I love Polly Toynbee, but sometimes she writes things and you can’t help but get a wee bit annoyed.
Her latest article is her latest attack against Brown (Like so many journalists, she seems to be paid a six figure salary at the moment to slag off Brown) and insisting that he must go the day after the European elections on June 4th.
The thing that annoyed me though, is how it ends by saying that ordinary party members, ‘you valient few’, must rise up and get rid of Brown.
I presume from the ‘you valient few’ that she has once more quit the party, and therefore rejected the opportunity to have a say in anything.
I once brought her up to a prominent councillor, and he immediately rolled his eyes and told me that she rejoined the party, only to quit again.
Obviously it doesn’t negate her opinion entirely, but it would mean so much more if she’d had the guts to stick it out in the party instead of quitting, rejoining and then quitting again.
Bumbling Cameron isolates himself from Europe
May 12, 2009
Excellent article on the Guardian today about how Cameron is busy isolating himself from Europe, not just over his insane plan to leave the centre-right grouping in the EU, but also of the way he’s going about it.
Supposedly he is agonising over whether or not to turn up to meetings, then when he decides not to go, doesn’t send a formal, polite explanation.
Hmm…agonising whether or not to attend an EU summit? Sound familiar? Still though, bit odd from a guy supposedly assured over what he’s doing with Europe, and confident of the way forward.
Maybe his confidence has taken a knock now the Czech party that was planning on joining his group is having second thoughts, which would leave the Tories with just the Policy Law & Order party.
You know, the ones whose leader made those homophobic and racist comments that Cameron seems to refuse to distance himself from.
Roll on the European Elections I guess – if only people in the UK voted on EU issues!
They’ve gone up 20% in the past month.
Does Iain Dale therefore believe that the markets have decided to back the government and their economic policies, and by implication oppose the Conservative ones?
Given the obvious and tedious ‘outrage’ the Conservatives affect whenever the government, or someone remotely related to the government, comes up with something not directly related to the economy (I’m thinking of the Jeremy Clarkson spoof video here) it’s kinda funny that the Conservative Shadow Minister to the Treasury is asking questions to Gordon Brown about how many takes it took to make his (admittedly cringeworthy) Youtube video on expenses when we’re in the middle of a recession.
I’ve blogged before about pointless questions being asked of ministers, but surely even the staunchest of defenders of these questions has to admit the only reasoning behind this question is to try find out information to embarass Gordon Brown with.
Just a thought.
It really looked like Brown and the government could lose one or more votes today, and with the rumour that Charles Clarke was going to stand as a stalking horse candidate to trigger a leadership election against Brown if he lost the votes today, we could have seen the resignation of Brown very soon if events had moved differently.
It’s often said that the Tories want to see Brown stay in, as a fatally wounded, helpless PM being dragged towards electoral annihilation. They supposedly don’t want the risk of Labour getting a new leader in, who could limit the damage at a general election and even lead Labour to a hung parliament situation (it would be too optimistic at the moment to suggest leading Labour to victory).
With this in mind, the decision by the Tory whips to send all their MPs home just because the government climbed down over the second home allowances, could suggest they didn’t want to do Brown any more damage if it risked the Labour party getting rid of him and putting someone else in his place.
Just a thought.
Cameron bottles second jobs vote
April 30, 2009
Cameron announced today that the Con front bench will abstain from the vote on second jobs – which would require all MPs to give full details of second jobs – because although they support it in principle, the way it has been drafted is a ‘dogs dinner’ and therefore while they’d rather have that than nothing, they’re going to abstain.
I can’t help but feel that a whaft of bullsh*t is making it’s way across Westminster today from that.
We know Cameron backed down when he asked his front bench to give up their second jobs, particularly from William Hague, who has about a zillion of them or something.
So if he supported it in principle then, presumably it was only for backbenchers, and not front benchers, hence asking them to give them up.
I personally feel this is another potential battle that Cameron has backed down from within his own party. Nothing on the scale of grammar schools but it does remind me of him backing down rather quickly when his shadow ministers complained about being asked to give up their lucrative second jobs and focus on the one they were elected to do.
