Credit where credit's due

One of the most important points made at the Tory Reform Group (TRG) conference on Saturday was the need for the Conservatives to ensure that they get the credit for the government's liberal and progressive policies. The simplistic view that has arisen, in part because the Lib Dems have promoted it, is that the work of the Conservatives to cut the deficit, reform the health service and the education and welfare systems has been tempered by the guiding hand of the Lib Dems.

This is not true. The policies being enacted by this government are mainly Conservative ones and the party currently has a moderate leader in David Cameron, who is in reality politically very close to the Orange Book group in the Lib Dems, led by Nick Clegg. The Tories need to work harder to promote this side of their work, and to ensure that the Lib Dems don't get all the credit.

As key note speaker Damian Green said:

What is absolutely clear to me is that the Conservative Party must retain its own capacity to be moderate and progressive. We must not sub-contract the need to keep the Government in the progressive space to the Liberal Democrats. It would not only be bad for the Government to think that progressive policies must come from the Liberal Democrats it would be flatly untrue.

So the role of the TRG is more important than ever under the Coalition. We need to retain a strand of thought which is recognisably moderate and reforming, but also recognisably Tory. Because we are not Liberal Democrats. We do look first to the market, to the voluntary sector, to the individual. We glory in the history of our country. 

A successful Coalition government will make real the argument... that a combination of Tory realism and progressive idealism gives us the right kind of government, the right kind of politics, and most importantly, a country we can be proud of. 

TRG One Nation Day - Keynote from Timothy Barnes on Vimeo.

Cameron's EU-Turn

Europe just never brings good news for the Tories, and many of their grass-roots members will be as unhappy as Tim Montgomerie is over on Conservative Home. Last week the government was aiming to keep the EU's budget at exactly the same level in 2011: a zero per cent increase. This week, David Cameron announced that he has 'succeeded spectacularly' by preventing a 6 per cent increase. Instead, he's got agreement from eleven states to support a 2.9 per cent increase. 

That's a definite U-turn. It's not that 2.9 per cent is good or bad (which I'll discuss later), it's just that you can't say you've 'succeeded spectacularly' when you've changed your position as obviously as he has. It's awful politics. His narrative is shot to pieces. Indeed, so obvious is this that I'm genuinely amazed that the PM has used such strong language. Because he knows that there is no group that will accept this decision. 

So Labour will attack him for his U-turn - which is an easy story to sell to the press because 2.9 is so obviously not zero let alone the 25 per cent cuts our domestic budget is facing. Which is why Yvette Cooper has pointed out that Labour made it clear at the election they would not support a rise and said that the PM was 'grandstanding' over a 'complete failure'. And Tory Euro-sceptics will complain that he abandoned them and was weak because he promised a zero per cent rise last week. So we heard Norman Tebbit saying that anything other then zero per cent was a 'Vichy-style surrender'. 

Even if it was a negotiating tactic - the EU wants 6 per cent, we want zero per cent, lets meet in the middle at 2.9 per cent - the fact that Cameron publicly went for zero per cent when 2.9 per cent was already on the table was a tactical error. Because that 2.9 per cent rise is the same 2.9 per cent rise that was agreed months ago by a larger number of EU states. And this group includes Germany and France, whose leaders carry a lot more weight in Europe than Cameron does, which makes it hard for him to claim that this is his success. Even the supposed panacea to the right, Cameron's claim that from 2012 onwards the EU's budget will be linked to the budget's of member states that are planning austerity measures, looks weak. Why 2012? Why not now? And how will that work when states have very different budgets and benefit from EU spending in different ways?

As for whether or not 2.9 per cent is a good deal, it both is and isn't. Because in so far as the EU wanted a 6 per cent rise and it does need a rise if it is to fulfil its ambitions and keep up its development then yes, 2.9 per cent is a good deal for Britain. But in so far as the fact that the ambitions the EU has and the goals it sets are totally inappropriate and lacking in democratic legitimacy from the British people, it is obviously not a good deal. 

