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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Critical Political Economy

March 16, 2010 — admin

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.

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Counter-attacking on Ashcroft

March 2, 2010 — admin

Michael Ashcroft, as anyone who’s read Dirty Politics, Dirty Times, will know, is made of tough stuff. No-one takes on News International and gets a score-draw without some serious clout behind them. Compared with Rupert, PM is just an amateur and I know that the chance to finally nail their bogeyman will get some Lib/Labs very excited – but really they should be stepping outside their glass houses before lobbing things at him.

Lord Ashcroft has announced that at the moment he doesn’t pay tax on his overseas income in the UK. Him and thousands of others. Labour has had 13 years to close that loophole had they chosen and have failed to do so. Why? Because of pressure from people like Lord Paul and their own donors, who told them very firmly that if the loophole was closed, the donations cashpoint would be too. So what Lord Ashcroft’s tax dealings actually boil down to is him perfectly legally taking advantage of a loophole that Labour left open in order to benefit themselves.

When he received a peerage in 2000, he gave assurances that he would pay tax in the UK. I think it is unfortunate that he chose not to do so and that he strung several Conservative leaders along on that basis. But the truth is that we don’t exactly know what the reasons for the delay were, as they are entirely his own business and the House of Lords has told Lord Mandelson – whose own financial dealings and peerage have been the subject of some considerable comment – to go and sling it. In fact, Mandelson is the leaver-in-chief of loopholes, having been the major figure involved in the wooing of big bussines over to Labour in the 1990s.

So it’s a bit rich that he’s the one doing most of the talking now!

And the Lib Dems shouldn’t feel as though they’ve got away from this, either. Chris Huhne said that the party had been bought like a “banana republic”, clearly forgetting in his rush to get the words out that Liberals don’t use phrases like that anymore. He probably also forgot that his leadership campaign was financed by money from a non-dom and that he has held investments in companies based in tax shelters. Never mind.

I’m sure that the Grauniad, whose newspaper today was oozing saliva from four pages of coverage and whose website almost has an Ashcroft section rtaher than a politics one, and the BBC will lap up the government’s follow-ups and keep the story running for a couple of days. But in the end what’s done is done.

Lord Ashcroft should have made good his undertakings to friends and colleagues. But he has every right to spend his money, in this country or another, how he pleases. And I’ll bet that Labour and the Liberal Democrats would accept his cash on exactly the same terms.

Posted in Conservatives, Tax. Tags: , , , , . No Comments »

Cadbury cremed by bad law

February 2, 2010 — admin

I’ve always been partial to Cadbury’s Creme Eggs and for the past two weeks, I’ve been buying boxes and bringing them into the office, exhorting my colleagues to “eat them while they are still British”. Alas, no more. At 1pm today, the iconic British company became the plaything of an American conglomerate whose trademark cheese products are, astonishingly, even less related to actual cheese than Creme Eggs are to eggs.

PM has been busy lately, launching a attempted decapitation strategy on DC yesterday in a speech filled with more chutzpah than a New York second-hand car dealership. Now he’s been to meet the Kraft CEO, who’s not averse to audacity herself on the evidence of this takeover, he is sagely warning that he’ll be looking for more detailed assurances in the coming months. I don’t think that’s going to worry Irene Rosenfeld much – she’s only 4% short of the shares she needs to take Cadburyoff the stock exchange altogether.

And what PM is less keen to let you know is that it was Labour, through the Companies Act 2006 that effectively removed the right of government to protect our long-established businesses from takeover. The act implemented the EU’s Takeover and Transparency Obligations Directives, which harmonise takeover law throughout the EU and prevent company boards from doing anything to frustrate takeover bids. But surprisingly, it’s not the EU’s fault.

Despite the obvious agenda of EU member states to fix takeover legislation to favour their own subsidised corporate environment (ever wondered why so many German, French and Spanish firms can afford to buy British companies and infrastructure?) the directive did leave EU governments free to restrict takeoever law in their states. Labour didn’t take that opportunity and so the government is now in a very weak position to do anything about Kraft or dictate terms to it once Cadbury is bought.

There’s nothing intrisically bad about large British companies getting taken over. It puts money into shareholders’ pockets and since many shareholders are pension schemes, it helps to boost flagging pension values. Certainly Kraft has chosen to pay well over the odds for Cadbury. But it is important that we have British companies continuing to develop and emerge on the global market as players.

And with little or no protection from foreign predators, that is less, not more, likely to happen.

