Cleggie loses it, as the Nasty Party bares its teeth

The dust begins to settle on the Government’s spending review and we see some interesting results - not necessarily where we would expect to. During Posh Boy George’s speech we shouldn’t lose sight of the ConDem MPs cheering welfare cuts; the Nasty Party is back - they never really changed.

We can see this in other details - the kinds of thing that slip out because their attention is fixed elsewhere. What is IDS thinking of when he says unemployed people should ‘get on a bus.’ First of all, doesn’t he realise people do that? But I suspect his knowledge of buses is small, I can’t see him on a bus to his office. Secondly, he’s pretty inept not to realise that he would be dragging up the recollection of Tebbit’s infamous ‘on your bike.‘ But then we’ve always known IDS is politically inept.

Have many people realised that millionaire Posh Boy is changing housing benefit so that people under 35 will no longer be able to get housing benefit for a small flat. They’ll have to live in a shared house - though he dresses this up in silver words (to match his spoons.) So one of his 500k public sector workers, who’s, say, 32 and living in a flat, will, when losing their job because of these cuts, will also have to move. Charming.

And Prefect Cleggie is losing it. Before the election Posh Boy and Cameron were identifying the Institute for Fiscal Studies as a respected organisation. The IFS has identified the ConDem cuts as ‘regressive.‘ So Cleggie is now stamping his little feet calling the IFS methodology ‘complete nonsense.‘ He’s also saying that their definition of ‘fairness‘ (one of the ConDem over-used sound bytes) goes back to a time of Gordon Brown.

Cleggie is rattled; no doubt about it. A hissy fit at a think tank that disagree with you shows you are not really mastering your job. But he’s every reason to be rattled; his own person polling is in free-fall and a recent YouGov poll puts the LibDems at a new low of 10 per cent (Conservatives at 41 and Labour at 40.)

The Government options for cuts; reaction on the march in the C of E

Who’d have thought anything as anorakish as a spending review could create so much interest? Much of this interest has been fuelled by the press; and for once I don’t criticise them. They have supplied much analysis and information to enable us to consider circumstances for ourselves.

And now (with the review due next week) they’ve gone into overdrive; in part, forcing the hands of ministers. Cleggie, anxious to pour honey over the bitterness of his many broken promises, announced a pupil premium to help poorer pupils. Quick as a flash the press started asking: ‘Will this money come from elsewhere in the schools budget?’ So (again quick as a flash) the government had to announce that the schools budget (not the education budget, by the way) will be protected.

Now this is interesting, isn’t it? Every time something contentious has come up, D Cameron has made a point of protecting it . . . police numbers, free bus passes, now schools, child benefit - well not child benefit, to protect that was just an election pledge.

Cameron has spent most of his premiership so far on PR; he doesn’t want bad news. But how’s he going to avoid it? The schools protection and pupil premium with the, as I understand it, proposed smaller defence cuts, could be reckoned to amount to some 18 bn gpb. This is quite a proportion of the targeted 83 bn gbp.

The options open to the government, now, are to make much bigger cuts elsewhere (and education as a whole has not been ring-fenced) or to go for a smaller figure of retrenchment. The latter option might be attractive; although Boy George would get a lot of stick, and it would be embarrassing for the Conservatives, that story would quickly disappear, massaged by lighter cuts. But I don’t think this will be palatable to them.

This means bigger cuts elsewhere. Even the Conservatives, who seem to have done little planning before the election, must be concerned about the effect of cuts on growth and unemployment. Unemployment is a major indicator and rising unemployment is always bad-news headlines; but let’s remember rising unemployment didn’t stop Margaret Thatcher. The attractive place (for the government) to cut is welfare; IDS has been sweetened already, so we could be in for some really bad news on welfare cuts. And this could be on other universal benefits.

On a completely different subject we see that the forces of reaction are on the march again in the C of E. Traditionalists (those who don’t approve of women bishops but can’t now get rid of them) reckon they have stitched up enough seats to take the reins of power in the Synod. This will mean restricting the role of women bishops for no other reason than that they are women.

Personally I don’t give a b****r about the C of E and its synod except for one reason. The Synod is a traditional powerbase; they have a powerful voice. And a powerful voice can effect change; this will not be change for the better. So I do give a b****r.

I'm not saying the nasty party is back . . .

In his final conference speech, David Cameron invoked the spirit of Kitchener (which is synonymous, in the circumstances, with the spirit of Churchill). ‘Your country needs you.’ What a cheek. ‘We’re all in this together,’ the millionaire says, ‘Go out and do your voluntary work - your country needs you.’ Interestingly, it didn’t get a warm response, perhaps even his delegates think they’re doing quite enough already, thank you.

I’ve argued before that if all his volunteers get going (civic gardens, volunteer libraries . . . ) it won’t be the well-healed that’ll suffer, nor the well paid managers, but the low-paid librarians, LA gardeners and the like.

