Guest post by Giles Wilkes

Given there is no sign at all that the Conservative’s disastrous 2010 campaign is likely to improve, this question of the economy’s performance with a minority government will continue.

A note from CitiGroup puts the case for the prosecution:

There is no consensus across the parties on fiscal policy, while Lib Dem voters disagree with the Conservatives on fiscal policy and prefer Labour’s policies on most other key political issues. Lib Dem voters would rather go into coalition with Labour than the Conservatives. We suspect that a hung parliament would only be able to implement and sustain major fiscal consolidation if boxed in by a market crisis. Gilts and sterling remain vulnerable.

The author acknowledges Nick Clegg’s recent vow ‘not to take any risk with UK plc’, and suspects that they LibDems will not cooperate unless given the Holy Grail of electoral reform in return. Which the Conservatives will never grant.

Clegg is getting annoyed:

“David Cameron and George Osborne are stoking up fears in the markets, actively trying to destabilise the pound and reduce the government’s ability to borrow. It’s like a protection racket: vote for us or our friends in the City will lay waste to your economy, your savings and your job.”

Too right. Chris Cook in the FT has a more nuanced summary of how things might pan out:

The threat of the LibDems pulling the plug on a government is overstated. The third party would, very quickly, be seen as co-culprits for the administration’s programme. So the LibDems would be stuck with them. If they then caused the fall of the government, they would be blamed for the chaos that follows … So the path of short-term naked self interest – the most powerful force in politics – would almost always be for the LibDems to back the administration.

The Lib Dems have the most to gain and the most to lose from the hung parliament situation. Their incentives are unambigiously in the direction of fiscal responsibility. No-ones goes around thinking “I can’t vote Lib Dem – they are too serious about the deficit”. A period where the LibDems hold the sensible middle of the debate: between diehard romantic deniers on the Labour benches, and blinkered trapped-in-the-1980s CutNowCutHarders on the other side, could gain them real credibility with a public worried about the difficult, um, balancing act that needs to be performed.

Republicanism, communitarianism, John Lewis, EasyCouncils, co-operatives, mutuals, the ethic of engagement, the reinvention of the firm, motivation and productivity in employee ownership and a market economy based on common ownership. Suggestive of the fact that from both the left and right a convergence will soon take place that seeks to undermine the legacy of Thatcher, or an effort from both the left and right to pretend to the electorate that they have their interests at heart? It is all rather indicative that what is fashionable in British politics today is the return to community – and the surpassing of current modes of government and market structure.

Progressive conservatism, a project by Demos and led by Max Wind-Cowie, rolls with this contingent, and like the Red tory Philip Blond, is avowedly anti-Thatcherite with regards to an embrace of greed and yuppie idolatry.

At a time when industrial plants are closing down, there are massive job losses, such as the current events in Middlesbrough with the Corus steel factory, with little that Labour can do about it – even if Peter Mandelson, First Secretary of State,Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, had acted a little sooner – and by disavowing Thatcher (whose image is synonymous with factory closures) a new generation of Tories seek to throw off their nasty party image. continue reading… »

Guest post by Richard blogger

Andrew Lansley has recently written about the main Conservative health policies. He justifies his policy to privatise parts of the NHS using the following statement about productivity:

“we can not go on seeing productivity fall in our public services, just as it rises in the private sector”

But if we look at productivity in healthcare, the NHS is actually more efficient than the private sector. continue reading… »

The editor of Conservative Home, Tim Montgomerie, is, I understand from the Financial Times, a “committed Christian”.

He is presumably familiar with the way in which the parable of the Good Samaritan warns us away from racist stereotyping, and perhaps also of the anti-racist message in the episode of the moneychangers in the temple.

He is also, according to the FT, a key influence on the thinking of the Conservative party hierarchy, his blog supposedly reflective of Conservative grassroots opinion.

