By Chris White
| Thu 25th February 2010 - 11:24 am
Local newspapers in western Hertfordshire exploded on Friday evening with news that the county council had lost a court case. It was chasing an invoice for £335 in a dispute with a water company over a broken manhole cover. The county council had had to put up a couple of cones to warn passing motorists and apparently cones are expensive things to handle.
The water company felt that this was excessive and the council and the utility had seen each other in court. The costs of the case were awarded largely against the council and were reportedly £110,000.
Sorry to be militaristic. This is the signal that the Royal Navy used to make it a supreme force in the world two hundred years ago.
What is the one factor that is preventing thousands of electors giving the Tories another turn? It is fear of what they did last time. It is fear of Margaret Thatcher’s impact on unemployment and on essential services.
Cameron’s main objective has been to move this stigma from the brand – cut’s in services, dole queues, the nasty party.
This morning Osborne admitted on the Today Programme that he will …
So, how to explain what Alistair Darling has been up to with his comments about Number 10 unleashing the forces of hell on him?
Let’s go for the carefully plotted conspiracy theories first (warning: may contain irony).
Explanation number one: it’s all a clever plot to make sure the Conservatives win the general election and are then crippled for a generation by having to carry out huge spending cuts. After all, look at the damage winning in 1992 did to the Conservative Party in the long run. This is a consistent, long-term and well thought out plot of course because each time …
By Prateek Buch
| Wed 24th February 2010 - 12:50 pm
It isn’t often that Members of Parliament are praised, vilified as they are over their expenses, point-scoring and deference to vested interests. Yet this week has seen a moment of real clarity in Westminster, a true demonstration of how our elected leaders can exercise critical thinking and formulate policy based on objective, rational evidence – and all this over some tiny sugar pills.
The political impact of TV debates in other Parliamentary democracies (and yes, yawn yawn, obligatory American reference, in the US too) has often been more about expectations than about absolute performance. Beat expectations and you benefit from the debate, even if that means people viewed you as the narrow loser. But if you were expected to be a big loser and then beat expectations and only just lose, you benefit.
Also the impact of debates has often been to reinforce people’s existing predilections rather than switch people between different parties or candidates. That has, for example, been a common feature in Canada, where TV debates have been held off and on since 1968. (Yawn yawn, US example, 1988 second Dukakis-Bush debate and others.)
In other words, you’re best placed to come out well from a debate if your party is the one most in need of motivating its supporters and if the expectations about your performance are low. Step forward then, Gordon Brown.
As for Nick Clegg?
Both of Brown’s advantages are advantages over David Cameron – and only over David Cameron. Liberal Democrat share of the vote is fairly static overall as turnout changes: from purely partisan motives, the level of turnout does not really matter, though of course from the perspective of health democracy higher turnout is much to be preferred. The expectations one is trickier, but the expectations amongst many in the media that Nick Clegg will benefit hugely from being in the debates is based on simply him being there, so he won’t go in to them with the pressure of extremely high personal performance being expected by the media.
Moreover, for Nick Clegg there is that third factor: TV debates can raise the profile of leaders beyond the main two parties.
For Nick and the Liberal Democrats this is likely to be a major boost, because consistently the party does best when it is in the news (even if, during the post-Kennedy leadership contest several MPs did their level best to disprove that). As simple a move as asking people about their views of party leaders before asking them which party they’ll vote for raises the third party’s vote in opinion polls. That’s why for many years Gallup gave the party higher ratings that other pollsters.
Compared to that, appearing in a trio of TV debates alongside Brown and Cameron will be a massive boost for Nick Clegg and the party.