Another thing is that while the front bench will be whipped in all the votes today, the backbenchers will have a free vote. Cameron’s done this before when he knows that a whipped vote would lead to massive rebellions, it’s clever politics but again it’s a sign of him backing down from fighting his own party.
If he agrees with reforms as important as expenses reforms – and think of all the noises he’s made about it over the last year – and if he thinks it’s that important for politics to sort itself out, why is he allowing a free vote on the matter? You could argue that MPs should be voting for it themselves, but it makes little difference really. You can have a whipped vote and still have MPs voting enthusiastically for it.
Because he knows it would lead to rebellions and he keeps bottling it.
NB: I don’t know if Labour are also allowing a free vote, if so, I disagree with that too – though the reasons on allowing a free vote given the rebellions of late are more obvious.
Woeful press will hinder us until the election.
April 28, 2009
Three articles today exemplified to me the challenge Labour faces between now and the election.
The first is a blog post from Danny Finklestein at The Times who says he believes that Peter Mandelson has given up on the next election because his ambition was always to be foreign secretary, and in an interview he says he feels his chance has gone.
Finklestein somehow tries to assert that the only logical explanation of this is to believe that the election is over for Labour.
This is quite ridiculous, even if Mandleson does believe it, there is nothing to suggest that in the article. Rather I think it shows Mandleson believes the time he could hold a great office of state has gone, as the top roles in any future Labour government would go to younger people – such as the current holder David Miliband.
A perfectly logical conclusion would just be that he believes his time has gone when he could be a senior minister. To suggest he must believe the election is lost for Labour is tenuous in the extreme and quite sad on the face of it – it’s tittle tattle designed to give the impression of the inevitability of Labour’s defeat at the next general election.
The second article was also from The Times. The headline alone caught my attention, as it was obviously designed to do. ‘Pupils aged 11 to learn about gay sex’ it screams.
I had to read it just to see for myself if this could be true, guessing that it wouldn’t remotely be true and it was scaremongering.
As it turns out high school children (that’s 11-16 rather than just 11) will learn about gay relationships. Shock horror! The implicit stance of all this of course is that if you teach children about the existence of homosexuality they will naturally be more likely to be gay when they’re older and therefore that sex education could make YOUR children gay.
Of course the Times would never come out and say this but that’s the implication from their headlines and attitutde towards it.
The last one was from one of our own, although hardly a strong supporter of anyone except the most Blairite of Labour ministers. John Rentoul claiming that because the 50p tax rate is coming in a mere month or two before a probably general election, it’s obviously being done for political reasons and is therefore cynical and cheap.
‘Why else’, he claims, would it be brought in just before a general election?
To which you’d have to point out that the reason a tax change comes into being in APRIL is because that’s the start of the financial year.
Imagine if Labour decided to announce an income tax rise due to come into force after a general election.
What would the criticism be? Well probably exactly what it was when they announced the 45p tax rate – they put it off until after the election because they’re not facing up with people about future tax rises, because they didn’t want to break their manifesto promise and therefore they are being cynical and working to political cycles not economic ones.
So when they work to an economic one, are people satisfied? No, now they are being cynical because they’re doing it before the general election – so it’s still working to a political cycle. The fact it comes into being at the start of a new tax year is cast aside as an irrelevance.
The reason I add this to the selection of articles is because it shows how even on our own side we’ll be facing down criticisms that don’t take into account the opposing view. It’s a free for all and those who criticism the most will get the biggest hearing from a media that’s fully turned it’s attention to the narrative of a failing government with time running out.
So whether it’s blogging right-wing journalists making claims about the government, articles from newspapers misleading and getting hysterical about policies, or left-wing critics complaining about their own party and government, over the next year Labour will have to face all these down.
By shouting louder, pressing harder, and utilising every media stream possible to reach the public and explain their policies, and why they’re better than the alternatives, and also why they will help people in the recession and beyond.
My only worry is when you look at the cabinet, it is not brimming with the sorts of people who either can do it, or are willing to.
Utterly bizarre noises coming from David Cameron at the moment. I have absolutely no idea how the Tories think they will help the economy grow if they win the election next year.
