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It's a real shame that this state of affairs exists, because blogs like Political Scrapbook have so much potential. But instead of being independent left-wing blogs have chosen to take their lines from Labour HQ: and the contrast with the Conservative side of the blogosphere could not be more apparent. Attempts to 'spin' the blogosphere are so transparent and really counter-productive. I genuinely hope that these blogs stop essentially working for Miliband and start arguing independently for their left-wing opinions, because that's a whole lot more interesting than just being Miliband's mouthpiece.
Cameron's reply was weak on substance but high on flair, setting the tone for a very personal PMQs. Miliband probably could have pushed on with this line of questioning but he is still too unsure of himself to deviate from what was pretty defined series of questions. Even so, his next question was good, asking Cameron about the amount of money that his Bankers' Levy would raise, and comparing that figure to Labour’s Bankers' Bonus tax.
The PM gave a very long, technical answer to this question which seemed to flummox Miliband. This was a real shame, because Cameron was being a little creative with the facts. He argued that his Levy would raise £2.5bn this year, more than the £2.3bn Labour's tax generated. Miliband argued that Cameron's Levy would raise £1.3bn, and said Labour's Bonus Tax raised 3.5bn.
It was Miliband who had his facts straight. The crafty maths that the Treasury used to get the £3.5bn down to £2.5bn – by making guesses about how much NI and income tax they'd lost in lieu – and the fudged statistic that the Levy would raise £2.5bn – it will in 2012, but not in 2011 – were frankly embarrassing. But fortunately for the PM, it was here that Miliband really let himself down. He stuck to his script again and failed to make it clear just how wrong Cameron was. This was a huge opportunity missed.
He ended up asking a lengthy question demanding more transparency, which gave Cameron the opportunity to turn to Labour's record in Government, and there was little substance to the rest of the session. Cameron scored an easy hit by reminding the House that Miliband had been at the Treasury during Labour's period in power and, in particular, when they had awarded Sir Fred Goodwin a knighthood.
Yet at times the whole thing threatened to get a bit too personal Cameron said of Miliband that: 'He was the nothing man when he was at the Treasury and he is the nothing man now he's trying to run the Labour Party.' For his part, Miliband commented that Osborne was a 'poisonous fungus'. Cameron tends to get personal when he's in a tight spot, and Miliband was just responding in kind – but it didn't look great for either man.
Bankers' bonuses worked for Miliband today not because he got the best of Cameron but because he pushed an argument that will resonate with the electorate. Miliband had a big opportunity to really punish the PM but he still lacks the confidence to deviate from his script and so Cameron was able to fudge his response, make a few jokes and stop Ed Miliband from winning it, but he was never on strong ground. A good defence by Cameron and a promising start to the year by Ed Miliband.
A very entertaining score draw.
This morning I was pretty sure that bankers’ bonuses would be Ed Miliband’s main focus. But watching today’s emergency questions to the Chancellor and seeing Alan Johnson and a host of other MPs fail to land a solid blow on George Osborne I’m not convinced it’d be a good idea for the Labour leader.
If Miliband does use this line, he better have a long list of retorts for Cameron when the PM – as he undoubtedly will – reminds the House of the scale of bonuses under the previous Labour government. A few choice quotes from Mandelson – 'haven’t the rich suffered enough' or 'We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich' spring to mind – or maybe a quick mention of Sir (with emphasis on Labour’s knighthood) Fred Goodwin’s £14million bonus...
Today we found out that the decision on retaining control orders, which expire in March and was due this Thursday, has been delayed by another week or two. It’s clear that the Government is struggling to come to a decision. Given that Labour created them and took a strong line on law and order, this is a topic Miliband should focus on. Not only can Labour point to a strong, or at least unambiguous, record, but it can also make political capital from the confusion in Government – both within the coalition and in the individual parties.
Some of the detail has leaked to the BBC this evening, and Ed Balls has been quoted already as saying that the process has 'descended into a shambles', and that it is designed to 'keep the coalition together rather than exclusively about what is in the national interest'. A Labour attack on this would also tie neatly with a dig at Ken Clarke’s prison reforms and the plan to allow inmates the vote, which are making lots of Tories very unhappy.
