Saturday, 21 February 2009

 The smell of decay

Saturday, 21 February, 2009 11:39 AM

The description by  Peter Oborne of a government in collapse is 
recognisable to most people.   What we all need very soon is a clear 
overall assessment of Britain’s dire position and the unpopular steps 
that are needed to right it - from David Cameron.

I suppose tthere’s always a first and I think that this posting is 
one of those occasions, for I include today’s effusdion from La 
Toynbee, that arch-priestess of left-wing twaddle.  She’s in a bit of 
a tizzy so I thought I’d share it around.  She’s still talking her 
usual rubbish, of course, but it’s pessimistic rubbish today.     
Please don’t chew the carpet after reading it!

xxxxxxxxxxxx cs

 

21.2.09

Treachery, sleaze and a Prime Minister in denial. This is a  
Government in collapse
    Peter Oborne

The symptoms are always the same when governments break down: sleaze 
takes hold, the ambitious defect, ministers turn disloyal, connection 
with reality gets lost and it becomes a matter of hanging on 
pointlessly to the end.

This state of affairs has occurred three times since World War II. 
The first occasion was the end of the 1951-64 Conservative 
Government, marked by fratricide - when senior ministers refused to 
serve under Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home - and public scandal 
such as the Profumo affair.

The second came at the very end of the 1970s, when Cabinet members 
like Tony Benn manoeuvred openly for the succession in the final 
months of the bankrupt Jim Callaghan premiership.

Fifteen years later and John Major's Government suffered a similar 
collapse. Giant rifts opened up inside Cabinet, the Government became 
mired in sexual and financial scandal, and ministers lost contact 
with the public mood.

Gordon Brown's Government has now acquired the full symptoms of one 
of these fag-end administrations. The first of these is sleaze. 
Ministers and MPs have lost all notion of the idea of the distinction 
between public duty and their own, sordid private advantage.

Of course, a handful of John Major's Tory MPs were openly on the take 
- but not at nearly such a high level as Labour's miscreants.

The Major period offered nothing comparable to the Jacqui Smith 
scandal, with a Home Secretary making false statements in order to 
obtain money from the public purse (Ms Smith has still not sued me 
after I accused her last week of thievery: does her failure to do so 
amount to an admission of guilt?)

There is one further difference between the Jacqui Smith affair and 
the John Major period. When ministers were caught out doing something 
wrong under Major, they soon resigned.

By contrast, Gordon Brown has thrown a protective shield round the 
Home Secretary - an indication that, far from being hit by the 
occasional case of sleaze, his Government suffers it as a systemic 
problem.

This impression is strengthened by the allegation this week that 
Alistair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer, may be engaged in the 
same sort of expenses scam as Jacqui Smith. The second symptom of 
terminal decay is disloyalty. Ministers are now actively preparing 
their exit strategies, just as they did at the end of the Callaghan 
and Major period.

In some cases this amounts to no more than making discreet 
preparations for a new career. In other cases it can amount to open 
betrayal. The end of an era is always marked by a steady creep of 
defectors to the new regime. This week's move by Gordon Brown's 
welfare adviser David Freud to the Cameron team was immensely 
important in that it showed how serious people now regard the Cameron 
Opposition as more credible than the Brown Government.

This is true among foreign leaders as well. French President Nicolas 
Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have both made insulting 
remarks about Gordon Brown's economic policy.

Neither would have done so if they regarded our Prime Minister as 
someone they would be working with in the long term.   Under these 
circumstances, civil servants lose their motivation.

To give one very recent example, civil service inertia is an 
important reason why the Small Business Finance Scheme - set up to 
help small businesses which are unable to get credit from banks in 
the downturn - has paid out only some £12million to underpin small 
business loans, even though £1billion has been set aside for the 
purpose.

The third symptom is a dark sense of unreality. It is obvious, for 
example, that Gordon Brown increasingly lives in some bizarre 
parallel world.

As our finances collapse, he continues to insist that our economy is 
built on 'sound fundamentals'. The Prime Minister cannot begin to 
address the desperate problems Britain now faces until he accepts 
that something has gone very fundamentally wrong.

The final symptom of government collapse is the most obvious one. We 
are at the stage where even Cabinet ministers have privately written 
off winning the next General Election. Instead they are beginning to 
position themselves for the leadership contest which will follow 
defeat at the polls.

This is exactly what happened over Labour's Winter of Discontent in 
1978/9. In the same way, civil war over Europe dominated the final 
year of John Major's Government in 1996/7, with Rightwingers such as 
Michael Portillo jockeying for position.

