Change you can believe in?

David Miliband’s bid for the leadership (let us not pretend it isn’t), announced in yesterday’s Guardian, has at its centre the need for Labour to “change” to succeed: “New Labour won three elections by offering real change, not just in policy but in the way we do politics. We must do so again.”

The vision of change outlined in Miliband’s missive can be summarised under three headings: change of approach, change of policy and, obviously, change of leader. So how does his brave new approach stack up?

Change of Approach: Miliband states that Labour must “be more humble about our shortcomings but more compelling about our achievements” if they are to re-engage with voters. On the basis of his Guardian article, he hasn’t started terribly well. Whilst nobly acknowledging that reform of the NHS should have started sooner (this reminds me of the classic job interview answer: “my biggest weakness is that I’m a workaholic”), he then proceeds to glibly proclaim that the Tories protestations of a broken society or crumbling economy are quite simply wrong because crime is down, immigration is down, employment is up, etc… This is not a compelling argument but the sort of shopping list of tractor production “achievements” that voters loathe, as Guardian readers’ comments testify.

Change of Policy: A 750-word newspaper article is never going to detail every policy nuance, but the hints Miliband gives do not suggest a radical divergence from current Labour thinking. The role of an interventionist big government is still central to Miliband’s philosophy: “If people and business are to take responsibility, you need government to act as a catalyst.” Nor, it seems, is he proposing any real change to Labour’s tax and spend system, arguing that “traditional Tory means of charity, deregulation and lower spending” to deliver policy don’t “add up”. People are tired of an ever-expanding state feeding on the resources of our economy – Miliband proposes no shift from this approach.

Change of Leader: Would Miliband really offer Labour the strong, charismatic and inspirational leadership that Brown so evidently can’t provide? I think not. His performance at yesterday’s press conference with the Italian Foreign Minister was the sort of smarmy, question-dodging, “not-me-guv” act that turns so many off politics. Worse though (from a Labour prospective), whilst outwardly more human than Brown (not difficult), Miliband as Labour leader will only serve to make Cameron appear more statesmanlike. Miliband is the epitome of “Blair-lite”, his whole approach based on aping his mentor. Combined with his relative lack of experience, it will be very difficult for him and Labour to portray Cameron as the “shallow salesman” lacking in gravitas. Facing their third Prime Minister within the space of two years, the Tories would begin to look even more like a government in waiting.

Miliband’s entry into the leadership debate is looking decidedly ill-fated. By writing an article so obviously intended to launch his ascent to the top, and to then follow it with protestations of innocence, has made him look like the sort of weak, dishonest and dithering figure he is attempting to replace. To compound the situation, the change he proposes is little more than a shuffling of the deckchairs. I fear he may already be a busted flush.

Deckchairs, Titanic, etc...

The political punditry are furiously running various scenarios to see which Labour MP would be most advantageous to Labour’s electoral prospects; Caretaker Straw, Miliband, Purnell, John Cruddas, and (God help us all) Harperson have all been touted. However, the best that any can hope of is diminishing the scale of Labour’s loss.

Regardless of who replaces Brown in the still unlikely event that he is convinced to step down, they will be obliged to hold an election within six months of taking office. I am fully aware that, notionally, we elect MPs who in turn form parties at Westminster who then in turn elect the leader best placed to command a majority. However, in reality, can you remember the last time a party went into a general election without being crystal clear as to who their leader was and who would subsequently become Prime Minister? If we as voters genuinely entered the polling booth on General Election day without taking into account who a party’s leader is, and who would subsequently be our PM, why would the removal of Brown make any difference?

It is inconceivable that Labour would be allowed to bestow us with a second unelected Prime Minister within a little over a year, and if they tried, they would undoubtedly be punished at the ballot box. Labour would be seen as undemocratic and afraid of elections, particularly following their reneging on the EU Constitution (let's call it what it is) referendum. This means that whoever was to take over the reigns from Brown would have at best six to nine months to convince the electorate that they represented a fresh start and could provide the necessary impetus required for change. Given the current state of the economy and the public coffers, this looks a stiff task.

Labour sink into the Clyde

How on earth is Gordon Brown going to spin this one, or indeed survive until the next General Election?

He has now presided over two monumental bi-election catastrophes (Henley, though not great, doesn’t count) and some of the worst local election results in Labour's history. What can he possibly do to get out of this deep, deep hole?

He can no longer pose as the friend of the middle classes; having taxed them heavily for a decade during the good times, he failed to hold a surplus with which to fund tax cuts when things became tight. Instead, the rapid deflation of the housing bubble (inflated by artificially low interest rates) and the rising cost of food and fuel have driven the coping classes back to the Tories.

