As an antidote, try this from the Financial Times, which is not given to putting regular political spin on its news reports:

“The Office for Budget Responsibility, Britain’s new fiscal watchdog, has not yet been let off the leash. The institution currently operates on an interim basis under temporary leadership. But it will soon receive statutory backing for its role as the government’s independent forecaster and guardian of the public finances. Let us hope it learns how to bark.

“As the Financial Times has revealed, the OBR secretly changed its forecasting assumptions in the week before the last Budget. Among other things, the OBR decided to start assuming that the state would cut its contribution to public employees’ pensions. This is not current government policy; a review of public pensions is only beginning.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/53ec6414-8b8a-11df-ab4d-00144feab49a.html

I emailed the BBC yesterday to complain of the ridiculous prominence given to the spies-swap story in successive radio news bulletins. By the BBCR4 News At One, the report about the management upheaval about to be unleashed on the NHS was crammed in as the final and minor item in the main bulletin even though that will affect the welfare of far more people in Britain.

Was this news management on a grand scale to divert public attention from NHS issues of wide public concern to some sensational story which will have little, if any, impact on the lives of most folk?

A current lead story in my local press is this:

“The axe could fall on St Helier and Epsom Hospitals threatening a £219 million rebuild and hundreds of jobs. In a letter to staff, chief executive Samantha Jones warns the Trust must save £30million – ten per cent – of its £340 million budget. . . ”
http://www.suttonguardian.co.uk/news/8259494.Axe_could_swing_on_St_Helier_Hospital/?ref=eb

There are no prizes for guessing whether that report or the spies-swap story is likely to be of greater interest to myself and others of about the same age in the district where we live. As the Telegraph warned:

Pensioners came out as one of its biggest losers in George Osborne’s emergency Budget:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/how-budget-affect-me/7847875/Budget-2010-Pensioners-are-the-biggest-losers.html

Martin Kettle, like Nick Cohen have always been men of the right.
Read their early materials and they were in awe of Thatcher.
They are political agent provocateurs who join left wing newspapers and parties with only one aim, to say to the world “I am a leftie but the conservatives are correct on this issue”
So what is the surprise, Kettle and Cohen is enamoured by Cameron and Gove.
It’s is as surprising as England getting knocked out of the world cup.
Inevitable
Also Kettle has a love of the trappings of power, hence his sucking up to Thatcher, Blair and Cameron. He probably didn’t like Brown because he wasn’t in that particular political circus
What is truly tragic is that nearly all newspapers supported the coalition, where is the divergence of opinion.
They all sing from the centre right hymn sheet.

I think its important the Left realize that Cameron is a clever and far-sighted politician who is marginalizing his own rightwing and moving, very effectively at the moment, to claim the centre ground in British politics.

Mistaking him for a Thatcherite and using all the old tribal slogans against Thatcherism isn’t going to work this time round.

The Left needs to be aware of this and work out ways of effectively countering this. To ignore this will condemn them to irrelevance.

The central fact is – and Cameron has read this – is that the country is moving to the Left. Not the marxist left. The Old Labour left. Why is it Tory MPs who are leading the marches on Downing St to protest the education cuts?

John f
I think you make some relevant points but sorry you are wrong.
Look at the three influences on cameron.
1. Thatcher, he was an acolyte.
2. The Policy Exchange, a hot bed of neo thatcherite and neo cons.
3. Daniel Hannon, man more Thatcherite than Thatcher.

I agree he a is clever politician but honest. No

@4 Since when was Dan Hannan an influence on Cameron?

This is why I couldn’t be of the Left. I don’t have enough hate.

Of course he’s not honest. What worthwhile or effective politician in a democracy is?

He started as a Thatcherite? Most of the Nu Laborist ruling elite started as leninists and trotskyites. He still has Thatcherites around him. Tony Blair always had John Prescott at his side.

The British electorate very cleverly – and praise to them – through voting for a hung parliament – hamstrung their politicians. For 30 years we’ve had megalomaniac leaders backed by massive majorities and the Murdoch press who’ve had complete contempt for the electorate and have happily served their vested interests – mainly the bankers and Washington neo-conservatives.