One other option for Miliband is the EU Bill, which is being debated tonight and is likely to pass despite unease on the Conservative backbenches. The big problem with the Bill is this: it was designed to appease eurosceptic Tory backbenchers and it has failed. Indeed, this is the group which has been most vocally opposed. Labour is on risky ground with Europe after the shambles of the Lisbon Treaty but they could still make the Tories uncomfortable with a couple of well-targeted questions.
Anyway, that’s what I’d do – although previous experience suggests that it might well not be what Miliband does. The main thing is that he avoids bankers’ bonuses, because it’s worse for Labour than the Conservatives. Besides, any debate even touching on economics is likely to encourage Cameron to bring up Alan Johnson’s National Insurance gaffe earlier this week.
Other things to watch out for include the sluggish Q4 growth at the end of last year and the 50p tax rate, as well as comments on the 'nuclear option' outlined by Vince Cable before Christmas. I wouldn't expect to hear anything on Eric Illsley or David Chaytor from either party.
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.
It's been a year of change for PMQs. What began with a straight fight between Brown and Cameron – occasionally deputised by Hague and Harman – was changed in May by the General Election. The coalition between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives meant that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg wasn’t asking questions at PMQs but sitting on the Government benches – and indeed occasionally deputising himself.
Labour’s defeat saw Brown resign, leading to the mother of all leadership contests. During this period, Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman was charged with facing Cameron over the dispatch box. This also gave Jack Straw the chance to step up as her deputy on occasion before, at long last, Labour held its vote and decided to give Ed Miliband the honour of leading the Party.
Phew. There can’t be many years when seven different people take to the dispatch box for PMQs. Yet in spite of the high turnover, there has been a degree of continuity. David Cameron quickly established himself as an able debater back in 2005 and the transition from Blair to Brown in 2007 meant he became more and more dominant against a Labour leader who didn’t really want to be there.
Cameron’s strong performances against Brown were the main theme of the year to May. He was in command of his brief, his jokes were better, and his party’s high poll ratings meant that he had the broad support of his backbenchers. The fallout from the recession made Brown an easy target, as it undermined his economic record. In the run-up to the election polling suggested that the public strongly favoured a reduction in state spending, which meant that Brown’s efforts to paint Cameron as ideologically committed to cuts were blunted by his own inevitable need to outline spending reductions.
Given his poor eyesight and the fact that his personality was unsuited to the quick cut-and-thrust of PMQs, Brown actually did better than I had expected. But it was only rarely enough to win PMQs.
If we needed a reminder of the limitations of PMQs it came in May, when the General Election did not produce an overall majority for any party. In the end, it seems the fact that Cameron was regularly besting Brown in the Commons only served to increase the Conservatives’ confidence, and not their share of the vote.
The forming of the coalition meant that Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg was now a member of the Government, and that he was no longer entitled to ask two questions at PMQs. This shifted the focus more heavily onto the battle between and Government and the opposition. It also meant that there was an even more obvious change from the leaders’ questions to those from backbenchers.
The resignation of Gordon Brown meant that Labour began its lengthy procedures to select a new leader. The result of this was that Cameron spent the first five months of his leadership facing Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman. I must say that I found Harman impressively combative. Cameron was moving his Government towards the CSR and the SDSR and was regularly put on the spot by the Labour stand-in.
Harman is my 2010 PMQs overachiever for this and one other reason: her annihilation of Nick Clegg in November. Deputising for Ed Miliband, she relentlessly pressed the Deputy PM on his party’s hostage to fortune: its election pledge to scrap tuition fees. It was truly masterful.
But apparently all good things have to come to an end. And so, on September 25, Ed Miliband was elected as the new leader of the Labour Party. His first performance at PMQs was awful.
Being successful at PMQs isn’t just about actually winning an argument or making a good point, it’s also about managing expectations. I truly believe watching Ed Miliband’s first outing against Cameron must have been one of the most worrying and demoralising moments of the year for Labour MPs (and it wasn’t a great year). He was predictable, slow, unoriginal, wooden, and appeared out of his depth. It was a huge let-down, and makes him the worst-performing PMQs competitor of 2010.
His performances have since improved. He is better than Brown. But he should be a lot better than Brown. He is now competing with Cameron, but he only wins when Cameron himself performs badly. Thankfully he has the potential to be better, but he will have to totally re-evaluate his approach in 2011 if he is to make the most political capital possible from what should be a very hard year for the Government. Miliband’s also still facing a Conservative leader who isn’t quite sure how to play him.
