Wednesday, May 14, 2008 

Tax cuts and yet more almost irrelevant legislation.

For what most of the press have presented as a panic measure, yesterday's move by Alistair Darling, or rather Gordon Brown skilfully manipulating the chancellor's strings, to raise the personal allowance by £600 to £6,035, a tax cut in effect worth £2.7bn, was reasonably inspired and probably the best option to mostly end the 10p tax cut debacle. It was what plenty have been arguing for all along: a honest, transparent and simple move that takes more of the working poor out of paying tax altogether, whilst not penalising middle earners at the same time. This was the opposite of what Brown, the supposed champion of anti-poverty measures had done in his last budget, the about-turn performed by his weak puppet. If this is the sort of thing that weak chancellors do, then we could do with more of them.

This isn't to forget about the downsides of the move. Firstly it does to a degree show the government panicking over the possibility of losing the Crewe by-election, but it also shows them genuinely listening to people's concerns, as Brown and others less than convincingly promised. More important though was compensating those who have lost out who should never have done in the first place, and if it just so happens to be done prior to a by-election which has become almost a referendum on Brown's stewardship of the country, then so be it. Secondly is that it sadly won't be fully compensating everyone that did lose out, with up to 1.1 million only getting half back. More must be done for them come the pre-budget statement in the autumn, but the issue does now seem to have been firmly closed, something that previous attempts at buying off both the rebels and the country at large had failed to do. Thirdly it puts the government perilously close to breaking its 40% of GDP borrowing rule, the tax cut coming as it does through lending, but almost any other means of compensating would have been either seen through for the con it was, left many still feeling short-changed even if they hadn't been or taken the best part of two years to come through, something entirely unacceptable. It has the added bonus for Labour of shooting the Tories' faux-plight for those who lost out under original change stone-dead, with Cameron always making clear that he would make no promises to restore the 10p tax band. Darling hasn't done that either, but he's done something better that the Tories at no time suggested.

If that was part one of the planned fightback, then part two was today's announcement of the draft Queen's speech, and understandably it had none of the dramatic effect or chutzpah of yesterday's gamble. Instead we have an almost congealed gloop of left-over, stolen or back of the fag packet style bills that hardly present a coherent programme of government. That is to be somewhat expected half-way through a parliament, but when it's also meant to be kick-starting Labour's hopes of getting re-elected in two years' time, it was mostly a squib of the damp variety.

One of Labour's worst tendencies has been to legislate, legislate, legislate and reform, reform, reform then think of the consequences later. We can see this in the continuing attempt to force through longer detention without charge, the use of various parts of Home Office legislation for purposes which they were not intended, the hospitals and schools sick to the back teeth of new initiatives when they haven't gotten used to the last one, and most egregiously, the banning of demonstrating within a mile of parliament, now due to be repealed in the latest constitutional renewal bill. The best political idea of recent years was the Liberal Democrats' pledge to have a bonfire of the very worst illiberal legislation placed on the statute books, and both Nick Clegg and Vince Cable have been making the same argument again today on the quantity rather than the quality of new bills. Their list at the time of what to repeal would still be a great start today, although you can also add the now tragically passed "extreme pornography" sections of the last crime bill to the things to burn.

In lieu of that happening, it has to be said that most of the bills at least have their heart somewhere in the right place. The problem with this pre-Queen's speech announcement is that at best we're given a very shady outline of what's actually going to be in the legislation once it reaches parliament, but on what we know the banking reform and saving gateway bills are steps in the right direction which seem unlikely to come across many hurdles. Of more concern and contentious are bound to be the equality bill, especially the part concerning the all-women shortlists which, despite having the right intention are not the way to achieve equality in parliament; the welfare reform bill, where it's not clear whether the government is "borrowing" the Conservatives idea of needlessly and wastefully re-assessing everyone on incapacity benefit but where they are forcing the long-term unemployed onto "training courses" they have most likely already taken; the policing and crime reduction bill which will introduce yet more crackdowns on "anti-social behaviour", binge-drinking and also "cut red tape", which might well mean the scrapping of the current stop and search mechanism; the Citizenship, immigration and borders bill which will likely toughen still further the steps towards citizenship; the communications data bill, introducing the EU's intrusive demands on data retention on ISPs and the like; and the coroners and death certification bill, where it's still not clear whether the government will relent on its much criticised changes to the coroner's system which mean the Home Secretary can order "sensitive" inquests to be held without a jury.