Now put this alongside the welfare cap - around 500 gbp per family. There is some argument about the fairness of this; it runs along the lines of ‘If you’re on benefit you shouldn’t have so many children.’ This may be harsh, but, for some, there is a cruel logic behind it. Precisely the reason, of course, that the Tories use it. But it’s not the true picture.

The real problem is that people have their families (large or small), then, possibly out of the blue, are made redundant or lose their jobs. What are they supposed to do with their children then? Put them back?! The capped figure includes housing benefit, so what happens to a family in rented accommodation in central London or other areas of the South East? Let’s take our clue from one of the delegates at the Tory conference; she said, ‘They’ll have to move house.’

And the final, never mentioned, element of this . . . we can all see that the policy of cuts Cameron and Osborne are promoting will certainly raise levels of unemployment.

The Conservatives are going to force people on to benefits . . . and then punish them for being there.

I’m not saying the ‘nasty party’ is back; I’m saying it never really went away, just hidden by a bit of PR camouflage.

Ed Balls' Interesting Spanner

Make You Mind Up Time is moving ever closer . . . for Labour Party members, that is. And Ed Balls has now put an interesting spanner into the works; he’s voiced something many of us instinctively feel is right but nobody has yet really voiced till now. He has spoken against the current, almost universal, thinking that the budget deficit must be cleared quickly. He voices the view that we must continue to support the economy until growth is more established. Rather than saying the deficit must be cleared as quickly as possible, he’s saying it must be cleared as quickly as is appropriate.

There is nobody I’ve met recently who believes that the savage ConDem cuts will lead to growth. In fact the evidence is in front of us; I’ve never known so many people taking voluntary redundancies or early retirements - some even involuntary redundancies. Many of these people may not register as unemployed or jobless, although some will. But, nevertheless, there is a serious danger of unemployment going up, the number of people not working going even more up, and tax revenues falling. In addition the amount of money spent of welfare will not fall - unless the ConDems put through draconian cuts.

Drastic cuts, cuts at a level never attempted before, are a grave danger, and Ed Balls‘ warning is right.

Will Ed Balls win this leadership contest? It seems unlikely. Will he be part of a shadow front bench team? That seems very likely. Will his arguments be heard and taken on board? The country may be ready to give him a proper hearing.

Casting our vote is a serious matter; and it’s just become even more complicated.

The ConDem Hollow Men

While Slasher Cameron is on holiday George Osborne and Nick Clegg are on the charm offensive.

The cartoonists are having a field day with Clegg - a short-trousered school-boy sitting at his Daddie’s big desk, a budgie in a cage . . . Aren’t you reminded of the Spitting Image puppets of David Steele and David Owen . . . (If you haven’t seen them - look them up, it’ll be time well spent.) Self-serving Clegg deserves all the vitriolic ridicule that comes his way.

The joint ConDem messages from Clegg and Osborne are interesting in as much as they have so little substance.

Clegg is desperate to convince us that Society will be so much better after the ConDem financial butchery. He offers us the comfort that the cuts in the economic review aren’t just for this year but for five years . . . The fear that I find around me in many different sectors is not just short term then? To shift the metaphor - the sword of Damocles will be there, but swinging for at least five years. Some comfort!

Osborne’s arguments are just as hollow. He is following Cameron’s lead and still uttering promises with no back up, and policies which face both ways. He says that a fairer society will come from their health and education reforms; but omits to say how this will come about. He wants all young people to be given equal access to education - but seems unaware that the number of young people with good grades unable to get into university is rising.

He states that their welfare reforms with get people out of the trap of poverty and into work; but he declines to explain how the changes are to be afforded or how these people will get into work when employment starts to rise. Osborne hopes that the private sector will pick up many of the public sector jobs being lost; they’ll do this by reducing wages and increasing profits. Does Mr We’re-All-In-This-Together Osborne realise who’ll suffer in this one?

But then, I suppose, the ConDems can change the meanings of Equal and Fair; to change the language to fit the policies may be a cost effective way of being radical.

Slasher Cameron's now pinching policy ideas from The Archers

Did you catch the latest Big Society big idea from Slasher Cameron?

He wants community groups to take over the civic gardens from local authorities. Another cosy idea for Cameron supporters. But this one appears to be plucked from The Archers. In one storyline, Linda Snell, headmistress of Ambridge, and Elizabeth Pargetter (Archer), went out secretly at night to sort out the flower beds around the village green.

But Cameron’s Archer’s policy isn’t quite so cosy. What will happen here is that low paid gardeners from wealthy LAs will be sacked so that middle-class amateur gardeners, with time on their hands, can take over their jobs unpaid (because they can afford to work unpaid.)

This is a specific example of what I was outlining in a previous blog about the Volunteer Society.

Nothing cosy, clandestine nor fictional about this, is there?