But in reality, Cameron is in a coalition with a Liberal Democrat party that is pretty pro-European. He is not from the right-wing of his party and is, at heart, a moderniser and pragmatist. It is possible he moved from zero per cent because he had to give concessions to the Lib Dems, but it's unlikely because the Lib Dems are facing a local election nightmare and more money for the EU isn't really going to help them very much. 

Frankly I think the coalition would be happy if the EU would just keep quiet for the next five years so they won't have to deal with it. Yet if Cameron hadn't made such a simple political error in driving for a zero per cent rise he could never get then things would be looking a lot better for the PM right now. 

Ed Miliband's new generation

I'm sure everyone from wonkland to Westminster is as excited as I am about the prospect of Ed Miliband becoming a father. But when will the dynasty's next rising star actually be born? So far the bookies have Ed Miliband's partner, Justine Thornton, as 11/8 to give birth before the due date of 5 November, closely followed by 9/1 on the day itself and 4/6 afterwards.

William Hill are giving the kid a 500/1 shot of becoming a future Prime Minister. That's almost as good a chance as his father...

Hat tip Political Scrapbook.

Scabs?

Two days ago I posted about the unions inability to garner support at a national level thanks to their outdated and reactionary responses to, well, everything. Now have a look at this short video of the Fire Brigade Union (FBU) strike on Saturday at Southwark in London. 


Frankly, it's sickening. A group of angry grown men standing around chanting 'SCAB!' at firefighters who had the temerity not to strike. 

Today the FBU has again walked out of negotiations with the London Fire Brigade (LFB) and looks set to go ahead with it's 47-hour strike starting on 5 November, which is the most active period of the year for firefighters because of Guy Fawkes night. David Cameron has branded the strikes 'irresponsible' and I wouldn't be surprised if there are now increasing calls for the fire service to be classified as an essential service alongside the police and the NHS and prevented from striking. Boris Johnson's calls for new strike legislation will also get a boost. 

Yet again we're seeing unions screw up their chances by resorting to strike action which has minimal public support. Even Labour has been mute on the strikes, so poisonous are they to public opinion. 

To strike you need a really solid public argument and a great narrative. The FBU don't. The LFB want to change the focus of the fire service so that they prioritise fire prevention, rather than fire response. So they are altering the shift pattern to make workers do 12 hours during the day instead of 9. That's pretty much it: a strategic decision made by management about how the service should function. 

It's not enough to go on strike about - and certainly not at the busiest time of the year. They also managed to have an RMT union banner at the Southwark strike. Which suggests Bob Crow's widely despised militant union was out to support the firefighters. Which is illegal. And even if it wasn't illegal because no-one from the union was there in an official capacity, the RMT is so disliked by Londoners that it was, again, PR suicide. 

But they'll go on fighting a losing battle. The LFB will win because it has public and political support from across the spectrum. It's another fight poorly picked by the unions. 

PMQs - 27th October 2010

We're beginning to see a pattern at PMQs, and it's one that doesn't bode well for Ed Miliband. Aside from one joke about him asking the questions in his first outing two weeks ago, Ed has not really managed to land a powerful blow on the Tory leader. Cameron is a highly able debater, which makes it all the more difficult for Ed to land good blows. Which means that it is all the more important that Labour have a credible economic strategy to beat the Tories around the head with. While they don't, Ed will struggle. 

There wasn't really a lot of substance to this week's outing. Miliband kept pushing on housing benefit but it wasn't very clear where he was going. If he was trying to exploit potential differences between the PM and IDS, as well as others like Simon Hughes, it quickly became apparent that Cameron was going to unequivocally support the changes. And as Cameron was happy to defend it, Ed was left to make (another) attack on the cuts causing unemployment, which was easily deflected by the positive economic news from yesterday. 

The problem Miliband has is that £20,000 per year as a limit is a fair figure, it's a figure that Cameron is sticking with, and one that can be easily defended. As he said, when the government is willing to give people 20,000 per year for housing benefit no-one should go without a home. 