While this programme might have been intended to add detail to yesterday's decisiveness, it's certainly done nothing to curtail the Tories' spirits, and their response has been emblematic of that. Why, the government is so desperate that it's taking up to 12 of our ideas and putting them to good use was the cry from the opposition benches, and it's one that's not wholly unfounded. While such populist ideas as directly elected representatives that deal with the police can either work well or fail abysmally, there's little here that's immediately going to be opposed on ideological grounds alone, although the pledge to give agency workers the same rights as regular ones, which again needs to be fully fleshed out, might have the Tories pause for thought. There's the saving gateway bill and the social housing plan for government to put up equal amounts as the potential buyer to appeal to the Labour left, but the rest seems almost devoid of colour, limp, lifeless, dull and decent, as someone else suggests.

Some will argue perceptively that that's exactly what Labour needs to do at the moment, to abandon the high risk strategy of eye-catching new initiatives which the Blair years foisted on us time after time, and just concentrate on governing effectively and competently. The other side to the coin is that also suggests a government running on empty, with nothing new to offer, while the increasingly confident opposition only seems to building on its gains. As usual, the reality is split down the middle, with a party that neither knows whether to go all-out or to just carry on. It seems unlikely in the long-run that this latest programme will make any great difference: as before, the next election is now the Tories to lose, and with nothing left in either the kitty or the bag, Brown looks just as isolated and lonely as before.

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5/14/2008 11:34:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, May 06, 2008 

Labour's "relaunch" and what it ought to do.

Never fear Labour supporters, here's the latest messiah to solve all the party's problems in one fall swoop:

Purnell will declare today that Labour can still beat the Tories in the fight against poverty because it is willing to stump up the money and is committed to tax credits.

"Both their goal and their policies are just aspirations," Purnell will say.

Mocking the Conservatives' approach, he will say: "It would be nice to reduce child poverty. It would be nice to put more money into the working tax credit. But nice isn't good enough. Until they pass the test of hardening their commitment and costing their policy, they cannot claim to be committed to ending child poverty."


Ah, yes, child poverty. It's strange how this government's modest redistribution, so modest that it may have lifted some children out of poverty but has done nothing whatsoever to alter overall inequality, only gets mentioned when the going gets really tough. It screams of desperation, of someone begging their lover not to walk out the door, bumbling, "but, but, look at all we've done for the poor kids!" In any case, Labour's pledge to end child poverty is just as much an aspiration as the Conservatives' policy announcements are: it's simply unattainable and completely unrealistic without far more targeted help being provided, and Labour doesn't have either the will or the funds to do it with. The less said about tax credits, the most hopeless and over-egged panacea of all time, the better.

The whole Grauniad article on Purnell's rallying-cry is about as accurate a distillation as you could get of where Labour is still getting it hopelessly wrong. It treats us first to what this fight-back amounts to:

· An intensification of the government's implementation of the Australian-style points-based system which will tighten the criteria for foreign workers hoping to take up skilled jobs in Britain. Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, will attempt to outflank the Tories by saying that British jobseekers will "get the first crack of the whip", while only those foreign workers needed - and no more - will be allowed entry.

· A £78m boost for schools in disadvantaged areas of Greater Manchester and the Black Country to target funds at those where fewer than 30% of the pupils achieve five good GCSEs including English and maths.

· Senior Labour MPs said one of Gordon Brown's most serious embarrassments - his failure to appoint a general secretary of the Labour party - would be resolved. Ray Collins, a senior figure in the Transport and General Workers' section of the Unite union, is expected to be appointed after winning the support of Brown, who sees him as a unifying figure.


This is what it all adds up to then: flagellating the darkies a little harder for the benefit of the tabloids, parachuting in cash to schools where the Labour vote mostly held up, and err, appointing a new general secretary of the party itself. It's going to knock them bandy!

Just to add to the fun, there's Ed Balls with his own detailed analysis:
Ed Balls, the schools secretary, yesterday signalled a tougher approach by the government when he pledged to dissect Tory policies line by line now that David Cameron is seen as the prime minister in waiting.

"In every area we will challenge and scrutinise the Conservative position and expose their determination to protect excellence for the few and oppose our reforms to deliver excellence and opportunity for all," he said.


