Saturday, October 10, 2009 

Weekend links and hiatus.

Most of the blogs are still reflecting on the Conservative party conference this weekend. Paul Linford provides his usual weekly column on Cameron's vision and emulation of Blair, Dave Semple and paulinlincs provide 10 lies about the Tory conference and a critique of Michael Gove's speech, as does Neil Robertson, Paulie waxes lyrical on the Tories and the economy, Tom Freeman glimpses into his crystal ball and finds the Tories winning the Nobel prize for economics and Hopi Sen notes the contradictions in Cameron's speech. In general miscellany, Craig Murray explains why he's certain the inquiry into MPs' expenses by Thomas Legg will be a whitewash, Ten Percent is glad the EDL protesters in Manchester were outnumbered, Phil BC explains why MPs' second jobs are about to become an issue, Tory Troll is stunned by an act of obvious cronyism by Boris Johnson, one which if New Labour had committed they would doubtless have been more than ridiculed about, while both Dave Cole and the Heresiarch have thoughts on Barack Obama winning the Nobel peace prize.

In the papers, or at least their websites, Howard Zinn also considers Obama's win, Marina Hyde reflects on the Strictly race row, Charlie Brooker attacks the BBC's awful Radio 1 promos, David Blancheflower is decidedly unconvinced by the Tories' economic policies, Matthew Parris is already worrying about the problems Cameron might have with his backbenchers, Janice Turner provides easily the finest piece of the weekend in noting that the Tories' policies on taxing alcohol seem to be based on social snobbery just as much as practicality (take note Graun and Indie: she's far too good for the Times, although the same could probably be said about Parris), Andrew Grice thinks the Tories still need to flesh out their policies, Yvonne Roberts is yet another person critical of Michael Gove's education plans and lastly Howard Jacobson provides his usual take on something completely different, this week on art and privilege vis-a-vis Tracey Emin.

As for worst tabloid article, it's one of those weeks when we're treated to a whole host of potential winners. The Daily Mail out does itself in deploring a "happy slapping" video posted on Facebook, then helps to propagate it by providing six all action screen shots (via Tabloid Watch). Elsewhere in the Mail Amanda Platell has her usual go, this week wondering what all the fuss surrounding someone saying something racist is about, as well as providing an especially paranoid conspiracy theory "explaining it". She also naturally thinks Gove's education plans are wonderful. Meanwhile the Sun has fallen victim yet again to Maddie-balls, this time convinced that a photograph of a girl that looks slightly like Madeleine might look now that she's six could be her. Let me confidently predict that it isn't. The winner though is the Sun's leader column, which launches a quite extraordinary attack on Rowan Williams for daring at yesterday's memorial ceremony for those who died in Iraq to wonder whether "freeing" the country was the right thing to do. If a religious leader can't explore such questions of morality without fear of being monstered politically, who can? Would they attack the Pope in such a way, who has also expressed highly similar sentiments and when the previous one also opposed the war? Or is it, to remember Stalin's question of how many divisions did the Pope have, that the Sun can get away with it when it's Beardie?

And with that, I shall be indisposed until next Monday. Have fun.

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10/10/2009 10:08:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, October 09, 2009 

Terror target Madonna?

Following on from the still reverberating TERROR TARGET SUGAR/Glen Jenvey Sun story, Unity has uncovered an until now unnoticed similar story in the Sunday People from the very same week back in January, this time focusing on posts supposedly left on the Islambase forum about Madonna. Interesting here is that the site targeted, islambase.info, is of a much more decidedly radical flavour than Ummah.com was and is. Islambase has, as Unity points out, been of special interest to those involved in the tiny "anti-jihadist" movement, with the Centre of Social Cohesion, ran by the neo-con Douglas Murray, producing an entire tedious report on it (PDF). Westminster Journal has two equally fascinating articles, written by a "Guy Baldwin", which show even jihadists enjoy pornography, amazingly enough. More recently a document posted on scribd.com entitled "Islambase exposed", since deleted and also now vanished from the Google cache, contained the personal details of many of those who post on the forum. Finally, there is also an Islambase Exposed blog, linked to one of the "Cheerleaders", which has a post containing very personal details on one of the key members of the forum.

