Some of the “big names” of the Labour/Left Blogosphere, (Including Will Straw, Sunder Katawala, Alex Smith and Ellie Gellard) joined MPs and journalists on the left of politics in signing a letter to the Guardian on Thursday calling for further fiscal stimulus.

I disagree with them – not because I think the economy is roaring along fine, but because I believe that a widening of the short run deficit at the moment would be recieved negatively by both the markets and the media, and end up being an expensive and politically disastrous mistake, with little economic benefit.

Yet, on reading the “stimulus” letter again, I’m not sure that the letter writers are talking about a “stimulus package”, as I understand it. continue reading… »

God, politics can be a bit depressing sometimes. Someone comes along with an unusual background wanting to be an MP, and what happens? All of us in the club smirk and nudge each other and roll out a series of pathetic double entendres, her party leader has to declaim her career, and an assembled phalanx of politicians and journalists act as if they’ve never so much seen a naked ankle. Bunch of hypocrites, the lot of us.

So a woman porn director wants to be an MP? Good for her. I’m sure the voters will be much more sensible about it than the political classes.

Anyway, from her wiki entry (I suspect parliamentary computers will prevent going much beyond wiki) she seems like someone with a real belief in personal freedom and choice rather than some sorry mens mag sleazoid, like, well, the owner of the Daily Express.

Here’s what I don’t get.

When I talk to serious people in badly cut suits, they are unanimous in their opinions. “Oooh, the deficit is troubling”. They say, grimacing in fiscal sympathy. “It’s all very serious” they add, stroking their chins in deficit based peturbation. “Sacrifices must be made” all concur, gazing steely eyed towards a future of budget balances and restraint.

You know what? I agree with them.

I sit alongside, in my own badly cut suit, grimacing and chin stroking and gazing sternly at the dissolute world with the best of them. I nod along solemnly when, to quote Benedict Brogan, we hear the regular call for a “politics, not of them and us, but of “we” “.

But I have to respond, “Who exactly is this “we”?”

Because when it comes to asking people who have done very well out of prosperity and asset growth to contribute towards last and this years current economic rescue operation, I’m all for it. Go right ahead, I say.
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I have no idea why various policy people get so excited by Philip Blond. Everything he says sends my inner bullshit detector into sirens blaring overload. Even the title of his new thinktank make’s me think of Johnson from Peepshow. ResPublico/ResPublicus, anyone?

Anyway, whenever someone perfectly sensible tries to get their head arounds this stuff, they end up writing a thousand words on the complex inner contradictions and fuzzyness on specifics inherent in the “Red Tory” project, which is a polite Thinktank way of saying it’s a load of old toss.

I have a simpler version. It’s toss, with the sole interesting feature being that it is fashionable toss. Why it is fashionable is a far more interesting a question than what Philip Blond is actually saying.*

I mean read this stuff:

“A new power of association could be delivered to all citizens so that if they are indeed in an area that receives public services in a form that can be identified both by sector and by type and if area specific budgetary transparency is delivered such that each place knows what is being spent on it, then if those services are less than they should be in terms of quality, design or applicability, then there should be a new civil power of pre-emptory budgetary challenge that is given to any associative group that claims to represent those in its area”

Why is it such waffle? Because if it wasn’t, if it was clear and you knew anything about housing, you’d probably say something like, “ah, like a Tenant management organisation you mean? But hold on, arent’ they part of the state that’s destroying society a paragraph ago…” and then you’d go, “ah, this is all toss”.

Which it is. So don’t bother yourselves with it.

(BTW, If the transcript of the launch is to be believed, the one thing that can be said about red Toryism is that it is resolutely, indefatigably opposed to commas. This is not good.)

As someone once said to me – Many things that are provocative are not worth arguing with. Red Toryism is one such.

So politicshome got launched yesterday. My first visit gave me the distinct sensation of having the entire collection of Sunday papers dropped on my head. It was neither pleasant nor enjoyable.

I have nothing against the people behind politicshome, and if they think they can make money out of collecting together the outpourings of all the pontificators and savants of British political journalism, fair play to them. It might make it easier for me to be irritated by Simon Jenkins smug, self satisfied banalities.
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