There's the whole problem in a nutshell. Labour is so concerned by what the Tories are doing that it's forgotten that it ought to be selling itself and developing new policies instead of "dissecting" the opposition's line by line. You weren't voted into power to attack and stalk the opposition; you were voted in to govern. Forget what they're doing and get on with showing why you deserve to remain in government, and you don't when you come up with such specious claptrap as claiming that your reforms have delivered excellence and opportunity for all when they clearly have not. There couldn't be a better example than Lord Darzi and Labour's apparent desire for the all-singing and all-dancing polyclinics: here's the party that claims it wants to engender choice while doing away with local GP services with almost no consultation whatsoever, leaving the Tories with the biggest open goal ever. Labour doesn't just want to shut your post office, they want to shut your GP surgery and possibly even your hospital too! It might not be entirely true, but it hits home.

It's really come to something when it's Charles Clarke of all people who is talking the most sense:

In his article, Clarke suggested a number of policy modifications, including a resolution of the 10p tax debacle, abandoning the extension of detention without trail [sic] to 42 days (intended for terrorism suspects), accepting House of Lords proposals on women's pensions, and suspending the "over-bureaucratic" review of post offices.

The problem with abandoning 42 days now is that it makes Gordon Brown look even weaker. 42 days is his initiative, borne of his apparent determination to be just as "tough on terror" as Blair was, just at the moment that the majority of the right-wing press has decided that such methods are counter-productive, the Sun being around the only newspaper which still supports the measure. If it was meant to show the Tories as being soft or to wrong-foot them, then it's failed miserably, especially as it seems that unless Brown wants to be defeated he'll need to drop the plans completely, concessions being unacceptable when it will still mean the prospect of those entirely innocent being held at the whim of the police for over a month. The Conservatives don't look weak; their arguments have held up while his have been left wanting, even if the public itself is supportive.

Clarke doesn't have a monopoly on getting it mostly right, however:

Looking ahead to May 22's key Crewe and Nantwich byelection, Clarke said that Labour's "all-consuming priority" should be to ensure that the defeat in the local elections was not repeated in the 2010 general election.

That would require changing Labour's recent, erratic short-term politics that had led to the "entirely unjustified" charge that Labour was mimicking Conservative proposals or following demands of the rightwing press, he said.


No, Labour's all-consuming priority should be governing and developing policy, not concentrating on winning an election two years' off. How Clarke can also claim that Labour isn't mimicking Conservative proposals or following the demands of the rightwing press when while he was Home Secretary one of his chief tasks was asking how high when the tabloids said jump is also beyond parody.

Clarke's obsession with power for power's sake is another of New Labour's emerging neuroses. Like the Conservatives after being dumped out in 97, they've came to the conclusion that they're the natural party of government, and that being voted out, or even the possibility of it is not so much a reflection on them but on the voters themselves. They've fallen into the same old trap of becoming the new establishment, and then when faced with the gathering storm fall into denial, buck-passing and outright bribery. Additionally, as with Boris Johnson, Labour is still making the mistake of both underestimating and slandering the Conservative leadership; yes, Cameron and Osborne might be public schoolboys and the product of Oxbridge, but then so was Tony Blair, and one or the other also applies to the vast majority of the cabinet. It's no coincidence that Alan Johnson, the former postman, received a standing ovation at the nurses' conference last week while Patricia Hewitt, the most patronising woman in politics was heckled and barracked on her last visit. Another man with the common touch, Jon Cruddas, said much the same in a Times interview today.

As previously noted, there isn't much that Labour can do to turn it around because the damage is almost certainly terminal. To even have a half-chance however, or to at least get past the Crewe by-election, it needs to either reverse the 10p tax rate abolition entirely or make completely crystal clear down to the last detail how it intends to compensate those that have lost out. It needs to stop worrying about what the Conservatives are doing and make clear what it is doing, beyond such bland generalities from Brown as feeling the hurt and pain as the economic downturn bites. Brown ought to swallow what remains of his pride and drop 42 days, which would be entirely the right thing to do however much short term pain it causes him. He could go further by scrapping ID cards, abandoning the increasingly irrelevant "rights and responsibilities" constitutional changes which couldn't seem more foolish, and as a further gesture that would signal real change, bring home the remaining troops from Basra. Then they could fully concentrate on, as Bob Piper suggests, pensioner poverty and social housing. All of this might do nothing more than staunch the bleeding without healing the wound, but it would be a start. There is however no sign whatsoever that even these small steps will be taken up, and with them the Conservatives will only continue to watch and wait.

