Economy

In a sign of his enhanced status in the party, Danny Alexander has been one of the main attractions on the conference fringe this year. This evening, it was standing room only when he was interviewed by The Independent’s Steve Richards. Alexander was on feisty form. He declared that ‘both the other parties are pretty useless’ and that the Liberal Democrats had ‘done a bloody good job for this country’. Marking his own homework, he gave the party 10 out of 10 for being credible and effective. But he said that the Lib Dems had to shout louder to get their share of the credit for the economic recovery.

Does it matter that the Tories can't spell out how they'd fund the tax cuts they announced at their party conference this week? Labour has launched a clock which monitors how long it's been since David Cameron promised these cuts without any detail on how they'd pay for them. But last night on BBC This Week, Tom Watson summed up why the Tories feel they can make this attack: 'I don't think we can be more austere than the Tories now: I thought those freezes were cruel last week and will have very bad social consequences and the Labour party doesn't believe in that, and so we've got to make a different play.

David Cameron has yet again delivered a belter of a party conference speech, peppered with announcements. His performance is a reminder of why, even now, he remains the Tory Party’s greatest single asset. His speech was a powerful invocation of the strengths of Conservatism, perhaps the clearest he has given from a conference stage. It was passionate, eloquent and, overall, the speech of a Prime Minister. What a contrast with the Ed Miliband's attempt last week. There were promises galore. The advantage of holding a party conference before the Liberal Democrats is that you can scoop their policies – in his case, announcing another increase to the tax-free income tax threshold from £10,500 to £12,500.

Twenty years ago, starting at this Labour conference, we together took the historic step of reforming our party’s constitution. The result is on the back of our membership cards today.

Today was set to be a boring day in Westminster. Sajid Javid, a courtier to George Osborne, was billed to give (yet another) speech about how the economy is going ‘gangbusters’ and why evil Labour would trash the recovery. Dutiful hacks were pottering off to the Centre for Policy Studies, the venue for Javid’s speech, when news broke of Boris Johnson’s ‘off the cuff’ announcement that he might stand in 2015 after all. This political hand grenade blew the government’s media plan completely apart. Javid was spotted calling CCHQ for a line to take on the Boris comeback. He duly took to the podium and prepared for questions that would have nothing to with George Osborne’s ‘long-term economic plan’.

The economy has recovered, and is steadily growing. That much is now clear. It has long been assumed that this will help the Conservative Party’s electoral fortunes. The logic goes that, having steered the country through difficult economic times, a grateful public will come out in their droves to thank them for it. But politics is never that simple, and the public are rarely so willing to give credit to politicians. While it may seem perverse to suggest that economic growth is harming the Tories’ electoral chances, continuing good news about the economy is making it less of an electoral issue. Voters are beginning to ask: ‘what next?’ David Cameron and the Conservatives are experiencing a voteless recovery.

Trade unions have an important role in any decent society, but their stranglehold on the Labour Party is something we must fight against. I will never forget walking the streets of Poland back in 1981, when martial law was in force, and there were armed soldiers on almost every street corner. There it was a trade union, Solidarity, which brought authoritarian Communism to its knees. In the UK Margaret Thatcher recognised the importance of trade unions in society. Indeed one of her first roles in politics was as chairman of Dartford Conservative Trade Unionists. But the battle in British politics today is nothing to do with the work done by local union officials or workers struggling for political freedom.

Some of what David Smith, author of the essential Economic Outlook column in the Sunday Times, says today will be salve to George Osborne: ‘…the government intended to spend £722bn in the 2013-14 fiscal year. In fact, it spent £714bn. Spending has been lower each year than set out in 2010. Current spending was originally intended to be £679bn in 2013-14. In fact, it was £668bn. Unusually for any government, spending has come in comfortably within budget. There has been no slippage.’ Other parts will not: ‘Where there has been slippage is in tax receipts, which have been weaker than expected.

What were Labour thinking? Against the background of Ukraine and Gaza, the only domestic story likely to cut through is an economic one. The news today is dominated by David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg wallowing in the success of the British economy. So what did Ed Miliband do? He made a speech about presentation for the Westminster village, of course. The SAS is on standby to land in Ukraine, Gaza crumbles and the IMF gives the UK a gold star for economic performance; but, look over there, Ed's got something to say about the political-media nexus! Miliband's war on photo-ops is utterly laughable given that it came just days after he flew half-way round the world to pose for a picture with President Obama at a pointless meeting.

‘Perhaps I should shift my prediction to 23 July 2014,’ I wrote in April 2012. ‘That’s the opening of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, and we must all start thinking positively about it.’ I was talking about the moment when the nation would at last shake off its economic gloom, which I had previously pinned to the opening of the London Olympics. But that spring we fell back into negative GDP territory (avoiding a technical two-quarter ‘double dip’ only when the first-quarter result was revised upwards to zero) and I felt obliged to ‘elasticate my timetable’. Since the beginning of last year we have had 18 months of robust growth — but pundits less cheerful than me have continued to report a persistent absence of feelgood.

If you walk around our great northern cities, you’ll see stunning examples of civic pride. Albert Square in Manchester and Leeds Town Hall reflect resurgent local confidence. Old narratives of northern decline are out of date. When Guardian writer Andy Beckett launched a hatchet job on the north-east a few weeks ago, claiming that the region was the ‘next Detroit’, the response was visceral and immediate. Beckett managed to write an entire article about the north-east without mentioning Nissan – the most productive car plant in Europe. The North is home to new tech hubs, advanced manufacturing, superb universities and world-leading culture, from sport to music to art. The north-east was the fastest growing economic region in the Lloyds index last month.