The Conservatives have some growing up to do and they better do so quickly. Their response to Alistair Darling’s tax repair job yesterday was so weakly opportunistic that, in different political times, it would have rebounded on them dangerously. In the light of the government’s self-inflicted crisis David Cameron and George Osborne suddenly discovered an interest in giving more money to the poor, although their official policy is to take money away from the poor in order, apparently, to deal with the “causes” of poverty. For weeks the Tory leadership has demanded that the government came up with a package to deal with the losers from Gordon Brown’s last budget.
Yesterday the government came up with a package and the Conservative leadership screams: Where’s the money going to come from? This would be a perfectly valid scream if at any point they had made a suggestion as to where they would have found the money. Now in the aftermath of yesterday’s announcement they give the impression of not giving a damn for the original low paid losers. Instead they contrive to make the opposite opportunistic point to the one they were previously making: “How outrageous that the government has come up with the package when it has got to borrow money to pay for it!” Having called for such a package would the Conservatives have preferred a tax increase?
There are no qualifications. The election results are dire for Labour and a triumph for the Conservatives. The Conservatives can claim much more credibly now that they are on course to win a substantial majority in a general election. David Cameron has managed to achieve this without the equivalent disaster of a Black Wednesday when Britain left the Exchange rate Mechanism, making the leap forward even more impressive.
The latest dire polls for Labour are not remotely surprising. From the beginning the new Labour coalition was wide, but shallow. It has been crumbling for some time. Labour's low standing has little to do with Gordon Brown's leadership. The party was struggling in the polls under Tony Blair. A new leader would make little difference and, given that the potential candidates lack any leadership qualities, might make matters worse.
More fundamental factors are at work. Labour has been in power for a long time in a country that needs little excuse to vote Conservative(at least in England). There is an economic downturn. Brown's errors and clumsy leadership are minor factors. A cabinet reshuffle will make little difference. Part of the problem for Brown is that there are no major figures in the current cabinet, so reshuffling them will make only a limited impact. Launching initiatives will be counter productive unless they have been clearly thought through.
Instead Brown should calm down and articulate more clearly his political purpose, which is deeper than any alternative offered by lightweights in the cabinet, or by his political opponents.
The BBC displays a characteristically self-destructive cheek using the Freedom of Information act to make public the expenses of some MPs: When I think of the stories I could tell you about the expenses of some BBC journalists and managers, based on my time at the Corporation and what I have observed since, the taxis, the champagne and the vintage wines. I could blog all day about them. Indeed the lavish expenses of some of my good friends at the Beeb are a running joke amongst those who know. Fortunately for them, I like them and their generously funded institution too much to reveal all.
Evidently they do not share the same spirit in relation to MPs. Instead the opposite applies: Let’s treat them like crooks! Let’s reinforce the orthodoxy that they are all up to no good and hunt down their expenses!
If I were Nick Clegg I would be worried. I have just chaired a discussion with three senior political columnists for this week’s Week in Westminster. You can hear it on Saturday on Radio 4 at 11am. The discussion largely focused on Gordon Brown and the problems of his government. There was general agreement that Brown could not be written off yet, that although he was in deep trouble he had time to turn things around. There was a mix of praise and criticism for David Cameron.
For Nick Clegg there was univeral scathing disdain, largely for his naivety over giving an interview to Piers Morgan in GQ and then answering questions about his sex life. In a short time Clegg has had two nicknames, ‘Calamity Clegg’ and ‘Cleggover’. Neither adds to his gravitas.
Nothing in politics is ever as it seems, which is one of its great joys. For the last twenty four hours I have read and heard snide comments about Harriet Harman. Ho, ho, ho...she was a buffoon to wear a police flak jacket when she went out with a group of community officers in her constituency. Ho,ho,ho...she would be slaughtered at Prime Minster's Question Time when she stood in for Gordon Brown. But step back from the mockery of the Daily Mail/John Humphrys alliance and take a closer look.