Posted in Economy, Europe, Labour, Law. Tags: , , , , , . No Comments »

Mandelson’s irony bypass

November 11, 2009 — admin
PM doing his Darth Vader impression

PM doing his Darth Vader impression

With his attack on The Sun today, PM shows himself to be even more shameless than I thought. He condemns the paper for its reporting of the Jamie Janes letter row and accuses it of striking a deal with the Conservative Party to support them in the election in return for favours.

It’s funny that he should mention that because this is exactly what Labour did in 1997 with The Sun. Since then News International has benefitted from deregulation of the media and steered the government’s line, against Tony Blair’s better judgement, away from European Monetary Union. They were Labour’s favours to The Sun – along with leaks aplenty about everything from government policy to general election dates.

The architects of the 1997 switch? Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair and PM himself. But he seems to have forgotten that.

As for the issue, the PM’s scrawled note was hardly the Bixby letter but I’m not going to criticise him for writing it. It was appallingly calligraphed and spelled but that’s not really the PM’s fault either given his sight problems.

What I think is a problem is that he clearly needs help in this department to convey the dignity onto such a sensitive circumstance that the office of Prime Minister befits – yet he is too proud to ask for it. Either this, or the fact he doesn’t believe he needs help, is to me another worrying sign of a Prime Minister with very little self-awareness and a poor understanding of his own strengths and weaknesses.

Mandelson suffers from no such problems and has a very clear understanding of both. But I think he will find that the harder he pushes News International, the harder they will push back. Mr Murdoch doesn’t like being on the losing side but he and his papers need to understand that political times have changed and their support for the Conservatives needs to be eloquent, subtle and nuanced.

The Conservatives are not here to make deals with newpapers. I am sure that ceasation of powers going to Europe, reform of the BBC and other things are probably on the cards – but these are things that need doing anyway and whether or not The Sun supports them, I certainly do.

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Don’t let the grin win

October 27, 2009 — admin
At least the man on the left has experience of being president...

At least the man on the left has experience of being president...

There’s a great website with a petition to sign up to if you want to stop Tony Blair becoming President of Europe. It would be even nicer if there was an election on the subject, come to think of it – but that’s the EU for you. Even if we voted for that Dutch chap or the bloke from Luxembourg instead, we’d probably have to have a re-run until the “correct” president was elected. A bit like in Afghanistan.

Anyway, please feel free to make your way to Stop Blair! and do your bit to ensure that the grinning idiot doesn’t get to do to Europe what he did to Britain. And please bear in mind that if he gets the job, he’ll be pushing for PM to abandon the Good Ship Brown in favour of becoming his Foreign Minister. I can’t think of anything worse – nor a more suitable set of corrupt and lofty institutions for them to preside over.

Of course if you are really desperate to stop Blair, you could always sign the Lib Dem petition of Scottish MEP George Lyon. I hope it’s better than all their other ones.

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Buttering the currant bun

September 30, 2009 — simonashall
Reproduced by kindest permission of the Murdoch clan. I'm a Sky+HD subscriber so they won't mind.

Reproduced by kindest permission of the Murdoch clan. I'm a Sky+HD subscriber so they won't mind.

I did my Master’s dissertation on the effect of The Sun‘s election coverage comparing 1992 with 1997 and having done so I regard the political endorsement, whichever way it falls, of Britain’s biggest-selling daily as a key moment in any election campaign.

As a conclusion of my research, I don’t feel The Sun wields that much power politically, although it would be wrong to say that it holds no sway over its readers at all. Perhaps they don’t blindly listen to its editorials, they aren’t bound by its opinions; but what The Sun chooses to report – and how it chooses to report it – is a big deal.

In 1992, The Sun hammered Neil Kinnock in such a way that rendered it difficult for its readers to vote for him. But he wasn’t PM, and couldn’t do much to harm Rupert Murdoch’s media interests on the way out. Brown can – it will be interesting to see whether James Murdoch tells the paper to go hell-for-leather or whether it will all be quite gentlemanly after all. One suspects that Gordon Brown won’t allow such a slight to go unpunished.

The switching of The Sun yesterday is the clearest possible signal that the paper believes DC is on the way to Downing Street. Given Murdoch Jnr’s closeness with George Osborne, it is also likely that the paper already knows what DC will tell the country next week. Despite what @KerryMP – who believes Twitter will counteract The Sun’s influence (seriously) – and others in Labour may say, it is a devastating blow to them. Since 1974, when Rupert Murdoch took ownership, The Sun has never backed the losing side in a general election.