Suddenly a hung parliament has reversed the situation. Now politicians are staring down the barrel of another general election – their imminent demise unless they follow the wishes of the electorate. Cameron’s aware of this. Nu Labor so far in their leadership election haven’t even dared mentioned the two great bugbears of the British electorate – foreign wars and international bankers. They’re in a dream.

While Tory MPs like Ian Liddell-Grainger in Bridgwater are holding widespread consultations with their constituents – including Labour counsellors – and are planning to march on Downing St to protest Gove’s educational cuts. Gove, along with Osbourne, is one of the few remaining Thatcherites in the Cabinet.

Recall that we are looking to additional exports to boost demand for goods and services as public spending is cut?

“Britain’s trade deficit in May reached its widest level since before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, underlining fears that the UK will not be able to export its way back to economic health.

“The UK imported £3.8bn more in goods and services in May than it exported, the largest deficit since July 2008, while the deficit in the past three months ballooned more than expected to £10.8bn, also the highest in almost two years.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9c096f3e-8b36-11df-a4b4-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=rss

Oh you do Billy, towards immigrants, liberals, unions and anyone who doesn’t share your right of centre views.
Also why do you post on a left of centre site if you cannot stand the left.
Do you like the attention.

As for Hannan and Cameron
“Since when was Dan Hannan an influence on Cameron?”Cameron’s pledge to withdraw the Conservatives from the mainstream European People’s Party (EPP) and form an alternative Eurosceptic bloc persuaded Hannan to support him in the 2005 leadership election over his right-wing ­rivals David Davis and Liam Fox.
Significant parts of Cameron’s first major speech after the recent expenses scandal, arguing for a “radical redistribution of power” as the solution to the crisis, appeared to be directly lifted from The Plan, the book Hannan co-authored with the Tory MP Douglas Carswell. Flagship proposals made by Cameron, including reducing whips’ powers by introducing elections for select committee chairs and members, and a promise to ­devolve power to the lowest possible level, were pioneered by Hannan and Carswell.”

Sunder Katwala, the general secretary of the Fabian Society, believes that the influence of Hannan on domestic policy has been greatly underestimated. He describes him as “the most influential backbench voice in the Conservative Party, despite not being at Westminster” and points out that, with the notable exception of Boris Johnson, ”
This is from a profile of Hannan.
I get the feeling he would love to implement Hannan’s ideas but fears the political backlash.

When all London hospital trusts are planning for funding cuts at the same time, amounting to £450 millions, where do the health service professionals who lose their jobs look to find other job opportunities?

“London hospitals are planning cuts of up to £450 million in a move that puts services and hundreds of jobs under threat, it was claimed today.

“New figures show five trusts in the capital are making ‘efficiency savings’ of £150million, but the figure could treble when all 35 London trusts have revealed their plans.”
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23854082-jobs-at-risk-as-london-hospitals-plan-cuts-of-up-to-pound-450million.do

>”Cameron’s pledge to withdraw the Conservatives from the mainstream European People’s Party (EPP) and form an alternative Eurosceptic bloc persuaded Hannan to support him in the 2005 leadership election over his right-wing rivals David Davis and Liam Fox.

That answers itself. It was a political manoeuvre.

Now he’s actually in power he and Merkel and Sarkozy seem to have formed an angelic choir. Even Hague is singing along (and bad-mouthing the Washington neo-cons behind his hand).

Clever stuff?

“The major shake-up of the NHS planned under the coalition government will set the health service back by at least a year and may cost £20bn, a think tank has warned. . . ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7881786/NHS-revolution-could-set-back-health-service-by-a-year-think-tank.html

nice one Septicisle.

Now we all know how to please Martin Kettle: send him a note. I’m writing mine now; Cameron’s all smoke and flippin’ mirrors mate

If, by chance, you have a friend who asks you what on earth does “hagiography” mean, you could refer him/her to the useful entry in Wikipedia – especially this bit:

“The term ‘hagiographic’ has also been used as a pejorative reference to the works of biographers and historians perceived to be uncritical or ‘reverential’ to their subject.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagiography

Or you could refer them to Martin Kettle and his piece on Cameron.

I think its important the Left realize that Cameron is a clever and far-sighted politician who is marginalizing his own rightwing and moving, very effectively at the moment, to claim the centre ground in British politics.

I agree with this, in fact.