Nor, it seems, can he any longer rely on the traditional rock-bed of Labour support amongst the poorer classes in Britain’s major metropolitan areas. Glasgow East and Crewe and Nantwich have demonstrated that the 10p Tax Fiasco has seriously undermined Labour’s credentials as the party of the working classes. They will have to work hard to win them back.

Finally, Brown cannot make up for his charisma deficiency by relying on the dour but competent line that was to be his defining quality. Remember “Not Flash, Just Gordon”? Well, what voters definitely will remember is the election that never was, the lost data discs, the stolen lap-tops, Northern Rock and the myriad of Budget Statements to put right his bungled final budget tax wheeze. Not Competent, Just Useless. And once a reputation for competence has gone, it doesn’t come back in a hurry.

The last year has exposed the shallow sands upon which the New Labour project was built. Without the benefit of the NICE decade, and the salesmanship of a leader who could appeal beyond Labour’s core support, people are now realising that this is, and always has been, just another tax and spend Labour Government. Their only hope is to recover their core support in time for the next election. With the Unions now providing 90% of Labour’s funding, expect a significant shift to the Left. Blair could defy calls for a return to traditional Labour policies thanks to non-Union funding and electoral succcess. Brown has no such luxury.

The Blairites' new challenger?

Received wisdom dictates that any prominent Labour minister spotted on a television screen at present is on manoeuvres. James Purnell has been labelled for a while now as one such minister, and his welfare reform announcements in the nation’s breakfast studios this morning have only enforced those perceptions.

If you accept the premise that Purnell is indeed positioning himself for a tilt at the top table, the content of his announcements raises an interesting question:

These proposals - lifted almost verbatim from the Tories own welfare policy outlined earlier in the year - place Purnell significantly to the right of many Labour back-benchers and grass-roots supporters, not to mention the Unions. Given the likelihood that the Party will shift still further to the left in the event of a heavy loss at the next election, does this suggest that Purnell is expecting a leadership contest a little earlier than the autumn of 2010?

Scorched earth theories give Labour too much credit

Following the revelation in the FT last week that Treasury wonks are planning to revise Brown’s hallowed fiscal rules, theories have abound that this is the beginning of GB’s scorched earth policy. To quote one; “Like a retreating army, he doesn’t want the advancing Cameroons to have any advantage at all.”

To describe this as a deliberate ploy is, in my opinion, to give it and this Government more credit than they deserve. Brown has proven himself over the past year to be incapable of strategic planning, despite his laborious use of the mantra “making the right long-term decisions”. I suspect, for two reasons, that this is a panic move born out of necessity and character flaw rather than a malevolent plot to scotch any future Tory first term.

Firstly, the Treasury are re-visiting the rules because they know full well they’re about to be broken beyond any currently possible interpretation. The government now faces the biggest budget deficit since 1946 and a tax take that, despite Brown’s myriad stealthy schemes over the past ten years, is dwindling as the economy slows and the housing market tumbles. As Captain Darling belatedly acknowledged over the weekend, taxation cannot rise much higher, whilst cutting back spending would go against Labour’s raison d’etre. Greater borrowing is therefore the only option left to this tired administration, and since Brown is innately incapable of admitting error, his once vaunted fiscal rules must be re-drawn. Expect much protestation of having entered a new economic cycle over the coming months.

Secondly, despite his best efforts to convince us otherwise over the last 12 months, Brown is not a fool. He must surely realise that, to deliberately place the economy in jeopardy by ramping up the nation’s debt solely (or at least partly) to screw an incoming Tory Government, would electorally ruin Labour for a generation. Never again would the population give them the benefit of the doubt on economic competence. As an historian, Brown will be more conscious than most of posterity, and he will not want his legacy to be the destruction of the party he holds so dear.

So no, the re-writing of the fiscal rules does not signal the start of some deliberately vindictive stratagem to shackle the Tories once in power. It is, instead, the inevitable end-game of a tax-and-spend Labour government.

PMQs

Like most, I have to wait until I return home from work before getting a chance to catch the day's PMQs. Having read a few posts through the afternoon, i switched on the TV anticipating a Brown bloodbath.

Yet, i was slightly underwhelmed by Cameron's performance. The subject of Jacqui Smith's ill-thought policy for stabbers to visit the stabbed didn't quite suit his oft-used line of attack that Brown is all calculation, unable to be straight with the British public. I also thought his connection of the fuel duty freeze to Glasgow East was a little weak. It was only on the subject of MP's expenses that Cameron really made Brown look uneasy, but even here Labour backbenchers had only to point to the Wintertons.

