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Why did George Osborne’s autumn statement remind Andy Burnham of “Oviedo Baby”?
George Osborne in his Autumn Statement last week tried his best not to sound triumphant.
But he did sound happy.
Britain’s economic plan is working, but the job is not done. We need to secure the economy for the long term, and the biggest risk to that comes from those who would abandon the plan. We seek a responsible recovery, one in which we do not squander the gains we have made, but go on taking the difficult decisions, and one in which we do not repeat the mistakes of the past, but this time spot the debt bubbles before they threaten financial stability. We seek a responsible recovery, in which we do not pretend we can make this nation better off by writing cheques to ourselves, and instead make the hard choices. We need a Government who live within their means, in a country that pays its way in the world.
Three and a half years ago, I set out our long-term economic plan in the emergency Budget. That plan restored stability in a fiscal crisis, but it was also designed to address the deep-seated problems of unsustainable spending, uncompetitive taxes and unreformed public services for which there are no quick fixes. Over the last three years we have stuck to our guns and worked through the plan. We have done so in the face of a sovereign debt crisis abroad, and at home in the face of opposition from those who got Britain into this mess in the first place and have resisted every cut, every reform, and every effort to get us out of that mess. We have held our nerve while those who predicted there would be no growth until we turned the spending taps back on have been proved comprehensively wrong.
Andy Burnham MP managed to rock up to watch this spectacle, which he probably did not enjoy as much as being a spectator at his beloved Everton football team.
But curiously Burnham had one thing on his mind.
Burnham has a curiously big following on Twitter. His remarks were ‘retweeted’ over 500 times. So his comment that Osborne’s “turgid” speech is not as insignificant as it might first appear.
When Leighton Baines fractured his toe in the 221st Merseyside Derby, there were many fears within Evertonians that losing such an influential player would severely dent their top four ambitions.
However his replacement Bryan Oviedo, coming in as somewhat of an unknown quantity, has seized his opportunity with both hands. Bryan Oviedo was said to be beaming with a massive smile after finally getting a chance to impress at his favoured left back spot. This is not particularly surprising as the left back has had a wait nearly two years to get the chance, but the toe injury to Leighton Baines meant the talented defender finally got a chance – and he took it.
“Oviedo baby” had put in a superb performance. Oviedo told Everton TV: “I am very happy to have scored my first goal in the Premier League and also to play my first game at left-back.” “I’m also happy that the team played well today. This is a very good chance for me. Leighton is a great player but I have waited a year and a half for this chance and I am so happy to play again.”
It could be that Andy Burnham couldn’t get this recent Everton news out of his head.
Or he genuinely feels that George Osborne is a ‘star turn’ who has blossomed.
Nah……
I'm a Labour member who despairs over our leadership on welfare; and I'm not the only one
So what’s new? This is yet another article about Labour and welfare. George Osborne wanted a debate about welfare, but he wants people to be united against ‘shirkers’ staying in bed while good citizens go out-to-work.
I don’t want even to go into that tired debate about working tax credits, and how the people Osborne appears to be targeting are low earners in society. I don’t wish to go into the billions of other arguments concerning this huge part of the budget, for example whether the “millionaire’s tax” would have ‘covered the costs’ of the “bedroom tax”. But increasingly I sense an overwhelming impression from Labour members like me an engulfing sense of despair. This is not about the top 15 things that Labour has promised to repeal or enact on gaining ‘power’, although virtually all of that list has to be cautioned against the state of the economy that any government will inherit in 2015. There are certainly too many variables and unpredictable externalities on the horizon, which makelife difficult. Labour is undergoing a complex review, and indeed people can contribute to the policy discussion through their website. However, there is simply a sense that the Labour Party has lost its identity, and that many people would simply like to quit and “up sticks”. Much of this is that Labour sets out to be a social democratic party, not a socialist party, so therefore has a real ideological problem with saving failing hospitals in the NHS; it paradoxically does not appear to have a problem in saving banks, increasing the deficit, creating billions of bonuses for some bankers in the cities. It engaged in ‘buy now, pay later’ behaviour which meant NHS hospitals, in the name of public infrastructure investment, being put on commercially-confidential contracts lasting decades at interest rates which most agree are competitive.
Labour’s fundamental problem is that it has fallen into the ‘bear trap’ of following not leading. 62% of people think that spending is too high, and indeed Philip Gould, Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson are reputed to be fond of ‘focus groups’. However, 99% of Sun voters are reputed to ‘back the Death Penalty’, and no-one is seriously proposing that Ed Miliband should ‘back the penalty’ to get elected. There is a sense that Ed Miliband will jump on any fast bandwagon going, but to give him some credit he has in fact caught a national mood over certain issues such as press regulation. However, many Labour voters feel that Ed Miliband does not share this passion over certain key issues.
Ed Miliband exhibits ‘a stuck gramophone syndrome’ when speaking about “vested interests”, which appears to be Miliband’s contorted way of reassuring the public that the Unions are not round for ‘beer and sandwiches’ every other day. But Ed Miliband simply has to emphasise, as he has tried to do to some extent, that it is the members of the Unions who, uptil now, have backed him not “the Unions” as neolithic organisations per se. Miliband has failed to make clear the essential democratic nature of the Unions, and if he has any sense of history of the Labour Party (which he does), he will wish to emphasise this. If he wishes to make the party wholeheartedly social democratic, he will not care. Surely members of Unions, such as “hard-working” (to use that tired word) nurses and teachers, will wish to have an input into nursing and teaching policy as much as private equity companies who are literally lobbying behind close doors on education and teaching policy? Labour is caught in a trap of advancing neoliberal policies of setting off hospitals against hospitals and schools versus schools, so has totally lost sight of its socialist sense of solidarity. It is currently, on welfare, allowing the debate to be ensnared and enmeshed into a discussion over ‘lazy shirkers’, and one person with 17 children setting fire to his house, but do not wish to establish basic truths about welfare for disabled citizens: that is, the living and mobility components of the current ‘disability living allowance’ do not constitute an employment benefit, but are there to help to allow disabled citizens cope with the demands in life: to use wonk speak, “to allow them to lead productive lives”.
Ed Miliband is also following not leading on the economy. The semantics of whether we should analyse the nature of the boom-bust cycle as FA Hayek would have wished us to do rather than the drawbacks of Lord Keynes’ “paradox of thrift” do not concern the vast majority of voters. However, workers who are being paid pittance, and certainly those below the statutory minimum wage, do not hear Labour screaming out from the rooftops about this achievement, which even happens to be an achievement of a Blair government. Ed Miliband has somehow managed to screw up discussions of ‘a living wage’, not in terms of allowing living standards for workers and employees, but through a convoluted discussion of ‘pre-distribution’ and the academic career of Prof Joseph Hacker (called Mr Hacker by David Cameron in ‘Prime Minister’s Questions’). Workers and employees are concerned that they can be ‘hired and fired’ below the minimum length of service (which this Government is set on reducing anyway), and that any awards for unfair dismissal will be less in future. Voters want some sort of protection through the policies of a Labour government, to curb the excesses of multi-national corporates for example, not a protracted list they can retweet at length on Twitter of the top 15 things Labour would repeal in 2015. This is basic stuff, and it is galling of a Labour opposition not even to do their fundamental job of opposing. Virtually everyone agrees that a strong opposition is essential for English parliamentary democracy.
