Two months after the vote: the pro-Coalition view

The coalition should be celebrated and not criticised. If anything, it's the best government this country has had for a long time, Jackart explains.

[This is a guest post].

Has my outlook changed since the Election? In a word, No. I’ve always described myself as a Libertarian Conservative. I happen to be a member of the Conservative party, but am two policies away from being a Liberal Democrat*.

I am impressed at the attitude of the Government, who have been cutting wasteful programmes, lancing fake charities, abolishing quangos and repealing law with some gusto. Even the response to the Cumbrian shootings was statesmanlike without the rush to DO something to appease a baying media. Government ministers do not pop up on the Today program announcing a new policy every single day. As far as I am aware, the rate at which things are being banned has dropped from one a day for the last 13 years, to …um… none since the election. Indeed we may yet get back the rights to tell a policeman to say “Cheese” or chase wildlife on horseback.

Then, of course there’s last week's budget. The plan, and this is considered ambitious, is to end the deficit within the parliament. That means, for the benefit of economically illiterates, that in 5 years, the British Government will no longer be adding to the national debt every day. Labourites who speak of “Paying down the deficit” are deliberately lying about the real effect of Labour’s profligacy. We will only start “paying down” anything when the deficit is cut to zero and beyond. Only a surplus will ‘pay down’ the debt, but we will not be “paying down” anything at all until 2016 even with the “Tory Cuts”.

Whilst I am not happy with everything; I think AV is a stupid idea and prefer an appointed House of Lords, for example, at least Labour are not in power, and that is almost priceless.

Would I vote the same way was the election to be repeated now? Yes. I would. I am persuaded that the actual outcome is better even than the Conservative Landslide I desired at the time as Liberal Democrat participation provides some protection from the left. It provides credibility, which may one day see Labour supplanted by the Liberals as the main party of the left. The Euro & Grammar school obsessed Tory right are sidelined. The death of the Labour movement is my most profound political wish, and the election result may see this come true.

What pissed me off the most about the outcome of May 6? The low turnout was the most disappointing feature (along with Ed Balls keeping his seat) of the election result. It flattered Labour, and showed the British people, 40% of them anyway, to be uninterested in how their country is governed. It is the Labour party’s skill at Get-Out-The-Vote and political trench warfare which kept them alive in this election. Their entire manifesto was based on a transparent economic lie (that cutting spending is “taking money out of the economy”) and they were led by the worst PM in history. Yet they did better than they deserved because of residual loyalty, a low turnout, an ineffective Tory campaign, and above all savage fear-mongering amongst Labour’s pets in the Public sector. Fear worked, and that too is disappointing.

As for the future, if there is any justice, Labour will be out of power for a Generation and probably for ever. The Labour leadership election is a matter of the profoundest indifference. None of the runners will ever be prime minister. The next non-Tory to be PM will be a liberal, the next Labour PM if there is to be one, isn’t even in parliament.

The most positive thing to come from the election is the Coalition, which is now even taking in grown-up Labour figures to help sort out the most severe financial crisis since the second world war which has once again been bequeathed to us by a despicable and incompetent Labour government. Good of the country is prevailing over good of the Party in power for the first time in 13 years. That is why the Coalition’s approval ratings are sky-high.

Long may it continue….

*PR and Europe, if you’re wondering.

Jackart is a libertarian blogger and a Conservative Party member. He blogs at A Very British Dude.

Two months after the vote: from Lib-Dems to Labour

Has public opinion shifted at all since May 6? As part of a new series, we explore how feelings have changed (or not) since the general election. Today, Daniel Hoffmann-Gill explains why he almost turned his back on UK politics.

[This is a guest post]

This year’s General Election seems long ago now, I’ve filed it far away in the recesses of my mind, politics, in the UK at least, has lost it’s luster for me and I’ve now gone back to obsessing about American exceptionalism, female genital mutilation and South African crime rates.

What killed it for me was voting Liberal Democrat, as I did in 2005, as they represent (or so I thought) my views the closest and then had to watch the bastards power-grab a horrible little deal with the dreaded Conservatives.

But before I turned my back on UK politics in an extraordinarily tedious fit of pique, I did something quite dramatic: I joined the Labour Party.

I was raised in a very Tory household and as soon as I could I wanted to vote Labour, because it seemed to me the team in blue represented something cruel, mean-spirited and negative; features all shared by my Tory father. So from 1994 onwards I was a devout Labour boy and only when they broke my heart by getting us into an illegal and terrible war, as well as a catalogue of human rights infringements and a slow and horrible metamorphosis into a cruel, mean-spirited and negative political party (are we really turning into America with no choice at all between the Devil and the very deep, very blue and terrifying sea?), I turned to my ideological bed-fellows: the Lib Dems.