Whether it is symptom or cause – or even, as I suspect, a bit of both – I can’t imagine that they would want to start now. There is still work for the Conservatives to do – in particular, they are vulnerable economically with George Osborne and in traditional areas such as the NHS. They need to spell out some home truths in a credible and caring way – it would be nice to hear some firmer manifesto content too.

The support of The Sun, always derided by its opponents, makes victory in May that bit more likely.

It’s also important to remember that we are not even in an election campaign – I cannot recall any previous election (even 1987) where The Sun has called its endorsement so early. Clearly they have their own reasons but for Labour the only place to go now is The Telegraph - although it’s difficult to see that paper, even in its more modern guise, switching and alienating the majority of its traditional readers.

PM must be furious – he and the PM have pretty much nowhere to go except YouTube.

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Talking to themselves

September 29, 2009 — simonashall
On his feet

On his feet

I’ve listened to the speech, heard the reactions – from the breathless enthusiasm of the younger activists to the not-even-faint praise of Barry Sheerman on 5Live earlier, having trashed Gordon yesterday too.

The most telling reaction was that of @BBCLauraK, who tweeted that she wasn’t sure what the big message of the speech would be. The main message is this - I am Gordon, your leader and I have shown in the past what will happen to people within the party who stand up to my authority. I will take your ideas and pass them off as mine, I’ll demote you and brief against you as necessary. I am here to lead you into the next election whatever you may think and the political career of anyone who dares challenge me will be over.

It’s not a message to the country, it’s a message to his party. What the country will see, I think, is a leader whose party has been in power 12 years and who should have done many of the things he is now talking about – addressing anti-social behaviour, finishing Lords reform, looking after the poor and ensuring proper childcare provision – although what low-income households will do with ten free hours a week is a puzzler. The public will give little credit for catching up with them on ID cards and the recalling of MPs is a silly Conservative idea that will lead to abuses. Everything in his speech was tired, rehashed, borrowed – it came from anywhere but him as he lamely looks around for something resembling a “vision”.

The BBC seems to have been keener on the speech than most but that’s not surprising. There were good things in it – a National Care Service isn’t a bad idea on the surface. But where is the money coming from? Brown has already spent and lent the country to breaking point and we cannot even service the debt on borrowing at the moment. Spending cuts and tax rises are inevitable – so how on earth does he expect people to take him seriously with these uncosted ideas?

More likely, they are things that an incoming Conservative government will have to “cancel” – even though they are not started – and opportunities for the Labour opposition to capitalise on. It’s politics, but it’s hardly statesmanship from the Statesman of the Year. Once again, Gordon has delivered a speech for his party rather than his country and as the Labour Party becomes ever more inward-looking, those looking outward – such as Peter Meddlesome – will seem ever more lone voices.

I would prefer a PM who can look beyond themselves and foster real reform. But the only way to do that is to take on the Civil Service (which is letting Brown “cancel” ID cards because they know he won’t be around much longer). The New Labour project looked at one point like it had the better of the Whitehall blockers. But the battle has now been lost and Gordon showed today that he simply doesn’t have the substance to fight on, even if the heart is willing.

I want to hear DC tell everyone what the plan is. Let’s hope he’s got one.

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Where's the plan?

September 29, 2009 — simonashall
Hmmmmm...

Hmmmmm...

Yes, Minister is full of allusions to the concept of “the less you intend to do about something, the more you have to talk about it” – no doubt I could find an episode and exact quote, but you get the picture.

During the Lib Dem conference, there was a clear picture – a narrative of where the Liberal Democrats wanted to go and what they wanted to do. They have a clear ambition and are aligning themselves nationally to the left with the intention of also being able to soften this to tempt away core Conservative voters. I don’t agree with it policy-by-policy but at least it’s there, it’s clear and frankly, it’s sensible.

But I’m searching the Labour conference in vain for a cohesive, collective and strategic vision. Gordon Brown has been banging on for ages about his strategic vision. Longer, even, than since he became Prime Minister. And the reason that the country has been allowed to drift is because Brown has never come up with this encompassing vision. After 12 years in power, Labour has been drained of the strength to reform government properly ie from the Civil Service upwards and instead now tinkers around with headline-grabbers.

On the one hand, Lord Meddlesome wants to extend the car scrappage scheme for cheap new motors - on the other hand, Ed Miliband wants us all to believe Labour will be serious about climate change at Copenhagen. Andy Burham can’t guarantee health spending while maintaining Labour is the party of the NHS, Jack Straw promises more support for victims but Alan Johnson wants to be tougher on crime – we’ve heard it all before.