It is one of the great cliches, but an accurate one: a budget that is praised on the day of delivery usually looks disastrous in retrospect. Now that we have had some time for reflection does the reverse apply to Alastair Darling's tediously delivered words last Wednesday? Almost universally he and his budget got the thumbs down in the immediate aftermath. Some columnists went as far as to decribe it as the worst budget for at least three decades.
In a limited way I sense that the budget does look better than it did on the day, and politically more astute.
The Liberal Democrats’ leader, Nick Clegg, has made two miscalculations in casting bright light on divisions within his party over Europe. The first was to assume that voters take his party as seriously as he does. The second was to work on the assumption that nearly always publicity for the third party is better than being ignored.
The Conservatives’ shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, has infuriated parts of his party by stating the obvious. In an interview for the Times he suggested that spending on health would rise further if the Conservatives won the next election as a result, amongst many other factors, of the growing elderly population. The problem for Lansley is that his comments do not fit into any Tory narrative on tax and spend, partly because the narrative is still so vague and confused. Most Tories want tax cuts, not spending increases.
Today the Independent’s front page declares that the government’s policies for primary schools are a ‘failure’, a view echoed in the newspaper by a right wing academic from the University of Buckingham who compares the ministerial approach to the Soviet Union. They do not sit on the fence at the University of Buckingham. The basis of the onslaught seemed to be that the government had done too much and yet not enough. The alternative of a free for all in education, favoured by the Conservatives, seemed to be the favoured option of those making the onslaught in today’s newspaper.
The reality is much more complex. Quite often when the state withdraws those that had previously called for the government to do less demand that it should do more.
Nearly always I agree with the astute commentaries from Andrew Grice on his Politics blog. But for once I take a different view. Andy argues that the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has the toughest job in the cabinet. I am sure that by a considerable margin the unfortunate title of the toughest, almost impossible brief should go to the chancellor, Alistair Darling.
Not so long ago leading Conservatives were comparing David Cameron with Barrack Obama. The comparisons ceased when Hilary Clinton stormed ahead in the Democrats’ gripping contest. Now some of them make connections with the triumphant John McCain, almost certainly the Republican candidate. This blog pointed to the similarities between McCain and Cameron, two figures apparently representing together a new brand of Conservatism.
Yet in revealing ways the claimed similarities were wrong. Supposedly both McCain and Cameron are pro-immigration, green and fiscally cautious to the fury of their own right wing. But Cameron is taking a tough stance in relation to immigration, is promising tax cuts along with spending increases and has shown less interest in green issues recently. Being also strongly pro-marriage and Euro-sceptic Cameron is a mainstream Conservative presenting his party in new and modern ways.
At Prime Minister’s Question Time, David Cameron accused Gordon Brown once more of being a ditherer. Cameron cited the number of reviews that Brown has instigated as proof that the Prime Minister is fatally indecisive. This is Cameron’s main line of attack against Brown and one conveniently supported by some former Blairite ministers, who also claim that dithering is Brown’s fatal flaw.
Either wilfully or mistakenly Cameron and the ultra- Blairites misread Brown and the complicated political context in which he leads a post Blair government. Brown has always used reviews as a way of changing the direction of policy with the maximum degree of popular consent.
The resignation of Peter Hain was inevitable and necessary. Quite often calls for cabinet ministers to resign are made without much basis. In this case the only mystery is why Hain managed to stay on as long as he did.
Currently he is the subject of several inquiries. But what we know already is enough to finish off his cabinet career. He spent more than a hundred thousand pounds on his deputy leadership campaign and failed to declare the donations at the required time. Some of them were paid through a think tank that did not produce a single thought before, during or after his failed deputy leadership bid. At the very least as Work and Pensions Secretary he would never have been able to condemn those who failed to claim benefits competently after this act of incompetence.