Cameron made excellent use of the Labour PMQs strategy document leaked to the Times today, which encouraged Ed Miliband to use 'mocking humour', develop 'cheer lines' for his backbenchers and the media headline writers, and to go for the 'big prize' of making Cameron look arrogant and patronising by asking simple, straightforward questions. It made the Labour leader look like a novice. 

Ed's best line was a quip about Nick Clegg looking glum and understanding why he's gone back on the fags, after Clegg said he'd have a stash of cigarettes as a luxury on Desert Island Discs. It was funny, but it was purely political and totally irrelevant. He really has to restrain himself from simply going after the Lib Dems when he can't score points against the Conservatives. 

As Cameron said: 'he's got a plan for PMQs but not for the economy.' Until he does he'll struggle. 

Cameron win. 

British Press: That Italian mini-skirt ban in full

It was like A-Level results day had come twice this year. The banning of mini-skirts in a small Italian town in order to improve moral decency (and according to a local dinosaur Priest, to help stop women being sexually attacked) gave the honourable British media a chance to remind us all of what we gain from our freedoms. By plastering women in miniskirts all over their pages. Here are some examples from the Mail, the BBC, the Express, the Telegraph and the Guardian.

Top marks have to go to the Telegraph for the fruitiest and most provocative picture...

Watch out Cardiff...

Len McCluskey of the Unite Union has accused Iain Duncan Smith of being unable to shake of the 'vicious Tory determination to make the poor suffer' and said that 'It is clear that the Tory nasty party has never gone away'. The PCS union was equally aggressive, taking the obvious line by calling IDS a 'Tebbit clone'.

What did IDS do to deserve this attack? He suggested that people may not be being realistic if they waited for a job to become available in their home town: 'The truth is there are jobs. They may not absolutely be in the town you are living in. They may be in a neighbouring town... We need to recognise the jobs often don't come to you. Sometimes you need to go to the jobs.' Using Merthyr Tydfil as an example, he said people had become 'static' and that they 'didn't know if they got on a bus an hour's journey they'd be in Cardiff and they could look for a job there.'

McCluskey then pulled out my personal favourite comment: 'Cant the ConDem coalition really believe that the unemployment being created by savage government cuts will be fixed by having people wandering across the country with their meagre possessions crammed into the luggage racks of buses?'

You've got to love the unions. I mean, they're great when they're defending an individual teacher falsely accused by a student or a council employee hounded out by an overbearing chief executive, but they just lose the plot when it comes to national issues. The simple PR problem they have is that people switch off when they hear rhetoric like that. No-one really believes that there will be Indian-like bus trips with bundles of luggage falling from the roof down the M4 to Cardiff, it's just not credible...

Our approach to Income Tax is all wrong

In this country, we start off with a tax free allowance, which is currently £6,475. Then we have a Basic Rate of tax, which is 20 per cent of what you earn up to the threshold of £37,400. Following that we have the Higher Rate, which is 40 per cent on earnings up to £150,000 and then the Top Rate of 50 per cent on those earning in excess of £150,000.

I'm not disputing the thresholds, in fact I think they're broadly right. What I'm disputing is the approach.

The current system is wedded to the idea that the rich must pay more tax. That's the default position. It comes from the belief that a flat rate - say 30 per cent for everyone regardless of income - would, whilst being absolutely fair in purely mathematical terms, cause the poorest in society to pay an amount that leaves them too little to live on.

I think we should make it clear that the system does not seek to penalise the rich by making the 40 per cent tax bracket the Base Rate of tax. If you earn less than the threshold then you get a discount rate of 30 per cent or 20 per cent depending on your earnings. This leaves the thresholds and amounts exactly where they are now, but makes it clear that the vindictive left wing ideology that drives extra taxation of the rich is wrong. We should all be paying 40 per cent tax, it's just that some of us can't yet afford it.

I go with the 40 per cent rate as the new Base Rate because I believe that 40 per cent is the level of taxation a responsible state should put on its population. I think the 50 per cent rate is not only unfair but counter-productive, as people are less inclined to pay it. However, it could remain as a temporary Income Levy on those earning over £150,000 if the government determined it was necessary. This measure is all about psychology and overcoming left-wing ideology. It's about saying that the country doesn't want to tax the rich more, but help the poor by taxing them less. 