@4 Rhys Williams: “1. Thatcher, he was an acolyte.”

Many of us would acknowledge that the USA 1930s New Deal and UK Keynesianism were good things at the time. And that we have to do things differently today. Times and circumstances change.

Thatcherism was a particularly nasty political methodology but some people, including Cameron, falsely believe that it was the correct thing to do in the 1980s. To Cameron’s credit, he has understood that a different time requires a different solution and that nuevo-Thatcherism is not right for 2010.

I never expected that I would respect Cameron. He is Flashman, the public school bully as demonstrated by his behaviour at Carlton television, and I don’t think that he is intellectual. But he is politically and socially smart. So long as he is advised by people that help him keep Flashman in the closet, I’ll look and listen.

The Germans will soon have a left-wing government anyway. Then it’ll be funny to see Cameron marginalised even more.

‘Also Kettle has a love of the trappings of power’

I agree 100% with Rhys Williams on this.

I wish we had a word for a lover of the powerful (omnipophile? imperiphile? exsusiaphile?), because like many others before him this is what Kettle is.

Give him a sniff of the powerful and he’s like a dog which sees a leg he must rub himself up against. He has to be in there.

Any political principle, or conviction can be ditched in this pursuit (note Kettle writing: ‘The old right (like the old left) can only gawp and grumble’), any odious, regressive or stupid policy can be excused because it is being executed by the powerful.

There’s a touch of the neophiliac to this too. He’s like the Blairite in the ’90s who when asked to rationalise and defend some execrable new New Labour policy replies: “Oh, so you’re against modernisation then?”

(why does Dennis MacShane jump into my head when I write that phrase?)

Cameron marginalised “even more”?

In what sense is he marginalised now?

Judging by the G20, not at all!

Ah yes, the good old centre ground in British politics – somewhere between the militaristic poor-bashing privatisers of New Labour and the privatising, support-our-boys, pride-in-our-island’s-story poor-bashers in the Coalition. Lots of room there.

Martin Kettle, like Nick Cohen have always been men of the right

Both Kettle’s parents were members of the Communist Party. His first job was at the NCCL. He then moved to New Society and eventually joined the Guardian, where he’s been for 25 years. He was against the Iraq war. Must be a Tory with a CV like that.

@ 21

Kettle, an Oxford graduate (an essential for requirement for Guardian’s columnists is that they are Oxbridge garduates) left the NCCLin 1977. He was with the Sunday Times in 1981 before joining the Guardian.

Some Tories opposed the Iraq War, the most notable being Kenneth Clarke.

He’s a personal friend of Tony Blair’s and has tied himself in knots defending him.

As for Communist parents, this is entirely irrelevant. One of Thatcher’s barmier far right advisers, Sir Alfred Sherman (he once proposed abolishing the rail network and changing the tracks into roads) was a former Communist.

Good grief, there really is a lot of reading things into this based on the fact it was intended to just mock Kettle’s OBN piece based on little more than how nice Cameron apparently is. Cameron might well be playing a blinder in marginalising his right-wing when it comes to social policy, but he’s throwing them more than enough in the shape of his economic policy to keep them happy. Blair, it should be remembered, did neither to placate his left-wing and he still succeeded in all but destroying them as any sort of force.

Kettle might well have once been a communist but he’s been a Blairite for quite some time, hence why we shouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised about his enthusiasm for Cameron. Even by the Blair standards of throwing ideology out of window though this was a policy-free paean to someone he seems to love simply because he’s such a civilised and cultured man, and so so different to that plebeian Brown.

I think that the respect and due regard for others is an ingredient that should be present in all areas of our society, politics and in the leadership. It also needs the substance to with it too however.

Who is martin kettle and why should I give a shit what he thinks?

@22: “[Kettle is] a personal friend of Tony Blair’s and has tied himself in knots defending him.”

I’m not really surprised because there are many similarities between Blair and Cameron: Blair attended Fettes College, the most expensive fee-paying school in Scotland, while Cameron went to Eton. Both went on to Oxford – Blair graduated with a second in Law, while Cameron graduated with a first in PPE.