In contrast, David Cameron has had a relatively successful year at the dispatch box. His strengths are obvious: he’s quick-witted, smart, in command of his brief, and has a human demeanour. He was naturally more gifted than Brown and had learnt how to defeat him. He is better than Harman and despite her plucky performances he still regularly delivered coherent political and economic arguments.
It’s against Miliband that he’s been least impressive. Ed is not yet performing well and yet Cameron has almost let him get the better of him on a couple of occasions. He’s my top performer of 2010 but he will need to pick things up this year.
Top Performer: David Cameron
Overachiever: Harriet Harman
Underachiever: Ed Miliband
Biggest Victory: Harman absolutely destroying Clegg on tuition fees, 10 Nov.
Best Quote: Harriet Harman, 10 Nov: "We all know what it’s like: you are at freshers’ week, you meet up with a dodgy bloke and you do things that you regret. Isn’t it true he has been led astray by the Tories?"
Other stories have rumbled on over the holidays, with Conservative MPs increasingly uneasy with their leader’s approach to the Lib Dems and the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election. Angus Reid conducted an interesting poll showing that the Coalition would struggle if if fought as one in 2015 because Lib Dem voters would desert it. Ed Miliband has changed up his press team and looks to be making more of an impact, although there is a long way for him to go.
The NotW hacking scandal came back again to ruin Andy Coulson’s New Year, and the Coalition has got itself in a bit of a mess trying to decide what to do with Control Orders. Half of Westminster decamped this week to Oldham for the by-election, which is expected to return the Labour candidate, Debbie Abrahams, and David Chaytor became the first MP to be sentenced for his expenses claims. He was given 18 months in prison.
YouGov Polling 06-01-11:
Conservative 39%
Labour 43%
Lib Dem 7%
Government Approval: -20%
In a bid to take this blog to the next level, Woodman's World is introducing a few changes. Going live next week will be the new PMQs Review section of the site, which aims to be your first port of call for everything to do with PMQs. It'l feature a review of each session and a look forward to next week's issues, as well as articles looking at long term trends. I'll also be introducing a Weekly Round-up that will summarise the week's main stories and keep a tab on the latest polling. And I'll be using Wordle and other tools to make the blog more visually arresting. I hope you're excited, because I'm positively tingling with anticipation...
Fawkes is absolutely right and it’s a point I’ve made in a blog post before. Their silence is deafening: it couldn’t be more obvious that they aren’t commenting on controversial issues within their own party. It also couldn’t be more pathetic. But why can't they do it? Do they lack the courage or the willpower to criticise Labour? Do they not think there is anything to criticise?! Whatever the answer, the result is that they come across as intellectually weak.
The real kicker is that they are undermining themselves. Because readers know that whatever the truth of a situation, these blogs will always write the same story. And in the end that means that people won't listen to what they have to say about the Government. Which means that they won't enhance the Labour Party's message because no-one who isn't a fully paid-up Labour member will be interested in what they are saying.
So for their own sakes, for Labour's sake, and for the sake of a better political blogosphere, I hope these sites start to look critically at Labour instead of just attacking the Government.
p.s. Another interesting part of the expenses saga is that no politician of any hue has sought to make political capital from David Chaytor’s imprisonment. It’s not even being used by Elwyn Watkins in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election. It's pretty clear that Westminster would like the story to go away as quickly as possible.
Sometimes you read something and just find yourself excitedly shouting 'yes, yes, YES!!' in your head. That's what happened today when I read this post by City AM Editor Allister Heath on the need for a proper re-evaluation of the relationship between state and the individual. So here it is in full:
It was Frederic Bastiat, the French nineteenth century economist, who famously described the state as “that great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else”. It is a shame that Bastiat’s work, cult reading in some circles, has yet to penetrate the public consciousness in Britain. Those who campaign obsessively against “cuts” should take note – what they are really arguing is for others – their contemporaries, as well as future generations saddled with the national debt – to pay for their pet projects.
It is high time for a proper debate about the relationship between the individual and the state. In a classically liberal society, people’s incomes are seen as theirs, to be spent, invested or donated as they see fit, with taxation kept to the minimum necessary to provide certain services and help the poor (the size of these activities are, of course, subject to debate). The present, collectivist mood in the UK sees it differently: earnings are implicitly treated as public property, to be divided up according to what politicians see fit; tax cuts are even seen as a “cost” to the Exchequer, as if it were automatically entitled to everybody’s wealth.
