From our UK edition
Further to my post earlier, Sky have now produced an embeddable copy of Don't Panic's Alan Duncan video. The offending remarks come around 04:30 in: I know I said before that I'm inclined to believe Duncan's excuse - that the comments were made in jest - but the more I watch the clip, the less convinced I am. Intentional hyperbole - perhaps. A joke - hmm. Either way, it's a stark error of judgement on the shadow leader's part.
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Peter Mandelson has been getting very cross, and rather personal, about George Osborne’s ‘political cross dressing”. But during the Blair era, it was New Labour politicians who were keen on cross dressing. Indeed, on his farewell tour Tony Blair went out of his way to declare it as something that was here to stay: "Most confusingly for modern politicians, many of the policy prescriptions cross traditional left-right lines. Basic values, attitudes to the positive role of government, social objectives - these still divide among familiar party lines, but on policy cross-dressing is rampant and a feature of modern politics that will stay. "The era of tribal political leadership is over.
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...Alan Duncan saying on video that MPs are treated "like sh*t", and that they're forced to live on "rations". He's just apologised, saying that the remarks were meant in jest. And I'm inclined to believe him: he was, after all, in conversation with the political pranksters over at Don't Panic (although he didn't know he was being filmed). But, either way, it's easy work for his opponents to take these things out of context. And many will argue that the expenses fiasco isn't a laughing matter in the first place.
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Nearly all the papers have run articles on Rachel Whetstone today. These pieces concentrate on the fact that she’s the partner of Steve Hilton, Cameron’s chief strategist, and that the Tories mention Google quite often. Frankly, this strikes me as a nothing story. The Tories are mentioning Google so much because it is the kind of modern, successful brand that they want to be associated with, not because Whetsone, who was Michael Howard’s political secretary and who used to be close for Cameron, works there. Also, considering how Google has become shorthand for so much of the technological change going on around us, it would be rather hard for a politician to talk about how the internet can change the way public services are delivered without ever mentioning the company.
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Michael Ancram is standing down at the next election on grounds of ill-health, you can read his resignation statement here. Former leadership candidate Ancram was embroiled in the expenses scandal, claiming £98.58 on swimming pool repairs and more than £4,250 in one year on cleaning and maintaining his second home. According to the Telegraph, he is understood to have been unhappy with David Cameron’s handling of the expenses scandal. William Hague paid tribute to Ancram's work as Conservative Party chairman through what were the Tories' "darkest times in opposition.
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I gave it a passing mention in my last post, but it's worth highlighting Michael Gove's mischievous comment piece in the the Guardian today. Why "mischievous"? Well, because its purpose seems to be to rile Ed Balls and mobilise his internal opponents: 'In a series of not so subtle signals to the grassroots, Ed has been emphasising, whenever the opportunity arises, that he is the socialist candidate for anyone in the party who wants to move away from the sullied compromises of Blair era. In a recent interview he explained that the battle for the leadership would be a struggle between David Miliband and himself - setting up the contest as a choice between the clearest heir to Blair and the key opponent of Blairism.
From our UK edition
It's a big day for George Osborne. The Shadow Chancellor is using his new platform at Demos — the think-tank which is credited with much of the brainwork behind the initial New Labour project, but which is now turning to the Tories as well as to the Purnellite wing of the Labour party — to deliver a speech on progressive politics. I haven't read the whole thing yet, but the snippets which have been published in the papers make it seem like a significant moment in Project Cameron: when the Tories extrapolate their attacks on Brown's fiscal legacy further, and perhaps more resonantly, than they have done before. Here's a key passage, to give you the idea: “...
From our UK edition
The Tory response to the story that they plan to raise Vat to 20 percent after the next election, worried me. The Tory line is that there are no plans to do this and that there have been no high-level discussions about it. But, frankly, there should have been. Not because increasing Vat is necessarily the right thing to do, but because the Tories should be exploring what can be done to get this country out of the huge fiscal hole that Brown has dug it into. I find it less than encouraging that less than a year out from an election, the opposition hasn’t even — or so it claims — discussed whether pushing Vat up to 20 percent might be necessary: if you haven’t examined something, you can’t know whether or not it is a sensible thing to do.
From our UK edition
When Brown comes to weigh up his prime ministerial legacy, maybe he'll be satisfied that - if nothing else - he seems to have enshrined the idea of a "zero percent rise" in political discourse. Here's a passage from the Times article today on how the Tories plan to freeze the pay of local government workers: "Conservative town hall employers told The Times that 'a zero rise' for workers next year would be the 'maximum' that Tory councils would support." More seriously, the Times article indicates a toughening of the Tories' stance towards the unions, and perhaps even over public spending cuts more generally (although Andrew Lansley does rather undermine that point).
From our UK edition
Is Andrew Lansley using his untouchable status* to bounce David Cameron into a three-year budget settlement? On the Marr sofa (or the Sophie Raworth sofa as it was today), he announced that the Tories are planning "real term increases to the NHS year on year." Well, David Cameron has only said he would protect health from cuts - but he has not specified how long for. It could be as little as one year. In my political column for this week's magazine I recommend Cameron keeps uses this to wriggle out of what is now an unaffordable promise. He should freeze NHS spending for a year, then take a scalpel to it. When Lansley first gaffed about how protecting health cuts would mean 10 percent cuts, there was a key part to this overlooked at the time.
