Sharpe’s Opinion

Letters From A Tory has been considering the positives and pitfalls of an early election this morning:

But what of the Conservatives?  Would they relish a 2009 election?  What if the tax cuts had made a small difference to the national economic landscape, or Obama comes into office hailing Brown and the world follows him?  These are not beyond the realms of possibility.  If the tax cuts fail and unemployment rises sharply, Cameron et al would destroy Brown at the polls but would Brown fare any better if he waited until after a disastrous set of European Elections in June 2009 and poor council election results in spring/summer 2009 as well?

I think, from a purely partisan perspective, the Tories should welcome a 2009 election, regardless of the outcome. If the Labour Party won it would likely be with a significantly reduced majority, possibly even a minority government. An election win for Labour in 2009 would most likely precipitate an election within the next few years, and leave them to struggle with the financial crisis and be landed with the blame for their own scorched Earth policies.

From the perspective of the country at large, the sooner we are allowed to vote on the Labour Party under Gordon Brown, the better it will be for our democracy.

In fact, the only people who really stand to lose substantially are the Labour Party. Even then it could be seen as a matter of cutting their losses: they might as well go for it now while they have a reasonable expectation of winning, instead of waiting till the tides turn back against them. If Brown called an election now he could claim to have won a mandate to borrow and spend as much as he liked.

The best thing that the Tories can do is to ramp up expectations for an early election. If Brown goes to the country, we’ve a chance of winning, or the possibility of a hung parliament. If he bottles out, he’ll be shown to be even more indecisive than he was the first time he bottled out.

Yvette Cooper has been shooting her mouth off and contradicting her boss. More than that, she seems to think we should be turned into a nation of economic smack heads. She says (and I quote from Coffee House):

Unlike the Conservatives, we refuse to abandon people in tough times. The British economy needs a shot in the arm, not a slap in the face.

If she means the British economy needs kick-starting with a shot of adrenalin, then the Labour Party is not providing the solutions she’s looking for. The Labour Party are dishing out a whole different kind of intravenous remedy.

The Prime Minister’s plan seems to be to give the economy a short, sharp, shock. A temporary high where we all float in a cloud of tax-rebate spend-happy bliss, but that unfortunately wears off after a year and leaves us in horrible debt with the probability of deflation and a hugely devalued currency. Somehow that doesn’t sound like adrenalin being pumped into the country’s veins.

That’s heroin.

By comparison, you may want to look at the Tory proposals. They are designed, at least in part, to fix the underlying problems and leave the economy in a better position than it is now, over the long term, by making efficiency savings, scrapping wasteful projects and moving toward a ‘low tax, low inflation, low interest’ economy so that we can start paying back some the the money that Dear Leader has borrowed over the past decade.

Not that I’m ‘drinking the Tory kool-aid’, it just seems obvious to me that solving our debt problems with borrowing is a massive-scale equivalent of consolidating our loans into one low monthly repayment, and no matter what Carol Vorderman says, that just doesn’t end well.

Gordon may be able to give us a temporary trip, and it may feel alright while it lasts, but there’s going to be a hell of a comedown, and someone’s going to have to put the country through rehab afterwards, lest we start stealing to fund our habit.

Today’s news is the extremely welcome announcement by David Cameron of a new Tory economic strategy – of slowing the growth of government, dropping the commitment to Labour’s spending plans and promising tax cuts funded by government efficiency. You can read his excellent speech on the matter on the Conservatives website and his even better op-ed in The Guardian.

That’s all very good, but what I’ve found really interesting is what Labour are up to today. It’s summed up very nicely in this sentence from the Evening Standard:

The Chancellor signalled that he would find bigger than expected efficiency savings in IT costs, procurement deals and sales of its assets and property.

Savings, you say? Savings?

That’s cuts, you’ve got there, mate. Savings isn’t the word you’re looking for, you’re looking for the word cuts. Tory cuts. And we all know, after 10 years of being told so, you can’t make savings on Government efficiency, you can only make damaging cuts that hurt people and cause the sky to fall down.

I’m sure the Tories sums don’t add up though. Never mind whether the Goverment needs to borrow £15bn (and hide mountains of debt off the balance sheet) to make its sums add up. What’s really important is that the Tories sums don’t add up.

Ahem.

The Times reports Obama may be heading to Watford next year for the G-20 summit:

His first visit as US President may take place against the backdrop of Watford. An hotel on the outskirts of the municipal borough just north of London is on a shortlist of venues for a follow-up G20 summit next spring.

I grew up in Watford, and the statment “Watford has an art gallery, three theatres, a museum, a cinema, and jukeboxes in some pubs” does just about sum the place up. Actually they missed out the 15 nightclubs, nor the dodgy politicians.