Labour simply exudes the impression of a political party that has lost its direction, will say or do anything to get into power (while spouting platitudes such as ‘we don’t want to overpromise and under-deliver’), and is totally cautious about what offerings it possibly can supply to the general public in future. Nobody is expecting them to have a detailed manifesto, but a sense of the ‘direction of travel’, in other words people saying that disability living allowance is not an employment benefit, or that Labour would seek to curb his ‘hire-and-fire culture’ and discuss with the Unions how to go about this, would help enormously. Another critical problem is presented by the sentiment conveyed in Adnan Al-Daini’s tweet this afternoon: “If the #Labour party is going to mimic the Tory party at every step what is the point of it? Same policies different rhetoric! #hypocrisy”. Labour, at an increasing number of junctures it seems, appears to be quite unable of opposing convincingly because of its past. I am the first person to promote rehabilitation, but this is genuinely a problem now. It is claimed that Labour introduced the equivalent of the “bedroom tax” for the private sector, so themselves should not be aghast that this has been proposed on an ‘equal playing field basis’. I happen to oppose strongly the “bedroom tax”, as it appears to discriminate against sections of the population, such as disabled citizens. The NHS is another fiasco. Labour ‘as the party of the NHS’ can offer to repeal the Health and Social Care Act (2012), but this is a symbolic (and rather vacuous) promise. The problem with Foundation Trusts still in a ‘failure regime’ will exist, the issue of hospitals paying off their PFI loans on an annual basis will still exist, and it was Labour themselves who legislated for an Act of parliament managing procurement (the Public Contracts Regulations Act); through a long series of complex cases, NHS hospitals have become enmeshed in EU competition law, but Labour had, whether it likes it or not, set in motion a direction of travel where hospitals would be caught in the ‘economic activity’ and competition law axis of the EU.
What Labour obviously did not legislate for was to allow up to 49% of income of hospitals to come from private sources, nor to make the legislative landscape most amenable for private providers to enter with the lowest barriers-to-entry; it was a policy decision of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats not to give the NHS any unfair ‘protection’, meaning that the NHS would of course be expected not to provide anywhere near a universal, comprehensive service. However, as the marketisation of the NHS and privatisation has been accelerated, but one in which Labour to a much lesser degree did participate, it is hard for Labour to provide convincingly a narrative on what it wants to do next. Labour seem very eager to produce apologies at the drop-of-a-hat, such as on immigration (which came to a head with the Gillian Duffy altercation after Gordon Brown forgot to remove his clip-on microphone and Sky happened to take a recording of it). It has tried to apologise for the emergency spending on the banks during the global financial crisis, but experts are far from convinced about why the banks were not allowed to fail; it is an inherent paradox in the Labour narrative that it seems content with allowing NHS hospitals to fail, but seems reluctant to allow banks to fail (meaning shareholders and directors of banks can be rewarded, and Labour gets blamed for the exploding deficit).
Against the backdrop of a false security of poll leads perhaps, Labour’s performance is floundering because it just appears to be opposing for the sake of it; it is now a rational accusation of the Coalition to say that Labour opposes virtually everything (except for Workfare and the “benefits cap” perhaps), but does not appear to have constructive policies of its own. Despite its rhetoric on “vested interests”, it seems perfectly happy to honour the contracts it started with ATOS over the disastrous outsourcing of welfare benefits (which has seen 40% of some benefits overturned on appeal, and some claimants reported to have suffered psychological distress through the benefits application process), yet, apart from a handful of excellent MPs such as Michael Meacher, seems rather limp at criticising this particular ‘vested interest’. It is a problem when the public perception of Labour protecting multi-national vested interests overrides its ‘loyalty’ to the Unions. It is also a problem when two years into the leadership of Ed Miliband the media are unable to report the closure of law centres or the problems of the NHS privatisation process but can only report how to self-litigate and what to expect from your GP in this new NHS landscape. Ed Miliband’s fundamental problem is that he gives the impression of being a follower not a leader. Miliband appears like a TV newsreader, nicely a product of “make up”, but whose autocue is suffering a technical fault. Labour does not currently inspire confidence. If it is the case where the best Labour voters can hope for is a ‘hung parliament’, despite glaring incidents of an #omnishambles government, something is very wrong indeed.
The 'bandwagon effect' and language of welfare reform
“Bandwagon” is one of the most common techniques in both wartime and peacetime, and plays an important part in modern advertising. Bandwagon is also one of the seven main propaganda techniques identified by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1938. Bandwagon is an appeal to the voter, who is perhaps feeling mixed feelings of “aspiration” and “insecurity” to follow the crowd, to join in because others are doing so as well. Bandwagon propaganda is, essentially, trying to convince the subject that one side is the winning side, because more people have joined it. The subject is meant to believe that since so many people have joined, that “victory is inevitable and defeat impossible”: in a sense, “success” becomes a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. Since the average person always wants to be on the winning side, he or she is compelled to join in.
When confronted with bandwagon propaganda, we should weigh the pros and cons of joining in independently from the amount of people who have already joined, and, as with most types of propaganda, we should seek more information. Thankfully, there are prominent disability campaigners, such as Sue Marsh and Kaliya Franklin, who have a very good, accurate command of the actual DWP data (as reported). In layman’s term the bandwagon effect refers to people doing certain things because other people are doing them, regardless of their own beliefs, which they may ignore or override. The perceived “popularity” of an object or person may have an effect on how it is viewed on a whole. Hence, it is entirely fitting that George Osborne should wish to give a speech on welfare reform to a group of employees in Sittingbourne, who “all share his concerns” about the small proportion of people in the population who are freeloading. This effect is noticed and followed very much by youth, where for instance if people see many of their friends buying a particular phone, they could become more interested in buying that product.
The history of this concept is interesting. A bandwagon is a wagon which carries the band in a parade, circus or other entertainment. The phrase “jump on the bandwagon” first appeared in American politics in 1848 when Dan Rice, a famous and popular circus clown of the time, used his bandwagon and its music to gain attention for his political campaign appearances. As his campaign became more successful, other politicians strove for a seat on the bandwagon, hoping to be associated with his success. Later, during the time of William Jennings Bryan’s 1900 presidential campaign, bandwagons had become standard in campaigns, and “jump on the bandwagon” was used as a derogatory term, implying that people were associating themselves with the success without considering what they associated themselves with. Often political commentators will say something which captures this derogatory nature like, “Ed Miliband has jumped so fast onto this moving bandwagon, that he’s likely to fall off it.”
