Conference Season

Another party conference season over. On balance, a clear win for the Conservatives – as shown by the opinion polls. But I still worry about complacency and underestimating the size of swing required.

I think there were four good things for the Conservatives:
- They started to show they would be serious about the public sector deficit, and distinguished between cutting administrative costs and front line costs (why does the MoD for example have as many people as there are servicemen?);
- They did not implode over Europe;
- Cameron’s speech highlighted the fact that Labour has failed a generation of people stuck in poverty, and that Conservatives want to make things better; to repeat once more: every Labour Government has left office with unemployment higher than when they came in. They fail their people. Continuously.
- Nothing too much went wrong so the faithful will have left enthused for the seven or so months left before the election. But I did like this fake diary of Samantha Cameron’s week.

There were two bad things:
- They have had to start dripping out policy. This means their ideas will probably be stolen.
- The Conservative message - big Government doesn’t work, people should be encouraged to take more responsibility for their lives - hasn’t quite gelled with all the public. But at the end of the day, if the voters want another five years of Labour then so be it. At least it means Labour will have to get to grips with the economy and to take responsibility for what they have sown.


There was one good thing for Labour:
- It really didn’t go very well; there will be no complacency and rather like Avis in the 60s: they will try harder.

There were two bad things:
- It was demotivating for party members. Nothing good happened, lots of MPs didn’t go. They announced lots of initiatives but as I said before – why have they not implemented them before, why wait 12 years? It just all seemed flat. Even without The Sun’s intervention.
- Brown did not come across as a leader with ideas to cope with the present situation. He is still talking a generation ago. He talks about himself as though he has led an economic recovery: I don’t like him, but I suspect that unlike Blair he is honest and has principles and he believes what he says. And in some ways that is even more scary than if he was lying.

The Lib Dem conference was three weeks ago and to be honest I can barely remember it. It didn’t go well: they couldn't decide if they wanted to be more left than right, they didn’t stamp their presence on the electorate and in some ways – because of clear tensions between Clegg, Cable and the rest – it made them appear more divided than normal. If only this had really happened.

Today

I woke up to Harriet Harman's voice in my ear; she was talking (on the Today programme) about all she thought she had done to increase women's employment. But she couldn't see the point of the other guest: that increasing equal opportunity bureaucracy for employers simply discouraged them from emplying as many women as they otherwise would. Unintended consequences flow from Government action. After 12 years she doesn't seem to know that.

A later guest, talking about the lack of investment in new power, made a similar point: if you keep changing regulations then firms lack confidence to invest. Regulation, he said, should increase certainty and reduce risk not the other way round.

A man of influence?

You’d like to think your MP had influence, could get things done.

People who aren’t political junkies might have missed a recent survey published a few days ago of senior Lib Dems asking who are the 50 most influential Lib Dems. Our MP, Alan Beith, was not one of them. Not even in the top 50. I am disappointed but not surprised: this area has lost out in many ways in the last 30 years by not having an MP from one of the main parties who could have helped get investment into matters such as local hospitals, the A1 and school refurbishments. And this is especially no wonder if we don’t even have an influential Lib Dem.

The next election is time to consider whether it is enough to be served by a nice guy who (as an MP should) helps individuals, or whether we need someone who can get also things done for the area as a whole.

Conference Time

I nearly went to the Conservative party conference this year. That intention was great – it has kept almost a week of my diary free so I will actually have time to do things next week. But somehow it seemed just a bit too long to spend hanging around corridors pretending to be important. Plus it was in Manchester.

