The nine-point plan

I don’t think that daily polls tell us much of a story anyway but the news that the Conservative lead over Labour is back into single figures isn’t surprising or worrying to me.

Despite everything that has happened during the past 18 months, George Osborne’s speech on Tuesday outlining cuts that need to be made if we to have any chance of bringing the country’s huge debts under control, will have come as a shock to some people. They probably don’t read a newspaper or listen to the news and use the internet for other things. The simple fact is that not everyone is going to understand the context of George Osborne’s message – for some, it might become clearer later – others will never see the necessity for spending reductions.

Others will understand the message and will have decided that they don’t like it much. Included in that may be thousands of public sector workers who fear for their jobs. For them, the Conservative message could be pretty glum – although it’s a glumness that we in the private sector have had to manage for the past 18 months. Today in the FT, there is an advert for a Deputy Head of Internal Audit at the DfT for £80,000 + benefits and in the Local Government Chronicle for an Interim Change Manager at £35-43k. I could go on.

This stoking of the public jobs market that Labour has indulged in not only has to stop – it has to be redressed. There are, for example, 99,000 soldiers in the Army and 85,000 officials in the MoD. That’s the equivalent of each soldier having a 0.85FT official to look after their needs – it’s clearly ridiculous. And turkeys won’t vote for Christmas – what is important is the creation and expansion of alternative economies for people to move out of the public sector into.

If you put 40%, 31% and 18% into Electoral Calculus, you still get a Conservative government – albeit with a majority of four (the same nine-point lead for Labour produces them a majority of 124). But I’d rather have a Conservative government that will sort out our national problems with a razor-thin majority than a Conservative government that tells people what it thinks they want to hear with a majority of 124.

If people then vote for five more years of Gordon Brown’s denial and escapism, they will get everything they deserve.

Buttering the currant bun

Reproduced by kindest permission of the Murdoch clan. I'm a Sky+HD subscriber so they won't mind.

I did my Master’s dissertation on the effect of The Sun‘s election coverage comparing 1992 with 1997 and having done so I regard the political endorsement, whichever way it falls, of Britain’s biggest-selling daily as a key moment in any election campaign.

As a conclusion of my research, I don’t feel The Sun wields that much power politically, although it would be wrong to say that it holds no sway over its readers at all. Perhaps they don’t blindly listen to its editorials, they aren’t bound by its opinions; but what The Sun chooses to report – and how it chooses to report it – is a big deal.

In 1992, The Sun hammered Neil Kinnock in such a way that rendered it difficult for its readers to vote for him. But he wasn’t PM, and couldn’t do much to harm Rupert Murdoch’s media interests on the way out. Brown can – it will be interesting to see whether James Murdoch tells the paper to go hell-for-leather or whether it will all be quite gentlemanly after all. One suspects that Gordon Brown won’t allow such a slight to go unpunished.

The switching of The Sun yesterday is the clearest possible signal that the paper believes DC is on the way to Downing Street. Given Murdoch Jnr’s closeness with George Osborne, it is also likely that the paper already knows what DC will tell the country next week. Despite what @KerryMP – who believes Twitter will counteract The Sun’s influence (seriously) – and others in Labour may say, it is a devastating blow to them. Since 1974, when Rupert Murdoch took ownership, The Sun has never backed the losing side in a general election.

Whether it is symptom or cause – or even, as I suspect, a bit of both – I can’t imagine that they would want to start now. There is still work for the Conservatives to do – in particular, they are vulnerable economically with George Osborne and in traditional areas such as the NHS. They need to spell out some home truths in a credible and caring way – it would be nice to hear some firmer manifesto content too.

The support of The Sun, always derided by its opponents, makes victory in May that bit more likely.

It’s also important to remember that we are not even in an election campaign – I cannot recall any previous election (even 1987) where The Sun has called its endorsement so early. Clearly they have their own reasons but for Labour the only place to go now is The Telegraph - although it’s difficult to see that paper, even in its more modern guise, switching and alienating the majority of its traditional readers.

PM must be furious – he and the PM have pretty much nowhere to go except YouTube.