The government is increasingly using value-laden and pejorative language when discussing benefits and welfare, something poverty charities warn is likely to increase the stigmatisation of poor people. The findings show that the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, has spoken of a mass culture of welfare dependency in every speech on benefits he has made in the past 12 months. The analysis came after complaints that the government is using exceptional cases such as that of Mick Philpott, the unemployed man jailed this week for the manslaughter of six children, to justify its programme of changes to the benefits system. The problem of using single cases to make a general point was highlighted by Diane Abbott who, this week, warned about drawing general conclusions about Austrian villages from the Josef Fritz case and Owen Jones who, also this week, warned about making unreliable inferences about inheritance tax from the Stephen Seddon case. Indeed, an examination of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) speeches and press notices connected to benefits in the year to April 1 shows a significantly increased use of terms such as “dependency”, “entrenched” and “addiction”, when compared with the end of the Labour government. Fraud, which currently accounts for less than 1% of the overall benefits bill, was mentioned 85 times in the press releases, while it was not used at all in the final year of Labour. In the 25 speeches by DWP ministers on welfare over the year, “dependency” was mentioned 38 times, while “addiction” occurred 41 times and “entrenched” on 15 occasions. A comparison of 25 speeches on the subject by Labour ministers saw the words used, respectively, seven times, not at all, and once.
Whatever the ultimate success of the Coalition’s war of words against “scroungers” and “skivers”, casualties of the ‘bandwagon’ will continue to attract attention. This use of language is, unfortunately, of huge concern. In previous years, there has been documented reliably a rise in hate crimes against disabled people, police figures for England, Wales and Northern Ireland show. For example, more than 2,000 such offences were recorded in 2011, up a third on 2010. Police said this was partly due to an increased willingness to report crimes. Strikingly, this statistic was in the context that, overall, hate crimes linked to race, religion, sexual orientation and disability fell by 3,600 to 44,500.
Why George Osborne's parking spot is such a problem
George Osborne wished to approach this week, Master Tactician that he is, setting the news agenda away from ‘The Millionaire’s Tax Cut’, for a debate about welfare reform. However, George Osborne is stuck in a mental rut, as well as perhaps “gutter politics” as proposed by Ed Balls MP, that the welfare reform debate is about shirkers v strivers, not about the pensions of the elderly which in fact constitute the bulk of the budget currently. Osborne in Torytown Toryshire earlier this week used the same image of shirkers being in bed with their curtains closed (with some of the words interchanged) while strivers go to work in the morning. Osborne therefore fundamentally wants to articulate his welfare debate in the language of ‘fairness’. He doesn’t wish to talk about those Directors of HBOS which have been alleged to underperform and who had been holding ludrative positions elsewhere. Not that kind of fairness. He doesn’t particularly wish to talk about tax avoidance – even though he has a “crack squad” of a handful of people looking into the billions which disappear because of multinational tax avoidance. No, instead, Osborne is pathologically stuck in a mental mindset of pointing the finger “at those below you” who earn more by doing less, not “at those above you” who earn more by doing much less.
Enter Mick Philpott. Like Ed Miliband ‘wants to have a conversation with you’, George Osborne wants you to have a debate about shirker psychology. However, Osborne’s fundamental problem is that benefit fraud, even according to the DWPs’ own statistics, is a relatively minor problem compared to other problems in the welfare budget. Also, it is dangerous to construct policy on the basis of one extreme example, for the same reason you would not necessarily reconstruct the entire policy of inheritance tax based on the recent Seddon case. The Daily Mail and George Osborne have undoubtedly succeeded in their primary goal of having people “discuss” this issue; except the discussion is one of competing shrills, of blame and counterblame, and there is a lot of noise compared to a weak signal.
This morning, George Osborne is facing more criticism over welfare reforms after he was photographed getting into a car parked in a disabled space. The picture shows the Chancellor being picked up by his official car in a restricted bay, after he stopped for lunch at the Magor services on the M4 in Monmouthshire. Senior Conservative sources said he had been to buy food from McDonald’s and was not aware the Land Rover had been inappropriately parked. George Osborne’s parking spot, on the front cover of the Daily Mirror, is a problem for a number of reasons. The embarrassing incident comes as the chancellor stands accused of pushing through welfare reforms that will hurt the disabled, including housing benefit cuts for people with spare rooms. The disability charity Scope says 3.7 million people will be affected by the government’s welfare cuts, losing £28.3bn of support by 2018. The charity’s chief executive, Richard Hawkes, told the Mirror the incident “shows how wildly out of touch the chancellor is with disabled people in the UK”. He said: “They will see this as rubbing salt in their wounds.
The issue is that George Osborne’s “team” appears to be taking up a parking space which should be taken up by a “real” disabled citizen. This taps into the “hypocrisy” attack of voters which is a very potent one – and when it is combined with an attack on someone perceived as privileged, there is a lot of political capital in it. This argument is only tenable if it happens that George Osborne’s driver is not disabled; it is perfectly possible for him or her to be a person with an obvious disability or a “hidden” disability. If the criticism of Osborne’s “team” is correct, then the idea of someone claiming something fraudulent is exactly what Osborne has seemed to accuse disabled citizens of. Osborne’s defence is one of ignorance, and indeed it is perfectly possible that his “team” parked in this parking spot negligently or innocently rather than fraudulently. However, it is a fundamental tenet of the English law that ignorance is no defence, in other words “ignorantia non excusat juris”. Nobody is above the law, including George Osborne, even if it is possible for the Coalition to rewrite hurriedly the law if it does not suit their purposes with the help of Labour (such as happened recently with the Workfare vote over which a number of Labour MPs were forced to rebel.)
The starting point is, of course, that George Osborne is inherently unpopular with Labour voters (and some within the Conservative Party say that he is inherently unpopular with many within the Conservative Party as well.) A lot of this is “personality politics”, in part contributed to by Osborne himself who appears to revel in playing a ‘pantomime villain’. He was openly very hostile to Alistair Darling, but since May 2010 when the economy was in fact in a fragile recovery, he has driven the economy at high speed in the reverse gear, and, whether or not the service sector recovers, he has taken the UK economy through a “double dip”.
Of course, the issue is a “storm in a teacup”, compared to NHS management, the management of the economy, etc., and Conservatives will feel that it is ludicrous that Osborne is being harrassed into apologising for a relatively minor incident. It is impossible to locate somebody who has never made a mistake. However, in the political “rough-and-tumble” ‘every little bit helps’, and the incident is not an isolated one contributing to an overall ambience of perceived incompetence. The other famous incident is of course when Osborne claimed that “his team” was unable to upgrade his standard class ticket to First Class, while he was merrily sitting in First Class. After a while these incidents, while perhaps unfortunate, all blend into the “pantomime villain” persona of George Osborne as a man who simply doesn’t care. A man who doesn’t care is normally pretty unattractive to voters, even in “white van” (or “white suit”) Tatton.