CSR - 'Reform, fairness and growth'

So, 'Today is the day when the country steps back from the brink.' I do wish that Osborne wouldn't wear three-buttoned suits though, they make him look like a teenage boy forced to wear a suit to a wedding or something. Cameron and Clegg both look very statesman-like in their two-button suits, Osborne should copy them. Did like his line that the department suffering the biggest and steepest cuts is the department for debt interest. 

PMQs - Pre-Spending Review

That was a much weaker performance by Ed Miliband than his score draw last week. He started off well enough with a quip at Ken Clarke's 'squeezed middle' but Cameron easily swatted the real question that followed. On the last question Cameron was brutal, reeling out the old Labour slogans and laying into the Labour leader for his role in the Treasury while the economy tanked. Cameron also got a bit of revenge for last week's 'I'm new to this but I'm sure I ask the questions' jibe from Ed, by saying that his first two questions were not very good and then remarking 'That's a better question!' to the third.

Ed Miliband needs to pick up his media training, he keeps repeating words, saying 'because, because, because...' and 'Can I just ask him, can I just ask him, can I just ask him...' in order to overcome barracking from the Tory benches. He had a hard job today as PMQs aren't really the main event, but his performance slipped and, at the same time, Cameron's performance was much improved. Solid win for Cameron.

Alexander's non-gaffe

Most of the press this morning has run with a 'gaffe' by Danny Alexander, in which he allowed himself to be photographed reading a document which said that the government expected 490,000 jobs to be lost. Fraser Nelson has just posted an excellent account of the flawed journalism behind these headlines, pointing out that the figure was widely published earlier in the year in a report which actually concluded 1.5 million jobs would be created as a consequence of the cuts. What's more, those figures are actually right next to each other in the Alexander 'gaffe' picture. Selective headline-chasing journalism at its best...

Press or Parliament?

How do things get into the papers before they are officially announced?

Iain Dale has a post today criticising the coalition for trailing certain aspects of the Defence Review in the press before announcing it in Parliament. This plays into a broader theme in politics (which went into overdrive under Blair and Brown), which was to make big policy announcements on TV sofas and in the papers before casually dropping into the Commons to confirm it. It is something that the Tories promised to end if they got into government.

The process was repeated this evening, as certain aspects of the Spending Review, due to be announced tomorrow, have made it into the press, specifically regarding the funding of the BBC and the World Service. But what is behind this? Leaks are common in politics and are one of many ways in which politicians attempt to shape the news agenda. Iain Dale is right to suggest that this is disrespectful to Parliament as an institution, but he's wrong to make a big deal out of it.

Journalists and politicians have close relationships. They need each other. So when something huge like the Spending Review comes along all of the journalists in Westminster will be working incredibly hard to get some details first. Because they need the scoop. Because, frankly, it's no good to them when it's announced in Parliament. Once Cameron stands up to make a speech like today, I can blog what he's saying faster than the BBC or the Guardian can write copy and get it put online, let alone put it into a print edition.

So journalists are all after the exclusive - once it's in the public domain a story is useless. Which is why they will have been working every contact they have over the past few weeks to get snippets of the big announcements this week. And why it would be wrong to suggest that every leaked story is an example of a politician trying to get a journalist onside or to further their cause. Sometimes journalists can have information a politician wants them not to publish, or publish in a favourable way. It's not just a one way street...

Defence Review

Amidst all the detail of the defence review I think it's important to remind ourselves of a few key facts. The most important is that, for all those on the right claiming that these cuts are 'a joke', Britain will still have the fourth largest defence budget in the world following this review. Not only that, but spending levels will be well above the NATO baseline of 2 per cent of GDP and the cut of 8 per cent in real terms still amounts to a cash increase over the next four years. 

Is this a spending review or a defence review?

