Oldham East and Saddleworth tells us nothing new

As exciting as by-elections are, this one didn’t really tell us anything new. Labour has been steadily climbing in the polls from around 30% at the election to around 42% now, and it was always likely that they would perform better than they did in May. That the big 17% leads suggested by opinion polls before the election never materialised was expected, but a win of 10% was exactly the kind of result that Ed Miliband needed in order to calm his Party’s nerves.

Senior figures like Miliband and Yvette Cooper have stressed that while it gives Labour some momentum, the Party has a long way to go before it is in a position to win a general election. They are right to be cautious. The polls suggest that Miliband is not regarded as a great prospect and while people are now less certain that the coalition’s economic policies are the right ones, they still don’t believe Labour would be any better.

It’s also important to note that despite Labour’s claims to the contrary, this wasn’t necessarily a vote against the coalition’s economic agenda: if you add the Conservative and Lib Dem vote share it comes to 44.7%, which is more than Labour’s 42.1%.

The Lib Dems actually gained a larger share of the vote than in May: up from 31.6% to 31.9%. This was probably because of tactical voting by some Conservatives, but their effective and determined local campaign does show that the Party is still alive. Clegg will be relatively satisfied that his Party avoided a bigger defeat, and while he’ll be afraid that May’s local elections will be unpleasant, he’ll also argue that national poll ratings that have them around 10% are likely to mean nothing at the next election.

The Conservative high command will be satisfied. They decided a long time ago that this by-election was not one that they could win and that it served the long-term health of the coalition better if the Lib Dems came through unscathed. They’ve achieved this aim. Their only worry will be that their weak campaign in Oldham will simply encourage those backbenchers who are concerned that the coalition panders to the Liberal Democrats. Baroness Warsi has, perhaps unwisely, told them to shut up and stop whining, but there is little chance of that happening.

Poll overload before by-election

A new ComRes poll has given Labour an 8% lead over the Conservatives, and is sure to dominate the early news tomorrow. While it needs to be taken with a pinch of salt it does reflect a general shift in the headline polls towards Labour. The Tories have been around 40% or so for a few months now (see UKPR average taken on 6th Jan - right) and they’ve just started to drop away in a few polls but given the margin of error this can’t yet be seen as a definite trend. Labour, on the other hand, has climbed steadily, from their 30% figure back in June to around 40% now.

Yet I think there needs to be a note of caution in the way Labour reacts to these figures. Most polls over the past month have had Labour and the Conservatives essentially level pegging around 40%, with Labour maybe slightly in front. Their figure of 42% fits the trend, but as yet the drop in Tory support to 34% does not. This is especially true because recent polling has indicated that Cameron is still widely regarded as a better PM than Ed Miliband, and that the Tories are trusted more on the economy.

It’s also dangerous for Labour to get its hopes up too much before the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election. I believe polls suggesting that Labour has a 17% lead over the Liberal Democrats will prove to be inaccurate. Labour will win, but it won’t be by that margin. And don’t forget: these figures all suggest Labour should win handsomely, and expectations have increased to match. Ed Miliband will now be in real danger of losing what little confidence his backbenchers have in him if he fails to pull off a convincing victory.

Marginalising the Lib Dems

There has been a definite change in tone since Ed Miliband brought Bob Roberts (L) and Tom Baldwin (R) onto his staff. One of the most visible changes has been the decision to switch from using the word 'coalition' and replace it with the new phrase 'Tory-led government'. This is designed to shift the focus from the coalition's 'alliance in the national interest' and onto the fact that this Government has a Tory majority and that they are responsible for its policies.

Ironically, this is also the new policy of many Tory backbenchers. As I have mentioned before, they are concerned that any popular policy the coalition proposes is credited to the Lib Dems, in order to improve their image, prop up their poll ratings and in turn reinforce the coalition. So it seems that despite the dawning of an age of 'new politics' and coalition, our democracy is still based on two main parties looking to marginalise the Liberal Democrats. How reassuring. 

2011 is full of opportunity for Ed Miliband

The Ipsos MORI poll that claims Ed Miliband is the least popular Leader of the Opposition since Iain Duncan Smith is not great news for the Labour leader, but it's hardly terminal either.