I’ll nevertheless be interested to see what happens. My main worry is over-confidence. I don’t understand why Labour is so depressed – or why there seems to be such an assumption that the Conservatives will win the next election. I have as much regard for the Sun’s page 3 “News in Briefs” as anyone, but this is not a slam dunk, for four reasons:
- The voting system and boundaries are massively skewed against the Conservatives. It will take a very big swing, and a much larger share of the vote than Labour, for them to have a majority.
- The election is likely to be 7 months away. A lot can happen in 7 months. Reputations can be made or broken. Leaders can come and go. Economies can recover or crash. Wars can deepen or end – or start.
- The Conservatives are reliant on a very small Cameron based clique for policy and personality; it’s worked well so far but...if there's any crack in that small clique there'd be big problems.
- There a big gaps in policy detail. As, to be fair, there were in 1979. And announcing policy will simply see it copied. But not being Labour may not be enough.

In addition, the Lib Dems are clearly, from their conference, leaning to supporting Labour so if there is a hung Parliament there’s no doubt who they will back.

There’s not a lot the Conservatives can do about this – except don’t take victory for granted, don’t appear to take victory for granted and try to work up some decent policy detail behind the scenes.

The Irish won't need a third referendum..what do the Tories do?

It looks as though the Irish will vote to adopt the new European Constitution (I call it a Constitution rather than a Treaty because that is what it really is).

The main reason seems to be that the credit crunch has made many feel safer in a larger Europe; that's strange because:
- most of Ireland's specific problems came because of the excess boom resulting from being in the Euro;
- as a small country they did better than say Iceland by being part of the Euro, so their currency and borrowing abilities did not suffer: but this is irrelevant to the issues of European governance raised in the treaty;
- being part of Europe (as opposed to the Euro) has not helped them at all in recovering from the problems. Ireland has done much itself in terms of working out how to sort out its banks and reduce public spending - far more than say the UK and indeed most other European countries.

But all that's irrelevant to what should the UK, and specifically the Tories, do now. Commentators have suggested that a yes vote would be a major problem for them, because they will have to be more specific about how they will deal with Europe. And many Labour and Lib Dem supporting commentators will hope that they will be riven with internal arguments as a result. I suspect some anti-Cameron Tories will hope the same.

This need not happen: the Tories must be controlled in their response.

First, although the Irish vote makes it more likely that the constitution will be ratified before a UK election, Poland and the Czech Republic still need to do so. There's no immediate need to change the policy: Labour and the Lib Dems reneged on their commitment to offer referendum on the Constitution, we won't.

Second, they need to avoid too much emotion about the wrong issues:

- It will be very frustrating if Blair becomes European President. But apart from having to watch him on TV more, it shouldn't matter too much; his new Middle East role confirms his ability to talk a lot and deliver little. If he is President of Europe, he is more likely to damage the European Union rather than the countries within it;

- Much of our complaints in the UK about Europe stem from how we negotiate and then implement European legislation, rather than the legislation itself. Many things should sensibly be handled at a European level - but many shouldn't. (Lightbulbs?) We need to build the management of European legislation into our Parliamentary processes - unlike Denmark, say, their is no Parliamentary scrutiny of forthcoming legislation until after it has been negotiated. The time to review it is at the beginning of the process, when constructive input will be welcomed and where exceptions can be negotiated. The Tories should focus on improving how we handle legislation within the UK rather than supporting generic complaints;

- If the constitution is ratified before the election then there is no point in having a referendum just on that issue: it has been ratified and we will be bound by it;

- There's no point in having a bland "should we leave the EU" referendum because the answer is clear - no we shouldn't; there's no chance of a majority for leaving and any other question is not specific enough to be asked simply.

So apart from improving UK handling of legislation - and don't underestimate how important that would be - there must be a medium term (ie in the life of the first Parliament) commitment to re-assess how the EU is working and how Britain should relate to it, followed by a Parliamentary debate on whether there needs to be a referendum on any EU issue, and what the question would be. This has to be a soft commitment because the new processes are untried and it's unclear what the outcome will be. And there's no point in being too specific on international negotiations because you shouldn't tie your hands too much.

My suspicion is that the best result for the UK and for the EU would be a formal move to a two-speed Europe; those countries that wish to integrate more can, those that don't needn't.