David Cameron refuses to stop his inheritance tax plans, which will cost hundreds of million of pounds a year but only benefit the top few thousand estates in the country.
He also claims its costed by a tax on non-domiciles, but if he believes that the 50p tax rate would lead to a so-called ‘brain drain’ (although he hasn’t explicitly said this, Conservatives like Boris Johnson have) then the logical consequence of that would be to believe that a non-dom tax would also lead to a brain drain, yet he advocates a non-dom tax to cut tax for the richest in the country.
He also opposes the 50p tax rate for earnings over £150,000 (whilst refusing to commit to abolishing it) which would raise several billion pounds.
He opposes tax rises for those earning £19,000 or more through their National Insurance contributions, which is offset by the increase in personal allowances anyway.
And he opposes Labour’s public spending plans saying he’d cut further and faster than they will. Although they’ve already committed the money for ID Cards to various things he still lists it as his main example of how they’d save money in Government.
Looking at that list above, you only have one thing that would actually cost the Government less. After all, he opposes all the tax rises, so that would mean less government income.
So what, exactly, do the Tories think they can do to help the economy out of the recession?
The only thing I can think of is cut public spending to such a massive degree that it would somehow heal the economy without the need to raise taxes. Because if Cameron opposes any tax rate on earners over £19,000, which is basically what he is doing, then how can he raise any taxes whatsoever?
In which case the only future we’d have under a Tory government would be massive spending cuts, with Cameron still claiming that his ministers could deliver ‘more for less”.
Exactly how a government department could deliver more for billions upon billions less is beyond me, and, I believe, his ministers.
NB This post on the Coffee House Spectator blog post sums it up for me – he opposes tax rises whilst in opposition whilst implying (but only implying) he ‘may’ have to raise taxes himself in government.
Gove can’t have it both ways on education.
April 25, 2009
One thing that gets me about Michael Gove, is that he is essentially an uber-Blairite on education reforms, and therefore a supporter of the Government’s flagship Academy programme.
As such he has just said the academy programme has been ’successful’ in ‘driving up standards’.
Yet on the other hand, and in many cases nearly the same breath, he criticises the government for poor results, often citing statistics relating to a government target they just set in response to far surpassing their previous targets.
I’m referring to the targets the Government set to get more kids leaving high school with GCSEs. The original target was smashed by the government, so they set a new, much tougher one. Since then Gove has been criticising them for ‘failing’ it despite the fact that it’s only been in place around two years at most.
Facts show the difference Labour’s investment in the education system has made, and a measure of it’s success is the fact that the Tories are ring-fencing education spending to protect the advances Labour has made – they have had to accept our arguments and policies as the political mainstream.
In 1997 1,610 schools were failing to meet the (newish) target Ed Balls has set of schools getting 30% of children with 5 A*-C grades at GCSE. According to the Guardian article from September 2008 linked to above, there were just 638 at the time of writing.
According to a BBC article from just four months ago, now there are just 470 – a drop of nearly 1,200 in just 12 years.
This, of course, provides an interesting argument for targets, given that in three months 150 schools met the target that previously weren’t.
Of course this also ignores the fact that if these statistics are so poor to Michael Gove, what did he think of the numbers under the last Conservative government, does he think they were acceptable, and why does he think they were like this?
PMQ’s: Cameron says government schemes aren’t working – even the one we nicked from you, Dave?
April 22, 2009
At PMQs today David Cameron claimed that all the government schemes to help people through the recession aren’t working.
Problem for Cameron is that one of the schemes, the several thousand pound ‘Golden Hello’ to employers who take people on who have been out of work six months or more, is more or less stolen from the Tories.
For the record I didn’t particularly like the plan when it was a Conservative one and I don’t like it particularly now.
But I remember at the time thinking that if it didn’t work how would Cameron approach it – would he try ignore it having already claimed the government stole it? Or would he and pretend they never suggested it and criticise the government and claim it hasn’t worked?
It doesn’t take a genius to know that Cameron can do a u-turn so quickly he smacks his arse as he turns, so it was therefore no surprise to hear him criticise all government schemes today – though of course it’s too early to tell whether or not they’ve failed anyway.
Not that he cares – he’s in opposition after all!
