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

Red Ed wins

Wow. 50.65% to 49.35%. And almost all on the union votes. Is that a mandate to lead? I guess it couldn't be much more different than Brown's coronation! They'll hope it'l end differently as well...

BBC Labour Election Video

Compelling...

Political Top Trumps

Sky have unveiled a set of top trumps for the 2010 political conference season. The five categories are Majority, Years in Parliament, Potential, Storm Warning, and Fanciability. You can download the full set here. 

Rap of the year?

This is great.

Hat-tip Political Scrapbook.

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:

Continuous Nuclear Deterrent

Is the ability to launch a strike against any target at any time the same thing as having a nuclear deterrent? No, it is not.

Currently, we have one Trident submarine on patrol somewhere in the world at all times. It is the expensive basis for our nuclear deterrent at the moment. But it needn't be. We could just as easily have periods where there were no subs out at sea and continue to have an effective deterrent. We wouldn't be able to strike any target at any time but, providing our subs' movements remained secret, our enemies would never know at what time we had subs at sea or at home. Furthermore, one submarine would always be ready to put to sea, so that at times of increased risk our deterrent would retain its ability to strike any target at any time.

This might seem flawed, and it is certainly open to the accusation that our opponents would simply wait until our subs were at port and then launch a nuclear attack. While that has some merit from a theoretical perspective, realistically it has none. At most there is a very slight risk of nuclear attack on the UK. And even then, the threat is from a small scale dirty bomb not some Cold War-era missile. Faced with this terrorist nuclear threat Trident would be of precisely no use anyway, as we'd have no-one to fire the thing at.

If you then consider that a British government is supremely unlikely to ever actually launch a nuclear strike - given that it's a wholly unethical thing to do and could escalate conflict into all-out nuclear war - then cutting back on the ability to launch at any target at any time is a very sensible, practical cost-cutting measure. It also has the benefit of signalling to the world that we are not a nuclear threat - it's not hard to feel uneasy when a country you don't trust has this capacity, and not everyone trusts us - while maintaining our nuclear deterrent and our 'prestige' as a nuclear power.

In the end, we wouldn't really be sunk if our enemies discovered our subs were all in port, because we'd always retain the ability to quickly put to sea. Most importantly, by not scrapping Trident outright and instead scaling it back slightly we can retain our nuclear capabilities so that if a new Cold War emerges we can rapidly return to a permanent any-target-any-time deterrent. The funds freed would also allow Liam Fox and the MoD to focus on the type of threat we face now, which is not nuclear but low-tech, low-intensity conflict in places like Afghanistan.

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. 

Now we're taking over their estates...

Here is a little culture instead of the usual politics:

News International plan to sponsor Academy causes concern... at the Guardian.

And that's because they don't have any money to sponsor one of their own.

Here's a really well-informed and completely impartial account by the Observer/Guardian on how this plan by Murdoch represents a bold grab for our children's souls. Teaching material will include the Sun, the News of the World, the Times, and, for an international perspective, students will spend all of Wednesday afternoon watching FOX News.

Well, not really. But here are some choice quotes from the article:

"The plan will alarm Murdoch's critics who claim the tycoon's media empire, which spans broadcasting, publishing and internet interests around the world, already wields formidable influence over the UK's political system and society." Unlike theirs :-(

"Concerns about Murdoch's dominance resurfaced at the last general election when all four of his UK newspapers came out in favour of the Tories, an event that represented a considerable blow to Labour's hopes of clinging to power." Just like the Guardian coming in behind the Lib Dems then...

There's no evidence in the piece of course, because all of this is just simply common knowledge, and therefore it's beyond doubt. Just in case you were skeptical, however, here are some incontrovertible quotes from some impartial commentators:

"Some people will say they are not telling people what they should think through their newspaper but teaching our children what to think in our schools." Tom Watson, Labour MP.

Paul Farrelly, another Labour MP, said: "It would be of considerable concern if the sort of bias we see in the Murdoch press was fed through to our children through the school system."

The best quote came from Denis MacShane, who said "The notion that Rupert Murdoch's values should infect our children is a real horror story. It shows the extent to which the Conservative party is becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of News International."

Wow. "A wholly owned subsidiary." That's not an exaggeration, is it. Now, I know that the Guardian and the Observer don't like Murdoch but this is going a bit far. I mean they're trying to invest in education, which is a worthy thing to do, and Murdoch has a track record of sponsoring schools in deprived areas in the US. So it's probably about time that people at these papers - who pride themselves on their intellectual approach to life - remembered that Murdoch is just a media mogul, not actually the devil reincarnate, and that not everything he does is evil.