Apologies for the length of this - but I think its an important topic and one where there will be a lot of pressure trying to derail the Tories.

Summer Things

Was the name of an atmospheric book about things that went wrong - and right – over a Summer. So having been silent for so long and needing something to kick start my blog I’ll use the title as a theme and describe what I read over Summer. I didn’t create a reading list, nor did I follow the list sent out by Tory High Command to their MPs, although I did buy one book on that list (The Pathans).

That list was largely political and historical but (I thought*) strangely omitted Bernard Donoghue’s Downing St Diary (vol 2) covering his period as James Callaghan’s Policy Unit head from 1976 to 1979. It’s a very entertaining read by an author who comes across as human rather than a political drone, about how the political process works. It is a good reminder of the last years of the last Labour Government: I am sure things are nastier 30 years on, but there are fascinating parallels.

He describes the frustration of power draining away despite the conviction that only they could do the right things; an inability to deal with a rising borrowing requirement and public sector spending; anger at public service unions wanting to protect themselves and contemptuous of both Government and the public; concern about uncontrolled immigration; some vocal Scots wanting devolution. And rising unemployment (did you know that every Labour Government has left office with higher unemployment than when it came in?). Yet feeling they had the right answers if only they had a bit more time... Fortunately for all concerned the Conservatives were elected.

I also read a book called Making Sense of Pakistan, a detailed exposition of how this vibrant and confused country came to be formed and came to have such a split personality regarding the balance between Islam, terrorism, capitalism and relationships with its neighbours and the West. I continue to worry about the influence of this area (and the resource rich countries of Central Asia) on world stability and the economy. I think Iraq (and potentially Iran) is a huge diversion and it scares me how little interest Western politicians (with the initial exception of Obama) generally show this region. For this reason I also read the Qu’ran – a big topic for another post.

Lastly, I do try to have a life: I also read some lighter stuff: I’d particularly recommend the new Le Carre; a charming book about crosswords and love; a couple of classic crime thrillers; the new Zafon; and a book about a Feng Shui detective. Amongst others.


* It wasn’t on the list because it had been on the 2008 Christmas holiday list – in hardback. I hate to buy books in hardback so I only read it after it came out in paperback.

Labour Conference Speeches

All these new initiatives....hospital parking, sorting out teenage Mums, solving street crime, and so on.


Why now? Why not in the previous 12 years?


Or was it all the Tories’ fault for not being a threat for most of that time?

Threesomes are bad for you

I don't want to moralise about people's private lives. I just want to comment on the tripartite system of financial regulation set up by Gordon Brown. The system, with some detailed changes, is to be retained after a review of lessons learned from the collapse of part of our banking system.

The review also follows the G"20" summit in London at the beginning of April, where Brown announced a whole series of international agreements to co-ordinate on economic and regulatory management.

The trouble with the tripartite system was that when things went wrong it wasn't clear who had responsibility. The Financial Services Authority had information, the Bank (of England) had the money to bail out banks and the Treasury had ultimate authority but neither information nor immediate access to money. None of the detailed changes correct this mistake. They do suggest banks should have more capital, which is good, but there is still a gap between the the FSA's detailed supervision and the Bank's management of cash flows and monetary supervision.

The Conservatives have produced an alternative: to convert the FSA into a consumer/conduct of business organisation and to give the Bank responsibility for all capital/financial issues. This removes most of the lack of clarity of responsibility, and also seeks to apply the best aspects of the monetary policy committee's processes to macro-regulation. There are two problems: it means a reorganisation (which inevitably ties people up unproductively) and any system can only be as good as the people who operate it. But its certainly more likely to be successful.

Antoine Kaletsky suggests some other requirements for a new regulatory system, which I think are right. (I disagree with his opening comment, that Darling did good work in saving the system; as I'll say later, everything was too little too late. But the rest of the article is helpful).