Both have spent most of their adult lives working in politics. Both evidently nurtured personal leadership ambitions. I suppose the main divergence is that Blair was first elected to Parliament in 1983 on the basis of Labour’s infamous manifesto which would have committed an incoming Labour government to negotiating Britain’s withdrawal from the “European Common Market”, taking the commanding heights of the economy into public ownership and to unilateral nuclear disarmament. The manifesto was aptly described after the election by Gerald Kaufman MP as the longest suicide note in history.

In 1982, Blair had written a 22-page letter in which: “the 29-year-old Mr Blair tells then Labour leader Michael Foot how reading Marx had ‘irreversibly altered’ his outlook. He also praises Tony Benn, agreeing with the left-winger’s analysis that Labour’s right-wing was bankrupt.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5081798.stm

Speaking personally, I was never able to stomach Blair and that was long before I learned about his 22-Page promotional letter. I felt there was something peculiarly recidivist about someone who pranced about offering “strong leadership”. We had already had much of that in the 20th century so I’ve an acquired aversion for charismatic leaders – my instinctive preference is for the legal-rational type of leader, to apply Max Weber’s typology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber

In a different context, I came upon this account of fascism in a reference book:

“Fascist ideology also included a romantic, an antirational allure, an appeal to the emotions, to a quasi-religious longing for a mystic union of peoples and their prophetic leader. In reaction to a utilitarian liberal state, fascism revived aspirations towards a normative or ethical state. According to this view, the community existed not merely as a practical convenience but in order to fulfil the individual’s ethical and moral potential. How people perceived these themes depended on the eye of the beholder. Conservatives viewed fascism as a bulwark against Bolshevism or as a middle way between worn-out liberal capitalism and the communist horror. Radicals viewed fascism as a genuinely revolutionary ideology that would sweep away discredited ideals and institutions and replace them with a new disciplined and cohesive society.” [Oxford Companion to Politics]

That had a resonance and tied in with all the silly stuff about Blair’s Third Way. Sadly, the ascendancy and nemisis of Blairism are now the Labour Party’s baggage.

Both Kettle’s parents were members of the Communist Party. His first job was at the NCCL. He then moved to New Society and eventually joined the Guardian, where he’s been for 25 years.

Melanie Phillip’s CV is the same.She worked for new society and then the Guardian / Observer. Is she Labour.
Just because you work for a leftie newspaper and your parents were commies doesn’t mean you are from the left. Vice versa, I know a few people who were true blue tories and then worked for the telegraph. they were very left wing.

Correct Rhys. Martin Kettle is a centre-right- turd, and tedious with it. He’s been given a left-leaning readership beacuse of ‘his past’, but he doesn’t deserve it.

Henry Porter is similarly brown-tonguing this government with some gusto, just read this nauseating shite.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/11/coalition-cameron-clegg

Porter is the worst kind of middle-class liberal. He makes a great show of fighting for ‘negative’ liberty – the right not to be detained, against ID cards etc. etc. all of which, fine, I agree with, although he isn’t half sanctimonious about it. But he can’t see anything beyond that, the concerns of the working populace or the poor, he sees as an irrelevance. Hence his trumpeting on about the great liberality of a government which is simultaneously trying to restrict the “ancient and inaliebale rights” of working people to withdraw their labour. Hence his airy dismissal of concern over the massive cuts being made which will immesurably make the lives of poorer people worse. He doesn’t have to carry an ID card any more, so all is well in the world. “Humane and common sense” indeed.

Wanker.

Where did the idea come from the Martin Kettle opposed the invasion of Iraq?

Both of Kettle’s parents were in the CP and they had a dog called Pollitt. There is a very funny piece of writing somewhere from Alan Bennet about Ma Kettle defending North Korea at a meeting in Leeds in about 1950. Martin has maintained in his writing the CP-like devotion to a party-line, even when it makes no sense, while rapidly rightwards.

@15 “I think its important the Left realize that Cameron is a clever and far-sighted politician who is marginalizing his own rightwing and moving, very effectively at the moment, to claim the centre ground in British politics.”

“I agree with this, in fact.”

As G. Galloway says, New Labour and New Tories are two cheeks of the same arse

And Cameron is stepping in to claim the centre ground: what an arsehole.

I wish we had a word for a lover of the powerful

“Tory”?

“I wish we had a word for a lover of the powerful”

Blairite?