Undoubtedly these connections are just simple coincidence. It's also doubtless coincidence that the Sunday People story, written by one Daniel Jones, was the person being contacted by Edward Barker, one of Patrick Mercer's office staff, with a view to getting a Glen Jenvey sourced report into his paper almost two months after Jenvey's Ummah.com fabrication was exposed.

As Unity concludes:
The role of Mercer’s office in, seemingly, placing dubiously sourced terrorism-related stories into the British press, at a time when Mercer was (and still) serving as Chairman of a Commons sub-committee on counter-terrorism, is a matter that Tim is still working on and although, at present, there’s no evidence to link Mercer or his staff directly to the faked Madonna story, it nevertheless seems clear that there is altogether more that needs to scrutinised in all this than just the [lack of] ethics of Britain’s tabloid press.

The plot continues to thicken.

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Thursday, October 08, 2009 

The shape of the Tories to come part 2.

The plan for the Tory conference has been both obvious and has worked: ensure that Osborne and Cameron get all the coverage and limelight and hope that the underlings stay in the shadows, or at best don't make any horrendous gaffes. This was clearly what was in action yesterday, hoping that only the faithful or interested would notice that both Michael Gove and Chris Grayling were making speeches on their specific areas and announcing either new or somewhat new policies. As it turned out, this was further helped when Grayling himself gaffed by describing the appointment of General Dannatt as an adviser as potentially a gimmick, not realising that it was err, his side, not Labour, that had done so.

It was Gove's proposals though which were clearly the more ghastly. Alix Mortimer thinks of him as a prep school teacher circa 1965 and it's clearly a description which fits. His proposals for what should be in and out of education when the Tories come in are so overblown it reads like a an old reactionary's wish-list. What's wrong with our school system, it seems, is that the kids aren't dressed archaically enough. Just as much of the rest of society decides that suit, blazer and tie aren't perhaps the most practical or comfortable of clothes, in comes Gove, who thinks that as adults are giving up on it, children should wear it instead. His other great wheeze, setting by ability, is just as old and hoary. Listening to Gove you'd think that state schools haven't so much as tried such a thing. I hate to break it to him, but at my bog-standard, at times failing comprehensive we had setting by ability, and all it did was further entrench those in the particular sets at that level of knowledge, not stretching them or helping them, just leaving them to get on with it, failing everyone. Adding to the sense of nostalgia, rote learning was the next thing to be mentioned. He also wants "the narrative of British history" taught, without mentioning whether or not history will be made compulsory post-14, and which in any case Alix Mortimer demolishes. Just when you think it couldn't get any worse, he also wants soldiers to be brought into instil discipline, which is just the thing that we need in general in schools: ex-military personnel with a high opinion of themselves thinking that all the children of today need is regimentalism and a shared bond which develops in the line of fire.

Chris Grayling didn't have much of a chance of living up to such a litany of pure bollocks. He did though have a go, further broadening the mind-bogglingly stupid policy of taxing strong lager and cider as well as "alcopops" because of their link to anti-social behaviour. There is a case for taxing the likes of Special Brew and the ultra-strong ciders which have never seen an apple for the simple reason that the only people who drink them are alcoholics and those looking to get drunk as quickly as possible, but the downsides are obvious: when an ordinary can of Wife-Beater isn't going to cost any more, you might as well just downgrade slightly, and it's what people will do. You have to challenge the behaviour, not the drink itself. I've also lost count of the number of times I've said it here, but it needs stating yet again: those meant to be targeted by this tax do not drink alcopops. The people who do are those might get drunk, but are not those who specifically go out looking for trouble; it can be best described as a tax on those who don't like the taste of other drinks. Despite all the mocking, Grayling also still believes in the "21st century clip round the ear", now examining "grounding" as an "instant punishment". We laughed when New Labour proposed taking yobs to ATMs; now the Tories, that party of the family, wants police officers to take over parenting. Finally, once again the Tories want to ban Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a group which although reprehensible and may have incited hatred in the past, most certainly does not incite violence. If we're going to ban every group alleged to do both, why focus on HuT and not the BNP or EDL, who are the number one current threat to community cohesion? Answer came there none.

All everyone was interested in though was the main event. There is one thing to be said for Cameron's speech, and that's at least that it was a speech rather than just a series of connected thoughts, as both Brown and Clegg's attempts were. It was also a good speech in another sense: that it at least partially showed what Cameron does believe and think, and quite how wrong his interpretation is of what has gone wrong, primarily with the economy:

And here is the big argument in British politics today, put plainly and simply. Labour say that to solve the country's problems, we need more government.