The review has not taken into account international co-operation. This is mainly because despite the summit promises there has been none. And in some ways this isn't surprising: individual countries' taxpayers are at the end of the day the only people who can bail out banks, so it is inevitable that individual countries' own political priorities are more important than acting globally.

I've commented before on the issues leading up to the credit crunch. But:

- the tripartite system set up by Brown didn't work because it assumed nothing would go wrong;

- the independence of the Bank of England to set interest rates didn't work because it was told to only focus on price inflation, not on ecenomic stability as well;

- a massive public sector deficit was created as public spending was increased but without productivity improvements;

- nothing was done for ages to resolve uncertainty over bank stability, and that was after too much dithering over Northern Rock;

- despite majority ownership of two major banks, and the implicit guarantees behind others, nothing has been done to increase lending or to create confidence in bank balance sheets on a stand alone basis, or to improve regulation. So we see a shortage of credit persisting, making unemployment worse than it need be, while at the same time margins on bank products increase allowing excessive bonuses to be paid on the back of taxpayer support which is not being properly charged.

In other words: the economic policy hasn't worked and the Government hasn't actually done much to improve stability recently. The proposed changes to regulations won't change much: the Conservative proposals have more chance of shaking things up.

We've been quango'd

The trouble is that the Government has spent the last 12 years ducking responsibility for anything. And it does this by setting up quangos or agencies to manage things which should have been its responsibility. (And to be fair, the Tories spent much of their last time in office doing something similar). This means that when things go wrong it can hide - and usually the quango can as well, as it can say any problem was not directly its responsibility.

No responsibility inevitably leads to bad management and decision making.

It also leads to unecessary costs as the leaders of the quangos queue up to overpay themselves. Forgetting there would be a raft of semi retired experts who would gladly put something back by doing many of these jobs at much less cost. But the main concern is the loss of political ownership of policy.

It was good to see Cameron focus on this key issue today. It was the subject of one of my first blogs, and nothing's changed.

Does the BBC hate itself?

It seems to have a death wish.

I've always thought the BBC was one of the UK's greatest assets. Every radio I have is tuned to Radio 4. The BBC website is a gateway to the world. The World Service provides a window for the world. The Archers is the longest running saga on any media outlet in the world. Many TV programmes inform and entertain.

Yes, it's full of pinkos who want to destroy the fabric of our society...but I'm sure only in a good way. And no more than most media outlets. So I've always been concerned about the political parties that want to take money away from the licence fee by cutting, sharing or eliminating it. The Tories haven't explicitly stated they will do this, but they have certainly implied it.

Yet so often the BBC tries to show it doesn't deserve support. For example:

- Why buy Lonely Planet guide books, creating a conflict of interest and starting to compete in a different sector?

- Why pay so much more for talent than anyone else would? I think of course of Jonathan Ross. But there will be others? But not properly fund journalism?

- Why pay so much to a whole raft of managers - far more than the commercial sector, although the brand means people would do the job for much less?

- Why let a Government spokesman on business host a business programme between now and the next election?

- Why send over 400 people to Glastonbury (after sending more people to the Olympics than the UK sent athletes)?

I've changed my mind. I still think there should be a licence fee. But it should be much less and it should pay for the website, a couple of radio channels, the World service and the journalism that supports the news and perhaps a couple of TV channels. I suspect that's about half the amount, but it would pay for things that the commercial sector cannot provide. It should not duplicate what it can now it has proven it cannot be trusted.

Since writing this, I have read this later post by Iain Dale which emphasises the point.

Hello again

Belatedly...a few comments on one of the most active months in UK politics since I last blogged. Holidays and golf are my excuse.

Election results

The results of the European and Local elections can't really give good guidance to a general election, partly because the turnout was so low and partly because there were clear signs of a protest vote. Labour's neglect of its traditional constituency explains the BNP's success in getting two MEPs. Like UKIP for the Tories, their vote was a cry for attention from the disenfranchised. The Tories did well but if the results were applied in a General Election, projections suggest they would only have a majority of 28.