In this guise, Montgomerie is now proposing that each Tory leaflet before the election should strip the content down to three key messages. Here they are:

(1) something on the economy, emphasising how Brown has failed on controlling debt, cutting waste and regulating the banks;

(2) something on crime and immigration; and

(3) something on protecting the NHS and the most vulnerable.

(My emphasis)

So Montgomerie is suggesting that around a third of the Tories’ overall ‘message-time’ should be spent conflating the issues of crime and immigration.

For him, and presumably for his readership, it is perfectly reasonable to insinuate/imply/spell out that crime is a problem because there are immigrants, and immigrants are a problem because there is crime.

In its way, this is actually much more shocking than Rod Liddle’s outrageous claims, because however revolting they are there is always the sense that it’s the desire to outrage that drives the racist message, rather than the other way round.

But Mongomerie’s casual, perhaps even unthinking racism, with its apparent willingness to victimise a whole section of an already victimised population (let’s not get into who’s an immigrant) is simply disgusting.

And this man calls himself a Christian.

This effort from John Redwood seems to contain many of the errors that arise when economic thinking is subordinated to party political motives: confusion, lack of empirical evidence, and an over-emphasis upon the importance of policy.

He says:

Borrowing is deferred taxation…
Taxpayers will have to help repay all that debt with interest in the years ahead. They know that means tax increases to do so. More borrowing can make people more negative about spending up to their current incomes.

A reasonable hypothesis – though he doesn’t provide any hard evidence that this is actually happening. But then he says:

Much of the money the government is borrowing will be lent by banks. This is money the banks will not then be able to lend to the private sector…No wonder money supply growth is weak, and no wonder the private sector finds it difficult to borrow enough at a sensible rate.

There are two problems with this claim. continue reading… »

For the third general election in a row, the run-up is seeing numerous meetings and articles asking whether this election will be the first internet general election.

However, much – in fact, nearly all – of the discussion falls into two traps which are common across political journalism in the UK. First, an undue focus on the central, national picture and, second, an undue focus on the novel.

Ask those involved in organising internet campaigning for any of the major parties about what really matters and you’ll get two answers repeated. They repeatedly – and rightly – emphasise the importance of the internet for local campaigning and they also emphasise its importance for the equivalent of plumbing and sewage systems in a political party – that mostly hidden infrastructure which is vital to effective operation. continue reading… »

Guest post by Mark Reckons

Iain Dale has a post recently entitled: “Why Don’t the LibDems Select BME Candidates in Winnable Seats?”. He makes the argument that the Conservatives have BME candidates in a number of winnable seats and estimates they will have between 11 and 16 BME MPs after the next election. He suggests there will be none on the Lib Dem benches.

In the comments, a number of people have taken him to task about his assumptions. LibCync points out that Operation Black Vote has identified 3 potentially winnable seats for the Lib Dems with BME candidates. He also points out that Nick Clegg has taken action to try and resolve this issue.

Iain has rebutted this by suggesting that privately Lib Dem friends of his have expressed concern about the lack of BME representation and that the 3 seats identified are unlikely to be won.

I don’t know if the seats cited will or will not be won by the Lib Dems but it is in the nature of the third party within our current electoral system to struggle to win seats. We have very few “safe” seats compared to the Tories who (certainly this year) will expect to have over 300 seats following the election. So comparing the raw numbers is pretty unfair. It strikes me that 16 BME candidates who have a shot at becoming an MP would be roughly 5% of the Parliamentary Conservative Party were they elected. 3 for the Lib Dems assuming we end up with roughly 60 seats again would also be 5% were they elected. Seems about the same to me and hardly a crisis situation.

But taking Iain directly up on his point about the chances of the 3 candidates OBV identified being quite low. That may be the case but it is not the Lib Dems fault that the electoral system is so stacked against it. We want to reform the electoral system to STV with multi-member constituencies. From the Electoral Reform Society, here is the second point from their website on advantages of STV:

With STV and multi-member constituencies, parties have a powerful electoral incentive to present a balanced team of candidates in order to maximise the number of higher preferences that would go to their sponsored candidates. This helps the advancement of women and ethnic-minority candidates, who are often overlooked in favour of a ’safer’ looking candidate.