Don't they see? It is more government that got us into this mess.

Why is our economy broken? Not just because Labour wrongly thought they'd abolished boom and bust. But because government got too big, spent too much and doubled the national debt.


It is indeed putting it simply, and also not accurately. Labour may have massively increased the size and scope of the state, but to break this down to saying that Labour's only solution is more government is nonsense. If it was, it wouldn't have spent the last 12 years trying to insert the private sector into every public service or continued with the horrendously wasteful private finance initiative, to give but two examples. More gob-smacking though is that Cameron seems to be suggesting that the reason our economy's broken is because of the size of government and because it spent too much: this isn't just wrong, it's politically bankrupt. The reason the economy's broken is primarily because there was too little regulation of the financial sector, not too much. Even if we had saved for that "rainy day", we'd still be in the same recession even if the deficit could be dealt with quicker, and considering that the Tories would have hardly done anything different on the economy to Labour until very recently, this is hindsight of the lowest order. He continues:

Why is our society broken? Because government got too big, did too much and undermined responsibility.

This is even more nonsense. Even if you accept that big government has and does undermine responsibility, and even if you accept that society is broken, the real thing that broke it was the undermining and even open destruction of economic communities over 20 years ago. Labour has tried and mostly failed with its initiatives, but at least it has tried. All Cameron offers, and continues to offer in this speech, is the firm smack of responsibility and the recognition of marriage in the tax system, something just bound to cure problems at a stroke and not just provide the middle classes with a helpful cut. And so it goes on:

Why are our politics broken? Because government got too big, promised too much and pretended it had all the answers.

Cameron on the other hand doesn't pretend to have answers, as he doesn't offer any specific reform of politics in this speech except for the cutting of some ministerial salaries. All the talk of a new politics has completely evaporated, and who could possibly be surprised? Cameron doesn't need to change anything to win, and so the status quo is far more attractive.

Again, like Osborne on Tuesday, Cameron also offers precisely nothing on economic recovery. It's presumably just going to happen magically, while all we need to worry about is getting the deficit down. As Chris Dillow and an increasing numbers of others are now arguing, the preoccupation with the deficit is potentially dangerous when there are other threats and decisions to be taken. The Tories have focused on the deficit because this is one of their very few selling points, yet it's also a point on which they could be attacked if Labour was reasonably sure of itself, with even the potential to turn everything back around. While trying not to be triumphalist, what is clear is that the Tories themselves are now absolutely certain of their return to power. From his mention of Afghanistan at the very beginning to the condemnation of the EU at the end, this was also a speech written to touch every hot button on which the Sun newspaper has recently focused. Nothing is being left to chance. The irony of it all is that on the one thing that the Tories are significantly at odds with Labour on, they're wrong. The sad thing is that it seems it won't make any difference.

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10/08/2009 09:54:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, October 07, 2009 

Ready for the same old dishonesty.

Like Craig Murray, I had to wonder whether I was on the same planet yesterday as some of the hacks who were clearly incredibly close to falling in love with George Osborne and his "massive electoral gamble", as Nick Robinson put it. Robinson was so over the top in his clear adoration of Osborne on the 10 O'Clock News that the only thing he didn't do was film himself shooting off while listening to the speech as a result of his excitement. If the BBC turned over and fell for New Labour, then the same seems to be happening now that the Tories are on the way in. Even the Graun described Osborne's gambit as their biggest political gamble in a generation.

Osborne's explanation of just what his new and doubtless "tough and tender" interpretation of austerity will entail left as many questions as it did answers. To start with, this is a very funny sort of austerity: let's accept for a second that the cuts and wage freezes which Osborne announced yesterday result in the £7 billion saving which he claims they will. Undoubtedly, these cuts will cause suffering, and they fall mainly on the middle, which is usually anathema to his party. All the same, this is as Robert Chote described it, nothing more than a dent in the actual deficit. Over a parliament it should save £35 billion. This year alone we've already borrowed over £175 billion. This isn't even going to begin to cut the deficit by half by 2014, as Labour have promised, with the Tories, although not being specific, saying they will act faster.