What the graph (right) shows is that recent party leaders - with the exception of Tony Blair - have all faced difficult periods in the polls. I think Miliband will feel that he has a chance to reform his party in the same way that Cameron has changed the Conservative Party during his leadership. Miliband should be confident that he will follow Cameron's trajectory, and see Labour into the next election in 2015 with a reinvigorated Labour Party behind him.

He'll also - if he actually believes in his key economic message about cuts and it isn't just political expediency - be certain that come 2015 he'll be facing a Conservative Party in government as unpopular as the Labour Party under Gordon Brown. So I don't think Miliband will be too unhappy with these figures. He will be wary, however, of falling below -20, because when that happened to IDS, Hague and Howard they never recovered.

He will also be buoyed by the figures that show 53% of Labour members are satisfied with his leadership. He should be confident of converting some of the 25% of Labour members who 'don't know' (how you can have no opinion is beyond me) into 'satisfied' supporters of his leadership over the coming year.

The overall figures, which show that opinion is split on his leadership, are an opportunity for Miliband rather than a death knell. Electoral politics is all about convincing people that you're right and he still has the time to do it.

Yet if I was Ed Miliband I would still have some serious concerns. I'd be less worried about how I appeared to the country, and more concerned how I appeared to my backbenchers and shadow cabinet colleagues. I'd also be afraid that the absence of concrete Labour policies in many areas would blunt my political attacks. So, in the spirit of Christmas, in anticipation of an exciting 2011 and in the hope that the opposition will force the government to raise its game, here are five suggestions to get Miliband's leadership moving in the right direction:

1. Ed Miliband must improve his PMQs performances in the New Year. Whatever he is doing now isn't working. If he does this he will begin to convince his backbenchers that he can actually compete nationally with David Cameron.

2. He needs to bring Balls and Cooper closer to his leadership, because at the moment they are not in his inner circle and are just itching to prove themselves better potential leaders. Plus they are in portfolios where, frankly, their talents are completely wasted. One of them at least has to replace Johnson in the shadow Treasury role if they ever want to get close to Osborne.

3. Stop picking on the Liberal Democrats. He claims to want to woo disaffected Lib Dems but he always goes for the easy line in the media or at PMQs and picks on them for some perceived 'U-turn'. Miliband should never forget that the coalition has a Conservative majority, and that they must be his primary target.

4. Choose a few policy areas and ruthlessly demonstrate to the public how the government has taken the wrong options. Eric Pickles' reforms to local government are the most radical changes to the structure of government in the UK in years, and the government has no idea how its localism agenda will turn out. The restructuring of the NHS is potentially disastrous and the changes to education are being very poorly executed. Lansley and Gove should be easy targets for their Labour shadow ministers.

5. Get real distance from the unions. If they are actually serious when they talk of huge coordinated strike action in 2011 then it would be toxic for the Labour leader to get too close. Cameron will be looking to paint Ed Miliband as a union man helping undermine the economic recovery with reckless strikes. He must avoid this. 

Coalition tensions will still be there in 2015

John Redwood has used a blog post today to highlight a problem that I've mentioned before: that the Conservatives are allowing the Lib Dems to portray all the positive coalition actions as stemming from their influence. Redwood calls this trend a 'new narrative' and, claiming that the notion that the Lib Dems have come into Government to 'bridle the instincts of Conservatives' is wrong, and he goes on to list policies - like the pupil premium - that should be credited to the Tories.

The problem is that the Lib Dems are struggling in the polls. To counter this they are trying to get credit for policies that will get good press, and the Conservatives are letting them do it. It is a good policy for the Lib Dems, because it's a narrative that is easily understood by the public. The Conservatives probably think that it's a short-term piece of political expediency for the sake of the coalition, but it could have dangerous long-term repercussions for the Tories.

Come 2015 the Conservatives will have problems if the Lib Dems can claim that every good bit of legislation was down to their influence, holding the nasty Tories at bay. But while this issue is easy to identify, it is much more difficult to resolve. The coalition will come under stress in 2011. And 2012. And 2013, 2014 and 2015. It will prove very tempting at a number of points throughout the life this Parliament to allow the Lib Dems to claim that they are a moderating influence on tough Tory policies so that they can try and improve their poll ratings. There is no period when things will get easy for this Government. 

But Conservatives do not need to be that worried. The deficit reduction plan is their idea and, if it works, they should be able to make it clear at an election that Britain's prosperity is down to them. This should count for more with the electorate than the Lib Dems' suggestion that some social policies are a little different because of their influence. 