Whilst we wait to find out what the televised general election debates will bring, enjoy this moment from the 1988 Canadian debates. The 1988 election was a re-run contest between Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives, who had won a landslide in 1984, and the Liberals under John Turner, still leader despite leading his party crashing out of power in 1984. John Turner is the silver haired one:
At the height of Make Poverty History back in 2005, in the Cabinet Room at No 10, Richard “Four Weddings and a Funeral” Curtis asked then PM Tony Blair, “would you mind if I showed you a video I’ve made?” It’s not the same as some bloke at work offering to show you his holiday snaps. So when Richard Curtis showed his new Robin Hood Tax video to some of the 85 national organisations supporting the latest big campaign in the TUC General Council Chamber earlier this month, we knew we were in for a treat. There’s already
Yes, teenage girls have problems. And it may well be that there are specific measures the State can take to reduce those problems, such as the regulation …
Here’s your starter for ten for our Saturday slot posing a view for debate:
Although it is estimated that no more than 2,000 people in France wear a burka, it has become a hot topic of political debate:
A parliamentary commission proposed a ban on the garment in all public services facilities, including transport.
The commission’s report stops short of recommending a complete public ban on the head-to-toe covering, which conceals the face, wanted by many politicians. Instead, it calls for those wearing the garment to be denied access to hospitals, buses, welfare offices and all other public facilities. (FT)
There’s a class war going on. So the Tories tell us. They treat it with distaste. But they rather seem to revel in doing so.
It’s all about one man, David Cameron. So the Tories tell us. It’s all about the disgraceful proposal from Labour that we should vote against Dave simply because he went to Eton.
Pause for breath.
Labour, let’s face it, make a pretty implausible bunch of class warriors these days. As Blair put it, they are all middle class now. Recently, the Tory press pilloried Harriet Harman as a class warrior when she dared to point out that Labour …
The Guardian reports that the Press Complaints Commission has rejected a complaint from Andrew Cowles, the partner of the late Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, over a Daily Mail article by Jan Moir originally titled “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death”. Moir stated that Gately’s death was not natural, despite official reports to the contrary, and claimed that the circumstances were “more than a little sleazy”.
Over 25,000 people complained to the PPC over the article, claiming that it was homophobic and slanderous. The article went on to compare Gately’s death to the suicide of Kevin McGee, …
Even the keenest, most aggressive deficit cutting rhetoric used in any of the main political parties still envisages a large deficit for many years to come. Politics over the next decade is likely to be hugely shaped by this backdrop. It won’t squeeze out all other issues but, just as the 9/11 terrorist atrocities caused civil liberties and foreign affairs to dominate much of the political debate in subsequent years, the deficit is likely to dominate over the next few.
What will the practical consequences of that be? What issues may come to dominate political debate?
I got my first lap-dancing related hate mail the other day. The writer (who was not anonymous) suggested that I had nothing better to do with my time and argued that I belonged in the Stasi.
One of the hazards of politics is that you occasionally take a clear public view and someone doesn’t like it. My crime was to have issued a statement in support of the new rules on sexual encounter establishments.
Since the 2003 Licensing Act, lap-dancing clubs had been subject to the same licensing regime as pubs and restaurants – in particular, there was a presumption in …
By Prateek Buch
| Wed 17th February 2010 - 12:50 pm
As people who know me well will tell you, I’ve always been something of an idealist, daydreaming about some abstract political philosophy whilst everyone else deals with more pragmatic concerns – or ‘living in the real world’ as I believe it’s known. I make this point as what I’m about to write alludes to an apparent confluence – potentially at least – of strands of abstract political thought and practical everyday policy that I believe should gain prominence as the general election approaches.
First of all let’s deal with the practicalities (unusual for me but there you go…). Earlier this month …
Councillors in Salford will be banned from using Twitter in meetings.
Gatherings of the full council at Salford’s town hall have been covered live by councillors via their micro-blogging profiles.
The debates have attracted hundreds of followers, but town hall bosses have now banned members from using the site during meetings.
I have to admit to being rather confused by this opposition to Twitter that’s creeping across a few Town Halls.
The argument is that councillors who are twittering can’t be paying attention, but how can you report on a meeting if you’re not paying attention to it?
Despite their professed enthusiasm for having a bonfire of the quangos, in practice the Conservative Party keep on announcing new ones – and have rather run in to trouble when pressed to explain what’s going on the bonfire (both points I wrote about here).