It seemed a perfect policy fit and with the election this year the golden bastards actually stood a chance of winning. Thanks to the archaic joys of our electoral system and also not as many people voting for them as expected (always a problem in an election) they were left as kingmakers and decided, even though 15.4 million Brits had voted for left of centre parties rather then the 10.7 million that had turned blue, to back David Cameron and his entourage.

Ouch. That hurt.

And I mean really hurt. And perhaps my hurt is irrational, flawed and riddled with an utter loathing of the Tories and everything they stand for and perhaps, in a stumbling through kind of way, the current Con-Dem alliance is doing alright (even though VAT increases kill us all, especially the poor and why some focused tax hikes on rich folk like me aren’t an option I’ll never know) but I voted for a party of the left, a liberal party because I was sick to death of Labour’s Tory transformation and my vote was betrayed. Where has the left gone?

And yes, I did just say betrayed, for this is a love affair and Nick Clegg has given me chlamydia.

So I decided to cheat on him with my old lover (this relationship and sexual transmitted disease metaphor is starting to run aground isn’t it?) and commit because I see no other options for those of us on the left to turn to, options that actually have power within their reach, rather than hopes and dreams. What use are they?

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill is an actor and writer. He blogs at Blurred Clarity.

LibDems now like VAT hike - but don't call it a 'betrayal'

Is the Left 's job that of opposing measures that we deem unfair, or do we simply find ways of not disagreeing too much with the Coalition lest "we push the LibDems further towards the Tories"?

Much has been said over the coalition's Budget as announced by George Osborne two days ago.

Stuck between the obvious ideological clashes between those who think such "brave" and tough measures are the "inevitable" legacy of the Labour years, and those who instead call the Budget "reckless" and "dangerous for the recovery", there appears to be a third category of people.

Yes, you guessed it: LibDem MPs. We don't really know where the Lib Dems stand, do we?

Less than two months ago they were kicking and screaming that the planned Tory VAT rise was a "bombshell". They even started a poster campaign about it (see image) and incur the wrath of many a Tory hack, including The Spectator's Fraser Nelson who slammed it as a "dishonest" and "misleading" campaign (see here).

Remember this was in April 2010. Unless I've totally lost it, this was a mere two months ago.

Now, we've all heard of turncoats, politicians performing gravity-defying somersaults, u-turns and about faces. Labour, for instance, can hardly lecture anyone when they signed up to Tony Blair's 'Encyclopaedia of Amazing Betrayals' for a whole decade.

The novelty here though is that never - ever - before has a political party managed to shed so many of its ideas (or "principles", if you like) as quickly as the LibDems are. Even Tony Blair waited two or three years before making a mockery of the now infamous Labour manifesto promise over tuition fees to mention but one of his "pretty straight" deeds. And that's saying something.

The LibDems are now actively supporting the Tories' VAT hike to 20% which, they concede at the Treasury, will mean an average tax increase of over £500 per household.

The jaundiced party claim that they didn't realise how bad the state of public spending was until they entered the coalition. But that's the lamest of excuses available. Maybe they should just stop treating the public like a mass of imbeciles and simply keep up with their daily job of nodding in the Commons whenever Cameron and Osborne speak .

My problem isn't with the Tories. I respect the fact that they're doing what they have to do as a Tory party. They may have kept a couple of things quiet during the election, but they are a Conservative party, we all knew their history and their beliefs and what to expect from them.

When the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that the impact of the Budget on the poorest section of the population will be five time worse than the impact on the richest by 2015, there is no surprise there. The Tories are implementing their ideas.

When huge cuts across government spending are implemented and the civil service goes through "a bit" of a diet and courts and police are axed, the Conservatives are simply practising what they've preached all along: the importance of a slimmer state. They believe in it. You can't say fairer than that.

But the LibDems. What do they actually believe in? If they can change their mind so quickly, easily and radically over the timing, scale and quality of cuts, VAT, tax, state benefits, or the best way to achieve recovery, what tells you that they won't change their mind over anything else if a dogbone is dangled before their eyes?

So, some people like Sunny from Liberal Conspiracy may reiterate the point that "screaming betrayal at the LibDems won't work" and that's this is not only a sign of "tribalism" but also "downright silliness". They add that "all [this] does is push Libdems further towards the Tories".

But by focusing on the red herring, they gloss over the devastating consequences of what the LibDems did: following the fine Blairite tradition of turning yet more election manifestos into disposable arse paper that can be dismissed within weeks on the basis of where the most rewarding political wind blows.

