The challenge for the centre left
This was a good budget. Perhaps unsusually, I thought the best bits were the bits that will probably get the least attention.
While the stamp duty holiday will benefit me personally and (given the age and salary profile of most journalists and editors), get a lot of headlines, it is essentially a measure designed to ensure housing values stay steady. Fair, enough – but not where the real action is.
Instead, I’m more excited by what Alistair Darling talked about, in his understated way, as the Growth Agenda.
Let me put it this way: the prime political challenge of the centre left for the next decade has to be the creation of around two million jobs. If we succeed in doing this, we will be able to pay down debt. If we succeed in doing this, we will be able to fund public services. If we succeed in doing this, we will be able to fund the research, development and technology that is needed for long term growth.
Doing that won’t be easy. People talk about export led growth, and that’s important. But everyone will want to export their way to growth. People talk about public works spending, but such projects can only do so much. continue reading… »
Cameron’s money problems
My brief reaction to the Budget is: I heard loads of micro-things from Darling, all of them adding up to “support for investment”. MoneySupply at the FT has 50 different items, from the questionable ‘forcing banks to lend’, to the substantial £2bn Green Investment Bank, from a tiny £35m for University Venture Capital to £5bn in cuts. All in all I think this was an attempt to do what Michael Burke called for: invest.
Yes, there was missing detail on spending cuts, and the usual optimism about efficiency gains. But as Ed Conway explains in more detail, it all adds up to quite sensible. The deficit improvements have nearly all been banked. Investment is more about pushing the private sector in that direction, with measures such as doubling the annual investment allowance, and bringing all the various schemes they have under an umbrella called “UK Finance for Growth”.
So, in many ways fussy and micro, but insofar as it risked public money, it tried to do the right things. Like David Smith, I suspect a lot of people in small businesses will like it.
You would not be surprised that I was annoyed by Cameron’s response continue reading… »
Budget round up
Here’s a quick summary of what the liberal-left people in our live budget discussion did and did not like about today’s Budget:
Good things:
Labour’s record on keeping unemployment down
Nigel Stanley (TUC): Tax credits, a desire to keep skilled workforces together by employers, and sensible union negotiators have all helped build the right kind of flexibility – not easy hire and fire.
Sunder Katwala: Where tax credits flexed upwards, for 440,000, that average £38/week is worth quite a bit more for those families even than the £700/year threshold change for earners over £10k in the LibDem tax threshold plan.
Will Straw: Job Guarantee extended for young people – a really critical development for dealing with youth unemployment. Will the Tories support it? continue reading… »
#cashgordon crashes and burns
In the last few minutes, the Conservative Party has taken down its Cash Gordon website after a major security failure which allowed twitter users to rick-roll the site using javascript embedded in a tweet.
To compound Tory embarrassment, one of the sites to which visitors were briefly redirected featured an image of three naked old men engaged in an explicit sex act, although the Tories can, perhaps, consider themselves lucky not have been Goatse-rolled at any point during today’s debacle.
So, that’s another expensive Tory new media project down the crapper in a matter of hours.
UPDATE
I’ve now been advised that both goatse and lemonparty did appear on Cash Gordon site for a while, all of which nicely sums up the Tory new media department’s day.
‘Cash Gordon’ campaign designed by US anti-healthcare lobbyists
Political Scrapbook has pulled off a hell of scoop this morning…
On the day the US Congress passed legislation providing health coverage to 32 million Americans without insurance, Political Scrapbook can reveal the Conservatives’ Cash Gordon campaign was developed by an anti-healthcare lobbyist described as “Karl Rove 2.0?.
Writing on the Blue Blog yesterday, the affable Sam Coates claimed that Conservatives’ campaign site against Labour/Unite links was “built in just a few days”. What he doesn’t tell you is that the system has been purchased off-the-shelf from Republican strategists David All Group and was originally developed to galvanise opposition to Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms.
Cash Gordon is based on Operation Waiting Game, which leverages social media against reforms which, it is claimed, “will have the same devastating effects in the United States as it has in Canada and in nations across Europe: longer wait times and lower quality care”.
To make matters even worse for the Tories…
In an embarrassment for CCHQ, the party’s flagship campaign is currently hosted alongside those attempting to ”rescue America from government-run health care”, including NotSoSure.org and Hands Off. Another site rails against homosexuals in the armed forces, stating the military “should not be used as a tool to advance the goals of gay activist groups”.
For a party that’s now supposedly ‘gay friendly’, the Tories do seem to have rather a lot of queer-bashing ‘friends’.
