Conservatives lead Labour in new poll

The latest YouGov poll in the Telegraph has the Conservatives three points ahead of Labour. This represents an almost unprecedented shift from Labour's 11 point lead of just one month ago, and it is that turnaround rather than the bald numbers that make the situation more interesting. The proximate cause of the shift in support was Brown's non-election fiasco, which in a few short days undid his reputation for decisiveness and leadership. He followed that with the Pre-Budget Report, where the student-politics trick of lifting Conservative policy did not go down well in the world of grown-ups. Of course, the Conservative Party reacted brilliantly to the developing government dither, but these were primarily Labour self-inflicted wounds. How serious they will be for the long term remains to be seen, but Labour needed a cushion of goodwill with the serious danger of an economic downturn in the near future, and it has been squandered in a staggering display of political incompetence. Over on the Labour blogs, there actually are a few, they are consoling themselves that a new Liberal Democrat leader will steal support from the Conservatives and so all will be well. For myself I hear the scraping at the bottom of the barrel on that one. What Labour needs to do is come with coherent policies for the good of our country. Instead we have Alan Johnson claiming that obesity is as bad a global warming. With that sense of perspective from one of their so-called 'stars' it is no wonder that the government appears increasingly shambolic.

Brown's economic miracle a sham according to a German team

Britain's economic performance is built on the twin pillars of personal debt that is based on inflated house prices and a fiscally irresponsible splurge in public spending. This is the view of a German-led team of economists writing for a think-tank. I have heard similar analysis before, that the difference between the trend growth in the British economy and the Brown boom has been funded through debt, both personal and governmental, and there is a ring of truth about it. Record government debt is a fact. Record personal debt is a fact. While there has also been a great deal of virtuous economic activity over the last ten years, the gloss has come from borrowing at levels not hitherto seen before. This is the point really as debt is not an absolute evil, and there are cases in business where a low level of debt is actually an inefficient use of assets. However, during periods of growth the government should be paying down the national debt, not ratcheting it up and the same is true of individuals, who should be saving. When there is a downturn, and there is a fair amount of evidence that we are heading into one now, then it is the savings from the good times that carry you through; but what if there are no savings? With growth slowing, real interest rates climbing and government spending being squeezed then there is a possibility that things might get a great deal worse for the economy. The political consequences that would follow are easy to predict. That at least is justice; the architects of this mess should be out on their ears.

Liberal Democrats next election prediction: zero seats

The Electoral Calculus website is a sort of guilty secret among politicos. It takes current opinion polling and overlays it on various parliamentary constituencies to determine a possible General Election result. The site is excellent in its layout and makes it easy to drill down to an individual constituency. Its current prediction is for Labour on 338, Conservatives on 271 and the Liberal Democrats on zero, nothing, nada, sod all. Of course this is an artefact of a uniform swing model, and the Electoral Calculus site has a detailed explanation of how it has come about. However, that cannot disguise the underlying fact that Liberal Democrat support has halved since the 2005 election. Even given more variable swings by constituency in a forthcoming election, it seems likely that a lot of the bright young things that came into parliament under the Liberal Democrat banner in 2005 will be going straight out again at the earliest opportunity. The reasons for the collapse in support are not hard to discern, with the Iraq War losing its electoral potency as an issue and the stuttering end of anti-Tory tactical voting. There was also Ming, whose failures as a leader led to a pretty brutal assassination.

Now the Liberal Democrat theory seems to be that all they have to do is elect a photogenic leader and their dire position will reverse itself. My observation is that nothing in politics is that simple, and that bouffant hair does not substitute for clarity of political vision and policy. This is a bit of a challenge for the Liberal Democrats as everyone knows that they won't be forming the next government and that their stated position is to prop up Labour given half the chance. So, if you want the current lot out, vote Conservative. Why do anything different? Well, the answer to that will come if the new Liberal Democrat leader can change the dynamic, especially in his party's relationship to the Conservatives and with one eye on what they would do in a hung parliament. This is not a trivial thing and would require a wholesale change of attitude, but, as the Electoral Calculus prediction shows, the alternative might be quite grisly. Ask the Liberal Democrats here in Basildon what happens when you prop up an unpopular Labour administration. They used to be the second largest party after Labour. Now they have three Councillors left; not quite zero, but getting there.

