Category: National politics

I enjoyed Boris Johnson’s column in the Telegraph today. It refers to two recent books: David Willetts’, “The Pinch” and Matt Ridley’s “The Rational Optimist”. Willetts’ book is a somewhat pessimistic presentation of the baby boomer generation and their consumption. Ridley’s title speaks for itself – Boris himself comes down on the side of sunny optimism. Tim Montgomerie at the ConservativeHome blog talks of Boris’ “captivating belief in human progress”.

As a late boomer myself who started work on a non-contributory pension in 1984 and saw his contemporaries having trouble finding work in the harsh recession of the early eighties I simply don’t buy into Willetts’ thesis.

On the other hand you can usefully compare the “musn’t grumble” generation we are losing now, who had childhoods stinted by the Great Depression and then had to fight a war and deal with over ten years of rationing, with the early boomers and say the later never had it so good but there is no good reason to suppose that today’s youngsters will have straightened, diminished lives.

On Saturday I was at an 18th birthday party (it’s a long story) and I was very amused when they all rushed to the dance floor to dance and sing along to Foreigner’s “Don’t stop Believing”. This record was made in 1981 and keeps finding new audiences through its use in movies. It has recently been covered in the Glee TV show. As a result this week the Glee version is still at 20 in the charts and the original itself is at 27. The song has a classic piano introduction, the obligatory rock guitar solo and one of the best hook lines in pop music. Watching 50 kids go mad to it reassured me that today’s kids will make it.

Having been interested in politics all of my life I can tell you with confidence that I shall be watching Desperate Housewives tonight. As parents of a young child many of our nights are spent in, in front of the telly. I did not even start to imagine I might inflict an hour of Gordon Brown on my wife this evening. If GB’s interview with Piers Morgan is politics it is politics of the lowest sort. The yuck factor is high.

In today’s Telegraph Jeff Randal gives a fairly comprehensive analysis of Gordon Brown’s economic record.

The bit on the stock market is particularly telling:

Under Labour 1964-70, the stock market’s real return (adjusted for inflation) went down by 13 per cent. Under Labour 1974-79 (which included Denis Healey’s grovelling to the IMF), it went down by 11.5 per cent. Under Mr Brown, the London stock market’s decline in real return is more than 20 per cent.

The full article is well worth a read if you want to get some perspective of the Labour government over its entire term.

In today’s Guardian it is suggested that the government is considering a £20,000 levy on estates to pay for social care. This is just another unfair Labour tax which looks like simple confiscation compared to the Tories’ proposals for a voluntary national scheme that allows people to pay a one off premium of £8,000 to pay for social care when they retire. Labour really have no idea beyond grab, grab, grab.

According to Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Philip Hammond:

Gordon Brown has a track record of saying ‘no new taxes’ before an election, and then raising them by stealth after it. Labour are now secretly planning another tax – a death tax – to pay for this unfunded, ill-thought out plan for social care. When you die, a Labour Government would take £20,000 from what you leave to your children and family. For those with the most modest savings Labour’s plans could leave them with nothing. In contrast we want to help people in old age so that they can leave as much of their lifetime’s savings as possible to the next generation. We will offer people the chance to pay a one off premium of £8,000 into a voluntary scheme to cover the cost of residential care in old age. So under our plans no-one would be forced to sell their home to pay for care.

I didn’t listen to much news yesterday, on Sunday, I was more interested in getting out to Snakes and Ladders in Brentford to give the baby an outing. This morning, with the baby in nursery, I have a chance to catch up.

Yesterday’s BBC coverage of the Peter Watt revelations in the Mail on Sunday could only be described as a naked act of partisanship. The BBC, and the Andrew Marr show in particular, got this totally wrong. If you are a Conservative you have got to conclude that the BBC really is the enemy.

I have just been replaying the Andrew Marr show, see it here. The news bulletin was a very smart bit of editing (if your objective is to protect and promote the Labour party). The way they handled the Peter Watt story was to include it but only in a way that minimised its impact. The lead story was the snow. Fair enough. The second story was Brown’s own interview in the New of the World. The only substantial part of that interview was Brown’s comment that he would serve a full term. Surely it is not that news worthy that someone who has only been Prime Minister for two years and is intent on standing again will undertake to serve a full term?

