Cut Out The Argument And Try A Different Tune

In politics, timing is everything.  1992 turned out to be a good election to lose.  2010 may turn out to be similarly cursed.  History would have been very different if Heath had triumphed in 1974, Churchill in 1945 or Callaghan in 1979.

Apart from the headline events, though, the timing of smaller occurrences can have  a dramatic impact on the political culture.  Anyone who has looked into the last recession knows that it had very little to do with run of the mill public spending.  As the banks collapsed, Government receipts went with them.  Add to this the cost of keeping the banks afloat, and it is soon obvious why the gap between Government income and expenditure grew so quickly.  Explaining this now, however, is utterly pointless.  The notion that Labour overspent and were financially imprudent is so firmly entrenched in people's minds that it is now almost impossible to shift.  Every time a Tory spokesman is featured in a news report, they allude back to this allegation, particularly the ubiquitous Frances Maude, who seems unable to answer a question without referring to 'The Deficit'.  It will take a long time and a lot of political skill to move the debate on.

How did this happen?  Well, during a key moment last summer, just as 'Dave & Nick' were chumming up to each other, Labour looked inwards.  Just at the time when the coalition were putting their proposals and arguments forward, Labour held a leadership contest full of nice people and nice sentiments.  At the very time that Ed Balls could have taken George Osborne to pieces, he was more concerned with trying to find differences between himself and Andy Burnham.  Just when David Milliband could have turned the attack on Nick Clegg, he was congratulating himself on nominating Diane Abbot.  Of course Labour needed to elect a new leader.  Just not then.

So where do we go from here?  Well, I sense that there is another, far more vague idea that goes hand-in-hand with blaming Labour for the deficit.  Around a third of people seem to like the idea of slashing public spending.  Another 15 to 20% of people seem prepared to go along with it for now.  However, what people do not seem to be registering is that these measures are not temporary.

There is a gap between income and spending.  No-one would deny that.  By bringing expenditure down, the Tories may very well close that gap.  What happens then?  Precisely nothing.  There seems to be a feeling that the deficit is like an overdraft, that as soon as it is paid off, we can start spending again.  A better way of looking at it would be to study the analogy of the household budget.  At the moment, we are spending more than our income.  We therefore have a choice.  The Tories are happy with a low income and will cut spending accordingly.  Labour should be arguing that, rather than slashing outgoings, we should be taking our income back up the levels we previously enjoyed, allowing us to afford the essentials - as well as 'luxuries' like police, libraries and SureStart.

This, of course, requires economic growth, something which the Tories are not renowned for achieving.  After the last recession, Norman Lamont became a laughing stock for his continual reference to 'green shoots of recovery' despite the economy doing a fair impression of the Sahara.  By not stimulating demand, keeping unemployment high and steadfastly refusing to invest, the coalition are making rods for their own backs, ensuring that growth will be either very slow or non-existent.  The economy has flatlined in the last twelve months, a contrast to the modest but palpable growth occurring when Labour left office.  Under the fiscal regime currently being imposed by George Osborne and Danny Alexander, unemployment will remain high, welfare bills will eat a large part of the available cash and businesses will go to the wall for want of trained staff.

Giving local communities the ability to vary business rates, introducing a National Training Credit and giving new businesses a tax holiday would all go towards kick-starting the economy, not to mention the feel-good factor.  Unfortunately, all the Tories can offer is a mixture of cuts, unemployment and the prospect of interest rate rises.

The Tories have already patented the hymn sheet.  Labour needs to start singing from a new one if it is to sound any different from the Conservative Cutting Choir.

I'm Not A Celebrity, But I Have An Opinion

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13414374

Oh dear.  Here we go again.  Every time there was a problem the Mayor of Gotham City didn't understand, he sent for Batman.  Whenever UK Prime Ministers find themselves in the same position they instantly want to send for a celebrity.

Following on from Jamie Oliver and school meals, Lloyd Grossman and hospital food, someone who has made a few programmes about shopping is now going to be asked their views on economic regeneration.  While bringing experts into Government is a very laudable aim, we must remember that there is a division between people who might know what they are talking about and people who are good at communicating what they think.  Grossman, for instance, knew a lot about food, but very little about the NHS and its budget.  Give him a blank page and he would have come up with a wonderful menu for patients.  However, work under the constraints of a very limited budget, overworked staff and kitchen personnel with a level 1 HND and you soon realise that the view from the Hampstead dinner party won't quite translate into wonderful changes at a hospital in Brentford.