How else do you call something like the VAT u-turn? Why shouldn't it be attacked outright? Sites like Liberal Conspiracy often go out of their way to find any inch of Tory wording or semantic that would justify lashing out at anything vaguely Thatcherite (that's not tribalism, is it?), so why shouldn't Lib Dem politicians be harshly criticised or exposed when their political errors are so obviously blatant and their votes crucial for Tory policies to be implemented?

The harm that the LibDems caused to the hopes and beliefs millions of potentially leftist voters is immense. The PR work that Clegg & co have done on behalf of the Can't-Be-Bovvered/Apathetic Party is also incalculable.

When the LibDems and the Labour left where (rightly) slating New Labour over Iraq, PFI or tuition fees, did Sunny write "easy with calling Tony Blair 'traitor' or 'Bliar' or else we risk turing these policies into a Tory monopoly"?

So this is the big question: is the Left (and the Labour Party)'s job that of opposing measures that we deem unfair and harmful for the least well-off, or do we simply have to find ways of not disagreeing too much with the Coalition governments lest "we push the LibDems further towards the Tories", whatever that means?

At which point does the game of triangulations end and principles can be asserted to the point that we can call a crap policy or an obvious betrayal by their name - that is, a crap policy and an obvious betrayal?

Quote of the month

"If Oasis were the soundtrack to my generation, then I'm glad I'm getting older", D.C. Harrison from the excellent blog The Tedious World.

Daily Star: "BOOZE BABES & BETS"

Base instincts, geeza.
Literally.

Letter from the future

Last night I travelled to 2012 and Cameron is right, the future looks bright. This is what I saw.

Dear people,

I don't know if it was last night's unfortunate combination of whisky, wine and ale with a handful of crisps later floating in the guts, but here's what happened.

My head was spinning and the last thing I remember was a bit of sick which later teletransported me to June 2012. It may have been for an hour only, but it was a trip I'll never forget.

You will not believe what I have to tell you, but the future really is bright. Stop listening to the scaremongers doubting the daily content of 'the Sun says' or Gideon's briefings. I'll say it again: the future is bright.

Britain in 2012 is a place where there are shops and businesses everywhere. Anywhere. I was walking down a mixed council & private area and the number of neon-lit signs was a spectacle to behold. Where state handouts and dole money used to be the norm, now there were wealth-creating private enterprises gushing out of each flat. Where tracksuited kids used to smoke weed or drank white lightning while shouting 'cunt' at each passer-by, now there were lines of Lamborghinis or shiny Bentleys peacefully parked.

I had to rub my eyes in disbelief. A car pulled up and a gentleman asked me if I was alright. I said "I'm from June 2010, I just can't believe what I'm seeing". The man said "No worries. Sir, let me tell you, the changes of the last couple of years are the best thing that ever happened to us".

"It's all down to the Great Cuts of 2010. Made in the National Interest", he continued. "They did wonders for the country. Do you remember all those incapacity benefits? The minute they were abolished, all those fake disabled decided to start their own business. I don't quite know where they got the capital to begin with, that may be a bit overly technical, but I can tell you they just did. And those who didn't were offered well-paid jobs by the new wave of entrepreneurs".

I was gobsmacked.

"State jobs were practically abolished", the chap went on. "Forget the burden of council-employed street cleaners, gardeners, carers and social workers. All that useless bureaucracy. Prime Minister Cameron and his colleague Iain Duncan Smith decided to get thousands of welfare scroungers out of bed, forced them to brush their teeth, wear a clean shirt and marshalled them to private-run welfare-to-work programmes immediately, as opposed to after 12 months".

"Remember all those projects and plans bankrolled by the previous administration? Axed. Those new hospitals and roads and libraries that the state was gonna pay for? Axed. And you know what happened next? The private sector moved in. I don't know where from, but it moved in. Entrepreneurs gently fell from the sky - mostly people previously on welfare, like I said, others I don't know (but it certainly wasn't the foreigners, we don't get them anymore) - and the private sector took over".

"Suddenly everyone was a wealth creator...". I interrupted the gentleman.

I'm sorry, I said. But we're talking about 1.5m people who lost jobs in 2008-2010, plus many more when the axe fell on the public sector. What happened to all of them?

The guy almost looked pissed off. "You don't get it, do you?", he said. "I know that you lot from 2010 find it hard to get. But the answer is this. The private sector moved in and millions of jobs were created".