Gove accused of strike hypocrisy
Over the weekend, the Sunday People dug up another rather embarrassing blast from Michael Gove’s past:
Yes, that is the young Michael Gove pictured on an official NUJ picket line during a long-running dispute in Aberdeen in around 1989/90.
My how times change….
A Song for Cameron
There’s a bit of meme going around at the moment of various blogger’s choosing theme tunes for their blogs all of which led me to the realisation that, thus far, David Cameron hasn’t got a tune.
Barack Obama had a tune…
Bill Clinton had a tune…
Tony had a tune… (sorry!)
And Maggie had loads… (not that she would have wanted them)
But as for Dave, there doesn’t seem to be anything on the horizon.
Okay, so there are a few obvious contenders, like this…
And Jarvis nails its pretty well, of course…
Sadly, there isn’t a video of Frank Zappa’s cover of The Clovers’ doo-wop classic ‘Cocksucker’s Ball’ so we’ll have to make do the original in honour of D-Cam’s days as a Bullingdon Boy… (definitely NSFW audio)
And I’ve always thought this one by the Beatles fits pretty well…
Although its possible that Beau Bo’s come closest so far to capturing the essence of the Tories…
Tell you what. Let’s throw this one open to the floor… can you think of a better theme tune for D-Cam than any of these?
Teenage girls have sex. Get over it.
We recently reported the hilarious, if disturbing, remarks of Tory MP Tim Loughton:
“We need a message that actually it is not a very good idea to become a single mum at 14. [It is] against the law to get pregnant at 14. How many kids get prosecuted for having underage sex? Virtually none. Where are the consequences of breaking the law and having irresponsible underage sex? There aren’t any.”
So, The Guardian asked, should there be prosecutions?
“We need to be tougher. Without sounding horribly judgmental, it is not a good idea to be a mum at 14. You are too young, throwing away your childhood and prospects of developing a career.”
Without sounding horribly judgmental, anybody who thinks that there are no consequences to getting pregnant, and that a criminal record promotes a happy childhood and helps develop a healthy career, is a Platinum Imbecile.
Platinum Imbecility aside, there’s something to note about the bizarre universe Mr Loughton resides in: girls get pregnant by magic. continue reading… »
Telegraph finds entrance to Narnia
MPs’ expenses: Nadine Dorries says ‘main home’ is tiny Cotswold cottage
Nadine Dorries, who has repeatedly declined to disclose the location of the property, was paid the allowances on the basis that she needed two homes to work in both London and her Mid Bedfordshire seat.
Mrs Dorries is under investigation by John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, who may recommend that she repay public funds received for unjustified claims.
MPs are entitled to claim back “second home” expenses that were “necessarily incurred in staying overnight away from their main home for the purpose of performing their parliamentary duties”.
Most designate a constituency house as their “main home” and bill taxpayers for a flat close to Westminster, where they can stay the night after working in Parliament.
Yet in a highly unusual arrangement, Mrs Dorries tells Commons officials that her “main home” is a one-bedroomed lodge-keeper’s cottage in a small Cotswold village, 90 miles away from Parliament and 55 miles from her constituency.
This allows her to claim “second home” allowances for her family house in her constituency, where neighbours have stated that she spent a significant amount of her time.
In all she has claimed £60,524 since 2006. She used the money to pay the house’s £18,000-a-year rent, as well as council tax and other domestic bills. She recently moved into a bigger farmhouse half a mile away.
—-
What a wonderful job we’re doing of keeping Nadine in the lifestyle to which she thinks she’s entitled.
Tories offer state funding to schools linked to ‘occult society’
Liberal Conspiracy has obtained a set of notes taken at a recent seminar which show that the Conservative Party is pushing ahead with plans to provide state funding to a network of independent schools with close ties to a controversial occult society.
The notes were taken at a recent seminar organised by the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF), an offshoot of the Anthroposophical Society, which exists to promote the occult philosophies of the German mystic Rudolf Steiner, and also suggest that a newly registered educational charity with close ties to the Conservative Party may be actively engaged in the promotion of Conservative education policy in such a way as to breach the Charity Commission’s regulations on charity involvement in political activity.
The meeting, which took place last November, was described as a ‘pre-election seminar about possible developments in the state funding opportunity for Steiner Schools’ and included seminars with Sam Freedman, the head of Policy Exchange’s education unit and a current advisor to Shadow Education Minister, Michael Gove, and Rachel Wolf, the Founder/Director of the New Schools Network and former education advisor to the Conservative Party. continue reading… »
Ashcroft and the unions
The acute observer may have noted that, whenever the scandal of multi-millionaire non-dom top party donor Lord Ashcroft is brought up, the Tories’ default reaction is “yeah but the Unions too, they bankroll Labour”.
