'Progressive' argument obscures real threat from inflation

We are four days into 2011 and already I've heard the words 'progressive' and 'regressive' so many times my head is spinning and I'm starting to feel nauseous. Sadly, I can see this being a trend that continues throughout 2011 as Labour seeks to label everything the Coalition does as 'regressive'. 

What's even more upsetting is that the real issue here is being missed. Retailers are going to put up prices by as much as 5% or even 8%. This isn't to make profit, it's to readjust their costs to factor in inflation. These price rises were coming VAT rise or no VAT rise. 

So the real story here is not the tired old tale about the profligate Labour Government and the austere Coalition reducing its deficit, but about the huge risk the UK faces in 2011 from inflation which some economists at the Bank of England fear could see the CPI top 4%. 

4%! And that's just the CPI. The RPI was already at 4.7% in November. So despite recent support for their economic measures from a group of leading economists - who believe that the UK is in for a slow period of growth in 2011 rather than a double-dip recession - the threat of inflation still looms large. It is the most pressing economic problem facing the country, and the Government must start concentrating on finding some way to reduce inflation. 

p.s. If you want to look at whether the VAT rise is progressive or regressive then look no further than this well-researched article by the BBC's Business Reporter Laurence Knight.

The Telegraph's Cable Cables

The Telegraph's sting this week has upset Vince Cable. Speaking to his favourite local paper, the Richmond and Twickenham Times, Cable claimed that the sting had caused 'great damage' to the relationship between MPs and constituents. 

This response is really pathetic. First, he's trying to deflect attention away from what he has said and onto the means which the journalists used to obtain it. Secondly, there will be no damage to the relationship between MPs and their constituents. To realise this you only have to look at what has been published: it's all headline stuff about national politics. The Telegraph went looking for concrete evidence that senior Lib Dem MPs were proclaiming their loyalty in public and were then openly critical behind closed doors. They found it, not because they were duplicitous, but because some Lib Dems ARE saying one thing in public and another in private. 

The only 'great damage' done is to an MP's ability to fob off constituents by saying that really he opposes everything nasty that his Government has done but that he had to do it or he'd get sacked. 

And really there is very little in these tapes that should surprise anyone. 

Jeremy Browne called the Conservative's EU allies 'quite nutty' and 'an embarrassment'. Well, they sort of are aren't they? Cameron's decision to ditch the mainstream right-of-centre EU block in favour of the smaller ECR group, which includes some pretty controversial individuals, has surely been one of the strangest decisions he's made as Tory leader. It's hardly surprising that the Lib Dem's leading foreign policy man should be critical. 

He also said that the Lib Dems were a softening influence on the Tories' Europe policy, and that the EU was relieved that they were tempering the anti-EU side of the Conservatives. Again, this is hardly news. It's very obvious to anyone who looks at the UK's foreign policy for more than five seconds. The same applies to the comments he made which claimed that the Tories' immigration policy was driven by 'uncharitable' instincts. This is pretty much what the Lib Dems and Labour said about the Tories before the election. 

Other things we already knew include:

Paul Burstow saying that he didn't want voters to start trusting David Cameron, and that Cameron hasn't suddenly become a 'cuddly Liberal'.

David Heath claiming that George Osborne 'gets up your nose' and that he didn't understand what it was like to be poor. (I'd never heard this argument before.)

Vince Cable bragging that he thought he was important enough to bring down the coalition with his 'nuclear option' of resigning.

Michael Moore saying that he didn't like the plans to scrap Child Benefits to some families and that he doesn't like Liam Fox. 

Norman Baker saying that there were some Tories he liked and some he didn't, the former including Ken Clarke and the latter category including George Osborne. 

Ed Davey claiming that changes to Housing Benefit could be problematic.

Steve Webb stating that the Lib Dems needed to assert their identity more within the coalition. (Shocking.)

and Andrew Sturnell claiming that he didn't know if Cameron was 'sincere', and saying he was a 'very skilled' political operator. 

The only seriously interesting revelation was of just how idiotic Cable could be. Not just in his naive claim that he could bring down the Government but also by saying that he was trying to 'wage war' against Murdoch, and that in doing so he might actually seek to bring his office into disrepute by not being objective. Now it's pretty common for left-wingers to dislike Murdoch, but to risk your professional career in order to prevent a takeover takes things to another level. 

It's also such a cliché that these middle-aged politicians were stung by two younger female journalists (Holly Watt and Laura Roberts - above L and R). I'd love for it to have been a coincidence, but given that the two journalists' investigative strategy basically consisted of giggling, I'm pretty confident that it was not. 

As a final point, it was very revealing to see the Telegraph shamefully fail to report Cable's comments about Murdoch. The Telegraph stands to gain from any curbs on Murdoch's empire and so didn't report what Cable said. Instead, some brave journalist leaked it to Robert Peston at the BBC and it was left to that organisation - one which, like the Telegraph, competes against Murdoch - to tell the truth. The BBC is to be highly commended for its reporting and the Telegraph should be ashamed. 

Wilful provocation or political naivety? Both.

Two comments have caused much consternation this weekend. The first was from Enterprise Tsar Lord Young on Thursday evening, and led to his resignation on Friday afternoon. The second was from Vince Cable on Sunday morning. Both showed a combination of political naivety and wilful provocation.

It has been pointed out by many (see here and here for starters) that Lord Young's comments that people have 'never had it so good' during this 'so-called recession' contained an element of truth. Low interest rates are good news if you've got a mortgage and still have your job. But that doesn't mean he was right to say it.