This therefore fails Osborne's own honesty test. He might not have said that these are going to be the only cuts, and he hasn't specifically ruled out tax rises, but many will get the impression that this will be the Tories' main prospectus for bringing down the deficit. Instead, this will only be the very, very beginning, as the Tories themselves must know if they are serious about reducing the deficit, and considering that it now seems to be their only real economic policy, it seems safe to assume that they are. Nick Clegg might have regretted talking about "savage cuts", but it's the closest description to what can be expected will be the order of the day once the Tories do seize the reins of power.

For this was just as fantastical a speech and lacking in any real integrity as Gordon Brown's was last week. Does anyone seriously believe that Osborne's repeated dirge that "we're all in this together"? I didn't even watch the speech in full, but the number of times he repeated the ridiculous phrase left me wanting to cram it down his throat. Indeed, it's fantastically clear from the very policies promised that we're not all in this together. Magnanimously, Osborne decided that he couldn't possibly repeal the 50p tax band for those earning over £150,000 a year while we're in the current mess, he's had to put the inheritance tax threshold raise on the backburner, although it's still a commitment during their first term, and if the bankers continue to award themselves ludicrous bonuses, he will step in to tax them, but apart from that there was nothing here that would shift the burden of bringing down the deficit to those who got us into this mess from those at both the bottom and the middle. Anyone earning over £18,000 in the public sector will have a year's pay freeze. The full-time median wage is £25,123. What is interesting is what both the Tories and Labour are prioritising: the military will not have to undergo any such pay restraint, meaning that if you're trained to kill people rather than trained to save people you're currently the more highly valued. To go off on a tangent for a second, it's also instructive that no party has considered getting out of Afghanistan to save money, but then that sort of thinking would make too much sense.

Just to highlight further how we're not all in this together, it's hard not to detect something afoot in the demand that no one in the public sector should earn more than the prime minister. Fair enough, but why not extend it completely? After all, just who is exactly worth more than just under £200,000 a year? Clearly, no one should earn more than David Cameron will, and if anyone suggests this isn't about all making a contribution and rather about envy, which is of course a Labour trait, then the Bullingdon might be paying you a visit.

Not everything that Osborne proposed was instantly objectionable. I'm one of those lefties who believes that only those who need the state's help should get it: why on earth were those earning over £50,000 a year getting tax credits in the first place when those at the bottom could have been receiving more (indeed, tax credits have always seemed a poor alternative to a guaranteed citizen's basic income and taking the lowest paid out of tax altogether)? I'm not as certain on the abolition of the child trust funds for all but the poorest third, as anything that encourages saving is welcome, but it may well be one of those cuts which we have to accept in the circumstances.

Most offensive is just the sheer disingenuousness of most of the speech. Osborne complains at one point that all Labour did last week was announce yet more spending; Osborne's party would never be so crass in committing to spending increases and tax cuts at a time when the books are so in the red. All they're doing is reversing Gordon Brown's tax raid on pensions, which won't cost much, probably only 3 to 5 billion, wiping out all but 2 billion of the savings so far announced. That's to add to the pledge that those going into care homes will no longer have to sell their houses, changes to the tax system to "support marriage", the freeze in council tax for two years, the decision not to introduce the rise in national insurance contributions Labour has pencilled in, and also now the promise not to tax new businesses for their first ten employees.

The most amazing hole though is that not once does Osborne broach the one thing that is more important than the size of the deficit: the recovery. He attacks Gordon Brown for not mentioning borrowing, then takes for granted that the recovery is already on the way and that he doesn't need to anything to stimulate it further. Indeed, he again claims to be right in not supporting the VAT cut. He scaremongers that our creditworthiness is being brought into doubt while Chris Dillow points out that in fact the yields on index-linked gilts have fallen to record lows, the bond markets never so keen to lend to us. Osborne's soundbite that we need to return to being a saving society might be right in the long-term, but not when we're not even certain that growth has started again. Osborne isn't going to be chancellor until at least May, it's true, by which time if we're not back in growth we really will be worrying, but even then we're going to need investment as well as cuts and tax rises.

We have to make allowances for the fact that no politician is going to give us their budget for after they win the election the year before it even happens, but that Osborne will only "not rule out additional tax rises" is simply not credible. Either you're serious about bringing down the deficit or you're not. It's one thing to be in denial as Labour arguably are, but it's something else entirely to be as dishonest as the Conservatives have been this week. Everyone knows that they are going to be cuts, and there are going to be tax rises, even if they don't like the idea. The real "massive electoral gamble" would be to set out what they are likely to be now. Only then will we be able to decide later whether or not a party was elected on a false prospectus.