@Ed_Miliband's #budget #budget2013 response in full
Ed Miliband’s 2013 Budget response was as follows:
Mr Deputy Speaker.
This is the Chancellor’s fourth Budget, but one thing unites them all.
Every Budget he comes to this house and things are worse not better for the country.
Compared to last year’s Budget
Growth last year, down.
Growth this year, down.
Growth next year, down.
They don’t think growth matters, but people in this country do.
And all he offers is more of the same.
A more of the same Budget from a downgraded Chancellor.
Britain deserves better than this.
I do have to say to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he almost need not have bother coming to the House because the whole Budget, including the market-sensitive fiscal forecast was in the Standard before he rose to his feet.
To be fair to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I sure he didn’t intend the whole of the Budget to be in the Standard before he rose to his feet and I hope he will investigate and report back to the House.
Now, what did the Prime Minister declare late last year, and I quote:
“The good news will keep coming”.
And what did the Chancellor tell us today?
Under this Government the bad news just doesn’t stop.
Back in June 2010 the Chancellor promised:
“a steady and sustained recovery…”
He was wrong.
We’ve had the slowest recovery for 100 years.
Last year he said in the Budget there would be no double dip recession.
He was wrong, there was.
He told us a year ago that growth would be 2% this year.
He was wrong.
Now he says it will be just 0.6%.
He told us that next year, growth would be 2.7%.
Wrong again.
Now just 1.8%.
Wait for tomorrow the Chancellor says, and I will be vindicated.
But with this Chancellor tomorrow never comes.
He’s the wrong man.
In the wrong place.
At the worst possible time for the country.
It’s a downgraded budget from a downgraded Chancellor.
He has secured one upgrade this year.
Travelling first class on a second class ticket from Crewe to London.
And the only time the country’s felt all in it together, was when he got booed by 80,000 people at the Paralympics.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I’ve got some advice for the Chancellor.
Stay away from the cup final, even if Chelsea get there.
And, who is paying the price for the Chancellor’s failure?
Britain’s families.
In his first Budget he predicted that living standards would rise over the Parliament.
But wages are flat.
Prices are rising.
And Britain’s families are squeezed.
And what the Chancellor didn’t tell us, is that the Office for Budget Responsibility has confirmed the British people will be worse off in 2015 than they were in 2010.
It’s official: you’re worse off under the Tories.
Worse off, year after year after year. And wasn’t there an extraordinary omission from his speech, no mention of the AAA rating.
What the Prime Minister called the “mark of trust”.
Which he told us had been “secured”.
The Chancellor said it would be a humiliation for Britain to be downgraded.
So not just a downgraded Chancellor.
A humiliated Chancellor too.
And what about borrowing?
The Chancellor made the extraordinary claim in his speech that he was “on course”.
Mr Deputy Speaker, even he can’t believe this nonsense.
Debt is higher in every year of this Parliament than he forecast at the last Budget.
He is going to borrow £200 billion more than he planned.
And what did he say in his June 2010 Budget:
He set two very clear benchmarks, and I quote, “We are on track to have debt falling and a balanced structural current budget” by 2014/15.
Or as he called it “our four-year plan”.
This was the deal he offered the British people.
These were the terms.
Four years of pain, tax rises ….
The Prime Minister says from a sedentary position, borrow more, you are borrowing more.
And he just needs to look down the road, because the Business Secretary was asked and he said: “We are borrowing more”. From his own Business Secretary.
So these were the terms: four years, tax rises, and spending cuts, and the public finances would be sorted.
So today he should have been telling us:
Just one more year of sacrifice.
In twelve months the good times will roll.
Job done.
Mission accomplished.
Election plan underway.
But three years on, what does he say?
Exactly what he said three years ago.
We still need four more years of pain, tax rises and spending cuts.
In other words, after all the misery, all the harsh medicine, all the suffering by the British people:
Three years.
No progress.
Deal broken.
Same old Tories.
And all he offers is more of the same.
It’s as if they really do believe their own propaganda.
That the failure is nothing to do with them.
We’ve heard all the excuses:
The snow, the royal wedding, the Jubilee, the eurozone.
And now they’re turning on each other.
The Prime Minister said last weekend, and I quote:
“Let the message go out from this hall and this party: We are here to fight”.
Mr Deputy Speaker, they’re certainly doing that.
The Business Secretary’s turned on the Chancellor.
The Home Secretary’s turned on the Prime Minister.
And the Education Secretary’s turned on her.
The whole country can see that’s what’s going on.
The blame game has begun in the Cabinet.
The truth is the Chancellor is lashed to the mast, not because of his judgement, but because of pride.
Not because of the facts, but because of ideology.
And why does he stay in his job?
Not because the country want him.
Not because his party want him.
But because he is the Prime Minister’s last line of defence.
The Bullingdon boys really are both in it together.
And they don’t understand, you need a recovery made by the many not just a few at the top.
It’s a year now since the omnishambles Budget.
We’ve had u-turns on charities, on churches, on caravans.
And yes, on pasties.
But there is one policy they are absolutely committed to.
The top rate tax cut.
John the banker, remember him?
He’s had a tough year, earning just £1m.
What does he get? He gets a tax cut of £42,500 next year.
£42,500, double the average wage.
His colleague, let’s call him George, his colleague has done a little better, bringing home £5 million. What does he get in a tax cut?
I know the Prime Minister doesn’t like to hear what he agreed to, what does he get? A tax cut of nearly £250,000.
And at the same time everyone else is paying the price.
The Chancellor is giving with one hand, and taking far more away with the other.
Hard working families hit by the strivers tax.
Pensioners hit by the granny tax.
Disabled people hit by the bedroom tax.
Millions paying more so millionaires can pay less.
Now the Chancellor mentioned childcare.
He wants a round of applause for cutting £7bn in help for families this Parliament, and offering £700m of help in the next.
But what are the families who are waiting for that childcare help told? They’ve got to wait over two years for help to arrive.
But for the richest in society, they just have to wait two weeks for the millionaires tax cut to kick in.
This is David Cameron’s Britain.
And still the Prime Minister refuses to tell us – despite repeated questions – whether he is getting the 50p tax cut.
Oh he’s getting embarrassed now, you can see.
He’s had a year to think about it.
He must have done the maths.
Even he should have worked it out by now.
So come on.
Nod your head if you are getting the 50p tax rate.
They ask am I?
No I am not getting the 50p tax rate, I am asking whether the PM is.
