The Bewilderness

The appearance of cuts....

George Osborne was buoyed along by reprising the reheated rhetoric of 2010 calling for further cuts in spending and no new taxes. Apart from one gimmick, the speech was light and lean, reflected the paucity of ideas at the heart of this administration. By invoking the prospect of further benefits cuts (their only popular policy?), Osborne flew into Liberal Democrat flak: the one political party that eschews popular coalition policies for their own idea of what people want (think Left!). Clegg was quick to chew his fat: cuts for taxes, rich for poor, mansion tax for reducing welfare.

However, in happier news, the OECD leading indicators appeared to show Britain decoupling from Europe and enjoying economic growth whilst the Eurozone plunged....

Vote for madam cameron

The Tory conference was designed to bring home to the public the notion of truth and responsibility. Some would say that the release of such headlines as raising the retirement age, freezing public sector pay and “telling it as it as” are a democratic version of spanking. The toffs transposing their public school predilections on the masses.

Yet, the very basis of this approach is paternalist. The public must be schooled and directed towards the appropriate outcome. For the Tories, the outcome is fiscal sustainability, the only time that word appears truthfully in their canon.

However, the majority in democracy have an incentive to socialise their irresponsibility, allying with government to inflate their debt away or maintain redistribution. Such a system is inherently unstable in the long term. After all, under Labour, welfarism has moved onto secondaries. An interesting experiment is under way. Do turkeys vote for Christmas? Short-term slaughter and, possibly, long-term satisfaction.

Cameron's conference: matters rest

The Irish voted for the Lisbon Treaty by two-thirds, a result that is dispiriting for democrats in Europe. Integrationists and federalists are cock-a-hoop! After unspecified threats to Ireland's status and an unequal campaign marred by establishment agitprop, the referendum was won because of economic depression.

The cri de coeur of the federalist was an undermining of sovereignty. How could one country undermine a consensus of 24? The same utterances are now directed against Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic. Many of the institutional changes have already been put in place illegally, establishing facts on the ground, prior to the final ratification of the treaty.

David Cameron must hope that 'President Blair' materialises: a god-send to a Eurosceptic challenge. Look how a vote for change in Britain is now nullified by Brussels. Labour broke its promise so that the party could extend its power via the European Union.

Whatever pressure is stoked by the media and Eurosceptics, Cameron will not clarify. The Tory leader wishes to keep his options open: a challenge to an EU shaped by Lisbon or acceptance of the new settlement. Either scenario is possible.

A push for a referendum whatever the outcome is unrealistic:

The Tory leader faced renewed demands from his party's right-wing. Bill Cash, the veteran eurosceptic MP, said: "This is a fundamental constitutional principle. David Cameron committed himself when he said he would not let matters rest there. That means a referendum in any event.

"Eighty-eight per cent of people demand a referendum on Lisbon and they have a right to have their say."

Declan Ganley, leader of the Libertas party which led the campaign for an Irish 'No' vote, told The Sunday Telegraph: "David Cameron must now feel the hand of history upon on his shoulder. He has now to decide whether he wants to be a great leader by committing to a referendum or just another prime minister with broken promises.

The decision to call a referendum acquires different dimensions post-Lisbon. Europe as an issue equals devolution. It is a low priority and any party could institute changes without difficulty. Imagine Cameron calling a vote after attempting to negotiate in good faith with Europe. Repatriation is not permitted so the Tories opt for a vote on membership itself, and withdrawal to EFTA. The Liberal Democrats and the Labour party are forced to declare their hand as it is settled again for a generation, either way.

This is my hopeful scenario of not letting matters rest. But, events may not play out as I would like.

Not good enough

Listening to Newsnight some hours after Brown's speech, the disappointment is beginning to flow through the conference. After the floral rhetoric, the parade of the hausfrau and a list of the achievements, there is a ebbing confidence in the policies set out.

The penal crackdown on teenage pregnancies, a new voting system that will actually benefit Labour and a whole raft of warmed up leftovers from the Blair years. Like all of Brown's speeches, the initial triumph is soon picked apart as the wheels fall off. The Sun has already come out against.

By outlining a series of political, economic and social reforms, Mr Brown was sending out the message that Labour meant change for the majority and the Tories for the privileged few.

Again, the most important insight that Brown recognised was that this is the most radical election since 1979. If the choice between the Tories and Labour narrowed under Blair, clear red water was seized by the philosophy of an "activist government" under the looming threats of the Great Decession. Instead of New Labour, we find ourselves full circle with the pale ghost of Kinnockian democratic socialism, revamped in an authoritarian wrapper.

The three big challenges that Mr Brown needed to tackle — the country’s dire fiscal position, the collapse of confidence in the political system and the difficulties faced in Afghanistan — were left, by the end of the speech, untackled....

And then there was Afghanistan. A war in which British troops are dying every week and that is rapidly losing public support merited, apparently, only four paragraphs of bland support for the Armed Forces. This was not good enough.

This was not good enough.

PM for GB

I was surprised, when reading the works of Labour party members and activists, the vehemence with which they held the Tories. It was not even the absence of bipartisanship, but a tribal identity that marked the other party as the enemy. This is certainly a cultural shift and the resurgence of a hidden strand of emnity.

The hardening of this attack, and its more personal targets, was heralded by Peter Mandelson's speech and remarks in the conference yesterday. It is reported as a confessional from the King of comebacks, where he opts for marketing Labour as the underdogs and as insurgents. Think like you are in opposition and act accordingly.