Two reasons for Labour shame

Two things came out of the Labour conference that real made me angry. I can put up with Labour ministers banging on about how Gordon Brown saved the world and how the Tories are planning to throw pensioners into the sea etc etc but the sight of ex-terrorists being allowed to return to the scene of one of their most infamous atrocities on an official ticket, to be able to mingle with Cabinet ministers and turn up to parties sponsored by the Grauniad really makes me doubt the character of the people responsible. We all know who I’m talking about; his name doesn’t get mentioned on this blog.

What the IRA did to the Grand last time they visited

I don’t need to go into the details of the Brighton bomb, which happened 25 years ago next month. Suffice it to say that I refuse to believe that it never occurred to the Labour Party what an inappropriate situation this was. It’s just the small, petty, spiteful and vindictive actions of a party that has lost its self-respect. No doubt next year they’ll be heading down to Eastbourne to hold the Labour conference outside the former home of Ian Gow. I don’t agree with Norman Tebbit about much but I certainly understand why he is not happy. Strangely, the BBC reports this only in its Northern Ireland coverage rather than the main conference section.

The second thing that made me mad was Gordon Brown‘s proposal for 16 and 17-year old single mothers to be housed together in shared accommodation rather than single flats. I can imagine the utter furore if a Conservative government had come forward with similar proposals. This is the politics of victimhood – of Labour saying to people “You’ll never amount to much but if you stick with us, we’ll protect you from the Conservatives who want to cut you loose in society.” Wrong.

The way to tackle teenage pregnancy is break the cycle of poverty and lack of opportunity that teaches young girls the only way to get on in life is to have babies because with those come houses and income through benefits. Young people need teachers who can instill self-worth in them, social workers who have the power to tackle parents who don’t give a damn and clear and distinct paths of opportunity to make their lives better before they bring babies into the world to share them.

It would also help if teachers didn’t hand out contraceptives to girls barely old enough to write their own names and if our culture wasn’t so wholly dominated by images of sex and peer pressure to engage in it. There are other enjoyable pursuits in life for young people – but if sex is all they know, it’s inevitable that it will become a preoccupation. It is up to government to enable the alternatives. It makes me mad that Labour has no intention to do this while telling everyone it cares about young mothers. It is not interested in single mothers – only their votes – and bunging them all together in block accommodation is a ghastly piece of ignorant and exploitative legislation that has no place whatsoever in Parliament.

I hope DC refers to this in Manchester. The Conservatives should be able to do a lot better.

Talking to themselves

On his feet

I’ve listened to the speech, heard the reactions – from the breathless enthusiasm of the younger activists to the not-even-faint praise of Barry Sheerman on 5Live earlier, having trashed Gordon yesterday too.

The most telling reaction was that of @BBCLauraK, who tweeted that she wasn’t sure what the big message of the speech would be. The main message is this - I am Gordon, your leader and I have shown in the past what will happen to people within the party who stand up to my authority. I will take your ideas and pass them off as mine, I’ll demote you and brief against you as necessary. I am here to lead you into the next election whatever you may think and the political career of anyone who dares challenge me will be over.

It’s not a message to the country, it’s a message to his party. What the country will see, I think, is a leader whose party has been in power 12 years and who should have done many of the things he is now talking about – addressing anti-social behaviour, finishing Lords reform, looking after the poor and ensuring proper childcare provision – although what low-income households will do with ten free hours a week is a puzzler. The public will give little credit for catching up with them on ID cards and the recalling of MPs is a silly Conservative idea that will lead to abuses. Everything in his speech was tired, rehashed, borrowed – it came from anywhere but him as he lamely looks around for something resembling a “vision”.

The BBC seems to have been keener on the speech than most but that’s not surprising. There were good things in it – a National Care Service isn’t a bad idea on the surface. But where is the money coming from? Brown has already spent and lent the country to breaking point and we cannot even service the debt on borrowing at the moment. Spending cuts and tax rises are inevitable – so how on earth does he expect people to take him seriously with these uncosted ideas?

More likely, they are things that an incoming Conservative government will have to “cancel” – even though they are not started – and opportunities for the Labour opposition to capitalise on. It’s politics, but it’s hardly statesmanship from the Statesman of the Year. Once again, Gordon has delivered a speech for his party rather than his country and as the Labour Party becomes ever more inward-looking, those looking outward – such as Peter Meddlesome – will seem ever more lone voices.