Brown on the wrong side of big issues

There is a rule in politics; try to avoid giving issues to your opponents. What this means is that significant matters of concern to key communities, keep on the right side of the argument, or at least make it hard for your opponents to get into a more popular position that you. Tony Blair was very good at this, on things like taxation or the future of the health service where he made it difficult for anyone to draw a sharp divide with Labour by allowing them to champion a more appealing way forward. Gordon Brown does not have this skill, and he has handed two big ones over to the Conservatives in his short stay in power. The first is Capital Gains Tax, where Labour's 'tax simplification' agenda has managed to array all four of the UK's main business organisations against them. It is a pretty difficult feat to get the representatives of business of every size, from window-cleaners to multinationals, up in arms on the same issue, but Labour has managed it. The Conservatives have come down for lower CGT and get an issue of huge importance to the nations business community. Smart politics from Labour it is not. Then there is the European Reform Treaty, or constitution by any other name. Here Labour's line that this is a new treaty that is unrelated to the old and that Britain's 'Red Lines' will be inviolate is bought by the Independent, who these days just print government press releases anyway, but by no-one else. Again the Conservatives get the issue and they are campaigning vigorously on a platform that has the support of most of the media and around 80% of the population. Brown should never have let it come to this and his microscopic political talents are in danger of leaving his party looking like it is being unpopular on purpose. This is not a wise strategy in any system that involves reasonably free and fair elections.

LibDem Leadership race just a beauty contest?

Leadership races are seminal moments for a political party. This is when the policy alternatives that will set the party's direction for an electoral cycle can be debated, where established principles can be questioned, where the very meaning of an entire political movement can be redefined. Or not. Incredibly, in the Liberal Democrat leadership race the key issue has been identified as 'presentation'. So, instead of a battle of ideas it appears that LibDem members face a battle of hairdos. Instead of a showcase on what in means to be a Liberal Democrat, and I for one was quite interested in that cos I've never managed to figure it out, we will presumably see an argument regarding the finer points of conducting a press conference or which brand of face powder makes you look younger on TV. To say that this is astonishing is an understatement, and you have to wonder what they think they are playing at. Apparently, there has been some understanding between the two declared contestants, Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg, to keep the contest clean. Somehow this has translated into not talking about, well, politics, which is an absurdity for a political party leadership contest. It is also a huge missed opportunity. If they don't talk about policy than any value the contest may have had as a showcase for the LibDems will evaporate. This was hardly going to primetime viewing anyway, but now media obscurity beckons. Bluntly, if one of these two guys really wanted the leadership then he would fight an election campaign for it, not engage in farcical shadow-boxing. Otherwise both risk looking like fools.

Basildon Council Motion on Reform Treaty

There was a debate at Basildon Council on the following motion:

The “Reform Treaty”, signed by Tony Blair on 23 June, is acknowledged publicly
by the leaders of nearly all our EU partners and by the parliamentary cross-party European Scrutiny Committee to be virtually the same as the
Constitution Treaty.

France and the Netherlands decisively rejected that Treaty.

The “Reform Treaty” transfers yet more substantive powers from Britain to the EU and further erodes British laws and the British Constitution.

It will reduce the rights and freedoms of the residents of Basildon and of the whole nation.

Therefore this Council calls on Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, to abide by the Government’s promise to the electorate in the 2005 Labour Party Manifesto, page 84, “We will put the [Constitution Treaty] to the British People in a
referendum…”

As might be expected, a very full debate ensued, with the Labour Party taking the view that no referendum was required. Their arguments were either abuse, 'you're all xenophobes' etc., or claims that the new treaty was minor or otherwise harmless. What there wasn't was anything on the central issue that both treaties were the same and the government had broken a manifesto commitment. This was very interesting indeed. With the government spouting a line that the Constitution Treaty and the Reform Treaty are totally different you would have expected that their own most fervent supporters would have believed this enough to advance it as an argument, but they didn't. This is a pretty good indication that Brown and co. are on to a loser.