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5/06/2008 08:41:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 

Gordon Brown, politics and courage.

There are two rules in modern politics. Whatever you do, don't admit that anything you've done or said has been a mistake, unless it becomes absolutely necessary. If you are forced into admitting you've got or done something wrong, make certain that the word "sorry" doesn't cross your lips, and also, under no circumstances whatsoever do you use the word "lie". Hence Hillary Clinton, who claimed she visited Bosnia under sniper fire, something proved to be utter horseshit, simply "misspoke".

Likewise, Gordon Brown, that most proud of men, never knowingly undersold like the nation's finest department stores, wasn't bandying about such namby pamby stuff as apologising or being sorry for the abolition of the 10p top rate of tax. Let's be charitable though: after all, just a few weeks ago he was refusing to believe that anyone whatsoever would be losing out, triggering the mother of all rebellions led by Frank Field, the man who cares about the hard-working low paid poor, but not so much about those who aren't working who ought to be ushered into the workhouse, although I might just be slightly exaggerating his views on the unemployed and current benefit system.

To digress, Brown admitted that both those earning under £18,000 a year and who aren't eligible for tax credits "weren't covered as well as they should [have been]" and that 60 to 64-year-olds without higher pensioner tax allowance also suffered. This, as the removal of the 10p rate always was without shifting the burden from the poorest to those more than able to pay, is to not see the wood for the trees. As attractive and helpful as the tax credit scheme has been for the lowest-paid, all it has done is to lance the boil, while simultaneously and ironically leaving those who are meant to be working for themselves and not for the state dependent upon it almost as much as they would be if they were out of work. It's the classic example of giving with one hand whilst taking away with the other. Instead of risking the ire of the CBI and small businesses by raising the minimum wage to one upon which it would possible to live on alone, while simultaneously raising the tax threshold so that the poorest pay very little to no tax at all, Brown's final budget as chancellor was the most regressive of his tenure. He and his advisers must have realised this: if they didn't, then both he and they were either incompetent, grasping for a good headline or both. It was spotted almost immediately by the anoraks and those who actually cared, but for almost everyone else it wasn't until the first pay cheques under the changes were sent out that Brown's whacking of the poorest became the scandal it ought to have been from the beginning.

As certain female columnists have spent years banging into us, Brown is for nothing if he isn't for abolishing child poverty and helping the poorest. Even after the supposed u-turn, it seems uncertain whether all those losing out will be in any way compensated, Field and the Treasury coming out with different interpretations of how the help would be dished out. In any event, the bottom line itself is not up for discussion: the 10p rate, a manifesto pledge in 97, has gone and isn't coming back, and neither is the bureaucratic nightmare which is the tax credits scheme. If you're too proud or to confused to claim tax credits, then, well buddy, you can sit and spin. The inequity of this situation is stark: just as the credit crunch bites, a situation created by both bankers and governments living on the never-never and in complete hock to neoliberal dogma, the faceless cleaner that mops up the sweat and tears from the floor of the concrete conurbation in the centre of London pays a higher proportion of a tax than the testestorone fuelled junkies they wipe up after.

Chris at Stumbling and Mumbling offers a solution to the whole sorry mess: raising the personal tax allowance by £1,200, while putting 7 pence on the highest tax rate. It is though, like almost all the worthy proposals which deserve to be policy but are likely never in our lifetime to be, a fantasy. The right-wing press would howl, the CBI would bleat, the Financial Times would scream, and the Tories would, along with the tabloids,soon have everyone convinced that they would be the ones being clobbered, just as apparently many now fear that they were about to be/would have been hit by the 10p rate abolition. Like with so much else that Labour could have done had it been led by someone truly radical instead of just a radical centrist, the time to have done so was back in 97, when the original pledge on the 10p rate was made. It would also require courage, something that Gordon Brown can write about, but which it seems he doesn't actually himself have. Actually, that's unfair: Gordon does have courage, but it's the courage to ignore the opinion of those who actually know what they're talking about, and to instead give in to the most hysterical moralist campaigners in the land; it's the courage to shaft those cushy prisoners from getting an extra pittance this year; and it's the courage to try and buy off Grauniad readers with a "listening" scheme that will be just as centrally controlled as all the previous ones were, a day before the local elections. When it comes to having genuine courage, the magnanimous sort which allows an individual to admit they were wrong and also that they are sorry for being wrong, Gordon simply doesn't have it.