Come on answer.
After all, he is the person that said sunlight is the best disinfectant, let transparency win the day.
Now let’s try something else. What about the rest of the Cabinet, are they getting the 50p tax rate?
OK, hands up if you are not getting the 50p tax cut?
Come on, hands up.
Just put your hand up if you are not getting the 50p tax cut. They are obviously … they don’t like it do they?
At last the Cabinet are united, with a simple message:
Thanks George.
He’s cutting taxes for them, while raising them for everyone else.
Now the Chancellor announced some measures today that he said would boost growth.
Just like he does every year.
And every year they fail.
I could mention the “national loan guarantee scheme”, he trumpeted that last year.
And then he abolished just four months later.
The Funding for Lending scheme, that he said would transform the prospects for small business.
The work programme that is worse than doing nothing.
And today he talked a lot about housing.
And the Prime Minister said this in 2011. He launched his so-called housing strategy, and in his own understated way he labelled it “a radical and unashamedly ambitious strategy”. He said it would give the housing industry a shot in the arm, enable 100,000 people to buy their own home.
18 months later, how many families have been helped?
Not 100,000.
Not even 10,000.
Just fifteen hundred out of 100,000 promised
That’s 98,500 broken promises.
For all the launches, strategies and plans, housing completions are now at the lowest level since the 1920s.
And 130,000 jobs lost in construction because of their failing economic plan.
It’s a failing economic plan from a failing Chancellor.
The Chancellor has failed the tests of the British people:
Growth, living standards and hope.
But he has not just failed their tests. He has failed on his own as well.
All he has to offer is this more of the same Budget.
Today the Chancellor joined twitter.
He could have got it all into 140 characters.
Growth down. Borrowing up. Families hit. And millionaires laughing all the way to the bank. #downgradedChancellor.
Mr Deputy Speaker, more of the same is not the answer to the last three years.
More of the same is the answer of a downgraded Chancellor, in a downgraded Government.
Britain deserves better than this.
Why not being able to organise a piss-up in a brewery suddenly matters
There’s one big problem with the branding of George Osborne as “The Austerity Chancellor”. That is, as a direct result of his own policies, he has made the economy much worse. Borrowing is going up, we’ve lost the “triple A” rating which Osborne himself was very proud of, consumer demand is effectively dead, and job security appears to be at its worst. It is of course vaguely possible that George Osborne is ‘sensitive’ about his own failings, and, to onlookers, he did look genuinely surprised at his level of unpopularity at an occasion which should have caused him immense pride.
And yet the popularity of his unpopularity cannot be underestimated. The YouTube video above has had 929,641 views. It seems that people have clicked on this video with the same relish that some people on a motorway slow down to observe a pile-up on the opposite carriageway. It is in a way easy to identify why George Osborne is unpopular; he gave a perception of enormous arrogance, and yet drove the UK economy into retropulsion with remarkable efficiency. Due to his policy, his target of ‘paying off the deficit’ by 2015 is pure science-fiction. People are undoubtedly sick of the ‘it’s all Labour’s fault’, and yet Labour members are still very enthusiastic about blaming the current UK’s troubles on Margaret Thatcher. It could be that George Osborne, with his Bullingdon past, has activated the ‘politics of envy’ button, and so there is a perception that he and Iain Duncan-Smith are “punishing” the most vulnerable members of society such as disabled citizens, while pursuing policies which are ‘friendly’ to the members of society with higher incomes.
In politics, leopards can change their spots all too easily. My gut feeling is that there will be another hung parliament in 2015. Sure, Ed Miliband managed to shoot ‘on target’ at an open goal today, and quite miraculously for some managed to avoid the crossbar. And thankfully the Liberal Democrats have blocked David Cameron’s “boundary changes” plan. All Ed Miliband has to do is to avoid losing, and there is absolutely nothing in it for him to play dangerously. In a similar vein, after the shambles that was last year’s Budget, George Osborne doesn’t need to pull any rabbits out of his hat. Last year, he was bigging up a great ‘reforming budget’ which rapidly disintegrated into a slanging match over pasties, and whether a railway Cornish pasty stall in a railway station had in fact shut down. Osborne will obviously be keen to avoid a repeat performance of last year’s catastrophe.
Not being able to organise a piss-up in a brewery suddenly matters. Commentators have often discussed openly what the Achilles’ heel of this Coalition might be. It is not disunity – there is no narrative of people violently throwing wobblies or mobile phones, or a similar episode of political fratricide. It could be that this Coalition is simply ‘out of touch’, and this is to some extent supported by evidence such as the “Millionaire’s tax benefit” or the “Bedroom tax”. However, the label of sheer incompetence is still a crucial one. Despite the screw-up that is the UK economy under the Coalition’s watch, certain voters are not blaming the Liberal Democrats. Despite the never-ending list of things that have gone wrong, such as the recent section 75 NHS regulations, there always seems scope for things to get even worse. Michael Gove does not want any further shambles over his school qualifications, while Theresa May’s star appears to be ‘in the ascendant’ with a perennial blistering attack on human rights. However, both parties do not wish to scupper their chances of a leadership bid if David Cameron fails in June 2015, and certainly are mindful of the old adage that “He who wields the knife never wears the crown”, with numerous former casualties such as David Miliband and Michael Heseltine.
Nick Clegg may suddenly have got ‘second wind’ having won Eastleigh, but this victory was only because Labour would have needed a miracle to win it (with Eastleigh around 250th on his “hit list”), and Maria Hutchings amazingly came third in a two-horse race. His party’s slogan “strong economy and a fair society” is obscenely fradulent at so many levels, even if you generously park his blatant lie about Labour having been incompetent over the economy. He himself had conceded the need for a £1 TN bailout of the banks as an emergency measure in the global financial crisis, and this is clearly stated in Hansard. The economy which was in recovery when he took over in May 2010 is now virtually dead, and heading for a “triple dip”. And if his “fair society” is epitomised by bedroom taxes victimising narrow sections of society, library closures, withdrawal of education support allowance, privatisation of the NHS which had been universal and free-at-the-point-of-use, high street closures of law centres denying thousands of ‘access-to-justice’, reports of suicides following welfare claims, Nick Clegg and his party genuinely need help. However, both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are mindful that they have reached a “critical mass” of cock-ups, and the Liberal Democrats, lacking all insight and being in complete denial, still feel that they have a useful rôle to play in propping up any minority government. However, next time Labour intend to repeal the Health and Social Care Act, so it would be a joke for the Liberal Democrats to ‘support’ this if they found themselves in government again, but Labour might need their votes. The only way to avoid this scenario is for Ed Miliband after his lengthy policy review to convince voters that there are genuine reasons why he should be allowed to implement his ‘One Nation’ vision. However, all political parties are prepared to ditch symbols of their values. It could be that Labour has no problem with revisiting the issue of electoral reform, again, if the Liberal Democrats demanded it; Clegg couldn’t care less if this were to become yet another ‘once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity’.