The motion was carried. As well as being a very damaging issue for the Labour government this is also a very uniting issue for the Conservatives.

Someone tell Gordon he can't do jokes, please

This week's PMQs weren't the painful mugging followed by stamping of last Wednesday, but they did illustrate one central point: Gordon Brown can't do humour. Now, some people can't, or can't very well and all of the advice on public speaking is that if you aren't funny then don't try to be. Unfortunately, none of Brown's coterie appears to have had the bottle to tell him that he won't be doing the Edinburgh fringe anytime soon. So, we had the sad sight of missed punchlines and repeated attempts to get the joke right. In a seaside pub he would have been pelted with food, but this was parliament and Labour MPs had clearly been told to act as more than last week's shocked bystanders, and so duly cheered no matter what came out of Brown's mouth.

There were two topics really, the superbug epidemic and the EU Reform Treaty. This last was on the eve of Gordon Brown's key meeting in Lisbon tomorrow, and put a pretty firm marker down on the issue. Unless the PM has an epiphany and decides that the matter deserves the referendum the Labour Party promised in their 2005 manifesto, then there will be a huge parliamentary row on this matter, on an issue that unites the Conservatives and splits Labour. Should be interesting.

Sir Menzies Campbell knifed by LibDems

He was assassinated, and any attempt to spin otherwise is understandable, but does not have the virtue of being true. Ming's problem was that he wasn't delivering either in terms of punch in the Commons or polls in the country. That didn't lead to a delegation of men and/or women in grey suits, but it did translate into a palpable lack of support from the Liberal Democrat parliamentary team. All this business about age wouldn't have mattered if Ming had being doing the business. Because he wasn't, and because at least some of his colleagues were pushing them the press started to raise the leadership question, but there should be no doubt that a bit of loyalty from LibDem MPs would have meant that there was no question in the first place.

The news coverage yesterday was most instructive. Vince Cable, Ming's deputy leader told the British media that Campbell had not talked to him about the leadership question, despite admitting earlier in the day that the matter was 'under discussion'. This does not at least suggest close and harmonious working relationship at best and at worst identifies at least one set of prints on the murder weapon. Then there was Sandra Gidley, LibDem MP for Romsey and sitting on a majority of 125. She didn't even bother to disguise her glee and the turn of events, and this with the bloke resigned barely an hour before. Finally there was an old-school MP phoning in from a parliamentary delegation to Moscow, who was pretty scathing about the way his colleagues had behaved. So, platitudes and attempts to blame it all on press ageism aside, it was an engineered departure with the one proviso that Ming might just have pre-empted them all by going a bit sooner than expected.

What now? Well we have the fascinating spectacle of a leadership contest to look forward to. The question is if that automatically translates into a bounce in the polls for the LibDems. On that I am not so sure. There is some evidence, based on emails and texts coming into various news organisations that the latest turn of events has not gone down that well with the public, so that has to be fixed. Then some lucky man or woman has to lead this bunch into a general election, now knowing exactly the level of loyalty they can expect if things don't do to plan. Sometimes, the swift removal of a leader doesn't always do it. After all, as far as the LibDems are concerned this is the second time in eighteen months.

Over-enthusiastic flu jab

My flu jab went feral, hence the lack of activity over the last few days. Perils of a compromised immune system. Feeling a lot better now though.

Labour's Vision

Gordon Brown talked about his vision in his conference speech. That is a good thing, having an overarching view of where you wish to take the country is a pretty good idea for a Prime Minister. It also means that policy can be put into context and a well-designed series of measures that underpin a vision is the basic process by which any institution, be it country or community association, is changed for the better. Unfortunately, Gordon Brown does not seem to have actually shared his vision with his own cabinet, much less the public. So, Labour ministers were on over the weekend either making up their own vision for the future or trying to change the subject. This is also the reason why Conservative-inspired policy on things like inheritance tax have gone down badly with both the public and the Labour Party. Without a political vision is seemed like simple opportunism, cunning without belief, and no-one likes that.

Having engineered a situation where the Conservatives are polling better than any time since 1992, Brown really has to sort this out. It would kind of be good for the country too.