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. 

Problems with the Browne Review are a missed opportunity for the Lib Dems.

I have written before about the Browne Review and the coming changes to the way universities are funded, making it pretty clear that the deal was actually better for students than the one they get now. But two areas I didn't touch have been troubling me. First, I didn't look at the principle of whether students should have their university education funded. Secondly, there is one area on which Browne's reforms are very weak and the Lib Dems are fools for not noticing it.

Britain's current problems have arisen from a noble goal: to make university accessible to all. A consequence of this has been that the number of people going to university has increased. A lot. This may have been great for social mobility (debatable) but it was awful for the government's finances. There are now more people going to university than the state can afford. On the surface - and I think that this is where people are looking - this looks unfair. Before the expansion of HE students, who were rarely from poor backgrounds, got free higher education. Now university is open to all it suddenly isn't free.

The simple fact is that students never deserved state help. There is no reason why taxpayers should fund students. Why should the poor fund your university experience? Or rather, why shouldn't you pay for it yourself? You get a hell of a lot out of it - all the statistics suggest that graduates earn more than non-graduates. So why should non-graduates subsidise your education so you can earn more money?

They shouldn't. You should pay for your own studies.

My second point is this: there is a big problem with these reforms, but it's not with the top-up fees. That £9,000 figure has distorted the debate. Everyone is focussed on it. But the reason why £9,000 isn't a problem is because the government pays it for you up front, and you pay back when you're earning. If you do the sums, you'll see that someone paying back their loan earning £25,000 a year at the 9% rate on income over £21,000 will have to find just £360 per year. It's not the thing that makes university unaffordable.

The killer is what you have to pay UP FRONT when you're there. That is supposed to be covered by a maintenance grant and a means-tested allowance. But there is a real argument to say that the sums offered are not enough. For those with a household income less than £25,000 there will be a grant of £3,250. This is supplemented by a loan, which is to increase to an unspecified amount probably dictated by inflation and likely to be a little higher (for those with a household income of less than £25,000) than the current maximum of £3,497.

That's a little more than £6,747 a year. You can easily spend well over £4,000 on rent alone, particularly in London, leaving you with less than £3,000 to spend on food and clothes and heating all year. It's not enough. Most people will manage it because their parents will help them, which completely defeats the point. It's important to note that this isn't a new problem, it was part of Labour's initial reforms too: Browne's review just hasn't rectified it.

So students have focussed on the wrong thing. They've got caught up in an unwinnable debate over the £9,000 level and rejecting the bill outright, and have missed a real chance to make university more accessible to all. By lobbying hard students could have pressurised the government into increasing the maintenance grant and maintenance allowance.

An amendment of this sort would have been politically acceptable, in a way that rejecting the bill never could be. Not only would this have been a great benefit for students, it also would have been great for the Lib Dems, who are crying out for something positive to mask the bitter taste of this bill. I hope they realise it before it's too late.

As a footnote, I've read with some amusement that students at my former university UCL have been occupying a room (or something) in protest at the tuition fee increases which will be voted on in the Commons on Thursday. Some of the brave souls have come up with this song to mark the occasion. Favourite lines include (and I apologise in advance for the swearing, but it is, apparently, how you show solidarity, or make a valid political point, or something):

"We're all in this together as the proletariat." Sung while wearing a cricket jumper.
"The proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains, working men of all countries unite." Impressed they got a melody out of this line. 
"Fucking Tories." So edgy. 
"Theresa May is a whore", which seemed a bit excessive to me. 

Anyway, decide for yourself if you think people on the lowest incomes should subsidise this lot:

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. 

PMQs - 10th November 2010

Following the disunity displayed by the PLP on Monday this could have been a very difficult outing for Harriet Harman but her relentless focus on tuition fees left Nick Clegg struggling.

Harman's prepared jokes were excellent and she was on the front foot throughout. She began with a simple question to Clegg, asking if he could update the House on how his plans to abolish tuition fees were going. This brought howls of laughter from the Labour benches. Nick fought back with those tired lines about the deficit and the legacy of the previous government.

She pushed again with a Clegg quote from the election campaign in which he called the prospect of £7,000 fees a 'disaster'. Clegg started to warm up and retorted that the system was fairer than anything under Labour and that it would help part-time students 'shamefully treated' by the opposition.