The label of this Coalition is well deserved, in fairness. David Cameron knows himself that he is living on borrowed time, but it is the whole Cabinet which is incompetent. For all his perceived faults, Ed Balls is a committed Keynesian, and has called it right on the economy; the only reason David Cameron perseverates in his hate campaign of him is that he knows he is a threat. In fact, all of the opposition are, because the Coalition has somehow managed to alienate systematically disabled citizens, the chronically sick, lawyers, physicians, human rights activists, and so on, in fact anyone apart from big corporates. The fact that he has managed to piss off most of the country ultimately will be his downfall.
Why not being able to organise a piss-up in a brewery suddenly matters
There’s one big problem with the branding of George Osborne as “The Austerity Chancellor”. That is, as a direct result of his own policies, he has made the economy much worse. Borrowing is going up, we’ve lost the “triple A” rating which Osborne himself was very proud of, consumer demand is effectively dead, and job security appears to be at its worst. It is of course vaguely possible that George Osborne is ‘sensitive’ about his own failings, and, to onlookers, he did look genuinely surprised at his level of unpopularity at an occasion which should have caused him immense pride.
And yet the popularity of his unpopularity cannot be underestimated. The YouTube video above has had 929,641 views. It seems that people have clicked on this video with the same relish that some people on a motorway slow down to observe a pile-up on the opposite carriageway. It is in a way easy to identify why George Osborne is unpopular; he gave a perception of enormous arrogance, and yet drove the UK economy into retropulsion with remarkable efficiency. Due to his policy, his target of ‘paying off the deficit’ by 2015 is pure science-fiction. People are undoubtedly sick of the ‘it’s all Labour’s fault’, and yet Labour members are still very enthusiastic about blaming the current UK’s troubles on Margaret Thatcher. It could be that George Osborne, with his Bullingdon past, has activated the ‘politics of envy’ button, and so there is a perception that he and Iain Duncan-Smith are “punishing” the most vulnerable members of society such as disabled citizens, while pursuing policies which are ‘friendly’ to the members of society with higher incomes.
In politics, leopards can change their spots all too easily. My gut feeling is that there will be another hung parliament in 2015. Sure, Ed Miliband managed to shoot ‘on target’ at an open goal today, and quite miraculously for some managed to avoid the crossbar. And thankfully the Liberal Democrats have blocked David Cameron’s “boundary changes” plan. All Ed Miliband has to do is to avoid losing, and there is absolutely nothing in it for him to play dangerously. In a similar vein, after the shambles that was last year’s Budget, George Osborne doesn’t need to pull any rabbits out of his hat. Last year, he was bigging up a great ‘reforming budget’ which rapidly disintegrated into a slanging match over pasties, and whether a railway Cornish pasty stall in a railway station had in fact shut down. Osborne will obviously be keen to avoid a repeat performance of last year’s catastrophe.
Not being able to organise a piss-up in a brewery suddenly matters. Commentators have often discussed openly what the Achilles’ heel of this Coalition might be. It is not disunity – there is no narrative of people violently throwing wobblies or mobile phones, or a similar episode of political fratricide. It could be that this Coalition is simply ‘out of touch’, and this is to some extent supported by evidence such as the “Millionaire’s tax benefit” or the “Bedroom tax”. However, the label of sheer incompetence is still a crucial one. Despite the screw-up that is the UK economy under the Coalition’s watch, certain voters are not blaming the Liberal Democrats. Despite the never-ending list of things that have gone wrong, such as the recent section 75 NHS regulations, there always seems scope for things to get even worse. Michael Gove does not want any further shambles over his school qualifications, while Theresa May’s star appears to be ‘in the ascendant’ with a perennial blistering attack on human rights. However, both parties do not wish to scupper their chances of a leadership bid if David Cameron fails in June 2015, and certainly are mindful of the old adage that “He who wields the knife never wears the crown”, with numerous former casualties such as David Miliband and Michael Heseltine.
Nick Clegg may suddenly have got ‘second wind’ having won Eastleigh, but this victory was only because Labour would have needed a miracle to win it (with Eastleigh around 250th on his “hit list”), and Maria Hutchings amazingly came third in a two-horse race. His party’s slogan “strong economy and a fair society” is obscenely fradulent at so many levels, even if you generously park his blatant lie about Labour having been incompetent over the economy. He himself had conceded the need for a £1 TN bailout of the banks as an emergency measure in the global financial crisis, and this is clearly stated in Hansard. The economy which was in recovery when he took over in May 2010 is now virtually dead, and heading for a “triple dip”. And if his “fair society” is epitomised by bedroom taxes victimising narrow sections of society, library closures, withdrawal of education support allowance, privatisation of the NHS which had been universal and free-at-the-point-of-use, high street closures of law centres denying thousands of ‘access-to-justice’, reports of suicides following welfare claims, Nick Clegg and his party genuinely need help. However, both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are mindful that they have reached a “critical mass” of cock-ups, and the Liberal Democrats, lacking all insight and being in complete denial, still feel that they have a useful rôle to play in propping up any minority government. However, next time Labour intend to repeal the Health and Social Care Act, so it would be a joke for the Liberal Democrats to ‘support’ this if they found themselves in government again, but Labour might need their votes. The only way to avoid this scenario is for Ed Miliband after his lengthy policy review to convince voters that there are genuine reasons why he should be allowed to implement his ‘One Nation’ vision. However, all political parties are prepared to ditch symbols of their values. It could be that Labour has no problem with revisiting the issue of electoral reform, again, if the Liberal Democrats demanded it; Clegg couldn’t care less if this were to become yet another ‘once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity’.
The label of this Coalition is well deserved, in fairness. David Cameron knows himself that he is living on borrowed time, but it is the whole Cabinet which is incompetent. For all his perceived faults, Ed Balls is a committed Keynesian, and has called it right on the economy; the only reason David Cameron perseverates in his hate campaign of him is that he knows he is a threat. In fact, all of the opposition are, because the Coalition has somehow managed to alienate systematically disabled citizens, the chronically sick, lawyers, physicians, human rights activists, and so on, in fact anyone apart from big corporates. The fact that he has managed to piss off most of the country ultimately will be his downfall.