Let’s leave aside the long list of differences (technical, fiscal, substantial, ethical, practical, etc) between the two types of “donations”. Let’s leave aside “solemn and binding” promises.
The best way to gauge weight and influence as carried by Lord Ashcroft vs the Unions is to check the relationship between donors and political parties.
Not a single senior Tory has publicly said a bad thing against the Belize-based tycoon. They said a lot of things, but nothing bad. And how could they, given that the Baron has pumped around £5m into Tory coffers?
continue reading… »
Guns versus butter
William Hague’s recent remarks in an FT interview, and in a speech to the Royal United Services Institute give us some idea of the purposes and shape of Conservative foreign policy, in the aftermath of a Tory election win. In short, it is exactly the same sort of interventionist twaddle spouted by New Labour, overlaid with the same veneer of humanitarian concern that Blair liked to bathe in.
All the recent talk about whether or not British troops have been given the equipment they need reflects a fundamental problem in British politics: all of the main parties accept Britain’s intervention in Afghanistan, and, to a lesser extent, Iraq. William Hague’s speech gives every indication that a Tory government will continue, and risk expanding, Britain’s military presence abroad.
Hague, unsurprisingly, also repeats the meme about Britain’s credit rating being a worry, citing the ‘recent’ Fitch warning about the loss of the triple-A rating. I say ‘recent’ because Fitch has been carping about this since last year, so a new press release about it is hardly serious news. What makes this interesting is that Hague is all about the deficit reduction…and yet continuously talks up “Britain’s role” abroad.
With what equipment, in this Tory-led deficit-free utopia? Spitballs and paper aeroplanes? continue reading… »
Cameron TV love-in bombs in the ratings
Oh dear…
Trevor McDonald Meets David Cameron attracted nearly 1.7 million viewers on ITV1 last night, Sunday 14 March – less than half the audience for Gordon Brown’s interview with Piers Morgan on the same network last month.
The Conservative leader opted to submit to a fly-on-the-wall documentary rather than an interview, with McDonald and the cameras following him at work and at home.
ITV1’s resulting 60-minute documentary attracted 1.689 million viewers and a 10.8% share from 10.15pm, according to unofficial overnights.
This compared with Morgan’s interview with Brown, seen by 4.2 million viewers, a 22.7% share, when it screened in the same Sunday-night slot on 14 February.
If that weren’t bad enough, the Guardian are also reporting that Cameron was well beaten in the ratings by both Match of the Day 2, on which the featured games were Man Utd v Fulham and Sunderland v Man City, and by a repeat of episode three of Great British Railway Journeys, which saw Michael Portillo travelling from Todmorden to York with a trip on the Embsey and Bolton Abbey Steam Railway thrown in for good measure.
What else can you say but…
…Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Remembering The Battle Of The Asda Checkouts
This is a guest post by Tim Fenton
Crewe and Nantwich is only one of almost 650 constituencies on the political map of the UK. But the by-election there in May 2008 holds important lessons for the upcoming General Election.
Following the death of Gwyneth Dunwoody, Labour were between the proverbial rock and hard place: whether they called a snap by-election, or played a longer game, the Government’s unpopularity put them at a disadvantage. Moreover, they needed to select a candidate, and quickly.
Both Tory and Lib Dem already had candidates in place. Edward Timpson was, apparently, not well regarded by Tory HQ, but the crucial and sensible decision was made by Eric Pickles, chosen to manage the campaign, to stand by him. The Lib Dems, seemingly in a moment of panic, ditched their man in favour of Elizabeth Shenton, who then had start over with local activists. This gave the Tories a head start.
Pickles then managed expectations well, the press were fed stories of a “rock solid working class seat”, which could be easily disproved by a trip out to Nantwich – solidly Tory – or to outlying villages, and those new housing developments full of potential swing voters. But during the campaign, most of the assembled hackery saw little more than the area between Crewe station and the town centre, and so bought into the Tories’ well crafted myth.
Surprisingly, the media did little analysis on past elections, which would have disproved the myth of the working class stronghold. The last time a majority Tory Government was returned – in 1992 – Dunwoody’s majority was under 2,700. There had been only one instance of a five figure majority, that in 1997: then, the Tories had been caught in a perfect storm, unpopular nationally and disliked locally after the rail sell-offs caused delays in new train orders and the Works had to lay off staff.