Labour's Deputy Leader then landed the best line of the exchange about Clegg meeting some 'dodgy bloke' at freshers' week and doing something he'd regret. The backbenches on both sides were laughing now - even William Hague couldn't hide his smirk (see above).

Clegg hit back by arguing that Labour was far from the party of students, pointing out that Labour had introduced tuition fees after opposing them in 1997 and introduced top-up fees after opposing them in 2001. They also set up the Browne Review and now disown its findings. He then asked Harman if she'd be going outside to explain to demonstrating students what her party's policy was.

Then Harman got to the real meat of the debate, and hammered home what should be a central part of their attacks on the coalition. Fee increases for students are not to increase funding for universities, but to cover the money that the government is cutting from universities. 'What is the cut to the university teaching grant?' she demanded.

Nick lost his bearings. He'd been defensive but generally assured until this point but here he started mumbling about the Labour party's plans to make massive cuts, which he couldn't be specific about because Labour don't even know what they are.

Harman came straight back at him, asking if he'd been taking lessons from the PM on how not to answer questions. She said the cuts to the university teaching grant were a 'staggering 80 per cent' and that the government had 'pulled the plug' on university funding. By now Clegg's responses were incoherent, as he said something generic about being progressive and fair.

Labour's Deputy Leader finished by mocking the Lib Dems' pre-election pledges. Clegg then tried to cram in a joke about the PLP's Mutiny Monday, but it was way too late and totally off topic. He looked completely lost, complaining that before the election he didn't know how bad things would be in government after Labour.

It was a big surprise to see Clegg so weak in debate, given that it's supposed to be one of his strong points. He didn't really land a single attack on Labour, and his Mutiny Monday joke was deployed out of desperation. Harman, on the other hand, was assured and relentless in her attack on the Lib Dems leader. In truth she has an easier time attacking the Lib Dems than Miliband has with Cameron, because they are so vulnerable on the compromises the are making. Even so, she defeated Clegg with some panache yesterday, matching excellent prepared jokes and quotes with points of real substance.

Solid Harman win. 

Tory ambitions in Oldham East by-election

Obviously we won't know until Monday if there will be a by-election in Oldham East and Saddleworth, but it seems as if the Tories fancy their chances and are already looking to steal the seat away from both Labour and the Lib Dems. 

Baroness Warsi - whose job title appears to be Party Chairman with special responsibility for relentlessly attacking the opposition - has come out and said that the Conservatives will field a candidate and will not stand aside for the Lib Dems. 

The Lib Dem candidate who brought the action against Labour's Phil Woolas, Elwyn Watkins, lost by only 103 votes. The Conservative Party candidate, Kashif Ali, was a further 2310 votes back. See the table below:

So do the Tories really have a shot at winning this seat?

First impressions would be yes, because in May this election was a three horse race, and it is conceivable that if Ali stands again and runs a good campaign he could take 1000 votes from Watkins and 1000 from Labour and win. 

But on closer inspection there is much for the Tories to be wary of here. The swing towards the Conservative candidate was a huge +8.7 per cent at the last election. He would have to not only maintain this but improve on it to win.

Much of that swing was at the expense of Phil Woolas, the Labour candidate and a former Home Office minister, who suffered a -10.7 per cent swing. He will (almost certainly) not be standing again in the by-election. Instead there will be a new Labour candidate, who will distance themselves from Woolas and the previous government. 

They will also benefit hugely from Labour being out of power and in opposition. There is no groundswell of anti-Labour - and perhaps as importantly, anti-Brown - sentiment like there was in May. Expect the new candidate to be very much part of Ed Miliband's 'new generation'.

The issue is complicated by the Lib Dems' poll ratings, which have crashed since the election in May from around 27 per cent to a paltry 11 per cent. This suggests that the Lib Dems will do very badly. It would obviously be premature to write them off, but I think that Elwyn Watkins will struggle to achieve 31.6 per cent of the vote again. This, of course, means that there are disaffected Lib Dem voters that can be targeted by Labour and the Conservatives. 

So what are their chances? The national political issues clearly favour Labour in opposition, and looking at the results in neighbouring constituencies I think Ed Miliband has every reason to be confident. This is a seat that will be receptive to Labour's messages about cuts and the government attacking the poor. Oldham East and Saddleworth is at the eastern edge of a belt of solidly Labour seats stretching over from Manchester to Liverpool, and just to the west of a block of solid Labour seats in the Midlands and Yorkshire. Phil Woolas has been the Labour MP there since the seats' inception in 1997. 