I would prefer a PM who can look beyond themselves and foster real reform. But the only way to do that is to take on the Civil Service (which is letting Brown “cancel” ID cards because they know he won’t be around much longer). The New Labour project looked at one point like it had the better of the Whitehall blockers. But the battle has now been lost and Gordon showed today that he simply doesn’t have the substance to fight on, even if the heart is willing.

I want to hear DC tell everyone what the plan is. Let’s hope he’s got one.

Where’s the plan?

Hmmmmm...

Yes, Minister is full of allusions to the concept of “the less you intend to do about something, the more you have to talk about it” – no doubt I could find an episode and exact quote, but you get the picture.

During the Lib Dem conference, there was a clear picture – a narrative of where the Liberal Democrats wanted to go and what they wanted to do. They have a clear ambition and are aligning themselves nationally to the left with the intention of also being able to soften this to tempt away core Conservative voters. I don’t agree with it policy-by-policy but at least it’s there, it’s clear and frankly, it’s sensible.

But I’m searching the Labour conference in vain for a cohesive, collective and strategic vision. Gordon Brown has been banging on for ages about his strategic vision. Longer, even, than since he became Prime Minister. And the reason that the country has been allowed to drift is because Brown has never come up with this encompassing vision. After 12 years in power, Labour has been drained of the strength to reform government properly ie from the Civil Service upwards and instead now tinkers around with headline-grabbers.

On the one hand, Lord Meddlesome wants to extend the car scrappage scheme for cheap new motors - on the other hand, Ed Miliband wants us all to believe Labour will be serious about climate change at Copenhagen. Andy Burham can’t guarantee health spending while maintaining Labour is the party of the NHS, Jack Straw promises more support for victims but Alan Johnson wants to be tougher on crime – we’ve heard it all before.

Gordon Brown wants to end the bonus system – but he presided over it. And Meddlesome thinks that Labour are both the “underdogs” for the election but also that it’s “up for grabs”.

This is government by headline and they are desperate headlines at that. Ministers’ ideas are stolen by the Prime Minister to shore up his own teatering authority and the country is being run by a series of politicians positioning themselves for leadership after the fall of a man whose methods of internal control are by all accounts tyrannical.

It strikes me that this conference is more about the Labour Party than the Labour government. Perhaps searching it for a national vision is to mistake its true purpose.

Luvvies, Labour’s Lost

Flawed but not floored - can he turn it around

It’s a bit early to define a narrative from the Labour Conference in Brighton just yet but so far the most interesting thing coming out of the proceedings there is the attitude of the BBC.

First, we have a surprisingly combative interview from the normally obliging Andrew Marr, who went so far as to raise with the PM the issue of his alleged medication. Predictably, Brown dodged the question and instead went for the sympathy vote over his eyesight, something that David Blunkett – a far more robust and substantial man – would never have done. Whatever the answer, it caught me (and quite a few of the Tory Twitterati that I follow) out – one wonders whether this is the last Marr/Brown interview.

It obviously irked Marr to ask the question as much as it did Brown to have to answer it. The BBC man’s pleading that it was a “fair” question was followed up by some serious feigned interest in Brown’s sob story. Obviously I’m sorry he has a sight impairment – but it was noticeable how much detail he was prepared to give up on this in contrast with the actual question about prescription drugs.

Then we had this from Laura Kuenssberg (@BBCLauraK) – she really is a gem on top of a compost heap. Not only was she prepared to tell viewers the actual mood of the conference on Brown’s arrival (ie pretty dreadful) but also to lob some real questions at him about his law-breaking ministers and then reflect that the party activists (the BBC usual calls them crowds as if to ignore their handpicked pedigree) were making so much noise that he couldn’t hear her. And she hinted, quite correctly, that this was probably deliberate.

But look at the story headline – “Labour ‘should expose the Tories’”. Clearly the online staff have gone seriously off message – or on message with PM. It doesn’t reflect the downbeat message from LauraK and about Labour – or indeed much about Labour at all. It’s just a pop at the Conservatives.

Previous to this, of course, was this beauty – again courtesy of online staff – suggesting that Brown and Barack Obama are, after all, the closest of chums and that Obama doesn’t see Brown as a washed-up political liability or “depressing to be around“, as one of his staff leaked to the press. According to the BBC, this official line “quelled rumours” of an Obama snub. No it didn’t – and who are they to report that as fact? Any moderately sensible person watching the polls will realise that the last thing Obama needs with his problems at home is to become embroiled in some tawdry scheme by a foreign political party to prop up their ailing government with lent popularity.