Shares plunge! Shares stabilise!These have been the dramatic headlines in the space of the last few hours in the UK. Here is further evidence that the financial markets are wild places acting without reason a lot of the time. It seems that most of the time they cannot control themselves. The markets are either stupidly euphoric or in a mad despair. Apparently there has been a degree of stabilisation because of hints of interest rate cuts that we all knew were going to take place before the shares collapsed. Across the world some of these powerful, mighty sellers and buyers are deranged. Yet since the 1980s the markets have been deified in Britain. One way or another all of us kneel at their altar. Along with the lightly regulated banks, the out of control property market, the low taxes and the flexible labour markets, they are seen as the basis for Britain’s apparent success. On whole we have viewed with a patronising disdain those countries that have retained an interest in manacturing goods and providing quality public services paid for out of higher taxes.
Yet suddenly all sorts of questions are being asked.
It seems that Gordon Brown is determined to find a buyer for Northern Rock, probably to Virgin. Evidently Brown cannot bear the prospect of even a temporary nationalisation. Instead he is frantically trying to secure a sale, seeking a convoluted deal involving Richard Branson, the sale of bonds and a lot of finger crossing.
The future of Peter Hain depends on the outcome of the inquiry by the parliamentary standards commissioner. Senior Conservatives expect the investigation into the funding of his deputy leadership campaign to take around four weeks, a nerve wracking period for the ambitious cabinet minister. I have no idea why Hain and his office did not declare all the donations for his campaign last summer. The inquiry will reach its conclusions soon. What I do know is that Hain wanted to become deputy leader with a passion that was irrational.
To differ slightly with my colleague Andy McSmith, I thought Nick Clegg made a well-judged debut at Prime Minister’s Question Time. He needed to do so. His predecessor, Ming Campbell, never recovered from his nervous and misjudged opening in this harsh forum. Clegg showed no signs of nerves and wisely did not attempt any jokes. At the end of last year, Vince Cable pulled off the the difficult art of cracking jokes surrounded by political opponents, but as a stand in leader he had nothing to lose if they had misfired. Clegg had a lot to lose if he under performed by telling an unfunny one liner.
British politicians are gripped by the Presidential race with good cause. On Sunday night a shadow cabinet member told me that Gordon Brown was the doomed Hillary Clinton figure while David Cameron was Britain’s Obama, personifying hope and change. Yesterday a senior cabinet minister expressed fears that Obama was flaky and would not last the course against a credible Republican candidate, implying that Hillary/Gordon were the long term winners. But he added urgently that Brown was alert to the dangers of being seen, like Hillary, as a figure of the past. At the weekend he was phoning allies saying that they must be seen as the agents of change rather than be trapped, Hillary-like, in the past.
Now Hillary is the front runner again and I have yet to meet a Tory today comparing their leader with Obama, while I suspect Brown is drawing comfort from Hillary’s triumph.
For the second month in succession the Downing Street press conference took the form of a double act: Ladies and Gentleman welcome to Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling, or rather Mr Prudence and Mr Stability, a double act without laughs.
I have a great admiration for most politicians. They pursue a noble vocation compared with, say, journalists. What a dangerously perverse culture we live in when most politicians are despised, the ones that brought peace to Northern Ireland etc, while drunken multi millionaire footballers are deified.
Still having made this general observation I despair at the thin field of truly, great British politicians at the end of 2007.
What characterises greatness? I do not have to agree with a politician to recognise titanic qualities. Nor in my opinion do great politicians have to be successful administrators. But to qualify for greatness they have to be big, compelling figures. The Labour cabinet in the 1970s was overwhelmed by such characters, huge, vivid figures: Healey, Crosland, Benn, Foot, Jenkins, Williams, Owen. They were much more than mere administrators (some of them were poor ministers), but they were enthralled by ideas, debate, oratory, intrigue, literature, music. As a bonus they were all good writers. In the 1980s and 1990s Heseltine, Howe, Portillo, Hurd, Clarke were almost as interesting.
Now I stare at a near blank political canvass. The cabinet is the dullest in modern times. Only Gordon Brown will fascinate historians for decades to come. I cannot imagine a biography of Jacqui Smith hitting the bookshops in twenty years’ time. The shadow cabinet is equally lacking titanic figures.