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10/07/2009 09:24:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, October 06, 2009 

Paxman vs Johnson.

Some seem to be having something approaching a sense of humour bypass over last night's performance of Paxman vs Johnson, but I'll be damned if this wasn't the funniest political interview in years, even if it doesn't really have the greatness of Paxman vs Howard or Paxman vs Blears:

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10/06/2009 10:04:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

The road to Purnell.

Over on the bustling Open Left blog, James Purnell has had a look at the Tories' welfare proposals and rather than arguing with the merits of their policies has instead decided to pick holes in them. If anything, Purnell is critical of the fact that they could be less tough on claimants:

The other big mistake the Tories are making is giving up on the Job Guarantee. In fact, this seems to me to be the bit no one has picked up on – looks to me like they are abolishing the Future Jobs Fund which is creating jobs with public and charitable organisations so we can offer everyone a job to every JSA claimant aged 18 to 24.

I think this would increase the number of claimants – training has limited value in helping people back to work. Instead, places like Denmark and the Netherlands guarantee people work but require them to take it up. That helps people such as the disabled who sometimes get overlooked in interviews. But it also forces people who are cheating the system to stop claiming. This is also the lesson from the US welfare programmes – what works is work. The Tories seem to be moving away from it (and indeed this seems to contradict the headline in the Sunday Times “Tories would force jobless to work”).

Even if Purnell is right, the Tory proposal is much more preferable. Just what jobs exactly are these lucky people going to have to take up or lose their benefit? Ones you would imagine that are dead-end and which no one who had a choice would want. Training on the other hand is a different realm of possibilities, although the funding and planning required would be far larger than simply plonking someone into what could be a completely unsuitable job. The other lesson of course from US welfare programmes is that they simply give up on those who exhaust their entitlement to benefits, leaving the charity sector to pick up the pieces, which is only slightly more draconian than what is being proposed here.

The real point though is that the Labour and Conservatives plans are almost identical, and that although I was highly critical of the Tories' policies yesterday, Purnell may well have set me straight on which will be the most destructive. It's worth quoting the comments left by both myself and Lee Griffin:

Interesting fight going on isn't it. On the one hand you have a party demonising the poor and the out of work, threatening them with destitution and a life of crime if they don't follow the government's prescribed course of "work-fare". And now you also have the Tories giving their own perspective on the same thing!

Is this really about picking (what are minor) holes in Tory policy, or outpourings of jealous petulance at them coming so close to Purnell's own frankly despicable policies?

I notice that nowhere in this does Purnell address the feasibility or likelihood of moving 500,000 individuals from IB onto JSA when there's the simple fact that there's no jobs for those people and that even if there were employers are loth to touch those who have been sick for years with a ten-foot barge pole. The real point here is that there is next to no difference between both the Tories' and Labour's policies: both are intent on further impoverishing the most vulnerable in society, not because it will save money, as it almost certainly won't, but because the focus groups and tabloids demand it.

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10/06/2009 08:55:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, October 05, 2009 

The shape of the Tories to come.

You wouldn't normally consider Manchester to be natural Conservative territory - there is only one Tory MP in the entire Greater Manchester area - but perhaps the journey of the party faithful to the city is meant to be a statement of intent. You still get the feeling that there'd be much more at home in Bournemouth, which was this year's location for the Liberal Democrats, who also you'd presume would be happier in Brighton, where Labour last week held their wake, but for a party that is clearly gearing up for their return to their rightful place as the natural party of government, such details are hardly going to bother them too much. It clearly didn't concern Chris Grayling, who only a few weeks back declared that Moss Side was reminiscent of the Baltimore portrayed in the Wire, who responded to criticism of his view from a real member of the public by saying that he hadn't done anything of the sort, while directing him to read what he did say in his speech.

Still, such minor squabbles with those unlikely to vote for Cameron's new Tories are nothing more than a distraction from the main work of this week, which more than anything else is trying not to be appear too triumphalist. That can wait; you can be sure that there'll be no declarations from Cameron of everything being all right, nor that his underlings should return to their constituencies and prepare to reign. No, the main theme of this week instead had to preferably be something that the Conservatives are not renowned for, with the natural choice being "Getting Britain Working". Perhaps not that unknown for, for those old enough to remember the Saatchi classic which helped kick start the Thatcherite revolution, but as Dave Osler reminds us, few now can recall the irony of such a campaign when the following years lead to more than 3 million unemployed.