Asking a celebrity to produce a report into failing High Streets is intended to do one thing and one thing only:  grab headlines.  The last 30 years have seen a steady decline in High Street shopping and there are many and varied reasons for this.  The growth of car ownership has made alternatives easier, and the 'out of town' shopping areas have grown as a result.  Even these have now been superseded by the almighty Trafford Centre, Cribbs Causeway, Metro Centre and others.  The homogenisation of towns has led to a domination by big cities.  Why go to a clothes shop in Burnley when you can take a trip into Manchester, visit the same shop and do a lot more besides?  The growth of supermarkets has also had an extremely damaging effect, with the extension of what they sell being almost as dangerous as their domination of streets both high and low across the country.  Look out for a Tesco Free School opening near you.

If we are to resuscitate the High Street, we need to change culture.  The out of town centres are here to stay - that particular genie will not be revisiting the bottle in a hurry.  If towns want an alternative to pound shops and Cancer Research outposts, then a sense of community needs to return.  I'm not talking about David Cameron's 18th relaunch of The Big Society, whatever he may mean by it.  I mean a cultural shift that looks for goods and services to be locally sourced.  Cafes and restaurants buying their ingredients from the nearest source, not the cheapest.  Furniture shops that are an outlet for local craftsmen and not trying to compete with DFS.  Banks that talk to local businesses rather than setting everything against a set of de-humanised rules.  Rather than making a sacrifice, businesses are protecting their own future, ensuring that more local people have jobs and income, so increasing the likelihood of having custom themselves.

We need to change too.  We need to purchase as locally as possible.  We can certainly balance this with Fair Trade, as a two pronged attack against multinational ordinariness.  It does not need a pledge not to touch Tesco and the out of town giants.  Just, perhaps, a little more thought.  And not a celebrity in sight.

Credit A Trained Workforce To Help Avoid A Greek Tragedy

The news that the Greek economy has grown more than that of the UK in recent months will be music to the ears of George Osborne and company.  There may, of course, be a few risible comments and the odd joke at PMQ's about Britain doing worse than the most maligned economy in the Eurozone, but the fact that there has been growth in Greece will give the Chancellor the opportunity to look even more smug than usual, if such a thing were possible.

The reason for this is that Greece has slashed public spending, as a result of receiving money from the IMF.  Bail outs such as those which Greece have received always come with more strings than a violinists convention and decreased Government outlay is always the first.  This in turn leads to high unemployment among teachers, nurses, police officers and others, generally driving salaries down as people accept jobs that they are massively over qualified to do in order to have an income.  This kind of low wage economy goes hand in hand with low skilled jobs, so the consequence is that people hugely under achieve, there is a great deal of unemployment and no-one wants to risk losing the pitifully badly paid post they hold.  Of course, overtime is a necessity to ensure that bills are paid, so productivity goes up.  Governments are desperate not to lose companies to their competitors, so labour laws are relaxed, making firing much easier (it's always been easy to hire, but people do tend to merge the two for the sake of a good cliche).  All this is set against a backdrop of increased profits for companies who are now able to compete against China, India and Indonesia on profit margin and wages (relatively).  It's Thatcher's first law of economics.  Get back to the Mill, proles, and don't dare question the Mill owner's opinions.

We may soon be treated to the sights and sounds of George Osborne holding Greece up as the economic example to us all.  If they can engineer a growing economy from dire straits, then all we have to do is follow their example and we will grow too.  Besides, those pesky schools and hospitals are simply a drain on the taxpayer and don't produce anything of value.  Quickly, nurse, the screens.  If you don't believe that the present Government are thinking in this way, just consider the BBC news report revealing that 40% of graduates are working in jobs whose skill level is lower than their qualification: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13361769

The Chancellor may even introduce TINA to us again.  "There Is No Alternative".  But there is.

For many years, British industry has been crying out for a 'flexible' workforce.  Well now would be the perfect time to give them what they want.  It needs to be well defined, and should not mean that we all have the aptitude to work in a call centre.  It involves partnerships between industry, employees, government and the educational sector.  The Government should be introducing a 'National Training Credit', which could be used either by individuals or by businesses.  Such a credit would pay for someone's vocational re-skilling in order that they can take the next step on their career route.  As a nation, we spend a fortune on training courses for young people who, more often than not, take up apprenticeships, college places and work-based training only to find they want to change direction a few years down the line.  Some of this money can be saved by companies taking on young people in working roles, with the promise of free training in the future.
For example, imagine a company which wants to break into eastern European markets.  The National Training Credit could be used to send key sales staff on language courses while managers could attend relevant modules of International Relations courses.  People who want to move into such posts could choose to use their Credit to undertake these courses with a view to promotion, giving the business a pool of talent that is well trained and prepared to move forward.