Watching Gordon Brown’s appearance in front of the Liaison Committee of MPs this morning I was struck by the unusual combination of transparency and guile that defines his political personality. He looked exhausted and made no attempt to disguise it. Perhaps it was the unfortunate lighting in the room, but he appeared as if he was unshaven too, endearingly indifferent to appearance. At times during the session he became immersed in debates that grip him. He spoke intensely about the nature of liberty and what he regards as the related issue of Britishness. The implications of the global economy featured in different ways across the session. He tip-toed neatly around the complex politics of the public services, highlighting ways in which he was continuing his predecessor’s approach but thankfully avoiding simplistic references to ‘choice’. He is not as easy to watch as Blair who was always his usual relaxed self in these long sessions, but Brown thinks more deeply about policy and it showed. The few voters that watched the session will have picked up Brown’s rooted integrity in impressive contrast to some of his more superficial opponents dancing around the British political stage.
Yet the context of the session shows how Brown can try to be too clever by half. His absence from the formal signing of the EU Treaty this morning is pathetic, made worse by his weak attempts to sign the document later. What did he think such contorted behaviour would achieve? The Euro-sceptic newspapers were never going to calm down on the basis of his absence from a ceremony, but other EU leaders already wary of Brown were bound to take offence. Not for the first time his attempt to woo the right wing newspapers have landed him in trouble without any gain.
My esteemed colleague, John Rentoul is sniffy about the position of Roy Jenkins as runner up in a poll on the best Prime Minister We Never Had, suggesting he did not deserve such a lofty position. I am sniffy because he should have been Number One in the list, rather than in second place below Denis Healey. Jenkins was the by far the best Labour minister in Harold Wilson’s government in the late 1960s, and one of the most effective ministers Labour has ever produced. He is most famous for his period as Home Secretary where he passed a series of liberal acts that have transformed the lives of many. But he was also an outstanding Chancellor, stabilising the economy after the trauma of devaluation. Even more remarkably, he managed to be politically creative in the dark 1970s, securing Britain’s membership of Europe and then going on to be one of the most powerful players in the EU.
The Labour MP and former deputy leadership contender, Jon Cruddas writes a significant article in today’s New Statesman. He argues that the new Labour chickens are coming home to roost, reinforcing a point I made in last week’s Independent that a lot of the party’s current problems are linked to Blair and Brown’s determination to move away from “old Labour”. Cruddas writes: “Looking at the Government's nightmarish predicament, one thought occurs time and again: that New Labour's chickens are coming home to roost…."The post of general secretary of the party - a once-mighty position - goes to administrators; the NEC is kept permanently in the dark; and the role of conference as a decision-making body has recently been brought to an end."
At the Independent’s fringe meeting at Labour’s conference in the early autumn, Cruddas enthused about the Brown leadership. Now he despairs, another barometer of the extraordinary collapse in morale within the Labour party.
There is an interesting article in today's Financial Times analysing why the Conservatives are not performing better in the polls. At the equivalent stage of the Tory government's demise in the mid 1990s Labour often rated at more than 50 per cent in the polls. The FT's Political Editor, George Parker has his theories. My view is that the current political situation is volatile and that nothing is cast in stone. Voters await to see more clarity from the Cameron leadership even as they turn away from Brown. As Parker notes some of the more astute Conservative MPs are also asking why the party's level of support is not higher. From my conversations I sense there is a strange mood in the Conservative parliamentary party.
Crises have erupted around Gordon Brown. He is not directly responsible for any of them. Even so Brown has been criticised for the way he has responded to the ferocious events.
In some ways the criticisms are unfair. There is no political leader who would have surfaced triumphantly when faced with a funding scandal and lost discs containing the sensitive information of 25 million people. On the whole Brown has responded swiftly in the face of the firestorms, instigated the inevitable inquiries while promising full co-operation in yet another police investigation.
But the attacks on Brown have had some justification in relation to his public performances, especially during Prime Minister’s Question Time when he has appeared nervous, shaken and angry. Performances at Prime Minister’s Question Time are of pivotal importance. It has been said that William Hague’s brilliance at PMQs and his failure overall as leader shows that the exchanges every Wednesday are irrelevant. This is the wrong conclusion to draw from the fate of Hague. The former Tory leader would have been in even more trouble if it were not for his successes at Prime Minister’s Questions.