Gordon Brown wants to end the bonus system – but he presided over it. And Meddlesome thinks that Labour are both the “underdogs” for the election but also that it’s “up for grabs”.

This is government by headline and they are desperate headlines at that. Ministers’ ideas are stolen by the Prime Minister to shore up his own teatering authority and the country is being run by a series of politicians positioning themselves for leadership after the fall of a man whose methods of internal control are by all accounts tyrannical.

It strikes me that this conference is more about the Labour Party than the Labour government. Perhaps searching it for a national vision is to mistake its true purpose.

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Luvvies, Labour's Lost

September 27, 2009 — simonashall
Flawed but not floored - can he turn it around

Flawed but not floored - can he turn it around

It’s a bit early to define a narrative from the Labour Conference in Brighton just yet but so far the most interesting thing coming out of the proceedings there is the attitude of the BBC.

First, we have a surprisingly combative interview from the normally obliging Andrew Marr, who went so far as to raise with the PM the issue of his alleged medication. Predictably, Brown dodged the question and instead went for the sympathy vote over his eyesight, something that David Blunkett – a far more robust and substantial man – would never have done. Whatever the answer, it caught me (and quite a few of the Tory Twitterati that I follow) out – one wonders whether this is the last Marr/Brown interview.

It obviously irked Marr to ask the question as much as it did Brown to have to answer it. The BBC man’s pleading that it was a “fair” question was followed up by some serious feigned interest in Brown’s sob story. Obviously I’m sorry he has a sight impairment – but it was noticeable how much detail he was prepared to give up on this in contrast with the actual question about prescription drugs.

Then we had this from Laura Kuenssberg (@BBCLauraK) – she really is a gem on top of a compost heap. Not only was she prepared to tell viewers the actual mood of the conference on Brown’s arrival (ie pretty dreadful) but also to lob some real questions at him about his law-breaking ministers and then reflect that the party activists (the BBC usual calls them crowds as if to ignore their handpicked pedigree) were making so much noise that he couldn’t hear her. And she hinted, quite correctly, that this was probably deliberate.

But look at the story headline – “Labour ‘should expose the Tories’”. Clearly the online staff have gone seriously off message – or on message with PM. It doesn’t reflect the downbeat message from LauraK and about Labour – or indeed much about Labour at all. It’s just a pop at the Conservatives.

Previous to this, of course, was this beauty – again courtesy of online staff – suggesting that Brown and Barack Obama are, after all, the closest of chums and that Obama doesn’t see Brown as a washed-up political liability or “depressing to be around“, as one of his staff leaked to the press. According to the BBC, this official line “quelled rumours” of an Obama snub. No it didn’t – and who are they to report that as fact? Any moderately sensible person watching the polls will realise that the last thing Obama needs with his problems at home is to become embroiled in some tawdry scheme by a foreign political party to prop up their ailing government with lent popularity.

Obama isn’t my cup of tea but he’s certainly not a fool. And only a fool would consider anything other than refusing any more public airtime with Gordon than was absolutely necessary. Any suggestion to the contrary is completely counter-inituitive and total propaganda, which the Beeb is only too happy to repeat.

Going back to the polls, not even Obama could have found a way to spin a poll that suggests you are heading out of office positively. I can’t now find the link on the BBC website – maybe they’ve seen sense and pulled it – but this poll, which states 41% of people think Brown is almost certainly going to lose is bad, bad news. Instead, the BBC concentrated on the 48% of people who though Labour still had a “slim chance” of winning in 2010, along with the 11% who think he will win.

It’s a silly question – you can’t ever rule out that a party has a “slim chance” of winning. I’m not surprised so many people ticked that box rather than commit themselves but it doesn’t reflect reality. The BBC is supposed to be here to present facts not spin to us that 59% of people think Gordon is still in with a chance next year – of course he is, he’s taking part in the election. They are more aware than ever that politics is self-fulfilling and by buying into this silly poll (I though they didn’t report routine polls anyway) they are just playing PM and the PM’s game for them. At our expense.

I don’t expect the BBC to give DC a free ride. I don’t expect them to push through government PR work. But there is a bipolarity within the corporation at the moment between the political pragmatists that realise the New Labour years are 95% drawing to a close and the politically-motivated staff who desperately want to play a hand in upsetting the odds with sly journalism. It’s got no place in the BBC and they have no place on the public payroll.

The BBC is a service, not a political tool. I’m afraid quite a number of its staff work there for the wrong reasons – they should stand for election instead.

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