The tally of new quangos the Conservatives is now at least 19, which sits rather oddly with the rhetoric about culling them. However, that doesn’t mean all the individual proposals are bad ones.
One in particular which appeals to me is an Office of Tax Simplification.
Regular readers may have noticed my love of tangling with bureaucracy. (I …
“Where have all the good times gone?” That old song by The Kinks often comes back to my ears when I am in Britain –quite regularly, that is. The economy is not only going down, it is just not up to what it used to be.
The Cadbury flop
The takeover of Cadbury by Kraft Foods is just the latest in a long series. In less than three decades Britain has lost many of the jewels in its industrial crown.
One of the most spectacular examples is of course the car industry. When The Times writes about Jaguar Land Rover as “the UK’s …
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 13th February 2010 - 7:45 am
Here’s your starter for ten as we experiment with a new Saturday slot posing a view for debate:
Belief in equality is, as the preamble to the Lib Dems’ constitutions states, one of the fundamental values of the party. But, as with all values, equality can mean different things to different people.
There has long been tension between liberals who believe the role of government is to aim for equality of opportunity for everyone, and liberals who believe government must promote equality of outcomes. The former will tend to stress the importance of education as the chief means by which individuals …
By Stephen Tall
| Fri 12th February 2010 - 2:30 pm
Two articles by broadsheet columnists on the prospect of a hung parliament bookended this week. In their contrasting ways, both made a convincing pitch for the attractions of neither Labour nor Tories ending up with an overall majority at the next general election.
The bogeyman of a hung parliament is being used to terrify British voters. What is needed, it is argued, is a government with a strong majority, to rescue the UK from the threat of national bankruptcy. This is nonsense. The UK
There is one principle that Labour politicians seem willing to test to destruction in the English courts. It is the avoidance of embarrassment principle. The Foreign Secretary has not only tried to apply that principle in court, in full public view – where he has looked increasingly ridiculous in the Binyam Mohamed case – but his legal representative has also tried to pursue the principle in private, in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to conceal his master’s shame and the
Government’s hypocrisy.
Even though the Government appeal in the Binyam Mohamed case was dismissed the Foreign Secretary told the House of Commons that …
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 11th February 2010 - 10:25 am
The last 24 hours’ focus on voting systems – surely every Lib Dem’s dream come true? – have highlighted just how hard it will be to gain acceptance for the party’s preferred proportional voting system, the single transferable vote.
It’s no surprise that almost all MPs from the two establishment parties, Labour and the Tories, are desperate to hold onto the electoral system that secures their cosy hold on power: just five Labour/Tory MPs voted to include STV in any referendum on voting reform.
But it will also be the case that a significant portion of the country will …
By Iain Roberts
| Thu 11th February 2010 - 7:28 am
Radio 4’s Today Programme has revealed the cost of the new parliamentary body to police MPs’ expenses: around £6.5 million a year, with 80 staff and a boss pulling in £100k.
Nice work if you can get it, but surely it raises serious questions about the new system.
The total amount current and former MPs are being asked to repay, covering claims over several years, is a touch over a million pounds.
That means the new cost of checking those expenses and ruling whether they’re legitimate is many times higher than the amount the public purse was previously losing where …
Last week we reported that, following the concessions forced on the government, Don Foster MP is broadly happy with the Digital Economy Bill’s proposals on illicit downloads. Jim Killock of the The Open Rights Group has a different take on the situation:
The Digital Economy Bill should be opposed by Liberal Democrats. Mandelson’s Bill seeks to reduce illicit downloads by punishing innocent people, removing any chance of a reasonable defence, and by disconnecting people.
Let’s start with this first idea, of disconnecting ‘infringers’.
Let’s say you pay BT, for broadband and somebody else downloads a number of copyright music tracks. You, your family, and …
Democracy has been saved “at the eleventh hour” – that’s right, the cross-party “Save general election night” campaign has successfully lobbied the government to stop councils from delaying counting votes until a day after the election.