Labour selected Dunwoody’s daughter Tamsin to fight the seat. Was this a good or bad thing? My take is that it had no bearing on the outcome. I reckon she was the best candidate, but Timpson’s shortcomings – he’s not a natural talker and doesn’t do charisma – were managed by Pickles guiding and coaching him, making sure he got his talking points over. It would be different in a General Election campaign, where the luxury of a personal minder would be missing, but that would be to miss the point. The matter at hand was winning the by-election.
The Tories were allowed to make the running from the start, and their focus was incessantly negative, and personal towards the PM. They stuck to this tack and their discipline held firm. Labour’s attempts to show Tamsin Dunwoody in a positive light made little impact. Elsewhere, Elizabeth Shenton was having difficulty making herself heard, despite Vince Cable being ever present.
The saturation media coverage, and the dispatch of every well known politician to Crewe and Nantwich, also had little additional impact: on one Saturday in mid-campaign, Simon Hughes turned up to assist Ms Shenton, while earlier, Jack Straw had brought his soap box to Crewe town centre, and took questions from all comers, but they need not have bothered. The same could be said of the “love bombing” of often bewildered shoppers in Asda, who for a moment were considered important enough to have even “Dave” Cameron pack their shopping. The parties’ efforts cancelled each other out.
Was the “Tory Toff” line wrong? Maybe, given that Timpson, although part of the shoe repair dynasty, is not a man of ostentatious wealth. But Labour make Cameron visibly uncomfortable whenever he is the target of such attacks, so the idea that this contest going the way of the Tories would stop them is groundless.
One controversy was generated by a Labour campaign leaflet, which Pickles called out as “racist”. I saw the offending flyer – the contentious part was the policy of ID cards for foreign nationals – and sent it on its way. Was it racist? I think not. Clumsy maybe, and more likely a policy cut and paste job. But racist it had been called, and once more the Tory discipline held: all those from the party venturing an opinion on the matter toed the line. Pickles is supposedly known for his “anti racism”, but on this occasion it seemed more a case of “accusing the opposition of racism at a time likely to cause them maximum damage, and keeping up the attack in order to prevent them effectively rebutting the accusation”. Given his role in the upcoming General Election campaign, look for that one to be wheeled out again.
The Tories then completed their mission by keeping up the campaigning until polling day. Labour did not. On the last Saturday, I spoke with a Labour supporter who assured me that they would return to get out the vote, but later that same day, a conversation with the campaign HQ on Nantwich Road left me with the impression they had given up. So it was: the evening of polling day was a quiet one in what I call “Redbrick Crewe”, the area that returns Labour and Lib Dem councillors. Labour had already admitted defeat: the Tory majority therefore flattered Timpson.
What will happen at the General Election? Well, unless the Tories score a substantial swing, Timpson will be unseated. David Williams, his next Labour opponent, has the presence and the patter: he is a natural politician. Edward Timpson will have served his purpose.
There ain’t nuthin’ more powerful than the smell of Tory mendacity!
Is Alan Johnson right to accuse the Tories of deceit over their recent claim that violent crime has risen by 44% since 1998?
Of course he is, in fact he doesn’t go anything like far enough in his accusations. Not only are the Tories wilfully misrepresenting the evidence provided by the police recorded crime statistics, but they are also pursuing a deliberate and wholly mendacious strategy of seeking to undermine public confidence in the British Crime Survey, a point that Johnson has, as yet, failed to put over forcefully enough.
As evidence, let’s refer back to an article by the Shadow Justice Minister, Dominic Grieve, which was published by the Telegraph in January 2009 under the title ‘Fiddling statistics is no way to restore public confidence”. In the article, Grieve makes the following claims about the British Crime Survey.
The BCS is an obviously poor measure of violent crime. It does not count homicide offences, rape and multiple assaults. It also excludes some of the most vulnerable victims of violence, including: the homeless, elderly people in care homes, students in digs and – until this year – all children. In fact, we know that police recorded violent crime has nearly doubled since 1997.