Despite what various Conservatives may wish, we will never compete with emerging economies on grounds of cost.  Our living standards are far too high to drive wages down to the kind of levels we see in developing economies.  Rather than revisiting the mistakes of the 80's and 90's, where huge British firms outsourced their production to cheaper nations, we should use the current economic climate to try something new.  A high quality workforce, well trained and involved workforce, with everyone around the table embracing a flexibility that can be in everyone's interests.

A march in support of Government cuts managed to muster 350 attendees, almost a whole trainful.  There is not a huge appetite for Britain to become  a slash and burn haven.  Nothing this Government has done in the previous 12 months has suggested that their sloganising is anything more than empty rhetoric.  If the economy is to recover, we genuinely need to all be in this together.

It may be the Tories ball, but Labour can take it home

Well, my return to blogging wasn't as triumphal as I had hoped.  While AV was rejected (hooray!), last Thursday's election results were a curiously mixed bag for Labour.  Scotland showed how a campaign can turn out if only your core voters support you, while the local elections in England showed a similar, if slightly less dramatic story.  Wales provided a high point for the night, though lacking the one gain which would have tipped the balance completely in Carwyn Jones favour.

Here in Monmouth, we actually achieved something rare, even if we did miss out on taking the seat.  Mark Whitcutt managed swings from both LibDem AND Conservatives, recovering a lot of ground that had been lost in 2007 and 2010.  The Conservatives now have a majority of six thousand, making Monmouth an interesting fight next time around.

Several issues have emerged from the results which need to be considered over the coming months.  Of course there was the LibDem collapse - entirely predicted and deserved.  But the expected Tory core stay at home never transpired.  Why?  Well, the AV vote would have brought many Tory voters out, while a couple of flag waving stories (some wedding and a skirmish in Pakistan) may have persuaded some to whistle 'Land Of Hope And Glory' on the way to the Polling stations.  But while these factors may have played a part, there are several truths that Labour need to digest over the coming 12 months.

There seems to be around 35% of voters (nearer 50% here in Monmouth) that actually like the idea of cutting public spending.  This is a harsh lesson for the left, given that we believed we had changed the landscape in the Blair years, and had altered the political culture just as much as Thatcher had.  We are once more losing the debate on public services, thanks to a great deal of Tory trickery.  Those very people who were promising to match Labour's spending commitments before the crash, suddenly made out that the worldwide recession was caused by Labour over spending.  We meekly allowed them to get away with those allegations last summer and are suffering for it now.

In Monmouth, we learned how badly that can affect a campaign when dealing with a largely unsympathetic media.  Put out a story on Labour protecting libraries and it is carried, complete with photo showing candidate and award winning author supporting him.  Try to put forward an argument about the economy which challenges Tory hegemony and we struggled to be published.  So the realisation that the Big Society Bank will take money away from charitable donations, or the notion that the banks have a hold over the Tories thanks to huge donations are conveniently ignored. 

The result?  An electorate which believes that Labour care about public services alone, while those ultra responsible Conservatives take the difficult decisions about balancing the books and managing the finances.  That particular argument has been advanced so far over the last twelve months that Labour's options have been severely narrowed.  Pointing out that most of these cuts are ideological and politically motivated will not shift that stubborn third of the electorate one bit.  Anyone who believes we simply need a big push is sadly deluded.

Instead, we need to play on the Tory economic pitch, just as we did in the early Blair years.  We need to be tough on Tory votes and tough on the causes of Tory votes.  As the man himself said, the Tories don't have the best policies, they just steal the best language, similar to the Devil and his tunes.  Ed Milliband has made a start by making Ed Balls his Shadow Chancellor, but having the right man in the right job is merely a start.  "Too far too fast" is not resonating with the voters we need to win over, both in Monmouth and nationwide.  Pointing out the flaws in Tory plans are not enough.  We need to put forward an economic agenda that is both fair and competent, both convincing and measured.  If we can convince people that we are to be trusted with the economy, then the squabbles of 2010 will be forgotten.  I am unsure, though, whether we need to nail the Tory myths before we can manage that.

In 1992 we went from people not trusting Labour to Black Wednesday in a matter of months.  John Smith's elevation to the Leadership made sure that we were in position to take advantage of people's anger.  A similar event could well have the same effect, and given the Tories reluctance to regulate the Banks, another crash could be just around the corner.  However, until such an event occurs, we need to concentrate on showing how the Tories are failing to match up to their own hype.  Every increase in unemployment, every stutter in the growth figures and every dip in business confidence needs to be magnified.  Locally, we need to take on board the concerns of SME's and the business community as a whole.  Until we convince people that we can handle the economy with confidence again, we will be a nice party that they do not trust with their votes.