There is a fundamental philosophical distinction between these two positions. This is not merely an abstract debate: shifting views on what we mean by “justice” have economic consequences. The UK’s relative prosperity – during its industrial heyday and then again during the 1980s and 1990s – was based on policies that assumed that individuals had a natural right to their earnings and property. By contrast, the post-war period, when envy and confiscatory taxation were rationalised on moral grounds, culminating with a 98 per cent tax rate in the 1970s, was a disaster.
The situation is obviously no way as bad today as it was in those days. But Britain is now a very high tax society by international standards. So it was great to see Boris Johnson call for the 50p tax to be scrapped yesterday. The real top rate of tax is even higher when national insurance is included; earnings are taxed again when consumed (VAT, petrol tax); and anything left is taxed again at death. Crippling rates of double and triple taxation are the order of the day.
Such a state of affairs would have outraged Bastiat. To him, high rates of taxation were unacceptable, morally as well as in terms of the damage inflicted on the incentive to work, save and invest. “No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic,” he argued in his inimitable style.
There are plenty of voices around today fighting for free speech, civil liberties and “social” freedoms. It is a shame there is no equal enthusiasm when it comes to defending individuals’ economic freedom.
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.
Miliband goes on to say that the Conservatives' "deceit is that the deficit was caused by chronic overspending rather than a global financial crisis that resulted in recession and a calamitous collapse in tax revenues."
Ah! I see. So chronic overspending wasn't an issue or didn't exist. Obviously the answer to the current situation is not to cut spending but to stimulate the economy in order to get tax income back to pre-crash levels, right?
Erm, no. "The real debate is not about whether or not to cut the deficit: Labour has been clear that we need to reduce borrowing from levels that are far too high." Oh, so there is a problem with the amount of money that the Government spends? Now I'm confused.
Ed Miliband is trying to have it both ways. He wants to say that the cuts are bad. But he also knows what this graph (above) from the Spectator shows: that Labour spent more than it received every year after 2002. And so he wants to show that he understands the need for cuts to be made, because apparently voters like that. So he ends up in the middle, opposing Conservative cuts while arguing that cuts need to be made.
This is cowardice. It's understandable, but it's still cowardice. It also makes his allegations that the Tories are being politically motivated in their policies totally hollow and hypocritical.
He can't have it both ways. And, frankly, he shouldn't be trying to. He'll get no credit in 2015 if he once said that the coalition strategy might work. He should go with his gut and genuinely promote an alternative strategy. What would he do if he was in power? If he wouldn't cut then he should say so. Because if he does believe Osborne's got it wrong then by having a clear and 'less painful' alternative he'll be giving himself a chance to be the leader who has it right in 2015.
Labour members should be concerned by articles like these. These nuanced policies reflect a short-termism that belies a lack of faith in their own economic arguments: If they're not certain that the Tories will get it wrong then they're not certain that their policies will get it right.
As a final point, I can't help but feel that having someone like Ed Balls or Yvette Cooper in the Shadow Treasury role would give Labour's economic policies a lot more purchase. The media would certainly listen more attentively than it does to Johnson.
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.
I'm not sure why the NUT is so against free schools. They claim that they are divisive and unaccountable, but don't really have any evidence to support this. What is divisive about a group of parents and teachers setting up a school to benefit their local community? And if by unaccountable it means outside LEA control, then the significant minority of failing state schools under LEA control should make the NUT think that perhaps being accountable to these bodies isn't always the best thing.
To prove just how unpopular these plans are, the NUT has commissioned a study, published today, that it claims proves that people don't want or need them. Except that it doesn't. What the figures show is that 26% of parents do want free schools, and that a further 43% are as yet undecided. Free schools are meant to be an option for parents. They are not being rolled out as the norm, though they may become more common if they are successful. Indeed, each free school proposal has to demonstrate that there is local demand, so if there really isn't any support as the NUT claims then there won't be any free schools.
The study also begs the question that if 25% of parents would consider setting one up then why would the NUT oppose their wishes? The answer is probably because the NUT perceives them as a threat to itself. These schools will have greater freedoms to fire poor teachers, will not have to follow the national curriculum, and could hire teachers who are not qualified. They will have the independence to innovate and develop new methods, just like the many successful private schools in the UK which have similar powers.