And this week, a significant new theme entered the Brown 
administration: an outbreak of hostilities between Left and Right.

Harriet Harman, who has been treated with contempt by Gordon Brown 
ever since she won the election for the Labour deputy leadership 18 
months ago, is pushing herself forward as leader of the Left.

Cabinet ministers are now briefing viciously against each other 
behind the scenes, and are utterly disrespectful of the authority of 
Gordon Brown. This week provides several choice examples of this kind 
of insubordination.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson wrote an article for the Guardian in 
which he contemptuously trashed Gordon Brown's political strategy of 
accusing David Cameron of doing nothing about the economic crisis - 
indeed, Johnson praised Cameron, which must have infuriated Brown.

Two days earlier Peter Mandelson used a speech in New York to mock 
the Prime Minister's habit of announcing a long stream of initiatives 
as a substitute for serious action. Both men know the Prime Minister 
well enough to make these points in private.

Instead they have chosen to undermine Gordon Brown in public. 
Significantly, John Major used to be treated by his Cabinet Ministers 
with the same contempt.

Of course, this Cabinet-level dissent quickly spreads down the ranks. 
Yesterday saw a significant intervention by the influential back-
bencher Frank Field who, in a deadly attack, asserted that the 
£75billion spent by Gordon Brown on his beloved New Deal jobs scheme 
[see “Youth unemployment - Frank Field speaks” yesterday at 11.14 am   
-cs] and the related tax credit system had been all but been a 
complete waste of money.

Amidst all this shambles, it is only the Prime Minister who keeps 
faith in his policies. I am told that, at a recent Cabinet meeting, 
he earnestly told his senior colleagues that it was still possible to 
win the election, and the main problem was that the Government found 
it hard to get its message across.

As the Prime Minister spoke, Cabinet ministers rolled their eyes and 
cast despairing glances at each other. The irony is that Gordon 
Brown's perseverance is, in its way, wholly admirable.

He is convinced he can make one more great throw of the dice. The PM 
believes that President Obama's visit to Britain this April for the 
G20 economic summit holds the key to his recovery.

He wants to use the occasion to strike what he calls a 'grand 
bargain' between the world's most powerful countries to come up with 
a new global plan to move out of recession.

Such a bargain would mean a massive, coordinated financial stimulus 
from each country involved, isolating Cameron who believes that 
spending restraint is the only answer, and potentially providing 
Labour with a boost and a positive message for an early summer election.

Mr Brown desperately needs to pull this off. If he fails, then all he 
has to look forward to is 15 dreadful months of sheer humiliation as 
his broken, divided, rudderless and sleaze-ridden Government crawls 
to inevitable defeat.

========================
 
21.2.09

Leadership tiffs are for later. Right now, it's life and death
Any party doing so badly in polls will question its direction, but  
Labour can best alter course with a brave, bold April budget

    •    Polly Toynbee

Tumbling in freefall, no one knows if the parachutes will open. Are 
we nearly there yet? No, only halfway down seems the best guess - 
though economists measuring how far we have fallen are clueless on 
what's still to come. Predictions just keep getting worse.

It could last a decade, says the departing deputy head of the Bank of 
England. The IMF calculated three weeks ago that world growth would 
be the lowest since the second world war: but that's already out of 
date, with a new warning it will be yet worse. Yesterday's crop of 
figures included a 55% rise in home repossessions, with 500,000 due 
to fall behind with mortgage payments this year; 52% more companies 
went into liquidation.

The national debt bombshell from the ONS showed tax receipts down and 
public spending higher. Adding in bank buyouts let the Daily Mail 
splash across its front page that every man, woman and child now owes 
£33,000. Rubbish, of course, as the FT pointed out: those figures 
leave out bank assets. But this is killer ammunition for 
Conservatives and their press. "Bankrupt Britain", alongside "Broken 
Britain", will reprise from now until election day.

So is Labour back in leadership turmoil? No, just despair. Any party 
fallen so far behind in the polls will rightly question its 
direction. Within the cabinet more radical voices see the urgent need 
to get ahead of public opinion and not trail pathetically behind it. 
Brown, Darling and Mandelson were badly wrong-footed when even the 
Tories got tougher on bank bonuses. Harriet Harman won the deputy 
leadership by protesting about obscene rewards long before the crunch 
began. She was right to press the issue in cabinet; while Mandelson 
chunters on about the danger of Labour turning anti-business. Ed 
Miliband was right to fight tooth and claw against the third runway - 
another empty Brown gesture towards business, again outflanked by 
Cameron. Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper and David Miliband also press for 
more radicalism - and so they should. What is there to lose?