Fair enough, New Labour might yet have the dishonour of breaking that record, but looking at the Conservative proposals, especially on benefit reform, supposedly meant to be both "tough and tender" without becoming oxymoronic, you can't help but notice the contradictions. As always, while the Tories themselves are trying to dress up the proposed reforms in the warm, kind rhetoric of compassion and help, the exact same policy is instead sold to the Telegraph as cracking down on cheats, while in the Sun the ubiquitous skivers are about to routed. When it comes down to it, the differences between this radical proposed programme of welfare reform and the government's own recent changes are slighter than you might think. For instance, the Conservative proposal that everyone on incapacity benefit be reassessed is already being carried out; whether the Tories would do it all over again should they come to power is unclear, although doubtless they will attempt to do it faster.

The main change though is that the charities and private sector companies currently carrying out the medical checks and reassessments, should they after deciding that someone should be on jobseeker's allowance and not incapacity benefit manage by some kind of alchemy to get them into a job, they'll be paid the savings that the government would have made for at least a year. Hence not only will there be little to no savings straight off, but there's a huge great conflict of interest. Which company is going to actively reduce the scope for making a profit by deciding that someone on IB genuinely is sick when they can instead find any number of inconsistencies or conflicting evidence that suggests they in fact are capable of work?

Indeed, the more you think about it the more staggering it becomes. Based supposedly on government estimates, the Conservatives believe that anything up to 500,000 could be moved from IB onto JSA, although that figure seems ludicrously high to me. At a stroke that increases the number of unemployed by, err, half a million. This, in case it had escaped anyone's attention, is at a time when jobs are in rather short supply. Many of those moved from IB to JSA will not have been employed in years, some even potentially for 10 or more years; do the Conservatives seriously think that those in that position are going to find a job any time soon? The stigma against anyone with a record of sickness, whether mental or physical is always high; the TUC blog points out a survey which found 33% of employers would actively exclude someone with a long-record of sickness, while 45% thought that disabled workers would be less reliable. If anything, it quickly becomes clear what the real motivation behind this policy seems to be: the Tories' other welfare reform proposals involve losing the right to benefits if someone refuses to go on a return to work training programme, while those who refuse "reasonable" job offers could lose the right to claim for three years. Finally, those who fail to find a job within two years will find themselves having to work for their benefit; yes, the Tories are seriously proposing bringing back the workhouse. This isn't just wage slavery, this is dole slavery, working for a pittance well below the minimum wage. The obvious result will be those unlucky enough to find themselves in this position relying not on the state, but on charity handouts, something which has already become the norm in some American states.

Even more perplexing is the savings from this are likely to be negligible. At the same time, the promises of extra apprenticeships and training places, if they materialise, will further reduce the pot. This is before you consider the also tabled, supposedly funded, tax cut for new businesses with no tax needing to be paid for the first ten employees for two years which is to be introduced, meant to create up to 60,000 jobs. Even if it did, that would still leave a net increase of those on JSA of 440,000.

For a party so committed to tackling the deficit, or at least so they tell us, there's little yet announced on where the pain is going to fall, and especially on where tax is going to rise, as it almost certainly will. As the above illustrates, the priority still seems to be to find cuts where possible, whether it be on inheritance or council tax. The announced proposals on tackling NHS bureaucracy will doubtless as usual fail to meet up with reality, and although the proposed reforms on putting all major spending online are welcome, they're undermined by the dubious and short-sighted pledge to reduce the number of MPs to around 500, leaving an average constituency MP with 77,000 individuals to work with. Can one person honestly provide a decent service to such a number and over such an area? There's also some cowardice involved in this: what's the point of reducing the number of MPs without approaching the West Lothian question head on first? The sad fact of the matter seems to be that the Conservatives are going to win power not because they're a better alternative to Labour, but simply because it's time for a change. If Labour could only rouse itself from its stupor and actually attempt to communicate their policies, as well as adopting some better ones, they could still make a fight of this. Instead we seem doomed to a party entering government just because it's their time again.

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10/05/2009 08:19:00 PM | | | links to this post

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