The seat was created in 1997 by merging an Oldham constituency, which had a strong Labour past, with Saddleworth, which since its creation in 1983 had been both Tory (12 years) and Lib Dem (2 years). Since 1997, the Conservatives have never polled higher than the 26.4 per cent Ali achieved in May. 

Furthermore, the collapse in Lib Dem support is because of the coalition. It is reasonable to suggest that the 11 per cent of people still supporting the Lib Dems are happy with the coalition and positive towards the Conservatives. Even so, they will likely vote Lib Dem in this by-election. If local politics mirrors national politics then the 16 per cent of Lib Dem voters who have lost faith in the party nationally will not likely vote Conservative, as it is the alliance with that party which has caused them to become disillusioned. Lib Dem voters are likely, if they move, to move towards Labour. 

So looking at the local history of the seat and its surrounding area, the likely effects of the collapse in Lib Dem support, and how receptive the locals will likely be to the Labour message of government cuts, it will be hard for the Tories to win this seat. It is Labour's seat to lose. 

As an interesting final point, it is not hard to see why Woolas felt that campaigning on immigration and alleging his opponent was soft on Islamic extremism could prove a successful tactic. In 2001 the seat gained notoriety when the BNP candidate Michael Treacy won over 5,000 votes, an 11.2 per cent share. Despite being right-wing, the BNP tend to do well in Labour areas rather than Conservative ones, which again points to the difficulty the Tories will have winning this seat. 

Prisoners, Europe and the Right to Vote

I would like to make two points. The first is about the law, and the second is about the man who's brought about our current impasse. 

The current legal situation is messy. On the one hand, you've the law passed by Parliament which removes the right to vote from prisoners. On the other, the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights which said that this law was superseded by another law the UK signed up to, the European Convention on Human Rights. This plays into a much larger - and for the coalition government, potentially very toxic - debate about the UK's role in Europe and the effect of European laws on our sovereignty. 

UK law currently states (Section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983) that "A convicted person during the time that he is detained in a penal institution in pursuance of his sentence or unlawfully at large when he would otherwise be so detained is legally incapable of voting at any parliamentary or local government election."

I think that most people in this country would agree with that. If you commit a crime and are punished with a prison sentence then, for the duration of that sentence, you lose some of your rights, and one of those should be the right to vote. Voting is one of the privileges of being a citizen of a free country. People will certainly be repulsed at the prospect of prisoners voting in their constituencies, and politicians having to court a 'prison vote'. 

The British Courts certainly agreed. In 2001 the High Court ruled that there was a spectrum of opinion of prisoner's votes and Britain fell into the middle. It stated that the country's "position in the spectrum is plainly a matter for Parliament, not the courts." So it deferred to Parliament and the 1983 Act mentioned above. 

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) disagreed. In 2004 it said that UK law breached the European Convention on Human Rights, a decision that was upheld on appeal in 2005. It noted that "The removal of the vote... runs counter to the rehabilitation of the offender as a law-abiding member of the community and undermines the authority of the law as derived from a legislature which the community as a whole votes into power." This was based on Article 1, Protocol 3, which states that "The High Contracting Parties [i.e. the UK] shall hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of people in the choice of the legislature."

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems like what influenced the judges in Strasbourg was the prospect of an unrepresentative legislature, rather than the prospect of prisoners having their rights infringed. Either way, the upshot was that the court decided that the UK was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. 

So does the government have to allow all prisoners the vote? Well, maybe not. The debate is nuanced by the fact that the court said that the blanket ban on voting was unlawful. It did not say that a partial ban would be unlawful. This appears to be the line the government is taking. They are naturally very anxious at allowing serious offenders the vote so will seek to stop them from voting while allowing those convicted of less serious crimes the vote. 

Yet this will surely only be a temporary fix. The man who brought this case to the ECHR was convicted of manslaughter and served 25 years. A serious offence. He made it clear today that he believed there was no room for a partial ban, suggesting he is prepared for further legal action. 

So that is the problem. The UK had a very clear position on this matter but, in voluntarily signing up to the European Convention on Human Rights, it muddied the waters by agreeing to a document that flatly contradicts its previous position. 