Brown’s hesitant awkwardness is surprising. Contrary to mythology he can be a highly effective parliamentary performer. To some extent he made his name as a rising star with some blistering performances in the Commons standing in for John Smith as Shadow Chancellor in 1991. Subsequently Brown saw off several Conservative shadow chancellors and was never made to feel uncomfortable in Commons’ exchanges. Now he behaves almost like a beginner, trying too hard, arriving too prepared for every eventuality.
The Sunday newspapers are full of speculation about ‘donorgate’ and whether the crisis exposes decay at the heart of the Labour party. Mathew D’ancona makes the case most vividly in the Sunday Telegraph comparing Labour to a dying corpse unable to even respond speedily when the crises erupt in marked contrast to the nimble footed beast of the mid 1990s.
So is Gordon Brown finished? That is the most commonly asked question in Westminster at the moment. Anxious Labour MPs pose it almost as much as political journalists after a week in which a funding scandal joins the various other crises that have erupted around him in recent weeks. In the media and on the blogs the answer appears to be ‘Yes…he is doomed”.
Such a response is premature. Brown is far from doomed and can recover from this latest low point in what has always been a career of wildly oscillating fortunes. Brown has been hit by a series of events that would damage any Prime Minister.
Do not believe that any alternative figure, from Tony Blair to David Miliband and on to David Cameron, would have emerged unscathed from a similar sequence. Brown has been damaged because the various crises are vividly awful, not because he has dealt with them badly.
One Liberal Democrat has flourished since the departure of Ming Campbell. Sadly for his party he is not standing for the leadership. The acting leader, Vince Cable, has led a forensic assault on the government’s handling of the Northern Rock crisis. While the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, opts for a more hysterical approach, accusing the government wrongly of a cover up, Cable has pinpointed ruthlessly a series of misjudgements made by the Chancellor, Alastair Darling. He has also proposed a solution that is increasingly being seen as the least worst of the options. Cable calls on the government to nationalise the hapless bank rather than allow its inept senior managers to continue at the helm. He does so while acknowledging all the baggage that comes with such a move. With Cable you sense that he does not make such proposals lightly. He has thought them through and speaks with the authority of a trained economist.
The Sunday newspapers report serious tensions between Gordon Brown and his Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. If they are as serious as some reports suggest there is a growing chasm between Downing Street and the Foreign Office. Much more important the split would signal the surfacing of the familiar highly charged divide within New Labour.
The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, gave a robust defence of her position in the Commons this afternoon over a fuss about nothing very significant. This morning the Daily Mail had published some leaked emails from the Home Office, sparking accusations that Ms Smith held back information on the illegal employment of foreign workers. Parts of the media gets excited about leaked memos as if their publication is proof in itself of dastardly deeds. There’s a leak! There must have hit upon a dark conspiracy! I have read the Emails several times looking for a killer revelation. There is not one.
Gordon Brown’s speech on foreign policy last night was the product of a Prime Minister at the beginning of his rule rather than the end. Most commentators have concluded that Tony Blair could have made the same address. That is not the case. By the end of his period in power Blair’s idealistic outlook in 1997 had been blown apart by events. Blair began by arguing that Britain could be the pivotal link between Europe and the US, a close ally to both. The theory was tested to destruction by Iraq when Blair had to choose between President Bush and the major players in Europe. Predictably and disastrously he made the more cautious move by choosing to stick with the world’s superpower.
David Cameron sounded a little muted on the Today programme this morning as he outlined his cleverly spun proposal to hold referendums on Council Tax increases. I suspect the reason for his uncharacteristic tentativeness was that his so- called policy had been forensically torn apart seconds before on the programme by the local government specialist, Tony Travers.
What a wonderful moment on the Today programme this morning: John Humphrys criticising the Chancellor, Alastair Darling, for failing to nationalise Northern Rock. In the 1980s and 1990s Labour became terrified of state intervention and embraced the markets. Now it is being condemned for its failure to act more speedily in relation to the banks.
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