Obama isn’t my cup of tea but he’s certainly not a fool. And only a fool would consider anything other than refusing any more public airtime with Gordon than was absolutely necessary. Any suggestion to the contrary is completely counter-inituitive and total propaganda, which the Beeb is only too happy to repeat.

Going back to the polls, not even Obama could have found a way to spin a poll that suggests you are heading out of office positively. I can’t now find the link on the BBC website – maybe they’ve seen sense and pulled it – but this poll, which states 41% of people think Brown is almost certainly going to lose is bad, bad news. Instead, the BBC concentrated on the 48% of people who though Labour still had a “slim chance” of winning in 2010, along with the 11% who think he will win.

It’s a silly question – you can’t ever rule out that a party has a “slim chance” of winning. I’m not surprised so many people ticked that box rather than commit themselves but it doesn’t reflect reality. The BBC is supposed to be here to present facts not spin to us that 59% of people think Gordon is still in with a chance next year – of course he is, he’s taking part in the election. They are more aware than ever that politics is self-fulfilling and by buying into this silly poll (I though they didn’t report routine polls anyway) they are just playing PM and the PM’s game for them. At our expense.

I don’t expect the BBC to give DC a free ride. I don’t expect them to push through government PR work. But there is a bipolarity within the corporation at the moment between the political pragmatists that realise the New Labour years are 95% drawing to a close and the politically-motivated staff who desperately want to play a hand in upsetting the odds with sly journalism. It’s got no place in the BBC and they have no place on the public payroll.

The BBC is a service, not a political tool. I’m afraid quite a number of its staff work there for the wrong reasons – they should stand for election instead.

Writs all round

Thank goodness that Nadine Dorries (left) has finally served libel writs on Damian McBride and Derek Draper for the scurrilous, nasty filth that they were bandying about for their Red Rag project.

The Grauniad reports authoritatively (along with a suitably unflattering photo) that Gordon Brown was not aware of the emails and was “furious” when he found out that they had been sent. One is inclined to be cynical about this kind of thing but I have to say I don’t believe such slanders are Brown’s style and for once am willing to take something other than a job ad at face value in the Grauniad .

Nadine Dorries is a canny individual though – she knows that the timing of her writs is likely to mean court hearings in around, say, six months or so when Gordon Brown needs them the least. I could drum through the Defamation Act 1996 but suffice it to speculate that even if they feel they were treated unfairly, McBride and Draper will come under some pressure to settle and avoid a courtroom soap opera in the press.

Whether they accede to that pressure remains to be seen but at least the writs have been served on the twits…

Economical with the truth

It’s a mixed day for the economic forecasts at the moment. Gordon Brown, for obvious reasons, is keen to claim credit for a few signs that the recession misery is easing. More likely, the dire straits of the first few months of 2009 are calming and the economy is being stimulated by production starting up again and the billions of extra pounds that the Bank of England has been forced to print.

Elsewhere, economists aren’t as optimistic as Gordon. Ann Pettifor thinks the worst is yet to come and the FT reports that even after a recovery is in full swing, there will be parts of the economy that have been permanently damaged and that will not return to pre-recession levels.

On a political level, Gordon’s front-page splash in the FT (complete with exclusive picture of Blairite hand gestures) is designed to keep City relations on an admittedly delicate even keel by trying to convince bankers that controlling their bonuses is vital to re-establishing the City’s reputation abroad.

He also knows that the FT is the newspaper that journalists read and that a front page there will get picked up everywhere else (notably the BBC, although they are obviously annoyed the story was fed to the FT as they only run it in the business news) for more populist purposes.

The point is this – that Gordon and his gang are going to try and claim that far from wrecking the UK’s once vibrant financial services and manufacturing economy with ruinous debts, strangling regulation and non-existent oversight, the government has actually saved it from destruction and navigated the financial storm. Really?

DC writes today in the Times about the Lockerbie decision and that’s fair enough because clearly some pretty underhand stuff has gone on there. But he needs to be ready to maintain pressure on Gordon over his economy-wrecking and head off Labour attempts to create a competence myth around the embryonic recovery.

Labour governments always end up out of office with the country bankrupt and 2010 will be no exception. DC needs to bring his communications skills to bear on this fact if Labour are not to slip out of the electoral noose.