While Brown is lauded as ‘Chancellor of the World’, Shadow Chancellor George Osbourne is a ‘bloody fool’.

I know the Conservative’s are just playing a waiting game at the moment, waiting for the recession to really start biting the public and watch them turn on the government and to the Tories, but in the mean time the contrast between the words of praise for Gordon Brown and the assessment of George Osbourne by the head of the FSA is too delicious for words.

Of course Osbourne and the Tories have been less than complementary about the FSA in the past but you can only presume the discussion was about the current economic situation. I’d love to know what Osbourne said/suggested to Lord Turner for him to be described thusly.

The Tories can’t even copy the Government right.

Huh, turns out the rest of the world aren’t stupid. And when George Osbourne and David Cameron come out of a meeting with the Chancellor Alistair Darling, and suddenly do a U-Turn on their position over the economy and declare that state intervention is the only possible option for the government to take, the rest of the world notices this, sees it for what it is and realises the government must be planning a serious bail-out plan for our ailing banks.

Obviously they realise this means the economy is truly suffering and panic, selling lots of shares, creating more turmoil economically and shredding the value of our biggest banks in the process.

The Tories, after being chastised by Darling for offering a ‘running commentary’ have insisted they were not even partly to blame, as Ned Temko notes, but Jesus how stupid do you have to be to come out of a confidential meeting and take on what the government are secretly planning and claim it as your own plan to try look clever in front of the electorate?

Comparisons between Brown’s fiscal rules and Osbourne’s Office of Responsibility.

Although various people in the media seem quite open to George Osbourne’s idea of a quango charged with overseeing the governments debt and making statements on it (but nothing else), I honestly can’t see past it’s obvious purpose. To convince the public the Conservatives can be trusted with their money and therefore that they’re worthy of government.

Then it struck me, what - really - was the purpose of Gordon Brown’s fiscal rules? The so-called ‘Golden Rule’; don’t borrow more than 40% of GDP and so on. In all honestly, it was a political tool to convince the public he could be trusted with their money and therefore that Labour were worthy of government.

In reality Brown could twist his own rules as much as he liked and it was an irrelevance. In reality the rules were nothing more than a stick for him to beat the opposition with but ended up as a stick for him to be beaten with by everyone else.

And isn’t that what this Office of Budgetary Responsibility will end up as?

‘Budget savings’ and ‘efficiencies’ - New Conservative speak for CUTS! CUTS! CUTS!

Anyone interested in public services will have felt a chill down their spine today with George Osbourne’s announcement that any council that delivers 2.5% rises or less in Council Tax will have it frozen for those two years. He said he expected councils to find this money with ’savings’ in the budget.

As we can now see from Boris Johnson’s administration, as well as general Tory bullshit over the years, any time a Conservative mentions savings, or ‘efficiencies’ it basically means cutting public services and funding.

The reason I say this is partially because governments of either political wing aren’t stupid, and if they felt they could save money by doing something you can bet your bottom dollar they would. Think about it, in government all the departments are wrangling and arguing with the Treasury, trying to get their own pet project off the ground, which requires a chunk of Treasury cash. The pie is only so big and can only be cut so many ways.

Do you really think in a situation like this politicians would be spending their money on needless things? It just doesn’t happen. Sure, some things are brought in with the intention of being good, and turn out to be crap, and these get cut later on when this becomes clear, but in general ’savings’ aren’t just hanging round waiting to be made, they come at the expense of funding and therefore at the expense of frontline services.

For instance, in Bradford the council delivered one of the lowest council tax rises in Yorkshire, around 2.5%. However, to do this they slashed the Mayoral budget among other things, leaving the position without the funding to operate like it used to. Other cuts have been made as well in other areas as far as I’m aware. In fact, it does seem to have been happening for a while. They too seem to have referred to the cuts as ’savings’, check the first paragraph of the editorial here, which quotes the council.

One of the reasons the Tories are doing so well at the moment though, is that they’ve convinced the public they’re not like the traditional Tories of old, they’re ‘new’ and improved, with David Cameron and George Osbourne showing the public this new breed of Tories care about public services. How could a man who sums up his priorities in three letters (NHS in case you were wondering, unless you’re talking about foreign policy in which case it’s ‘Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Afghanistan’, is there anything this guy doesn’t do that Tony Blair didn’t do first, and better?) advocate cutting services?