This leads to the bigger debate about the effect of European laws on the UK and what some perceive as a threat to the UK's sovereignty. It is clearly a part of national law that the legislature - in the UK's case its Parliament in Westminster - is the highest law-making authority. Yet the advent of supra-national structures like the EU and UN have created bodies whose legal decisions are deemed to take precedence over national decisions. 

The issue is all about balance. If we want to be part of these organisations because of the benefits they offer - and we entered the EU and UN voluntarily, just as we signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights voluntarily - then we have to find a way to maintain the sovereignty of our own country at the same time, in order to ensure that our country remains responsive to the needs of its citizens. We must ensure we retain our independence and that other states retain theirs: there is nothing noble in having a homogenised Europe.

So there there is now a legal wrangle going on which is trying to work out the jurisdiction of the ECHR. Because the Human Rights Act of 1998, which forms the basis of the Court's decision, states only that we must "take into account" the decisions of the ECHR. This is vague enough, some argue, to mean that it is not totally binding. On the other hand, a much stronger argument is put by those who point to Protocol No. 14 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which says "The High Contracting Parties undertake to abide by the final judgement of the court in any case to which they are parties." 

Yet to really understand why this is such an emotive issue, we have to look at it hypothetically, because the Liberal Democrats believe the 1983 law is wrong. Yet they will not get the chance to challenge it in Parliament. If we step back and re-examine the issue without the revulsion to the edict from Strasbourg we can ask: would the government legislate for change or keep the existing provision? 

I believe that the reason for the outcry is that the answer would most emphatically be NO. I don't believe there is any great movement for change on this issue within the UK and I believe that the 1983 law is an accurate reflection of the wishes of the people this country. 

So without a judgement from a court outside this country there would be no change in prisoner's voting rights. This could become a totemic issue for many who resent the subordination of our Parliament. I expect the Conservative Party backbenchers will make a lot of noise on this issue and I don't see many on the Labour benches opposing them. In fact I'd expect them to agree. 

I also expect people to resurrect calls for a British Bill of Rights, which could seek to insulate the UK from European legislation. Completely un-twining our country from Europe would be very difficult and counter-productive, but creating some sort of legislation that reasserts Parliament's sovereign right to make final decisions on legislation and the right of the UK's legal system to have a final say on the superiority of either European or British legislation is surely possible and overdue. It's all about finding a balance. 

On to my second point. John Hirst is the man who brought the Hirst v UK (No 2) case to the European Court of Human Rights. It is unfortunate for other prisoners that he is an unpleasant man, because they could do with someone who isn't aggressive and totally lacking in remorse to argue their case. This video of his interview with Andrew Neil on the Total Politics programme today reflects that. A more eloquent advocate would have a much better chance persuading people to support his cause. 

Students! Stop and think: Browne's reforms are great!

I wanted to begin by saying that I really don't understand why students dislike the Browne proposals. But the truth is that I do understand. I understand that students have seen the figure of £30,000 widely quoted and correctly worked out that this is more than they pay now. It then occurred to them that there would be no way for poorer students to afford that because they don't have £30,000. Then they heard someone mention a 'free market' and 'choice', and that made them really mad. So they decided these reforms are regressive, bad Tory cuts which will harm the poor and make university elitist.

They've thought about it for about as long as it took you to read that paragraph. Which is a shame. Because Lord Browne's reform is excellent.

The most important part is that you don't have to repay your loan until you earn £21,000 a year. That is brilliant. I wish I was that lucky. This measure, on its own, removes any argument that this reform unfairly impacts the poor. Because if you're poor all your fees are covered, and you don't pay back until you earn over £21,000. And if you're earning more than that you're not really poor any more are you! You've succeeded: you've come from a poor background, gone to uni, got a degree and got a good job after it. Well done.

And if you don't, then you don't pay. Your education will be free. FREE! What a great deal. £21,000 is so much fairer than the current £15,000, which almost all graduates will achieve. Yet even then, you don't just get a bill for the whole amount, you have a small percentage taken from your wages before you even see them. It will also increase with average earnings, so will not be fixed at £21,000 forever.

That leads into the second point about this system: you don't miss money you never had. The system will mean that university is FREE AT THE POINT OF USE. You will never see the money used to pay your fees, and you will never see the money that gets taken from your wages when you reach the threshold and start to pay your loan back. So much gets taken off in tax and NI anyway that having a little extra disappear to repay a loan - that helped you get your job earning over £21,000 - won't make any tangible difference. No-one is going to become destitute because of these repayments.