The Tory press has eagerly seized on a few acid remarks by the 
Blears, Hutton, Flint, Hoon and Mandelson New Labour battalion who 
accuse Harman of grandstanding, and others of jockeying for the post-
election leadership. Are they? It's naive to think political 
contenders don't jostle all the time - but this is a far more 
important struggle. It's life and death for Labour in the here and 
now, never mind who leads the battered remnants if Labour loses as 
badly as looks likely.

Out there, Labour is profoundly detested by large numbers of people, 
sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not. Failure feeds on itself, 
so Labour gets scant credit for what it has done best and blame for 
some things not its fault. Sleaze allegations encrust all parties 
long in power - whether it's Labour Lords for hire, MPs' expenses or 
the oddity of financiers' titles for enriching themselves and 
impoverishing the nation.

Worse still, Labour has lost its political talent. So long in power, 
ministers are now managers toiling in their silos, talking like 
policemen, devoid of political imagination. Remember how in the early 
days every attack was challenged, every phoney set of figures 
rebutted. Sharp as stilettos, they fought back on every policy front. 
Now there are only listless ya-boo press releases without substance. 
Where are the speechwriters?

Gordon Brown does score over Cameron as an economic heavyweight, but 
it stretches credulity to think people will vote him back for five 
more years. But the time has passed for the guillotine: Labour 
imploding in the middle of the world's worst crash would risk 
electoral disaster that might prove permanent.

In the dream scenario, Brown ascends the world stage to head a beefed-
up IMF, but few imagine the man who wanted it so much can confess he 
wasn't leadership material after all. A Captain Oates walk to save 
the party he loves is an unlikely act for a man who admits no 
mistakes. Regrets? If he's had a few, they are too few to mention - 
though a well-judged apology with a purpose could draw a useful line 
with the past to herald a real change of direction.

So is it all over? Labour might prefer to lose, some say. Who wants 
to run the next few years of economic hell? Leave the suffering to 
the Tories. But the reason why Labour could, just, still win is the 
same reason why it must fight to the death to stay in. The Tories now 
openly admit they plan enormous cuts: even Kenneth Clarke is on that 
message, responding to the public finance figures with a call for an 
immediate spending slowdown. Not even the CBI wants that, while 
yesterday's FT leader called for no spending cuts now. Regardless, 
the Tories promise to do exactly what Thatcher did in the 1980s. It 
is now their official policy - alone against the world. Never mind 
Cameron's general wellbeing index or letting the sunshine in, this is 
back to Hooverite basics with alarming clarity. Debt is bad, sound 
finance is good, cut spending.

So far, Labour policy lacks similar clarity. There is one budget left 
to set out on a radically different path, but, as yet, Labour's 
future spending plans are almost as eye-watering as the Tories. 
Unless Brown dares borrow and spend more, the next election will be 
great ideological sound and fury over what will be in reality a small 
piece of turf.

Fiscal rectitude can wait: for now, 100,000 more unemployed every 
month matter most.[It’s the lack of ‘fiscal rectitude’ that’s  lost 
them their jobs -cs] Promise a job or apprenticeship for every school-
leaver, create green jobs, build homes and railways. Make mortgage 
rescue work.
[They keep talking this way and when they act this way it doesn’t 
work!  Usually ‘talk’ is  the end of the policy! -cs]
Talk openly about the divide between the majority in work, doing 
rather well with low mortgages and falling prices: they will need to 
share more with jobless families and pensioners in real hardship. 
Explain the need to spread pain and gain more fairly. Describe what's 
happening honestly and why there must be no cuts in public services. 
Make bold savings on Trident, aircraft carriers and ID cards among 
other things and, for the sake of foreign investor confidence, admit 
that later taxes will need to rise for those who came through this 
well.  [=More spin” no action -cs]

Clarity and honesty are the only hope: April's budget is Labour's 
last chance. It's an all or nothing gamble. But since the Tories will 
go for the jugular on debt anyway, Labour needs to take a bolder 
Keynesian line that really will save millions from suffering. Brown's 
talk of the "spirit of the Blitz" might start to resonate if he makes 
a braver fight against this ever darkening depression.  [a ‘braver 
fight’ = throw more borrowed money at it! -cs]