For the perfect summation of the town, though, it’s over to the late, great Humphrey Lyttleton…

As early as the 9th Century B.C. the Catalonian King Wilfred came upon a site by a water crossing where he laid down the foundations of a new city, that was to become the envy of the Holy Roman Empire. With its ancient covered market, Roman-esque brick towers, Baroque cathedral and fine collection of Renaissance paintings, there are few things finer than to spend the day browsing amid its beautiful gothic splendour – a legacy we owe to that great King Wilfred of Catalonia.

What a pity he never visited Watford.

Serious, Obama. Don’t go to Watford.

It seems that Politicians and journalists live in a magical pixie-land where comments can be ‘politically damaging’, a party can face higher election prospects by ‘regaining the narrative’ and Melissa Kite’s opinion on David Cameron’s holiday plans makes the blindest bit of difference to the world. Here’s the real news: they’re wrong. People don’t blindly believe absolutely everything they read in the newspapers, and the only sway the press really has is over Westminster Village itself.

Lord Norton thinks that the country is suffering from a crisis of confidence in the press, noting the fact that whilst only 27% of Britain’s population express trust in Parliament, only 19% trust the Press.

I say good. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of bottom-feeders. Never before in human history has a group of people had such a narcissistically inflated view of their own importance.

Lord Norton says “a free and vigorous press is an integral part of a healthy democracy” but I disagree: I think free and vigourous comment and investigation is an integral part of a healthy democracy, and we won’t need Fleet Street for that much longer.

The internet has already changed the playing field and is showing no signs of stopping. The best investigative political journalism in the country comes from Guido Fawkes, and the best political comment from a raft of sources including political insiders, political outsiders, journalists, MPs, and perfectly ordinary people.

In America, the election was fought by circumventing the media and creating conversations among normal people. People got involved, People became less apathetic. People actualy wanted to talk about politics. That’s how it’s going to work here as soon as one of the parties has the guts to take the conversation away from the press.

As I’ve written before¹, the saddest thing about the Conservatives, and David Cameron in particular, is their inability to break away from the stranglehold that the press have had over the world of politics since Blair turned up (arguably since Thatcher).

Forget about the media. They lie, they cheat, they have their own agendas and we don’t need them any more. They’re worse than the music industry – Fleet Street is, to quote Hunter S. Thompson,² “a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason. There’s also a negative side.”

We don’t have to follow what the press say. We can use the internet now to communicate with real people and have real debates. We can let the British people use the intelligence that we know they have. Let this whole George Osborne/Brown recovery saga be the last sad straw, give up trying to please the media. They don’t deserve it.

And if we do that, we don’t win because of the media, we don’t win because we’re better at fighting than the other guy, we don’t win because we’re better at lying or at presentation. In the immortal words of Libby Holden: “we win because our ideas are better”.

1. I promise, my constant criticism of Conservative internet policy has absolutely nothing to do with CCHQ turning down my job application at the start of the summer! [↩]
2. This quote was actually originally aimed at the TV industry (and didn’t include the left-in-because-its-funny last sentence), but I think the boot fits [↩]

Much digital ink is being spilt this Sunday over George Osborne, Gordon Brown and the country’s economy. The press, continuing to play their part as the rats to Mandelson’s Pied Piper, have their knives out for George, while the bloggers are wondering why anyone is questioning him when he’s talking so much sense .

Even Labour MP Tom Harris agrees, with caveats.

The strangest thing about all this is Brown’s assertion that Osborne is being ‘partisan’, and that being partisan is somehow bad. He used a similar line against Cameron at PMQ’s on Wednesday, suggesting he was turning the death of a baby into a ‘Party Political issue’. While Cameron clearly wasn’t making any party political comment, George Osborne arguably should be making more of a partisan point than he is doing. The problem with what he’s saying is not that he’s talking down the pound¹. The problem is that he’s not doing enough to stick the blame for the ‘financial ‘crisis’ on the PM, nor to point out that Gordon’s New Clothes aren’t made of such fine material.

And anyway, Gordon’s got cheek, seeing as he’s the man who in 1988 gave one of the most partisan speeches on economic troubles in living memory:

In the midst of a withering attack against Nigel Lawson’s management of the faltering economy, the Labour front bencher pierced the Tory’s façade with deadly accuracy: ‘This is a boom based on credit.’ Labour MPs frenziedly cheered as Brown artfully mocked the forlorn-looking Chancellor for allowing consumption to spiral out of control and for offering consistently wrong forecasts. The Chancellor’s boast about his ‘sound management of the economy,’ scoffed Brown, was worthless. ‘Most of us would say that the proper answer is to keep the forecasts and discard the Chancellor.’

Partisanship is part of the point of politics. If we didn’t have partisanship, we wouldn’t have competition. If we didn’t have competition, we wouldn’t have democracy. If we didn’t have democracy, the government would do whatever the blazes it wanted regardless of the will of the people.

Gordon Brown should grow up.

