of experience within a party with a track record of sorting out Labour’s mess.

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Vote amber, go red

April 20, 2010 — simonashall

Any Conservative voters who really believe that a vote for Nick Clegg will get them a sort of Labour-lite – avoiding the upheaval of a change of government, keeping the half-decent things that Labour has done while not having to put up with the “old party” of Gordon Brown or even Gordon Brown himself – should read this post at ConservativeHome.

We are choosing a government and people need to look at what the Lib Dems will actually deliver if elected. They want to give all pension tax relief at the basic rate – so if you earn more that £37,400 your contributions above that limit will get relief of 20%, not 40%. They also want to tax capital gains at the same rate as income – a 2% increase on the basic rate and 22% on anything above £37,400. They want to scrap the Child Trust Fund, scale back the HomeBuy programme that helps people onto the property ladder, cancel the next tranche of Eurofighter aircraft and cancel Trident. Then there’s the local income tax, the stopping of people going to prison for fewer than six months (effectively ending the power of magistrates to send people to prison) and the threats to reform our voting system so that they will remain in coalition with either the Conservatives or Labour in perpetuity.

In addition, the Lib Dems will push for further European integration and there will certainly be no support for withdrawal from the EU, they will open our borders for unlimited immigration, are proposing an amnesty for illegal immigrants and will continue to be staunch supporters of handing continuing amounts of sovereignty over law and order, foreign policy and taxation to Brussels. Quite a price to pay for a fresh face on the telly.

All of this policy may not be Conservative or Labour and it may not come directly from the mouths of those associated with past ills, although let’s not forget Michael Brown and the fact that Lib Dems too were invovled in expenses and other scandals, but that doesn’t stop it being regressive and contrary to the national interest.

The equation that we face is shockingly simple. The Conservative manifesto sets out a positive future for Britain under David Cameron that builds on opportunity, self-empowerment for individuals and communities and a focus on a high-technology economy to pay off our crushing debts. If you don’t agree with the Conservatives and you’re not convinced that we can deliver, the only other option open to you at this stage is a Labour/Liberal coalition with Gordon Brown as PM. I can’t think of a worse place for Britain to be on May 7 – an outright majority for either of those parties would be better.

We must leave The  X-Factor to Simon Cowell and the pop music industry and keep our sense of proportion in politics. It is time for change and not chance, confidence and not compromise and a future that shows to the world Britain has a plan for recovery.

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Evening of debates

April 16, 2010 — simonashall

Yesterday evening saw the first leaders’ debate on television and by and large the media is portraying Nick Clegg as the winner. I didn’t see the debate for reasons that are obvious below but spent a bit of time in work this morning calming down my colleagues about Nick Clegg (they’ve come to expect that of me).

Firstly, it was always going to be easy for him to look like the reasonable man in between the Conservative and Labour warring factions. We saw Vince Cable do it in the Chancellors’ debate; we saw it again last night. Secondly, there is so much more at stake for DC and the PM, it’s no wonder that they looked more under pressure. Particularly for DC – when these debates were agreed, it seemed like it would just be a matter of cementing the lead. Things are different now. Nick Clegg was able to look and feel more relaxed because he’s not going to be PM.

Thirdly,  Nick Clegg can afford to be “honest” about cuts, tax rises etc because it isn’t him that’s going to have to do them. The Lib Dems have always been good at promising wonderful things in the knowledge that they won’t have to deliver. Their record in local government is much more patchy. Fourthly, let’s give Clegg some credit. He prepared well, understood the medium better than the other two and came across well. It doesn’t mean he’ll make a great Prime Minister. Or even prop one up.

Meanwhile at the Lightbox, the first of the Woking Hustings was getting underway with Jonathan Lord up against Tom Miller (Lab), Rob Burberry (UKIP), Rosie Sharpley (Lib Dem)  and the lady from the Peace Party whose name escapes me. The event was organised by the Federation of Small Businesses and focussed on the economy. Around 40 people turned up but mostly people I recognised as businesspeople or activists.

I thought Labour’s Tom Miller gave a good account of himself faced with a sceptical audience and the impossible task of defending this government’s mismanagement of the economy. He’ll be an MP for sure – just not for Woking. Rob Burberry spoke with the usual UKIP over-earnestness and although he talked a little sense about the European dimension, he wasn’t at all convincing in any other dimension.

Jonathan Lord spoke confidently and knowledgeably, gaining quite a bit of applause from the audience, although perhaps that was to be expected. The contrast though with Rosie was less expected. I thought that she’d bear up well in these hustings given her background. Not so – she stumbled around answers, had to be stopped when she started answering a different question to the one that was asked and from what I hear it got worse after I left.

She might know Woking “like the back of her hand” but in the end so do many people. What we need in Parliament is someone with the influencing skills, the energy and the strength of personality to push Woking’s case forward in among the great melting pot of conflicting interests.

Jonathan is in the process of moving here and whether you vote for Rosie or Jonathan, you will have an MP living here in the constituency. The question is what qualities you wish that person to have and the contrast couldn’t be starker. The Lib Dems have been pushing the sophistry for months now that Woking was Jonathan’s “third choice” seat. Not true. But even if it was, I’d rather be a third-choice seat than have a third-rate MP.

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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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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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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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