The Obama victory is a rejection of the philosophy of David Cameron
The Conservatives ARE LYING. They are claiming that Obama’s situation is fundamentally different, as the Conservatives inherited a mess from Labour. They LIE, LIE and LIE even more, and simply do not care. Unfortunately, the public are not stupid. In 2008, the then Shadow chancellor George Osborne has committed the Tories to matching Labour’s public spending totals for the next three years. Osborne said the 2% increases in the financial years 2008/9 to 2010/11 would also allow “sustainably lower taxes” as the economy is expected to grow faster than public spending. The shadow chancellor said triumphantly in a newspaper article: “I can confirm for the first time that a Conservative government will adopt these spending totals.” He then continued: “Total government spending will rise by 2% a year real terms, from £615 billion next year to £674 billion in the year 2010/11. Like Labour, we will review the final year’s total in a spending review in 2009. Just in case you were in any doubt, “The result of adopting these spending totals is that under a Conservative government there will be real increases in spending on public services, year after year. And why did Labour have to spend so much money to increase the deficit? To stop the banks from imploding, as an emergency measure. The Tories would have done the same had it happened on their watch. Fact.
In contrast to Iain Duncan-Smith and Dr Liam Fox who were actively helping the Romney campaign, it is no secret Labour were helping the Obama campaign. “It matters because America is the last superpower where who wins a leadership election really matters – it affects the whole world,” said Simon Redfern, chair of the Walthamstow Labour Party. Simon just returned from ten days of campaigning for Mr Obama in Cleveland, Ohio, as part of a 30-strong British delegation. He explained: “I was given the opportunity and I just jumped at it. In the Labour Party we’re trying to emulate many of the things the Democrats have been doing with community activism, so it was a real education. Simon added, “Getting people involved and battling cynicism has really been [Walthamstow Labour MP] Stella Creasy’s mission. Things like the pop-up respite centre during the riots last year are an example of that type of community, grass-roots involvement.” That, I think, is precisely it – instead of asking for votes by scaremongering over impending bankruptcy like Greece, losing our gold studded triple A rating, talking about spending sprees with the public finances, Obama uniquely offered hope not hate. It is therefore little wonder then that American President was left rather underwhelmed after a private discussion with Mr Cameron in 2008 and his impressions of the Conservative leader were reported in a confidential cable sent by US officials back to Washington. David Cameron was regarded by Barack Obama as a “lightweight” politician following their first meeting, the leaked documents have disclosed apparently. The embarrassing memo is among more than 1,000 documents from the American embassy in London that have been leaked and been publicly released, consequently. According to the Daily Telegraph, American officials had already warned Downing Street over the contents of the diplomatic cable. It is thought that they have stressed that Mr Obama’s opinion of Mr Cameron has changed as the two men have got to know one another better.
At least Obama was able to say last night that “Our economy is recovering”. Indeed in 2010, George Osborne inherited an economy that was growing at 0.7 per cent. Later that year he ignored the advice of many economists and set out plans to close the deficit within four years rather than eight. He also failed to set out a coherent growth plan, predicated on investment and jobs in the green economy that his party once championed. The result of Osborne’s slasher-nomics has been, as entirely predictable, that borrowing that is rising rather than falling. In this year’s budget, the Chancellor was forced to admit that public sector net borrowing (PSNB) would be 8.3 per cent in 2011-12 rather than 7.9 per cent as he’d predicted a year before. Since then, the situation has deteriorated. The most recent ONS release showed that the PSNB is up nearly 22 per cent in the first five months of the financial year compared to the same period last year. Borrowing is going up even as the departmental spending cuts continue apace.
It is thought that Cameron will seek to “seek change” in 2015 even as the incumbent candidate, but a François Hollande proved, it is possible for one-term oppositions to exist. Obama said last night, “It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you’re willing to try.” Meanwhile, here in the UK, ATOS has conducted about 738,000 work capability assessments on benefit claimants in the past financial year. However the assessments have been widely criticised and it has emerged that 40% of people appeal against the decisions – with 38% of those successful. The cost to the taxpayer of the tribunal system alone is £50m, around half of the amount spent on reassessment. In sharp contrast to Miliband’s “One Nation”, charities say jobcentre staff have been shocked “when someone who is clearly unwell turns up having been told that they are fit for work”. In May 2012, GPs called for the assessments to be scrapped. Tom Greatrex, whose investigation into Atos led to the National Audit Office this month calling for an overhaul of the government’s medical testing contract with the company, said the firm “would not fix its reputation by sponsoring the Paralympics”.
“Tonight you voted for action, not politics as usual. You elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours. And in the coming weeks and months, I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together.” We in Labour support him, as we always have done.
Meanwhile, this Twitter exchange from last night sums it up nicely.
Estimate for GDP is +1.0%, but "overall this broadly leaves GDP unchanged"
The preliminary growth estimate is GDP grew by 1.0%, production 1.1%, service 1.3%, construction -2.5%. These had been affected by the special factors in the Q2, additional bank holidays, and the exceptionally poor weather conditions. Also, the Olympics had a number of effects, summarised in an article on the ONS website. “Overall these broadly leave GDP unchanged”, according to Joe Grice. GDP has fallen by 6.3% to the rough announced in 2009, and possibly about half of that trough has been recovered today.
Today’s estimated growth in the UK economy is very much despite the economic policy of HM Government. Despite a temporary bounce expected from the Olympics, due to ticket sales for the Olympics and Paralympics, the UK economy still has massive underlying structural faults, and it is very difficult to be optimistic about the future with any degree of certainty. George Osborne will be desperate to use the third quarter GDP figures to demonstrate that he has taken ‘tough decisions’, and that ‘the medicine is working’. However, any sign of growth on Thursday will reaffirm that the economy was always capable of growing, and indeed had been growing before the Conservative-Tory government took power. The figures will also much undermine the notion that some citizens of the UK are ‘intrinsically lazy’, a theme spun by a Government which has allowed Starbucks to pay no corporation tax amidst much public disgust.
Stripping out the effects of the Olympics, the economy is definitely flatlining – it’s flat at barely beyond 0%. Part of the problem is that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats refused to acknowledge the cause of the crisis in the UK economy as being generated abroad. The financial crises of the past decade have restricted access to funding, suppressed consumer demand and stifled international and domestic growth. Consequently, their premature calls to blame the Eurozone crisis, aided and abetted by the British Chambers of Commerce, has smacked of a bad dancer, George Osborne, desperately trying to blame the floor. The standard rate of VAT increased from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent on 4 January 2011, and is likely to stay at this historically record level. In a period of slumping consumer confidence an increase in VAT is effectively a tax on retailers rather than consumers. Initial attempts to absorb the increase in VAT are difficult to maintain when supply chain pressures are not equally suppressed, but as the year continues the VAT rise is likely to push up prices and further undermine demand. As with international cost changes this puts an increased focus on value and costs.