OK, I said, I believe you. After all, the streets do all look like Solihull. But do the people earn enough? "Oh. I see", he answered. "Well, most employees are those from welfare-to-work schemes. They have to come in to work, otherwise Iain Duncan Smith will personally clip them round the head in the morning. I don't know where they live. Maybe they do a Dubai and they get trucked back to their dormitory areas at night. All I can tell you for sure is that they've suddenly developed an impeccable work ethic. Even the window cleaners. You've never seen them keener. The other day one was smiling while holding the chamois. What a picture it was. He looked so happy."*

"Anyway", he added, "'proper employees, let's call them that, are incredibly well-paid".

Are they? I asked. "Yes. And there's no legal enforcement either. The minimum wage was abolished a while back. The whole thing magically self-regulated. Greed as well. Gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Thanks to the private capitals on tap (the consequence of the above-mentioned Great Cuts of 2010), money has been coming out of people's arses. Wages are now the highest in Europe. I'm a call centre worker myself and look at the car I'm driving. £12 an hour I make. We're all paid really well. We've never had it so good".

And how about crime and social problems? Are things looking up on that front as well? "Absolutely. That's the best bit", the guy nodded enthusiastically.

"People receive an extra pint a week to stay married. The other day someone snitched on our neighbours because they were having a massive row. Within ten minutes we got Iain Duncan Smith and Nadine Dorris turning up on their doorstep accompanied by a couple of smiling welfare-to-work henchmen. The minister patted the raging husband on the back and said in a priestly voice: 'if I buy you a pint a week will you promise me you'll stay together and stop rowing?'.

The fuming husband took a deep breath. His fury quickly eased off. 'Yes', he answered hesitantly, 'give us a mini tax break and I'll do my best'.

Well...you're not going to believe it but I haven't heard a single row since! Every week the family get money to buy a pint and now it all looks hunky dory".

Then the chap said: "I don't know if you remember when Energy Secretary Chris Huhne announced he was leaving his wife for his PR lady two years ago". Yes, vaguely, I nodded. "Well, that changed the moment marriage tax breaks became law. Apparently IDS sneaked £20 under the table to him at a Cabinet meeting. Believe it or not, power-of-the-tax-break, Huhne and his wife salvaged their marriage"!

I was flabbergasted.

"Needless to say, with all mums and dads staying together now, crime has been nosediving and also kids are no longer wearing hoodies and tracksuits".

Wow. What a society, I marvelled.

Then I got a text message saying my time in 2012 was coming to an end. I had just about time for one final question. OK. How about the England team, I asked. Did we at least win Euro 2012?

"I don't know. It's underway as we speak. But I can tell you that all the newspapers are talking about 'The Spirit of '66' all over again and the Sun had a picture of Winston Churchill on its front page". Nothing ever changes, nothing ever changes.

[*kudos to you if you can spot the window-cleaning reference].

When mega salaries backfire

Remember the glaze-eyed mantra that you may have to pay mega salaries "if you want to retain top talent"? Yesterday England's superstars proved it's a load of absolute bollocks.

Three months ago, the papers quoted England coach Fabio Capello saying that "money is to blame" for the slew of scandals and off-field problems marring some of the Premier League star players.

What if, however, such ridiculous amounts of money were also at the root of England's spectacularly lacklustre World Cup performances?

The problem isn't so much that England are failing to win against much less celebrated teams. Surprise defeats or simple failure to bring home good results have always been part of football and in fact it's happening to other top teams too (some so far have done even worse than England).

Which is why what pissed off most viewers last night wasn't so much the nil-nil draw against Algeria, but the total lack of drive and determination seen amongst England players. They looked just pathetic. Their performance was dire, dull, uninspiring, directionless (more here). Almost aloof. They were hopping about as if it was a training session. The perception was that those top Premier League celebrities just couldn't be bothered.

Hands up if you didn't envy the sight of how enthusiastic and motivated the Algerians looked instead. They may have been less technically gifted, less popular and less used to top-flight football but, against the likes of Rooney, Gerrard and Lampard, they didn't struggle one bit. They actually played much better.

Which is why last night's football can serve as a light-hearted warning against the glaze-eyed free-market mantra that exorbitant wages are a must "if we want to buy or retain top talent".

Premier League salaries have quadrupled in the last ten years, growing much faster than their main European counterparts from Serie A, Primera Liga or Bundesliga (see chart). Figures range from Frank Lampard's annual £7m and John Terry's £6.75m to Wayne Rooney's basic salary of £4.5m.

With his £6.6m a year from the FA, coach Fabio Capello is by far the highest paid World Cup manager. Just imagine that the second best-paid one, Italy's Marcello Lippi, is earning less than half Capello's money to do exactly the same job.