1. He isn’t talking down the pound, anyway, he’s making a prediction on possible side-effects of the Government’s financial plans [↩]

Unemployment figures are rising and have been over the last year. I have, in fact, seen this up-close already with people I know losing their jobs because of their employer’s lack of faith in the economic outlook. It’s also not just banks and financial organisations that are ‘streamlining the workforce’ – all sorts of companies are facing the prospect of declining sales, and looking at where they can knuckle down and make savings.

Unemployment is a Bad Thing. It feeds into the viscous circle of a shrinking economy, it costs the government billions because they have to pay the unemployed in welfare, it puts pressure on families and causes crime to increase.

The Conservatives have been talking for a long time about social issues in this country, mostly under the banner of ‘Broken Britain’. Iain Duncan Smith has found a policy niche that he really connects with and has done some fantastic research and reports into the effect of families breaking up. These effects are wide-reaching – they say that children from poor, ‘broken’ families under Labour have hugely reduced prospects for achievement at school or entering higher education, lower job expectations and are more likely to turn to drugs and crime – and indeed more likely to end up in prison.

Britain has come into the ‘economic crisis’ very badly placed because, in standard Tory parlance, Labour didn’t ‘fix the roof while the sun is shining’ – that is, didn’t save the surpluses of a booming economy to fend off the deficits of a bust one. We’re about to be hit by a whole raft of social problems caused by unemployment and family breakdown in the face of a recession. Labour didn’t fix the broken society during the good times either.

Somehow, that doesn’t fill me with hope for the future.

Blogging hasn’t always been self-published journalism. In fact, the man who coined the phrase ‘weblog’ (Jorn Barger, incidentally) originally intended it to be just that – a log of all the things he saw on the web that he felt were worth logging.

To that end, as much as I very much enjoy writing journalistic-style articles, I’ve started a ‘Daring Fireball’-style linked list which sits alongside my main blog posts. I think it’s a far more interesting approach than just having a static blogroll, since I’m sure I’ll end up linking more to the sites I like the most.

A few things to note about the difference between link posts and articles:

• Link posts don’t have titles, just Links.

• Link posts don’t have comments. If you wish to let me know something about a link I put up, feel free to send me an email using the Contact Me link in the sidebar. Due to popular demand, comments are back on link posts

• They do still have permalinks. If for some bizzare reason you need a permalink, just click on the strawberry and prepare to be amazed…

• If you subscribe to the RSS feed and don’t want the links included, you can use the separate ‘Articles Only’ feed in the sidebar on the left. The ‘Full Feed’ includes everything in the other two feeds.

You wouldn’t normally hear me stand up for President George W. Bush. I think his mission to go to war in Iraq was the height of belligerent jingoism, and his unfortunate (but unavoidable in America) referral to religion as a guiding force in his politics is disturbing and gives me serious pause. One thing I think is extremely unfair, though, is how often people take the slips of the tongue or accidents of grammar to which the President is somewhat prone and using them to imply that he is stupid.

I’m sorry if I’m a killjoy, but really: are you telling me you’ve never said the wrong thing in public? Are you suggesting that you’ve never used a phrase which could mean something you didn’t intend it to mean? Even worse, are you suggesting you’ve never tried to make a joke, only to see it fall flat? If so, you must be a shockingly dull person.

Case in point, an early Bushism was his statement in 2000 that “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.” Clearly, here, he is making a bleeding joke. What’s so wrong with trying to lighten the mood? Do politicians have to be serious all the time? In fact, almost every time I read or hear a ‘funny’ George Bush quote, I either understand what he meant to say, or it’s clear he was attempting some Oscar Wilde-ish wit which has been misinterpreted only because the world is prejudiced against his background and feel that because he has a Southern accent he must actually be Forrest Gump.

Other examples:

• “I know how hard it is to put food on your family”. (I could get a quote like that from any politician by lopping off the last word in one of their sentences, to be honest)

• “I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn’t here.” (What’s wrong with that? Can’t he read a summary or watch a video?)

• “A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there’s no question about it.” (And I know if Churchill had said that we’d hold it up as a shining example of British wit.)

• “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” (Okay, yes. That one is funny.)

The truth is, in the world of plastic politicians and media personalities, Bush’s Bushisms were a breath of fresh air – Bush has always appeared as a human, with flaws and with foibles. So what if he wasn’t a wonderful public speaker and sometimes got his words muddled in his head? He still went ahead and did what he felt was right – even if he made some terrible mistakes along the way.

Gordon Brown is not a very good public speaker either, and unlike Bush he fails to make up for it with innocent charm. Brown doesn’t even try to crack jokes, speak without serious preparation or laugh openly at himself – and his speech is all the worse for it (in fact he has a tendency to make me reach for the remote). Whilst Cameron is a good speaker and Obama is an absolute inspiration, by criticising Bush and implying that he is stupid because he shows charisma, we’re actively encouraging a world in which all politics is plastic and without personality or nuance.

It seems, too, that it was Bush himself who gave us the perfect words to end this post, summing up exactly how we should all feel about the end of his time as President:

“I think we all agree, the past is over.”