For the answer to this I’d guess the best thing we can do is go to the testing ground of New Conservative policy and see what Boris Johnson has been doing in the months since becoming Mayor of London. In the campaign leading up to the London election Gordon Brown accused him of wanting to make cuts to the police budget after he said that he felt there were real ‘efficiencies’ to be made there. Boris Johnson stood up in the House of Commons and insisted the Prime Minister return to the House to rectify his ‘mistake’, as Boris actually wanted to do the ‘exact opposite’. Conservativehome have it on their site if you do a Google search for Boris Johnson, Point of Order.

So now the Johnson administration is bedding in (finally), what situation does the police find itself in? Well Team Boris has announced £12 million worth of cuts across the Greater London Assembly, with the police getting a below inflation rise in funding, which is in real terms a cut. And his Deputy (one the ones who hasn’t resigned or been sacked yet) Kit Malthouse has said that police numbers may have to fall, and the other Deputy Mayor Simon Milton (the power behind the throne) has said the same thing.

So let’s get this straight. Boris explicitly said, recorded on Hansard, that he wanted to do ‘the exact opposite’ of cutting the police budget, namely, increasing it and specifically getting more police officers. Yet within a year of becoming Mayor of London they’ve cut the police budget and are paving the way for cuts in the numbers of police officers, which is exactly what Gordon Brown said he’d do. People claim Brown constantly misrepresents people like Johnson when they say things like ‘I want to make efficiencies’, but Brown isn’t stupid, he knows how a Tory thinks and acts when given the chance, even if the press get taken in.

Let’s hope the public don’t get fooled as well.

Is George Osbourne stupid?

On a week that the European bank Fortis is partially nationalised by three countries, the USA passes the largest bank bailout in history (or will do later today) and Japan pumps £9 BILLION into their economy to stop it going into recession, George Osbourne has just been on BBC Breakfast News saying the problems in our own country can be summed up with one word, ‘debt’.

What planet is he on? Ireland is in recession and the USA is turning into a nationalised socialist utopia and he believes that our country is in the position it is in because of government borrowing? Does he even understand the term ‘globalisation’? If our debt, which the Tories claim is the worst in the western world, was the main reason we are skirting with recession, then why are the USA, Ireland, Spain, Japan and numerous other countries struggling, flirting with recession, nationalising banks and pumping liquidity into the economy? Osbourne seems to genuinely think people are so stupid that they don’t click on the section of BBC News saying ‘World’.

Then, when asked about hedge fund short sellers donating to the Tory party, he waffled an excuse saying they aren’t beholden to them like Labour are to the Unions. When pressed further on the issue, being told that it was surely a bit controversial that the Tories were taking donations from people who’s trading practises - short selling - had been banned, he then explained that they weren’t beholden to them like Labour are to the Unions.

What a tit.

The Tories plans for the economy - a list.

Martin Kettle has written a slightly pandering piece on the Tories and their plans for the economy.

He lists the things they’re planning on doing, many of which he admits they’ve already announced (funny how much they criticise Gordon Brown for re-announcing things when they so obviously do it themselves, far more often), but offers no critique of them.

So in the spirit of fairness I’ll take a shot myself:

The Tories are clueless on the economy.

You can always tell when Labour have done something right, because generally you don’t hear anything from the Tories. Scrolling through PoliticsHome I found a comment from Chris Grayling on the HBOS takeover, why he was speaking and not George Osbourne I don’t know - perhaps because Osbourne and Cameron are totally clueless.

Whats funny, apart from the grudging acceptance, is that they are still harping on about the US tax cuts, which have allegedly ‘energised’ the economy.

How many banks have the US government had to nationalise again? Is it 3 of the top 5? Or is it two with another one allowed to collapse? I’m losing track to be honest with you. Are house prices still plummeting in the US? Thought so. How’s the US dollar doing? Oh dear. Unemployment…ah.

The only speck of hope for the US economy has been that last quarter it had something like 0.8% growth over the quarter. Why the Tories think that people are so stupid they won’t actually know what’s going on in America in one of the biggest economic crises arguably since World War 2, I don’t know.