As I mentioned in my previous post, fear of debt has not put off poorer students from applying to university. In fact the opposite is true. Application numbers have increased dramatically. People clearly believe that university is a good path to success.

The problem with Browne's report is simply presentational. Using the words 'debt' and 'loan' makes students think, naturally, of a bank loan they must repay come what may. But this is not the case. It's not real debt, because if you don't earn over £21,000 it doesn't exist and whatever you haven't paid after 30 years gets written off.

There will also be more generous maintenance grants of £3,250 for students who come from households with incomes of less than £25,000. The upper threshold for students receiving partial maintenance grants will increase from £50,020 to £60,000, meaning more families will be get financial help. This will be supplemented by a flat-rate £3,750 maintenance loan which will no longer be means tested (yay!) and won't be paid back until you earn over £21,000.

The reforms also allow for funding to be extended to those completing part-time courses, who are not supported by the current system. This will make such courses much more appealing and will extend educational opportunities to millions of people who work and would like to do a part-time course but can't currently afford it. 

Browne's reforms also call for the universities to change some of their practices. For example they will be required to inform students up front how many contact hours they will have each week, so they can make informed decisions. There is also the hope, which may not be fulfilled, that universities will become more responsive to the needs of undergraduates. While this may not happen it is worth a shot, because at the minute they are not responsive and, frankly, inaction will not bring change either. 

Students will get their university experience totally free at the point of use and only have to pay money back once they earn over £21,000. Far from being penalised, the poor will be able to get the education they want knowing that it won't hurt them or their families financially. 

Today David Willetts will unveil the plan, and announce that when the reforms come in in September 2012 there will be two thresholds: £6,000 and £9,000 a year. Universities can charge what they like up to £9,000, but over £6,000 they have to demonstrate to the government that they are proactively encouraging students from poorer backgrounds. 

It already looks like one Lib Dem, Jenny Willott, MP for Cardiff Central and PPS to Chris Huhne, will resign over the matter. This is probably pretty helpful to the Lib Dems. Because of their election promises they can't be seen to totally support these measures even if the leadership does, and as their success in university seats is threatened they probably need a resignation to show students they care. It's a good move for her (she has a university seat in Wales) and for her party. I wouldn't expect to see any others go though. 

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. 

Budget! Here's my two cents...

The 20% VAT rate is obviously going to get lots of coverage, and rightly so. Every media outlet is using the words 'regressive' and 'unfair' to describe it. It isn't fair because it does hit the poorest* disproportionately. People in the middle will lose out as well, missing out on benefits and also facing higher taxes.

But on the whole, I thought that the budget was pretty reasonable.

There were genuine attempts by the coalition to avoid putting all of the pain on those with the lowest incomes. Efforts to freeze public sector pay will only affect those earning higher salaries, those with wages that mean they will really struggle to pay all their bills and get enough food will have some protection. The raising of the allowance limit by £1000 as part of the drive to get it to £10,000 is very promising.

The call for government departments to cut their spending by 25% by the end of the parliament is surprisingly high. I suspect that there is a lot of waste in the public sector and that these cuts could be made. What worries me, and probably everyone else, is that useful and important things will be easy targets.

Harman's best line was that the Lib Dem's have sacrificed thousands of people's jobs in return for a few ministerial positions. Will read brilliantly in the Mirror. The rest of it was naturally - given that she didn't know exactly what was coming - vague and probably wouldn't have changed whatever Osbourne had said. Her cries that the cuts were ideologically driven were amusing, given how driven the Labour party is by its ideology. The Tories feel more comfortable with a smaller state, and they are looking to redefine the role of the state in our lives. They are right it is too large. They are right that the current benefits system is flawed, and they are right in trying to encourage private sector development. Labour are wrong to believe that simply creating government jobs in poorer areas solves the problem. Government is there to help people, not simply employ them all if they can't find jobs.


*It goes without saying that the convenient social definitions - the poor, the middle class, the rich - are useless. They are simple generalisations loaded with political implications. While there is just one budget, it will affect each individual in a different way. And the current media obsession with asking locals in Nottingham or Gateshead or wherever what they think of the budget and it's effects on them is irrelevant to everyone except themselves. Well, maybe that's a bit strong. But you get the point: the definitions are flawed.