The almost universal acceptance that Cameron will be the next PM does not take account of the enormous swing that the Tories need because of the massive bias in constituency allocations to Labour, with Scotland being the worst example. (Something that must be sorted out after the next election). Two other factors: with the general bias in Scotland, Wales and N Ireland, events in the devolved areas could have an exaggerated impact on the outcome. And if the chips are down, the Lib Dems are more likely to support labour, partly because most of their activists are left leaning and partly because they know the Tories will actually do things to get the economy straight again.

So although a Conservative Government is the most likely outcome of the next election, I wouldn't put much money on it. They aren't helped from not having coherent economic policies at the start of the recession, which gives them a weak base to comment on the economy now. They have a year to become coherent - or to hope Labour continues to implode.

A couple of local comments:

- my friend didn't win his local council seat. But he did hold off the NIMBY party to be second.

- in Northumberland there was a low turnout, but the Tory vote was up and the Lib dem vote down - albeit a little. This increases the chances that Berwick upon Tweed could become Conservative again. Which would be good: we need an MP who can actually do things for the area.

Aftermath of the Moat

So much has been said about MP's expenses. A couple of thoughts from a different angle..

a) second jobs. One of Brown's responses to the scandal was to introduce a new set of rules about second jobs, with the intention of discouraging them. This was partisan - I suppose most Labour MPs couldn't get a second job which is why they disapprove of them. Seriouusly, it is surely better to have some MPs with experience of the real world rather than just being political clones or media tarts. I hope a new administration would actually promote second jobs for MPs.

b) creating an independent parliamentary regulator. The trouble is that an independent regulator means that no-one will be responsible for anything. The culture of "it's within the rules" will be emphasised; the regulator can't be that independent because it will be appointed (even if indirectly) by the Government; its members will likely want future quango roles. This approach is typical of so much delegation of miniterial responsibility to outside agencies. It means the buck is eternally passed.

Much better to have full disclosure of payments and to make MPs responsible and accountable. I repeat my earlier view: a closing Parliament should set the salaries for the next parliament - as the MPs would immediately be facing election. Expenses should be radically simplified to be consistent with normal overnight stays in business. Salaries should be increased, but to compensate there should be fewer MPs. And they should have a normal rather than a supernormal pension scheme to help them understand the real world.

The reshuffle

The weekend speculation over Brown's future clashed with a golf weekend so much of it passed me by; my impression was that however bad the election results Brown would not go voluntarily and the Labour party could not finance an early election and most MPs would not want to lose their seats so it was unlikely he would go. And so it proved, although his eventual reshuffle proved he has little control over his party.

Cameron must be pleased: he needs Brown to stay in office to increase his chances of success. I asked a Labour supporting friend of mine to name one capable thing Brown had done in the last 12 years; I couldn't, and nor could they (well, they said his control, of the economy until the recent crash but early successes were the legacy of Ken Clarke's Chancellorship, and the later apparent success was merely a debt fuelled boom before the inevitable bust).

There's one problem of a weak PM, however: the risk of lots of badly thought through initiatives to make it look as though the Government has ideas and enwed energy. The track record is that most intiatives are announced and then fade away - but there's always a risk some may become policy. Like MPs expenses.

Meanwhile, elsewhwere in the world...

As we contemplate our relatively minor problems there are two major events in the Middle East, in Iran and Pakistan. No-one based here can understand what's really going on. But the outcome will have a major impact on the world's stability and the economy. In Iran, I hope the groundswell of disgust against an obviously faked election result will lead to a loosening of the regime's control and a normalisation of life and realtions with gthe rest of the world. Iran is a country of civilised intelligent people: it should be our friend. Pakistan's army is at last taking action after decades of being in thrall to fundamentalism mainly because of an irrational fear of India. Too little? Too late? Again, who knows, but its a problem the West has helped cause and we must hope Pakistan can resolve.