The question of whether or not this is a spending review masquerading as a defence review is a false one. You cannot conduct a defence review without taking into account what you can afford. That is obvious and unavoidable. What Labour are alleging is thus that what the defence review does is not to find an appropriate balance, but to put the spending issue first and defence second. For example this is, according to Shadow Defence Secretary Jim Murphy, what leads the government to take decisions that leave us without any aircraft for our carriers for ten years.

Is this review short-term or long-term?

The carrier decision plays into a larger debate about the nature of the review: is it short-term or long-term? Cameron was unequivocal. It was a long-term review. And because of the state of our finances, that leaves the government having to make a strategic gamble. Leaving the new carriers without aircraft and decommissioning the Ark Royal (our current carrier) immediately leaves a gap in defence. The government has obviously determined that our ability to respond to the threats the country faces over the short term - the next 5-10 years - is not likely to be reduced. 

What are the threats Britain faces?

That is because they anticipate focussing their effort and money into intelligence, diplomacy, international aid programmes, counter-terrorism and the like. These are the first four of the eight areas laid out on pp11-12 of the Strategic Defence and Security Review. They also fit in more broadly with the direction our foreign policy is taking under William Hague. His speeches have all discussed the need for Britain to remain an active player in the world, something which Cameron reiterated today. It was not surprising to see more money given to counter cyber-terrorism, given how much coverage this has had in the press recently. 

When it comes to using our armed forces, it was telling that there will be no cuts to special forces outfits like the SAS. Aside from the unaffected current levels of commitment in Afghanistan it's pretty clear that the government is planning to make the army smaller once we pull out. 

What does this mean for the future?

The government announced that the Defence Review will be conducted every five years. While this is a welcome innovation, it is partly because the government want to delay making key decisions until the next parliament. Hence the postponement of a decision on Trident (which also saves £700 million). The future is not bleak for the armed forces though. There will still be money for new projects once the economy is back on its feet, and given how shockingly wasteful the MoD has been/is it can't really be surprised that it has lost a few things. 

Check out this Canadian election video

Classic negative campaigning. Hat tip Iain Dale.

Vucinic can levitate

I can't believe I missed this. It appears that Mirko Vucinic can levitate. Here's the photo again so you can see for yourselves:

Government Spending

In the run up to the Spending Review on Wednesday the Guardian have created a spending cloud. It's well worth taking a look at:

University Fees Reform

This is getting a lot/all of the press coverage today, and rightly so. It's a major test not of the coalition itself but of the way it works when Lib Dems oppose government measures. I'm not going to get into all of the details, rather I'd like to make a few points.

The first is that the NUS is saying that fear of debt will put off the poorest students and make higher education elitist. I can see their point but, frankly, I don't think they have any evidence of this. In fact, I think the evidence points firmly in the other direction, given that fees are at their maximum levels this year and there were too few places to meet demand. If there is funding available from the government (be it a loan or whatever) people won't be deterred from university.

The second is simply that I quite like the idea. Especially because I hope students being saddled with 30k of debts will be much more likely to demand a better standard of education from their universities. At the minute, class sizes are too big and time spent in seminars too small. This needs to change.

Thirdly, people already factor in financial costs when considering which university to apply to. It's a recognised fact that living in London is more expensive, and students there have long had a larger loan to cover their costs. People still go because of what it has to offer.

Lastly, I'm in favour of those who can being able to pay upfront. This is because not to do so would be to penalise the rich with no matching benefit to the poor, and that even if there was such a benefit, funding for universities is no place for wealth redistribution.

England v Montenegro

I really hope that Mirko Vucinic manages to score against England on Tuesday. Just so he can have the chance to repeat this bizarre yet undeniably brilliant celebration from table-topping Montenegro's previous qualifier against Switzerland.

This is no time for a novice!

Now where have I heard that line before...?

Shadow Cabinet - Reaction

I think putting Alan Johnson into the Shadow Cabinet role was a pretty shrewd move by Red Ed. He's already said he broadly agrees with Darling's deficit reduction plan, which chimes with Ed's position. Furthermore, it keeps Ed Balls away from the job, and ensures that Balls doesn't become some Gordon Brown figure circa 2000, formulating his own economic policy independently of the leader. Given how off piste Balls' message on the deficit is that's an own goal avoided for Labour.