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4/30/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, April 18, 2008 

Imagine... imagine... imagine a story....

It's difficult to even begin to imagine what was going through the mind of Angela Smith MP yesterday. Perhaps she was laying there in bed on Wednesday night, tossing and turning, thinking about the meetings she's had with her constituents, rereading the letters in her head from those who've previously loyally voted Labour that were not angry, but just bitterly disappointed with how they'd been betrayed by a supposedly socially democratic government over the removal of the 10p top rate of tax, feeling disillusioned with how her own party was taking from the lowest paid and giving to middle earners just as the economic weather has turned. Resigning would have been extreme, and damaged the government as a whole, but it would have been highly principled and could, just could force a change in the policy, unlikely, but vaguely possible. Most of her spineless colleagues would have thought this over, finally fell to sleep and then would have dismissed it in the morning, like most do those bizarre, foolish ideas that tend to plague you in the middle of the night and then instantly regret even thinking up. But no, she would be strong, and go through with it!

It's even more difficult to begin to imagine what was going through her mind when she suddenly decided that she wasn't then going to resign after all. It's easy to see government as an extended family, Smith as the disobedient child, having told Cooper, her furious, snarling, teeth-gnawing mother, the corners of her mouth already flecked with spit, that she was going to quit. "You better well phone up your father Gordon and tell him then!"

And so she did. Quite what Gordon, away in Washington on important business, told her that reassured is even more difficult to imagine. It certainly wasn't the news that they weren't going to go through with the tax rate change after all. The terse, through gritted teeth statement, so obviously spin doctor scripted, saying that Gordon had convinced her that the government's anti-poverty agenda remains unchanged even while 5.2 million will be losing out, just made an embarrassing situation even more mortifying. Perhaps the real reason she rowed back was because Gordon had threatened to have her sent to Siberia. It's more a convincing explanation than Brown winning her over with the sheer power of his argument. From standing up to her parents to making even Clare Short look dignified all within 24 hours, not even Armando Iannucci could have imagined it.

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4/18/2008 10:52:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 09, 2008 

Tory wolf in Labour clothing part two.

This letter in today's Grauniad says everything my post yesterday failed miserably to do:

Both my husband and I are to have our income reduced due to the removal of the 10p tax rate. I am disabled and receive incapacity benefit and an occupational pension (both taxed). My husband works full time for a low wage. He hasn't had a pay increase in nine years. Our children are grown up and we are below pension age. We are not entitled to tax credits. We are on the brink of poverty. And this from a so-called Labour government. I despair.

Josette Morgan, Potton, Bedfordshire

Justin has more of much the same.

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4/09/2008 08:45:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, April 08, 2008 

Beware the Tory wolf in Labour clothing.

Beware the lesson of the Tory wolf in liberal clothing, writes La Toynbee. As it happens, she's talking about how the centre-right in Sweden, after getting into power on a programme of policies not much different to that of the centre-left, have turned out to be rather more right-wing than they promised, the implication being that no one must vote for that nice Mr Cameron, as despite his message, he'll undo all of Labour's hard work in abolishing poverty and establishing total equality.

I exaggerate slightly. The headline could however just as easily be about Brown. Toynbee strangely doesn't mention in her column something rather more important to the average low-paid worker who's most likely to actually vote Labour, but Brown could be that Tory wolf in Labour clothing. What else to say of someone who, through abolishing the 10p starting rate of tax, has just redistributed mainly from single workers without children earning under £18,500 to those earning over £35,000 a year, who gain under the tax changes introduced in his last budget?

It's important to set the background to how this change came about. This was back shortly before Brown was to inherit the Earth - or at least the Labour party leadership. His stewardship of the economy was not yet as threatened or criticised as it is now, but it was starting to come under some strain, and he didn't have much room for manoeuvre. He needed something that would grab the headlines, but that wouldn't smack the most crucial constituencies, the cliched hard-working families, pensioners, or the City. It might not have had anything to do with it, but the weekend before a number of newspapers called for tax cuts, with the News of the Screws almost begging for some sort of slash. The 10p top rate, introduced by Brown himself some years previously, was the obvious contender. The reasoning was that due to the introduction of tax credits, those on low pay who would have otherwise have been whacked had something of a fall-back, while the only real major losers would be those under 25 without children who couldn't claim them and part-timers who didn't work enough hours to qualify.