Grieve’s suggestion that the BCS is an ‘obviously poor measure of violent crime’ because it does not count homicide offences is as risible as it is boneheaded. The clue here is in the name, British Crime Survey, which explains precisely why it doesn’t count homicide offences – you need to be alive in order to complete the survey form. In any case, homicides accounted for only 662 of the 2.1 million violent offences that the BCS estimated as having taken place in 2008/9, a mere 0.03 percent of the total number of offences. continue reading… »
Theses on Progressive Conservatism
Republicanism, communitarianism, John Lewis, EasyCouncils, co-operatives, mutuals, the ethic of engagement, the reinvention of the firm, motivation and productivity in employee ownership and a market economy based on common ownership. Suggestive of the fact that from both the left and right a convergence will soon take place that seeks to undermine the legacy of Thatcher, or an effort from both the left and right to pretend to the electorate that they have their interests at heart? It is all rather indicative that what is fashionable in British politics today is the return to community – and the surpassing of current modes of government and market structure.
Progressive conservatism, a project by Demos and led by Max Wind-Cowie, rolls with this contingent, and like the Red tory Philip Blond, is avowedly anti-Thatcherite with regards to an embrace of greed and yuppie idolatry.
At a time when industrial plants are closing down, there are massive job losses, such as the current events in Middlesbrough with the Corus steel factory, with little that Labour can do about it – even if Peter Mandelson, First Secretary of State,Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, had acted a little sooner – and by disavowing Thatcher (whose image is synonymous with factory closures) a new generation of Tories seek to throw off their nasty party image. continue reading… »
NHS more productive than private healthcare
Guest post by Richard blogger
Andrew Lansley has recently written about the main Conservative health policies. He justifies his policy to privatise parts of the NHS using the following statement about productivity:
“we can not go on seeing productivity fall in our public services, just as it rises in the private sector”
But if we look at productivity in healthcare, the NHS is actually more efficient than the private sector. continue reading… »
So much for “Compassionate Conservatism”
The editor of Conservative Home, Tim Montgomerie, is, I understand from the Financial Times, a “committed Christian”.
He is presumably familiar with the way in which the parable of the Good Samaritan warns us away from racist stereotyping, and perhaps also of the anti-racist message in the episode of the moneychangers in the temple.
He is also, according to the FT, a key influence on the thinking of the Conservative party hierarchy, his blog supposedly reflective of Conservative grassroots opinion.
In this guise, Montgomerie is now proposing that each Tory leaflet before the election should strip the content down to three key messages. Here they are:
(1) something on the economy, emphasising how Brown has failed on controlling debt, cutting waste and regulating the banks;
(2) something on crime and immigration; and
(3) something on protecting the NHS and the most vulnerable.
(My emphasis)
So Montgomerie is suggesting that around a third of the Tories’ overall ‘message-time’ should be spent conflating the issues of crime and immigration.
For him, and presumably for his readership, it is perfectly reasonable to insinuate/imply/spell out that crime is a problem because there are immigrants, and immigrants are a problem because there is crime.
In its way, this is actually much more shocking than Rod Liddle’s outrageous claims, because however revolting they are there is always the sense that it’s the desire to outrage that drives the racist message, rather than the other way round.
But Mongomerie’s casual, perhaps even unthinking racism, with its apparent willingness to victimise a whole section of an already victimised population (let’s not get into who’s an immigrant) is simply disgusting.
And this man calls himself a Christian.
Redwood wrong on borrowing
This effort from John Redwood seems to contain many of the errors that arise when economic thinking is subordinated to party political motives: confusion, lack of empirical evidence, and an over-emphasis upon the importance of policy.
He says:
Borrowing is deferred taxation…
Taxpayers will have to help repay all that debt with interest in the years ahead. They know that means tax increases to do so. More borrowing can make people more negative about spending up to their current incomes.
A reasonable hypothesis – though he doesn’t provide any hard evidence that this is actually happening. But then he says:
Much of the money the government is borrowing will be lent by banks. This is money the banks will not then be able to lend to the private sector…No wonder money supply growth is weak, and no wonder the private sector finds it difficult to borrow enough at a sensible rate.
There are two problems with this claim. continue reading… »
Let’s not deny it: Libdems are closer to Labour than Tory voters
Nick Clegg and the Libdem leadership have insisted on a policy of ‘equidistance’ from both main parties; putting forward various policy demands as a price for their support in any kind of deal.
While this might seem like good politicking it actually leaves the party vulnerable to ‘love-bombing’ from both sides.
But polling shows that the Libdem leadership are dangerously out of sync with the sentiment of Liberal Democrat voters.
The latest YouGov poll illustrated how the attitudes of Labour / Libdem voters tend to have more in common than Conservative / Libdems voters.
Liberal Democrat voters tend to prefer leading Labour politicians compared to Conservative ones.
continue reading… »
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or rss feeds.
» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civic cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
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