The other reason the Tories are missing the mark so much on the economy is that Labour already gave a big tax rebate, £2.7 billion worth. We’ve just received our first £60 rebate this month, with another £10 a month to come for the next six months. Obviously any effects on the economy have yet to be felt, but you’d expect it would only slightly help consumer spending.

In the weeks leading up to the tax rebate, the Tories had been calling for one like the US. Then when we announced one, they turned round and said it was careless borrowing. More than a few people noted this turnaround and have subsequently ignored nearly everything they’ve had to say about the economy, preferring someone who knows his arse from his elbow like Vince Cable of the Lib Dems. Thus when you read reports about the HBOS takeover on BBC news, you mainly see quotes from Alex Salmond of the SNP, and Vince Cable, with nothing from George Osbourne and David Cameron.

We’ve also seen the only action from George Osbourne this week, which is an open letter to Alistair Darling offering ‘cross-party support’ for extending the amount of protection for investors up to £50k, up from the current total of £35k. Osbourne made this suggestion around the time of Northern Rock, the fact that in all the time since thats the best he can do is testament to his uitt

In ordinary times a combination of having your opinions ignored and not respected with you not having anything of note to say on the economy would be political poison. But with the right-wing press so anti-Labour and the Tories so far ahead in the polls, they’re getting away with it.

 

Update: Ha! Vindication from any quarter is welcome. Even someone from the Telegraph has noticed how silent and pathetic the Tories have been while everyone else comes to terms with the biggest banking shocks since the 1920s. I have to admit I was surprised to read that Cameron had been calling on people to ‘defend capitalism’ in case the left wrecks the global economy in reaction to the current crisis. Maybe he has been spending too much time in one of the various ivory towers he has in his multi-million pound property portfolio, but if he hasn’t noticed, the global economy is to many people already wrecked. Idiot.

 

The Tories give a giant tax cut…to themselves

One of the most annoying aspects in the run up to the election that wasn’t, was the cack-handed manner that Labour handled the Tory announcement on Inheritance Tax.

George Osbourne announced that a Tory government would raise the threshold on IHT to £1million, so ‘only millionaires pay inheritance tax’. It proved quite popular and Labour panicked, as they were not-so-secretly planning an election.

So at the pre-budget report, the Chancellor Alistair Darling announced a rise in the threshold of IHT to roughly £700k for married couples and civil partners.

Shock as Tory makes ridiculous progressive claims to the Guardian

Less than a week after commenting on the stready stream of Tories heading over to the Guardian to proclaim themselves the true progressive arty lefty party, George Osbourne heads over for a natter about how Gordon Browns anti-poverty measures have failed so badly and why the Tories are now the true progressives.

Aside from the implication that until recently it was Labour who were the actual progressives, and that actually the Tories have been wrong for a political generation, his comment that Labour has failed on poverty is particularly weak. In the current media climate I’m sure the right-wing blogs and press will lap it up faithfully and recycle some quotes and the like.

George Osbourne - What we’d do in this economic crisis

George Osbourne has come out with what the Tories would do if they were in Government now:

“There are three things we would do.  First stop the planned increases in tax in the pipe line such as that on the low paid, small businesses and others.

How? And how would he make up the shortfall in tax flow? More borrowing? He slammed the government for doing that with the recent mini-budget tax cut.

“Second we would allow the government to grow more slowly than the economy grows and thridly we would look at long term reigning in of spending in the good years to stop the cycle of boom and bust.

Long term reigning in of spending? It would be like the government in reverse. Between 1997-2001 Labour stuck to Tory spending plans, and then spent lots of money to try save our public services from complete ruin. The Conservatives look like sticking to Labour spending plans, then cutting funding to public services, or are they going to reign in spending, lower taxes and somehow maintain historically unprecedented levels of spending on our public services?

He then said that the Cabinet’s decision to not take a pay rise this year was a ‘gesture’ and what mattered was families pay. Well of course it’s a bloody gesture, how else are you supposed to interpret it?

“Look, I am a Conservative who would like to reduce taxes.  However, if I were fortunate enough to be Chancellor after the next election I would have to deal with the broken services left over from this government.

These sorts of comments never fail to annoy me. If the services we have now are broken, what were they in 1997? What would they be without the unprecedented spending and investment? The Conservatives can’t try and make out like 100% of Labour’s investment has been wasted, in which case they would have to tacitly admit that whatever the state of the services now, they were much worse under the previous Tory government.