This is clearly an important issue and I am glad Iain is raising it. I wonder though if he might take another look at the benefits of electoral reform (that he has often been quick to dismiss in the past) and how it could help improve the chances of BME candidates for all parties.

Sunder Katwala has also done a very detailed piece in response to both Iain and my posts here.

This post originally appeared at Mark’s blog

Ed Miliband, or at least his tweetmeister, has been asking for suggestions on what should be in Labour’s health manifesto for the coming election.

Now in principle, I’m against this sort of thing. Policy should be developed in branches, in CLPs, in unions and debated on the conference floor.

Even so, I have to admit there’s something quite attractive about being able to bung an idea into 140 characters and send it direct to someone given ministerial authority to pretend to be a minister online.

I think it’s a good way of picking up the odd good, practical idea for change that fits within the broad manifesto statement and brings it a bit more to life than it might otherwise.

So an experienced but now ex-nurse, as an ex-Director of a Primary Care Trust, as an experience developer of social enterprises, and as a Labour leader on a small council, I tweeted six quick ideas, all of which I think would make a decent positive difference to the NHS’s work, and all of which have the virtue of not costing that much.

Here they are, in unadulterated tweet form:

@EdMilibandMP #health Set up local social enterprises to conduct local needs and opportunities research with funds top-sliced from GP commissioning budget

@EdMilibandMP #health Re-democratize PCTs, especially if Adult Social Care functions are moved to the NHS, by creating real veto power in Overview & Scrutiny

#health @EdMilibandMP Reinforce valuable role of walk-in centres by secondment of A&E staff and provision of further emergency capacity.

@EdMilibandMP #health Provide seed corn funding for replication in medical wards of brilliant acute psychiatry www.starwards.org.uk/ idea

@EdMilibandMP #health Reintegrate fully the career development path for care workers/nurses so that nursing degree becomes possible for all

@EdMilibandMP #health Provide ‘guidance’ on minimum nursing staff levels in acute medical/elderly wards & ensure this is priority over all else

*

Don Paskini adds: Those are Paul’s ideas – now over to you. In 140 characters or fewer, which ideas do you think would improve the NHS (or any other area of policy) ?

Guest post by Ellie Gellard

The Labour Party has lost a true hero. Michael Foot was a parliamentarian held in the highest regard. One of the most outstanding orators this country has ever known and a man who defined the notion of principled politics. Tributes have been pouring in, from Gordon Brown, Tony Benn and a fitting tribute was made in the House of Commons by Jack Straw after a frankly embarrassing Prime Ministers Questions, the depressing nature of which was put into sharp focus by the news of Foot’s passing. But more on that in a moment.

Foot was the mind of the Labour Party. A remarkably intelligent writer who went from Fleet Street to Westminster with the same principles and values underpinning all his endeavours, values which were unashamedly, unapologetically socialist. Without a doubt Foot was a visionary politician, to some extent an idealist, but was one who admired, if not idolised, as perhaps the greatest pragmatist British Politics has ever known.

Reading Foot’s biography of Aneurin Bevan will have influenced, I hope, the rest of my life. It is for this, perhaps monumental impression on my future, that I am truly grateful to Michael Foot. His bringing to life of Bevan’s spirit, character and politics inspired a love of socialism and the Labour party that I would find, now, impossible to shake off. Foot was a master of the written word which framed the life of his idol, and now mine, beautifully. I would urge anyone with a political interest to devote a weekend to reading it, it will not disappoint.

Amongst the tributes that have poured in for Foot I have, however, noticed a worrying trend. continue reading… »

Nick Clegg and the Libdem leadership have insisted on a policy of ‘equidistance’ from both main parties; putting forward various policy demands as a price for their support in any kind of deal.

While this might seem like good politicking it actually leaves the party vulnerable to ‘love-bombing’ from both sides.