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I must admit that I thought that both the government and the Tories were committed to raising Vat to 20 percent after the next election. My recollection was that Vat rising to 20 percent was part of the PBR package that saw Vat temporarily cut to 15 percent and that the Tories had not opposed this part of the package. But having checked up, I see that this was not what was announced but merely what the Treasury was advocating internally. The Tories might be denying the story that they will raise Vat to 20 percent but I would be very surprised if they did not end up doing so. Vat is an easy tax to collect and hard to avoid so as the Tories look for an instant way to show the markets they are serious about dealing with the national debt, Vat is the obvious tax to increase.
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Reports that the Tories are thinking about appointing a Minister for Afghanistan raise the broader question of how they should structure their national security team. Though the Tories bang on about their idea of setting up a National Security Council, there has been precious little detail given of how it would work, how it would be different than the Foreign and Defence Policy Secretariat in the Cabinet Office and who would staff it. The National Security Council should be led by a minister, sitting in either the Commons or the Lords, who would also act as the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, supported by a National Security Director, from the ranks of the Civil Service.
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When David Cameron flew to Georgia last year, it was perhaps the clearest and most welcome statement of foreign policy made by the party since he became leader. Liam Fox’s piece on conservativehome today pays tribute to this, and gives us a welcome reminder of the stakes. The Russian threat is growing: there are 10,000 troops there and settlements will soon start. The best the West can do is show solidarity, and there is no clearer sign than going there. As Cameron did. Like Israel in the Middle East, Georgia is a light of democratic freedom in an area with plenty of unlit candles. There is something totemic about its independence, something the Conservatives can express clear and unequivocal support for.
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Ok, Fraser - I'm not going to let this tax 'n' marriage debate rumble on interminably, but I do want the final word! First, I appreciate your response - it makes a very strong case, but one which fails to convince me. Why? Well, largely because I agreed with most of it already. As I said in my original post, IDS and others have unearthed plenty of statistics which show just how important marriage is to the functioning of society, and to the lives of people within it. This evidence, much of which you raise, is important and shouldn't be ignored. But there are still reasons - beyond those set out by Philip Collins today - for being wary of, specifically, tax-breaks for married couples. For starters, what's to be gained from them?
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Cameron has been fairly bold in entering the debate on marriage, because we don't like do that debate in Britain. Not really - it's private, and we Brits don't like debating private things. Anything which helps marriage can easily be paraphrased as "deploying fiscal incentives to force something which should largely be a private decision". And not by the left, but by our very own Pete Hoskin in the below post. Now, we are a heterodox bunch of baristas here at CoffeeHouse and we do disagree - so here is why I think Pete is wrong. I'd like to have a go offering some of the "convincing answers" he's looking for. Right now, millions of couples are better off apart under the perverted incentives of the welfare state. The Tories would remove this anomaly.
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Ok, I must admit I'm quite wary of Tory plans to encourage marriage via a £20-a-week tax break for married couples. Not because I don't think marriage is a positive social force. I do. And Iain Duncan Smith's usually excellent Centre for Social Justice - who are pushing the tax break proposal, along with other, more convincing, ideas, in their recent Every Family Matters report - has unearthed enough statistics over the years to prove that it is. But there's something crude and debasing about deploying fiscal incentives to force something which should largely be a private decision, based on sappier motives such as love, between two people.
From our UK edition
If further proof were needed that the public’s attitude to public spending has changed it comes in the latest Guardian / ICM poll. It finds that 64 percent of voters think that spending should be being reduced now as opposed to 28 percent who want it increased: the electorate is on the other side of Brown’s favourite dividing line. Even among Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters, a majority favour cuts. Amongst those who favour cuts, the Tories have a significant advantage. 46 percent of those who support cuts think Labour would cut too little with 21 percent saying it would cut too much. With the Tories, 30 percent worry they would cut too much and 22 percent that they would not cut enough.
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It's worth following Andrew Sparrow's typically excellent live blog of the Commons culture committee's first public hearing into the recent NotW "phone-hacking" claims. So far, the biggest revelation has come courtesy of Nick Davies - the Guardian journalist behind the story last week - and it's one which will please the Tories: "Davies says he has the names of 27 journalists from the NoW and four from the Sun who used a private investigator to get information. Some of the requests were legal, like electoral register searches. But many were not. Davies says he does not want to name the names. "I'm a reporter, not a police officer." But there are a number of senior editorial executives on the list. One was Greg Miskiw, the assistant editor, news, at NoW.
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If you haven't already, it's well worth reading Robert Peston's analysis of the first annual report from UKFI, the government's banking wing. There are plenty of fascinating titbits in there, but this passage on how long it will take the government to sell its shares in Lloyds and RBS rather jumped out at me: "As the annual report makes clear, flogging perhaps £100bn of stock in Lloyds and RBS - which is what the holdings may easily be worth in a couple of year - can't be done overnight. That's just too big a mouthful for investors to swallow quickly. How can I be certain?
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Andrew Mitchell is doing the media rounds to discuss the Tories' new policy paper on international development, and he seemed to let slip with a major claim on defence spending to the BBC earlier. Here's how the indispensable PoliticsHome reports it: "Mr Mitchell said that it was not a question of choosing between the budgets for defence and international development, adding that the two departments would work much more closely under a Conservative government. 'I don't think that defence will face cuts, but it's not a question of either or, you have to do both," he said. 'The development effort in Afghanistan which hasn't always gone well and so to upgrade we need to have much closer coordination than we've had in the past,' he added.