All of these things could really benefit children who are not getting the education they deserve under the current system. But because they also point to a smaller role for the country's largest teaching union, the NUT continues to oppose them. It's an incredibly sad state of affairs, because these plans will go ahead and if they work could be fantastic news for children. By being so thoughtlessly critical the NUT is really missing out on a huge opportunity to get involved in free schools and help shape their development.
The coalition's localism bill is designed to shift power from central government to local government, and to remove local government regulation to make those institutions more flexible and responsive to local people's needs. This will allow them to 'genuinely lead their communities'.
The DCLG business plan, published in November, makes it clear that this seismic shift in the structure of British government will only be successful if local government is compelled to change: it needs to become more accountable, transparent, and democratic. One of the simplest and most necessary changes is that all local government bodies be forced to publish all spending information. If this is not done local citizens cannot make informed decisions.
Publishing data needs to become the norm for councils. Currently, councils' default setting is to look to see what data they have to publish. They need to completely change their perspective and publish everything unless they are legally required not to. The figures out today showing that over half of Britain's councils have not published their data with only a month to go before the deadline are worrying.
Eric Pickles has criticised councils who have not yet published their data and asked what they are hiding, but he has not acted to legally compel them to publish their data. If localism is to work we cannot wait for the culture of secrecy to change over time. We need a rapid change and that can only be brought about by the creation of a legal imperative to publish all local spending data. Localism hasn't even begun and already there is a serious threat to one of the most important measures needed to make it a success.
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.
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.
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.
Here's a great little graphic from the Telegraph illustrating the spending power that each department will have after the cuts in 2014.
So Labour are offering a 1p membership to anyone under 27. I started writing a post on this the other day but couldn't really be arsed to finish it. And it seems that I wasn't the only one lacking any enthusiasm, because today the Guardian revealed that the offer had brought in just 400 new members.
400 people paid a penny to join Labour, so they could have the honour of having Ed Miliband voice their concerns to the nation. Now, I'm pretty confident that the admin on 400 new members is going to cost more than the £4.00 that Labour have made this week. And that these bargain hunters may prove fickle when they get asked for the full £39.00 next year. It's also made me more certain than ever that Labour's claim to have had 50,000 new members since the election is likely to prove an exaggeration.
I wonder why people didn't take up the offer? Maybe it's because although the 'young' are perceived to be against some of the coalition's policies, they still realise that Labour are not yet a credible alternative. These young people also aren't quite young enough to have missed the fact that Labour were the ones that introduced tuition fees in the first place. And they won't have missed that Labour itself has absolutely no credible policy for higher education. They will also be suspicious that having Ed Miliband as a spokesman isn't necessarily the best thing, given that he can't seem to get any media coverage at the moment and the PLP thinks he's useless.
Which begs the question: why now? A reduced membership rate is a great one-off gimmick that has the very real potential to raise membership numbers. But you have to already have forward momentum. A cheap membership rate when you've no policies, have just been beaten in an election and have a weak new leader will not turn things around. Now they're in an even worse situation, because this poor response has just confirmed to the public that no-one wants to join their party. If they'd done it in three years' time then it could have been hugely successful. But I really think they've jumped the gun.
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'.
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.
Apparently, Vince Cable's car crash of a ministerial career is one of the Telegraph's top three 'celebrity news' stories today.
The paper left the sage of Twickenham out of its front-page politics section and gave him a berth in its celebrity news section instead - which apparently covers everything 'from the Hollywood homes of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton to the chic nightclubs visited by Kate Middleton and Prince William and the holiday beaches favoured by the Beckhams and the Sarkozys.'
I'm not sure that people take Vince Cable seriously. His forthcoming performance on Strictly Come Dancing - the subject of this 'celebrity' article - is coming at a pretty bad time. He could really do with keeping his head down for a while after making a total idiot of himself earlier in the week. It's sort of all his own fault though really, so I've got little sympathy.
What I will say is that while it was a controversial move to keep Cable in the Government and not to have forced him to resign - as Cameron and Clegg would have done to almost anyone else - keeping him inside the tent does mean that he can't start stirring the pot on the backbenches. And that has to be better for the long-term health of the coalition.
Anyway, it's sad about Ryan and Scarlett, isn't it guys?
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