As Fraser Nelson rightly points out, Cameron is undoubtedly at his best when delivering his acerbic off-the-cuff put-downs. His quick-witted retorts keep Brown constantly on the back foot, swiftly heading off any line of attack he attempts. Today was no exception, and he brutally dealt with the PM's mocking of the "Vote Blue, Go Green" slogan. But in between these gems the debate was tepid.

Undoubtedly a win for Cameron, but these days that's the minimum acceptable standard. It says much for his and the Tory Party's performance over the past year that this is the case.

The Environment or Poverty: A Zero-Sum Game?

Janet Daley claims today that “you can be the party of the environment or you can be the party of the poor, but you can't be both”. The aims of tackling global warming and eradicating poverty, she says, are “in direct contradiction with one another”.

Her argument has two strands: Firstly, that green taxes are inherently unfair and, as they make no consideration of income, hit the poor hardest. Secondly, efforts to make bio-fuels such as ethanol are sending food prices through the roof, thus, again, hitting those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Those two statements in themselves seem sensible enough, but does it really lead from this that you can’t tackle both poverty and global warming at the same time? On the former, Janet is of course right that the Government’s bungled VED is a regressive tax that will hit those with older, cheaper cars – invariably the poorest. But this does not mean that all green taxes or measures need be so inequitable. Janet cites water metering as another example of green taxes hitting the poor hardest, because it takes no account of income. Well, no Janet, it doesn’t. But it does take account of how much water you use, and subsequently, if you use less water, you pay less. If the richer in society want to let the tap run a littler more freely, they can pay for that privilege. Surely this is a more even-handed method of payment than simply handing over a flat rate as most do at present, regardless of use?
In addition, what about the carrot instead of the stick? Incentivising people to recycle instead of hitting them in the pocket for not doing so is again an equitable measure that would change behaviour by providing a means to save money.

Both these measures have the capacity to cut costs for individual households who choose to do so, likely to prove of most benefit to the poor, not the rich, whilst at the same time forwarding “greener” patterns of behaviour.

What of Janet’s second premise? Well, it certainly holds that the re-direction of crops, such as corn, for the production of bio-fuels instead of foodstuffs has helped in forcing prices up. It should be added, though, that commodities speculation and poor harvests have also played their role.
But does this alone mean that the pursuit of cleaner fuels inevitably drives up food prices and is therefore incompatible with helping the poor? Scientists in the US have already found ways to enhance productivity when producing ethanol from grain, and alternative clean fuels are being developed that do not impact on the world’s production of food, such as hydrogen cells or simply electrical motors (charged by non-fossil fuel power stations). So no, cleaner fuels do not automatically lead to higher food prices.
However, perhaps the fundamental flaw in Janet’s argument is what would happen if our politicians did not pursue alternative energy and fuel sources: Does she really think petrol prices and heating bills will start tumbling downwards of their own accord if we continue to rely on our diminishing fossil fuel stocks? If we want to have affordable fuels with which to run our cars and heat our homes in the future, we are going to need to find alternatives. And if we can’t, it will again be Janet’s poor that will be hit hardest.

Of course, Janet is right to an extent:

“when you are jobless and the rising cost of transport makes it inconceivable for you to travel to look for work; when the cost of decent food is climbing out of your reach, and your household energy bills are unaffordable, you are unlikely to see the contentious arguments for long-term climate change as the most urgent item on the political agenda.”

That doesn’t, however, mean that climate change and poverty are mutually exclusive, or that our politicians should give up one to focus on the other.

Balls from the BBC

There's nothing wrong with a good booze up, let alone a fat pay rise, so in theory one shouldn't begrudge others enjoying such perks now and again. But when the aforementioned are funded from my own pocket, and granted by people unaccountable to me, i tend to get a bit miffed.

This perhaps explains BBC Director General Mark Thompson's piece in today's Telegraph, proclaiming that "40p a day for the BBC must be good value". Maybe Mark feels the need to justify the recent +25% pay-rises and celebratory binge at The Ivy for the Beeb's executives and "star performers".

Mark's key line of defence is that, were it not for the BBC, the British public would be deprived such joys as The Office, The Proms and, most disturbingly of all, Alan Partridge. He says that British talent would go unfound, predicting, for example, that musicians in the BBC's orchestras would "be busking on the street". Put simply, he believes that without our benevolent BBC, the British economy would be unable to generate opportunities for these talented individuals.

Mark's premise succinctly encapsulates all that is wrong with the BBC and the Labour Government it panders to. This deep-seated belief that society at large is inherently unable to generate opportunities of its own, and that our lives must be nurtured and guided by the all-knowing hand of big government, explains so much of what has gone wrong with our Country over the last decade.

It is time to cut the apron strings.