But polling shows that the Libdem leadership are dangerously out of sync with the sentiment of Liberal Democrat voters.

The latest YouGov poll illustrated how the attitudes of Labour / Libdem voters tend to have more in common than Conservative / Libdems voters.

Liberal Democrat voters tend to prefer leading Labour politicians compared to Conservative ones.
continue reading… »

Given the Tories’ continuous slide in the polls, there was an almost tangible feeling of opportunity at last night’s “Osbornomics” event.

Hosted by the New Political Economy network and Compass, debate was mainly focused on what can be expected from a Tory chancellor.

The audience and panel focused enthusiastically on how Labour can stop the Conservatives, and even what it can do differently if it wins. There was talk of a hung parliament with Vince Cable as Chancellor, even of a small Labour majority.

As members of the audience and panel became enthusiastic about a Labour resurgence, the understated but excellent Andrew Gamble had a small and important point to make: be careful what you wish for.
continue reading… »

The big news today, that the Tory lead is down to 2%, is obviously a joy to the ears of lefties. Who can actually want a massive Conservative landslide? That said, I still think this is still an election for the Tories to lose – their strength in marginal seats and the willingness of Tory voters to turn out on election day remains.

But why the continued fall? Lack of clarity, narratives that have no real resonance (’Broken Britain’, ‘We can’t go on like this!!?!‘) and a complete lack of coherent policy are obvious points to make.

And to that I’d add another point: the Conservative party has been influenced far too much by the attack-dog politics of right-wing blogs, who are intent on winning the news cycle and simply trashing their opponents. Don’t get me wrong – that’s the job of right-wing blogs. But as I said earlier, their influence on the actual voting public is minuscule.

And so every time Cameron stands up and says: We can’t go on like this, a whole group of people seem to think – that’s true, I can’t go on hearing your crap. Every time Cameron says, We can’t have 4 more years of Gordon Brown, a group of voters seem to say – oh yes we can!.

Every time Guido Fawkes puts up another picture of the PM in the hope that he attracts more ridicule – the Labour Party’s poll ratings go up.
continue reading… »

Health Tourists are the latest group to come under fire in the shooting gallery that is winning the public’s hearts before the General Election. Labour have here taken a problem (foreigners coming to the UK and stealing our j…healthcare) and turned it in to a somewhat solid policy idea.

Of course solid doesn’t mean good, and I need to make sure it’s clear no-one thinks I’m even slightly in favour of these sort of right-wing populist policies rather than allowing those desperate enough to get good healthcare using our country’s system.

As with all immigration policy it is hamstrung (thankfully) by the lack of ability to wage it against the European Economic Area (EEA).

But for the purpose of the next minute or so of your attention I am not really going to argue about immigration…this is about elections, and more specifically why this story is another example of why the Tories lead is likely to be slipping.
continue reading… »

I found myself in the unenviable position this week of actually agreeing with Nadine Dorries about something. But don’t worry, it was a short lived affair.

Now despite the fact that I appear to be one of the few lefties she hasn’t yet blocked on Twitter, I’m not renowned for holding Dorries in any high esteem (see here for example), so you can imagine my surprise when she tweeted this:

…and I found myself nodding along.

Yes she’s right, the political new media is dominated by men – in fact it’s something I’ve been intending to write about for a while now.
continue reading… »

Following previous rows about the Prime Minister’s favourite biscuits, as well as speculation over his use of anti-depressants, the state of his eye sight and his chewed fingernails, Gordon Brown has now been accused of using his breath to intimidate staff.

It all started when senior Observer columnist Andrew Rawnsley, anxious to plug his new book The End of The Party, quoted a number of staff at No.10 Downing Street accusing the Prime Minister of making their life a misery with his pongy mouth.

This ignited a political battle over whether Gordon Brown suffers from halitosis or whether this is simply a Tory conspiracy aimed at discrediting the Prime Minister as recent opinion polls indicate Labour is making up some lost ground.