Yet this is by no means a great shadow cabinet, and it certainly doesn't chime with Ed's call to a 'new generation' given the prominence of Balls, Cooper, Johnson, and Harman, as well as other former ministers like Hain, Burnham, Flint and Benn.

I doubt the Tories will be unduly worried with this cabinet. They already know how difficult what they are trying to do is and they have just had a pretty successful conference period. They'll be more focussed on getting the Spending Review announcements sorted for later this month. That said, Theresa May will probably be a little concerned at facing off against Ed Balls, given his reputation. I can't wait to see Caroline Flint square off against Eric Pickles. That will definitely be entertaining!

Osborne's letter to MPs explaining Child Benefit cuts

Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010

Subject: IMPORTANT - Dear Colleague from the Chancellor of the Exchequer

Dear Colleague,

I wanted to take this opportunity to give you some more information about the two announcements on welfare spending that I made in my conference speech.

We all know that the unprecedented scale of the mess that Labour left behind means this Government will have to take some very tough decisions about public spending. The Conservative Party has been here before and we have always risen to the challenge of rebuilding our public finances.

But in order to sustain public support for the difficult choices ahead I believe that we must show people that our approach is not only tough but is also fair. That means showing that those at the higher end of the income scale are also affected by the measures we take.

The first announcement I made yesterday was that from 2013 we will withdraw child benefit from around 1.2 million households containing a higher rate taxpayer, saving around £1 billion a year. The other 85 per cent of families, 6.6 million in total, will continue to receive child benefit as they do today.

As I said in my speech, I understand that most higher-rate taxpayers are not the super-rich, but at a time like this it is very difficult to justify taxing people on lower incomes to pay £1 billion in benefits to households that contain higher rate taxpayers.

To put this saving in context, in the Budget I made £11 billion of savings from other parts of the welfare system, many of which affected people on lower incomes.

I know some have pointed out that this approach will leave households that do not contain a higher rate taxpayer, but whose joint income is above the higher rate threshold, still in receipt of child benefit. The only way to assess these joint income families would be to create a new complex, costly and intrusive means test that would spread right up the income distribution.

Effectively that would mean abolishing child benefit, which is one of the simplest and cheapest benefits to administer, and bringing every family in the country into a new tax credits system, with families having to provide details of their household income every year. Colleagues will be all too familiar with the drawbacks of Gordon Brown’s tax credits system and I do not believe that would be the right approach.

It is also important to note that we are not introducing a new principle to the tax and benefit system; at the moment a single earner on £50,000 pays higher rate tax while a two-earner couple earning £40,000 each do not.

And as David Cameron pointed out this morning, we should not see this policy in isolation. Other policies contained in the Coalition Agreement will help families, including our commitment to introduce transferable allowances for married couples.

Crucially, I do not believe that fairness is only defined across the income distribution. As I said in my speech, if the welfare state is going to regain the trust of the British people, it needs to reflect the British sense of fair play.

That is why I have also announced that for the first time we will introduce from 2013 a limit on the total amount of benefits any one family can receive, saving hundreds of millions of pounds.

The limit will be set according to this very simple principle: unless they have disabilities to cope with and therefore receive Disability Living Allowance, no family should get more from living on benefits than the average family gets from going out to work. By 2013 this is expected to be around £500 a week.

I believe that this measure will have strong support from the British people, and together with our transformative proposals for a new Universal Credit, it will help to ensure that work always pays.

I know that both these measures are tough, but they are also fair, and I believe that the public will perceive them as such. Our opponents pretend that difficult decisions can be avoided, but they are consigning themselves to the margins of British politics. This is a battle between the vested interests and the national interest. The Conservative Party has always been on the right side of that divide.

Please feel free to contact me or my PPS Greg Hands if you would like to discuss any of these issues further.

Yours ever,

George