Whilst the average voter might be willing to swallow the story that Labour ‘spent too much’ in the previous government, being the cause of the depression, pump-fed to them vicariously by the BBC on behalf of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government, it is an inescapable fact that UK business confidence slumped to its lowest point this year. This is confirmed amid fluctuating economic prospects, according to research by BDO. The BDO Optimism Index, which predicts business performance two quarters ahead, has hit a seven-month low in the firm’?s latest “Business Trends” report. The indicator fell for the fifth consecutive month, from 93.5 in June to 93.1 in July. BDO says there was a brief resurgence in business confidence in Q1 2012, where confidence reached as high as 98, but the index is now at the lowest level since December 2011. The poor performance is a sign that contraction will continue for the remainder of 2012. The UK’s trade deficit also more than doubled in August 2012, according to the Office for National Statistics. The difference in goods and services imported and exported widened to £4.2bn in August, from £1.7bn in July. The UK’s deficit with the 27 countries of the European Union – including the crisis-plagued eurozone – widened to £4.9bn in August from £4.4bn in July. Separately, the UK’s industrial production fell in August for the 17th month in a row. Arguably the trade statistics continue to provide few reasons for optimism in the short term, with the large drop in goods exports to parts of the eurozone over the past year underlining the ongoing impact of the crisis.
Firms are generally less confident in taking on staff too. The CIPD, which represents Britain’s employers and employment professionals, has previously highlighted that Adrian Beecroft’s fire at will proposal would be a ‘licence for bad practice’, and could harm the reputation of small businesses seeking to hire new employees at the very time when we need to help them drive growth and jobs. This further adds to the chorus of criticism of the proposals which we have already heard from business. It can hardly be a proud claim that the number of people in any employment, without the most basic of employment rights, is at an all time, as indeed the UK slips one place in “business friendly” ranking, announced today. So, somewhat despite the management of the economy by the Conservatives-Liberal Democrats, Britain is this week expected to emerge from recession later this week, with the Olympics providing a much needed boost to the economy in the third quarter. Analysts expect a 0.6% rise in GDP, lifting the economy out of the longest double-dip recession since the second world war. Economists have predicted that a rise in GDP would largely be a result of temporary effects, such as the Olympics. A bounce back is also expected after the jubilee weekend in the second quarter dented output. you can easily start to build a case of GDP growth is between 0.8, maybe even 0.9 (percent) in the third quarter.
The data published today may provide a further boost for George Osborne, coming after news of falling unemployment. The rising employment, consisting of a workforce with next-to-no employment rights, with zilch job security, may be a price ‘well worth paying'; for a start, you need some sort of workforce, however flexible and transitory to make a dividend for a shareholder. That will surely strengthen the chancellor’s resolve to stick to “plan A” budget cutting measures ahead of the autumn statement in December, but the ‘hard won respect from the markets’ will be in absolute tatters if the economy continues to suffer from drivers towards growth. It could be at least symbolic that George Osborne’s conference speech did not even mention ‘growth’ once this year in Birmingham. Vicky Redwood at Capital Economics has opined as follows, cautiously: “GDP will therefore need to have risen by more than that to point to any recovery in underlying output. Anything less should be viewed as disappointing. That is, however, likely to be only a temporary boost. Samuel Tombs of Capital Economics says: “There are bigger factors at play. The eurozone is one of the biggest constraints on growth.” He forecasts a 0.4% drop in GDP in the final quarter, meaning the UK would shrink by 0.5% this year. That would be bad news for George Osborne, who bases his budget on forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility, which has pencilled in growth of 0.8% this year.
Looking forward, the Conservatives-Liberal Democrats look set to continue on their course of deception, with David Cameron shamelessly lying on Twitter that Labour opposes all spending cuts. That is a naked lie: Labour has specified, for example, where it would not have cut in the frontline services, well before David Cameron’s “tough and intelligent” speech about law and order today. The problem with lies from the current government, unfortunately, is that they all dispelled eventually by the Office for National Statistics in time. The full answer will be revealed in the next few months, which even threatens UK’s much prized credit-rating. Voters will have a chance to provide feedback too on May 8th, 2015.
Should Labour play the ball not the man?
“Play the ball not the man” – we can be bold enough to make a stand and do battle for our views and beliefs. But we must strive to be mature enough not to resort to unnecessary personal attacks upon people with opposing views. The “ball” is our personal view and the “man” is someone with the opposing view. The phrase derives from the world of soccer.
The starting point is unfortunately how the Conservatives have approached the matter. The UK economy is now an outright disaster, entirely thanks to George Osborne enabled by the Liberal Democrats. At a personal branding level, Osborne would like to be viewed as a great strategician within this party, but actually there is no strategy in any orthodox meaning of the term using by business, finance and management, let alone politics. Osborne is a tactician, and even then it is firefighting partly as a result of self-inflicted errors. One is unable to call somebody a great tactician who has made a million U-turns, like following the recent Budget.
George Osborne has personally attacked Ed Balls, because he would like to put the image of Balls and Brown as aggressive mobile phone chuckers playing havoc with the economy. The Tories do not produce a narrative on how money was spent as an emergency measure to save the banks, and nor do they wish to tell the truth to the public, in the same way they lie about how we ought to go bankrupt like Greece. Osborne would like to make mendacious, highly vindictive, personalised, extremely nasty smears rather than engage with Balls about why Balls was right. The chain of events is as follows: put VAT up so that consumer spending is decreased, pull investment in the construction industry by stopping projects such as ‘Building Schools for the Future’, create a high level of unemployment as a price well worth paying, receive fewer tax receipts, and spend a high level of benefit; whilst giving your mates a tax cut, and taking people silently off the register for their disabled benefits, leading to a record number of appeals in tribunals.
They are aided and abetted in this immoral activity by the BBC in this. The BBC provides inaccurate, highly biased and imbalanced reports, completely contrary to their own editorial guidelines. They on a regular basis confuse real news with entertainment, and prefer to report on their own reporters than the real issues facing this country. Therefore, Labour has a very limited means of getting its message across, arguably apart from the new media. Whilst some excellent blogs exist, not everyone (particularly the elderly) have access to the internet, so still remain disenfranchised by politics. Whilst it does not matter that politicians effectively spin things with very little evidence, as indeed Lord Lamont conceded regarding George Osborne’s direct accusation that Ed Balls was directly involved in corrupt activity, they can continue to argue that people are ‘apathetic’ about politics. People are not apathetic about politics, in that they cannot wait to see the Liberal Democrats obliterated on May 8th 2015. David Cameron is hated by much of his party, and whilst one term governments are extremely rate this government is most unusually incompetent.
A further problem is that many people are now warming to Gromit. This means that people prefer to listen to Miliband over a judicial inquiry for banking, Murdoch and the NHS, than listen to the corporate-funded Conservative Party which would rather hire-and-fire people without notice and seem to have become senior members alleged of very serious crimes. So Labour is forced to get personal, because they have such little scope to explain the arguments. And whilst Maurice Glasman produces incoherent rants about intellectual issues which nobody can understand, and Stephen Twigg appears to wish to consign members of society to ‘military schools’ , you can understand why voters feel frustrated.