According to one of Rawnsley’s sources: “the air in our Downing Street office is really unpleasant. Each time the PM opens his gob we recoil in horror. It’s like being hit in the face by a rotten onion”. “Needless to say”, the source adds, “the whole thing’s ruining our lives. We dread coming into work”.
continue reading… »

What sort of newspaper runs with headlines such as ‘We must arm ourselves for a class war’?

I mean, not even publications of the kind that get flogged outside Dalston Kingsland shopping centre of a Saturday routinely urge the comrades to break out the Kalashnikovs. That sort of juvenile ultraleftism is just embarrassing.

If you were just about to say Socialist Worker in response to my opening question, you may be surprised to learn that the correct answer is the Daily Telegraph this morning. No kid.

In fairness to economics editor Edmund Conway, I suspect the subs were getting a little carried away.

The piece at no point actively incites the bourgeoisie to stockpile automatic weaponry in anticipation of the need to gun down hordes of Jobseekers’ Allowance claimants on the rampage through the leafier parts of Richmond upon Thames.

But the article does offer an insight into what sections of the right are thinking right now.
continue reading… »

The Tory right is getting a British Tea Party movement off the ground this Saturday, aiming to build an anti-tax movement.

Its being organised by the Freedom Association, starring right wing Tory MEP Daniel Hannan.

As we will no doubt hear again and again, its a good moment for an anti-tax revolt.

After all, the 2010 British Social Attitudes survey shows public support for tax cuts and spending cuts has doubled since 1997, from 4% to 8%.
continue reading… »

An amusing activity to do while watching the Tory lead dive over the past few months is to read the comments over at ConHome. The sight of activists panicking and subjecting Cameron to angry tirades is a joy to behold.

But there seems to be very little discussion on why they’ve dropped like lead balloons. It’s not like New Labour has announced any major new policies, found a coherent narrative, got the press on side or even escaped bad news. Cameron just ain’t getting a luck break. What gives? Here’s some thoughts.

1) Bad policies.
The rollout hasn’t gone too well has it? The education policy meant that Carol Voderman was excluded from their own ideas, the crime policy lead to Chris Grayling being publicly humiliated and the ‘broken society’ narrative got punctured by a few misplaced decimal points. All in all, Cameron was doing much better when he was vague. The public either don’t like their big ideas or don’t like the incompetent way they’ve been presented.
continue reading… »

There was a good example of the open contempt which the media have for ordinary people and for democracy in the Times recently. Mourning the “profoundly depressing”, “colossal loss” of James Purnell standing down from Parliament, their leader included a spoof recruitment advert:

Wanted: a highly intelligent, experienced person to kick his heels for at least five years. Travelling to and fro from some of the most inconvenient places in the country, you will have the opportunity to work seven days a week. On Sundays you will be able to enjoy attending civic events.

We promise to select your immediate boss from among your worst enemies. In return we will pay you less than half of what you might earn elsewhere. You will have to shoulder your own expenses. We are seeking a candidate willing to endure repeated insults from customers.

This is a window into the minds of a sneering, out of touch, hard to reach elite.

Thanks to journalists and Tories for the fake concern about what a devastating blow Purnell’s departure from parliament is for the centre left, but somehow I think we will cope.
continue reading… »

There has been an ongoing “re-evaluation” of Green Party policy around scientific evidence recently. This came about mainly due to a few journalists helpfully letting us know that there was some deeply dodgy stuff in policy.

It certainly came as a shock to many of us who had not thoroughly read our voluminous policy documents.

This conference saw the first swath of re-orientating our policy on a more science friendly footing. We passed the motion on abolition of the science pledge – a policy so offensive to scientists and ‘technologists’ that it makes me wince just to think of it. Anyway, it’s gone. Hurray.

This was quickly followed by the passing of the science chapter enabling motion which means that the party has officially endorsed a review and rewrite of our entire science and technology section of the PSS, our core policy document.

That’s going to take some hard work and we’ll be looking for people both inside and outside of the party to help us with that process.
continue reading… »