Algeria's Rabah Saadane is on just over £240,000 a year - less than the amount Capello or most of his players make in a fortnight. But let's just say that, if we were to judge from last night's performance, we wouldn't have guessed.

Feel free to call it a crass comparison, but there are parallels between the City binges that led the country to the biggest crisis in sixty years and football's spiralling costs.

There comes a point where somebody can be rewarded too much for what they may (or may not) achieve.

Remember when Sir Fred Goodwin was paid £4.2 million including a £2.86 million bonus in 2007? Yet what the man did was simply preside over the biggest loss in UK corporate history. What are the incentives, where is the motivation, what is there to be feared, if even the most colossal fuck-up can be produce rewards so gargantuan that not even your great grandchildren will ever have to do a day's work?

Watching England's superstars half-arsedly gracing the world with their presence as they took on Algeria last night, you could be excused for suspecting that Rooney & co weren't going to lose any sleep regardless of the outcome.

Those young men have already been rewarded beyond belief. They are multi-millionaire supercelebrities that are routinely treated like royalty wherever they go. In the event they feel a bit low (i.e. in case their pin-up girlfriend catches them red-handed with a fellow model) they can console themselves with yet another Ferrari or private yacht.

Could it simply be that stratospheric salaries can actually produce counterproductive outcomes?

Wayne Rooney's pig-headed criticism of booing from fans ("Nice to see your own fans booing you. If that's what loyal support is ... for fuck's sake", he blasted after the game) was further indication of how distorted those spoilt kids' perceptions have become.

Perhaps bingeing on £90K a week from Man Utd plus extra millions from Coca Cola, EA games and others really persuaded the young star that there should be nothing other than adulation and "loyal support", no matter how embarrassing their performance.

So perhaps the best chances of success in four years' time won't come from an even richer contract handed out to Capello's successor or masturbatory headlines about "the Spirit of '66" and Premier League superstars up there with the Brazilians, the Argentinians or the Italians.

Simply leave home the Rooneys, the Lampards and the John Terrys and give less celebrated First or Second Division players the privilege of representing their country instead. Guaranteed they'll try harder and play with some passion. And perhaps even stand a chance of actually winning something.

I didn't vote LibDem for this

Axing hospitals, jobs, help for the unemployed, manufacturing projects and front line services: this cull is coming straight from the most ideological right-wing hymnsheet.

Commenting on cuts and "difficult budget decisions", Deputy PM Nick Clegg said recently that his government would "not" do it "the way we did it in the 80s". "We're going to do this differently", he remarked.

The acute observer, however, may have learnt the bitter way that, whatever the Lib Dem leader says, the exact opposite is true. In fact, his public declarations read in reverse should be coveted as the best way of predicting government policy.

And so, yesterday's announcement that projects worth £2bn are getting axed (with another £8.5bn suspended) is a clear sign that, for all Clegg's posturing, the 80s are actually back with a vengeance.

To quote Chris Dillow, "[W]hen Clegg says he’s going to do things differently from Thatcher, he’s right - he’ll cut overall spending by much more than she did".

The significance of yesterday's cuts is immense. It offers a clear glimpse of the ideological direction taken by the Con/Dem administration.

The Coalition are not cutting back on things such as council-funded festivals, public-funded anti-obesity ads or - even better - the salaries handed on a tray to the Chief Executives of Network Rail or the Royal Mail.

No. The axe is falling on public projects which were crucial in both the public and private sector. Cuts are going to affect job creation (mostly in the private sector), 21st century manufacturing, the health service and measures to help the unemployed.

Those include scrapping a much needed new hospital in the North-East and cutbacks on the Future Jobs Fund, a scheme that was created during the recession to help the long-term unemployed with jobs or training.

But probably even more significant was the massive blow dealt to manufacturing firm Sheffield Forgemasters.

Their £80 million loan would have created skilled jobs and stimulated the supply chain in low carbon power generation. It was a good investment both in terms of future green technology and long-term support of a specialised UK company with only one direct competitor in the field of heavy steel forgins and steel castings - in Japan. Other foreign companies will soon be vying to fill the gap.

Quite clearly this government is not interested in diversifying the economy away from the financial sector. They are repeating the short-termist mistakes that led us to the crisis in the first place. They are not interested in a forward-thinking manufacturing base and they have no plan for growth other than praying that their Ideological Hymnsheet may deliver the goods.

And the 11th Chapter, first epistle to the Free Marketeers, Verses 2-16 states clearly that the government shouldn't invest in manufacturing and that mass unemployment is a price worth paying. Amen.