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!
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
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]
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