Lord Young was probably fed up with generalised comments about the recession and how it was affecting people. So he sought to tell it as he saw it. But in doing so he made a sweeping, generalised comment of his own which undermined the government's narrative that its deficit reduction plan - and the job losses that will accompany it - is the only responsible way to deal with the effects of the recession. They also play in to people's ill-founded yet genuine concerns that the Tory party is the party of the rich, and that it doesn't care - or won't even notice - if they suffer. Any comment that undermines the government, however economically accurate it may be, is a foolish comment to make. It is right that he has resigned.

Vince Cable has also made comments that are totally accurate and completely foolish. Speaking to the BBC's Politics Show, he said that, on tuition fees, the Lib Dems 'didn't break a promise. We made a commitment in our manifesto, we didn't win the election. We then entered into a coalition agreement, and it's the coalition agreement that's binding upon us and which I'm trying to honour.' Spot on; but what on earth is he thinking?

The Lib Dems need the debate about tuition fees to go away. As quickly as possible. It is turning voters against them. So why would one of the most senior Lib Dems come out and deliberately provoke their (very noisy) opponents on this issue? Last week the CCHQ building was trashed by part of a 50,000 strong demonstration against this legislation. All he's done is start another round of media interest in the subject. NUS President Aaron Porter is back on the airwaves, calling the comments 'insulting'. Cable gains nothing from this. Neither does his party - in fact it just highlights the same 'broken promises' that Clegg talked about (see below) before the election. Sometimes, even if you know you're right about something, you should just bite your tongue and shut up about it. 

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...

BBC Labour Election Video

Compelling...

Press Perspective

Headlines are great, aren't they. One can make you feel good and another can make you feel crap. Even when they are about the same thing. Today we had new data out from the Office of National Statistics about unemployment, which was given very different treatment by the BBC and the Guardian:

Afghan democracy

Just had an excellent example on the BBC 6 o'clock news of why we have to include the Taliban in any political settlement. Covering the Afghan election, Ian Pannell states that the MP he's following needs a security guard in order to go out and talk to the voters. Apparently it's worth it though - the tribal elder can guarantee the vote of every adult in the village. That's what Afghan democracy is. And there is no reason why the Taliban can't be part of it. 

Labour's Legacy

The BBC's main headline today is that the coalition's spending cuts will 'hit the north harder'. I'm sure that comes as a big shock to all of us, especially if taken in conjunction with the Daily Mail's story from yesterday discussing figures that suggest 24 per cent of north eastern households have no inhabitants in work.

The overall UK figure is that there are 3.9 million households where no adult works. In these households there are 5.4 million adults and 1.9 million children. This has led to fears that there are children being brought up knowing nothing other than benefits.

Their reliance on the state will obviously mean that northern areas will suffer the initial brunt of cuts. The problem for the coalition is that while it is rightly seeking to review benefits and to force those wrongly on incapacity benefit back to work there are not enough jobs in these areas to accommodate the current unemployed, let alone the newly unemployed.

Predictably, the Labour party and the unions are condemning the cuts as unfair and ideologically driven. They say that the government is risking the recovery and hitting the poorest hardest. Each attack of this nature is frankly an admission that Labour failed to help the poorest in society, and that it failed to build an economy that would protect the most vulnerable people in the most at risk areas of the country.

It's not that I dislike Labour - indeed it has much to commend it - it's just that they had 13 years of government to make an impact on this. 13 years to make the north and other areas less reliant on the state for jobs and to make people less reliant on the state for welfare. They failed to do that. It was a mistake that was compounded by their economic policies, which were based on faulty underlying assumptions about the cyclical nature of growth and led them to borrow and spend too much money. For them to now sit in opposition and bleat about cuts is not credible. It's too easy in opposition just to be opportunistic, and their party is becoming ever more so as it seeks to redefine itself. I just hope they stop when they eventually elect a new leader.

One person, one vote?

I guess it's up to the Labour Party to decide exactly how it runs its leadership election, but its strange voting system is getting a bit of flack in the papers today.

It seems as though many individuals have more than one vote for leader. This is possible because the vote is split between unions and socialist societies, who have 1/3 of the vote, MPs and MEPs, who have another 1/3, and party members, who have the final 1/3.

So if you are a party member, who's in a union and also a socialist society, then you've got 3 votes. According to the BBC, some people have as many as seven votes.

When Mandelson and the other modernisers got rid of the union block vote back in 1993 they did it under the banner of 'one member one vote', or its catchy acronym, OMOV. I'm not sure that this was what they intended.

I understand the system, but I worry that it looks corrupt. Perception is everything in politics. That people can vote more than once in the same election will give the public the impression that the result isn't even a fair reflection of the views of the Labour Party. It would be much better if they simply divided the vote up between MPs and MEPs on the one hand and party members on the other. If they are desperate to keep the unions, then give the leaders of the major ones votes equivalent to those of MPs and MEPs.

Labour 'leadership' contest

Viewers were offered the choice last night between the future and the past. Not by any of the 'leadership' candidates, but by BBC and Channel 4, who respectively ran Marr's interview of Blair and a 5-way debate, at 7pm. It was a bit of a false choice to be honest, as you can happily watch and re-watch them both on the internet.

I did a poll (which you can find here) and the results are opposite. I am shocked that it thinks I agree with Balls so much. Going to go upstairs now and take a long hard look at myself in the mirror. Hopefully it won't break...

More seriously (not that the campaign is particularly serious) I thought that David Miliband was the star performer last night. His body language was better, and he has a natural authority when he talks. His policies are also much saner. He also didn't bicker as much as the others, which was a pretty lame sight - I know they have to get their points across but if they all talk at once they all look petty.

I felt sorry for Andy Burnham though, because he was side on to the camera, which did him a great disservice. I don't know how the seating arrangement was decided, but it favoured Balls and the Milibands, as they were face on to the camera.