The signs that this wasn't thought through properly, or that it was, and Labour either didn't care or thought that the majority wouldn't care, are fairly clear. If there's one thing that New Labour has always been aware of, it's the polls, and time after time they show that around the only remaining demographic that supports the party consistently and in spite of everything is the 18-24-year-olds. How could they have not noticed it regressively targets them if the Treasury hadn't been frantically searching for the proverbial rabbit to pull out of the hat?

Regardless of that, the giving with one hand and taking away with another didn't fool hardly anyone else in any case. The most grateful headline the budget received was the Sun's "reasons 2p cheerful", which was rather mitigated against by the following day's headlines elsewhere on Brown's "tax con". Questions have been asked of why the Labour MPs now concerned and angry about the change didn't recognise it sooner and speak up - the reason why they didn't because at the time they didn't care as they had no reason to think it was going to affect them personally. Even if the local elections were coming up again, the losses were thought unlikely to be as severe as previously, especially considering Blair was on his way out and acting as a lightning conductor for discontent. With him gone, Brown was bound to re-energize the party and re-engage with the public itself. This was exactly what happened - until the Northern Rock crisis broke out, Brown fluffed his opportunity to call the election last autumn, and the economic weather significantly turned with the credit crunch, still now reverberating and having a chilling affect across the board.

Backbench MPs are concerned now because a tax change they thought they could bluff their way through has come home to roost. However much the Supreme Leader and Alastair Darling chunter about how we're in an excellent position to deal with the lack of liquidity in the financial markets, with inflation low, the lowest paid are the ones feeling the pain of the price of food especially rising. Then, just as things are getting worse, they get further stabbed in the back by Labour taking away the 10p rate. Taking into conjunction with other matters that Labour has dismissed or poo-pooed, such as the closing of post offices and now the most dramatic fall in house prices since the dark days of 1992, and it's little wonder that the Labour MPs are so worried. Even though the Conservatives continue to offer very little of any substance or great difference, they see the upcoming local elections as the precipice they may be about to fall off. They remember the almost wiping out of Tory councils back in the local elections of the mid-90s, and fear it's about to happen to them. The only major council Labour still controls in the south outside London is Reading - and it's under great pressure.

This was not how it was supposed to happen. If Brown had gone for the election back in October, then Labour would now most likely still be in power, albeit with probably a further reduced majority, and while all the above issues would be of concern, they'd have the four or five years to once again turn it around. Instead Labour is increasingly hemmed in from all sides, but Brown himself doesn't either seem to recognise this, or if he has, he's not showing it. I personally couldn't care less about house prices falling, especially seeing if I'm ever going to be able buy one at some point in the future they're going to have to drop a lot further, but when it's possibly the number one issue for the middle classes it seems to be asking for it to refer to the drop as "containable". That doesn't even come close to the apparent contempt he feels for the very individuals he's shafted with the removal of 10p rate however, who have to realise that he's taking the "difficult long-term decisions" and that in a few months they'll see the results - I'm sure they'll appreciate that when their pay-checks come in.

Quite why the Labour MPs are complaining however, as opposed to why are they complaining now is the better question. It's with a piece of everything else Labour has done of late. When John Hutton does the greed is good routine just as the banking sector has brought the Western economy to its knees, when concessions over the non-doms are made almost as soon as the City howls, when Caroline Flint continues to spout about evicting those on benefits from council houses and when the entire cabinet seems to have decided to out Blairite the worst excesses of the Blair years across the board, they ought to have realised by now that Labour stopped caring about its base a long time ago. Instead of letting them eat cake it urges them to eat tax credits, even if they mask the problem rather than anywhere near address it, are incredibly difficult to claim in the first place and there continues to be huge problems in the administering of the scheme, leading to both under and over payments. Rather than offering the change he promised, Brown has been a continuation of the same without the undoubted political nous which Blair had. You might remember that David Miliband said on Question Time that a year into a Brown prime ministership some might feel nostalgic for Blair and want him back; someone more perceptive might have instead said that a year in and everyone would be saying that nothing had changed. The "tragedy" has been that they would have been proved right.

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4/08/2008 07:27:00 PM | | | links to this post

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