The Peter Watt story came up third before the Togo football team ambush. The line they used on the Peter Watt story was he says that “it will be difficult for the party to win under Gordon Brown”. No reference is made to Watt’s claims that Brown lied directly over the election that never was in 2007, probably the most damming claim made by Watt. No reference to Brown’s lack of strategy.

The BBC website uses the same damage limitation technique. Their main website news story covering the issue leads on Brown’s “silliness” quote from the News of the World and refers to the Peter Watt story in the 3rd paragraph. Yes, suitably prominent but why? The line they use is so anodyne you have to question why it is the third paragraph.

But ex-Labour Party general secretary Peter Watt told the Mail on Sunday they were unlikely to win under Mr Brown.

The only answer can be that the BBC news editors want to be able to claim that they gave the story due prominence without doing any damage to Labour. You have to read through 600 words before they come back to the story:

Former Labour general secretary Mr Watt told the Mail on Sunday: “Gordon is a big political figure but he lacks the emotional intelligence required by a modern leader. If you cannot connect with people you will fail. Leaders like Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher were fantastic communicators. Gordon just doesn’t have those skills.”

In his memoirs he said Downing Street was a “shambles” after Mr Brown took over and said that the prime minister had spent £1.2m on the “election that never was” in 2007.

Mr Watt resigned as the party’s administrative chief in 2007 after admitting he knew businessman David Abrahams had been donating cash to Labour through third parties.

Mr Byrne dismissed the Mail story as “a bit of innuendo and gossip” which related to events that took place some years ago. He added that Mr Watt was “a thoroughly decent guy but the chap’s got a book to sell”.

Even at the bottom of the article they fail to cover Watt’s most damning revelations and go to the trouble of quoting Liam Byrne to further mitigate the damage (to Labour).

Back on the Marr show if you scroll through to 6:40 you get to the most egregious example of damage limitation. Why does Marr choose to discuss the papers with two Labour supporters? Both actress Maureen Lipman and historian Tristram Hunt are Labour people. Lipman is an avowed Labour luvvie and Hunt even worked for the party. Don’t forget that Marr has described himself in his youth as a “raving leftie”. Naturally enough they manage between the three of them to refer to the Peter Watt story without dealing with its implication that our Prime Minister is probably unhinged, that he has no strategy beyond being in power for the sake of being in power and he is quite prepared to lie if it suits him.

It seems that one of the main results of this week’s failed coup against Gordon Brown is that Alistair Darling has plucked up the courage to make a partial admission of the extent of the disaster that the Labour government has visited on our country. In an interview in the Times today he says:

Many departments will have less money in the next few years,” he said. “[The cuts] are utterly totally non-negotiable … We had a very constructive meeting on Wednesday about what we needed to do and wanted to do in the Budget. I have always been clear you have to level with people. We are talking about something like a £57 billion reduction in the deficit through tax increases and spending cuts. It is a change of direction.”

It is good to see a number from Darling but it is less than half of the amount required. On Thursday Philip Hammond, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, roasted the Government in the debate of the Pre-Budget Report. The key section of his speech was:

Listening to the Chancellor and the Prime Minister yesterday, and to the Chief Secretary, one would think that the global financial crisis had caused the meltdown in Britain’s public finances, but that is not what has happened. According to the Treasury’s figures, the economic recession accounts for about a quarter of Britain’s deficit—that is the cyclical part of the deficit, which economic recovery will eventually eliminate—but three quarters of it is structural, and requires a structural response.

The deficit is £178 billion right now. So three quarters of that is £133.5 billion not the £57 billion figure mentioned by Darling.

When Labour luvvie Patrick Stewart was taking part in the Boxing Day Labour Party campaign against fox hunting he would have known that today it would be announced today that he is to be made a knight in the New Year’s Honours List.

I guess if you are a successful thespian who is happy to date women of your daughter’s age you don’t care much how things look.

It looks like Stewart has been rewarded for being a loyal Labour supporter. Beam me up!