It seems many Liberal Democrats are welcoming the right outcome for the wrong reason.
There are two main possible justifications for this:
(1) Counting the votes as soon as possible, to minimise the risk of someone tampering with ballot boxes.
(2) Feeding the frenzy of wanting instant results broadcast as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, the campaign has been geared towards the latter, and most Lib Dem MPs who’ve supported …
By Chris White
| Wed 10th February 2010 - 12:25 pm
Keynes was both a serious Liberal and a serious man. His work in two world wars and their aftermath is the stuff of legend. His contribution to economic thinking, recently somewhat vindicated, makes him a giant. Bertrand Russell found him intellectually formidable.
But he also built the Cambridge Arts Theatre and was the first Chairman of the Arts Council, created by the postwar Labour Government.
It would be too easy to say merely that a great man needs a hobby like anyone else. The Classical world and civilisation since have shunned the suggestion that somehow culture was an add-on, like sitting down …
PFI has created a very modern problem – how should councils manage relationships with contractors when they stretch over decades and involve multi-million pound sums but also remain responsive to political change, advances in technology and moving priorities? It’s a problem that has come to the fore in Cornwall.
In 1998 consultants outlined a vision for Cornwall’s waste management that included incineration. In 2002 a waste plan was adopted by the council. In 2006 the council appointed a contractor, Sita, to run the contract in a £400 million 30-year deal. In 2008 Sita submitted a planning application to build an incinerator in …
Tony Benn’s lament that politics should be about issues, not personalities, is one echoed even by many who would struggle to find any issues on which they agree with him.
But it’s not a view I share. Why? Because the detailed policies of election manifestos or conference speeches frequently get swept aside in power by events. It’s not just the unexpected new event, it’s also the fallibility of forecasts which mean that decision making is often made from a very different perspective from that used to draw up pre-election policy promises.
Take the economy. It’s hard enough to know whether it is …
The Tories were today forced to recall a consignment of hybrid policies following widespread complaints that their economic model failed when it encountered bumpy or slippery surfaces. The party is already facing criticism over the recent recall of many of its other policies, including marriage tax-breaks, which have been affected by the potentially dangerous acceleration towards an election.
The Tory leadership of David Cameron and George Osborne are due to give details of their latest recall today, and on most other days leading up to 6th May. “We’ve tried applying the brakes,” they admitted, “but the …
By Iain Roberts
| Tue 9th February 2010 - 10:24 am
Look at a Lib Dem election campaign, whether it’s a sitting MP or target seat challenger, and you’ll invariably find a hard working local campaigner, a local champion, and leaflets full of local stories.
That’s not at all what you see in Conservative literature. Across many seats the Tories have all but given up promoting their local campaigning credentials, or selling their candidate as the best person to be the MP. True, you’ll always find a few token stories, but the vast majority of material hitting doormats promotes Cameron, and Cameron alone.
Here’s the plan. We take a bunch of teenage lads. We pay them tens of thousands of pounds a week, tell them how wonderful they are and have 40,000 fans chant their names at football matches each week.
We eagerly follow their testosterone and cash-fuelled antics as they do the sorts of things lads in their late teens and twenties across the country do: get drunk, cop off and all the rest of it.
We happily encourage young women to see them as a meal ticket that’ll at the very least show the ladies a good time and …
Graham Evans Whatever the message, we need a leader who can clearly enunciate it, and not simply make party policy on the hoof. Ed Davey's intervention on the issue of local...
Peter Davies "Wanting to tear down historical statues , monuments , portraits, sanatise books etc ….It’s what the Taliban did in Afghanistan." It's also something Cromwe...
PM If Brexit is the cause of all our problems in the UK, what is the cause of the similar, or even worse, problems in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy etc?
The ...
David S Even if one's conclusion after examining all the complexities of the Civil War (which is a good deal more than "monarchy vs. democracy") is that Cromwell was a ...
Pawel Urbanski Much-needed piece. You are right that young people are the audience, but I am not sure Europe is the way in. The polling you quote shows they already agree with...
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