But Mandelson lets the side down, as always, with the differential between high-flown flowery and the down and dirty. He musters his insults and calls Cameron a “flibbertigibbet”. A what? Did he want a prize for how many syllables he could say in one breath?

Yet, the constant amongst all of the politicians in Labour is that they view their role as the natural voice of the British people. They view this as their entitlement, their birthright and are unable to consider other alternatives. All we hear is the damage to be done, the Plan unwound, the suffering and woe if the Tories are returned to power. The stakes are now that high for them.

High stakes, political entitlement, a loose cannon as PM...

Brown the Presbyterian Pope

There are few alternatives for a governing party at the last conference before the election. Behind in the opinion polls, they have to galvanise their activists, support their leader and prepare for a tilt at victory. Otherwise, the accusations of defeatism will haunt their candidacies after Brown falls on his sword.

This was the motivation behind the orchestrated shelling of the mainstream newspapers with a Labour blitz on why going over the top is the latest strategy. However, the problem for Labour is that their leader remains wedded to an unconvincing score.

If you listen to Brown, he is adamant about his role in the financial crisis. Whilst "saving the world" was a slip of the tongue at PMQs months back, it has now become part of his armour and self-belief. We have returned to the monologue of last auturm where Brown is not only the saviour of the world but the architect of Britain's rescue:

"I have led the way around the world, spent night and day persuading my colleagues what is necessary."

This is bolstered by a sense of infallibility and a contempt for his opponents. Every choice was "right" and this is juxtaposed with the "slogans" of the opposition. For if they were thinking about the crisis, they would see that Brown was correct and support him in everything he did. (Why then would we need an official Opposition?)

The interview also brings us a useful window onto Brown's thinking about the expenses crisis. The anger, the disillusionment, tha plague upon all your houses is dissipated. Instead, we have an anodyne observation: that the electorate has "suspended judgement".

This is Brown's greatest error: that he was too convinced of his own intellectual rigor and infallibility, too unwilling to listen to the message that his employers kept telling him. He is truly the first Presbyterian Pope.

Facing down the critics at the Lib Dem funny farm

The Liberal Democrat conference has begun to unravel, as the lack of a collegiate style shows the flaws in Clegg's leadership. Just as his wheeze over the referendum led to a fiasco in the Commons, now his co-operation with Vince Cable has fallen apart under a hail of criticism. And, in an echo of Macavity, the leader visits a nearby farm, leaving his deputy to face the music, over his “mansions tax”.

Whatever the flaws of a policy that was not costed or detailed, this has proven very damaging for the Liberal Democrat leadership. When the main rival, Chris Huhne, confirms that he was not consulted, can one avoid contrasting this mess with what might have been?

Nevertheless, the third party is not holding the headlines. When they attempt to ridicule the Tories, they sound by Mandelson's puppets, thinking of nothing more original than the inexperience of Osborne. Or they attempt to distinguish themselves from a foreign policy consensus by opposing the war in Afghanistan. Now that they are signed up to 'tea with the Taliban', will they detail how we do this without undermining our allies, assuring Afghani security and preventing a resurgence of jihadist training.

Mr Davey told delegates at the party conference in Bournemouth that his call to sit down with the enemy had caused consternation but denied it was an insult to British troops.

“The real insult to our armed forces is not talking about a more realistic strategy in Afghanistan,” he said. “Anyone who has studied the last 30 years of war in Afghanistan will know that battles tend to be decided by defections not fighting.”

Mr Davey said the motion recognised that “time is running out but rightly does not call for an immediate withdrawal, as that would be disastrous for Afghanistan and Pakistan”.

In reality, this is posturing. Symbolic abasement to diplomacy without dealing with the nitty-gritty of campaign failure in Afghanistan. Trying not to appear undermining the troops, the Lib Dems wish to have their cake and eat it, face the critics and visit the farm at the same time. From this vantage, it appears to be the funny farm. 

Soak the rich, save the state, help the planet.

The one word that we should despise when applied to politics is libertarian. For, Peter Riddell describes the Liberal Democrats thus, when they are anything but.

Let us look at their policies: taxes based on economic illiteracy and populist gain, designed to tap into the current theme of 'hang the rich' and damn the poor. And they describe this stance as courage. If only they had written a book on this virtue to clarify their hypocrisy.

Even Riddell, centre-left, recognises that the LDs are radiating the zeitgeist but have no coherent voice, conflicted between liberty and equality.

Soak the rich, save the state, help the planet. Sums up all three parties actually.

Self-important eunuchs strut in Bournemouth

Should one be unimpressed by the rhetoric of the Liberal Democrats? There seems to be an ironic foolishness about a leader who repositions his party by attacking the other two leaders. By this very act he becomes part of the problem, a continuation of the political culture that we have suffered from for the last few years.

The Liberal Democrats could always afford to be more honest than other parties because they knew that they would never gain power, thus enjoying the fruits of honesty in opposition to accountability. Does the list of public expenditure cuts that Clegg and Cable now put forward demonstrate the fundamental dishonesty of their position? Nick Clegg promotes himself as a potential heir to progressive politics and replacement to Labour, as all of his predecessors before him, yet sets out a policy stall that indicates psychological impotence: an awareness that power remains out of their reach. If they ever did get a whiff of the power, it would surprise them even more than the electorate.

So, on the eve of the Liberal Democrat conference, Clegg understands the hunger for change and ensures that he will have no part of it, making the same claims and with the same honesty that have tormented all other leaders of his party. Strutting their self-importance, signalling their impotence.