As James suggests, few things are more tempting and pointless as "adjudicating" debates according to the Expectations Game. These matters may not be as zero-sum as a horse-race but it's silly - even if one does it oneself - to view them in terms of Who Did Better than Expected? None of these fellows is a Cicero who might need to carry a penalty weight...
Why, as Rod asks, has so little attention been paid to the story about Labour sending 250,000 women leaflets suggesting that if they get cancer they'd probably die under a Conservative government? I was in Ireland at the weekend and so didn't see the Sunday Times story but as far as I can see, what follow-up there's been on the BBC and elsewhere has been remarkably restrained. To recap: Labour has become embroiled in a row about the use of personal data after sending cancer patients alarmist mailshots saying their lives could be at risk under a Conservative government. Cards addressed to sufferers by name warn that a Labour guarantee to see a cancer specialist within two weeks would be scrapped by the Tories.
Reihan Salam has a characteristically excellent post on school choice that has some bearing on the Conservatives' proposed reforms in England. Reihan's talking about the US and the suggestion that Milwaukee's voucher programme hasn't delivered as much as one might like, but his general argument applies to this side of the atlantic too. Bottom line: choice is not enough. Or, to put it another way, choice is a beginning, not an end*. As he puts it: [C]hoice-based reform at its best creates an opportunity for educational innovators to create new models, deploy new technologies, etc. The ultimate goal is to create a flourishing educational marketplace that goes beyond the binary choice of going to school A or school B.
Obviously: In Safety Study, Sheep on Meth are Shocked with Tasers Poor lambs. Previous concerns about the paramilitarisation of policing and arming the cops with these weapons, collected here.
Pete is right: the Liberal Democrats have their issue and it's a good one. It makes sense for them to be more hawkish on the deficit and debt than either of the larger parties. That way they can present themselves as a sensible restraining influence in the event of a hung parliament that creates room for a coalition. But who should that coalition be with? Understandably Clegg and Cable will do their utmost to avoid answering that question; doubtless they will insist that it all depends on, you know, the result. Nevertheless, having reinvented themselves as Deficit Hawks it would, on the face of it, be absurd to the Lib Dems to climb into bed with the Labour party.
Three excellent, interesting responses to the Tory manifesto from Iain Martin, Danny Finkelstein and John Rentoul. I recommend them all. And by way of folllowing yesterday's post... It's not a libertarian manifesto by any means and it's not, contra Rentoul, laissez-faire either but it's certainly more appealing than anything produced by Labour and more relevant than the Liberals' offering. But it is, as Martin says, a considerable gamble even if, in the end, it is built on the recognisably Tory planks of Family, Community, Country... The Cameron idea of the state is not, despite what some folk seem to think, for a small state. After five years of Cameron central government will still, I suspect, be spending 40% of GDP.
I was going to say that Labour have gone negative but, actually, their campaign has, for any number of understandable reasons, been negative all along. Still, that reached a new low (or height) this evening with this advert, broadcast in Scotland only: It's impressively dishonest on many levels, not least because any decisions taken on Scottish NHS or education funding will be made in Edinburgh, not by any Conservative government in London. True, the block grant could be squeezed but this is true regardless of who is in power in London or who's running Holyrood.
I'm not opposed to local referenda and ballot initiatives. But they need to be carefully handled. As commenters have pointed out and as California's experience demonstrates these can easily fall prey to powerful interest groups. This is especially so if the threshold for putting an issue on the ballot is too low. And 5% of available voters is, I'd hazard, too low. Apart from anything else experience suggests that youcan get 10% of voters to believe in just about anything. Consider this example from tonight's YouGov tracking poll: 11% of voters say they'd like to see a "Grand Coalition" in which the Tories, Labour and the Liberals share power.
I think that today's Tory manifesto is really quite a piece of work and potentially a work of genuine radicalism. It looks west and back and while it honours plenty of traditional Tory themes its inspiration is American in ways that not even Margaret Thatcher would have imagined - and that the Lady would have found too radical. Hopi Sen worries that none of the questions he asked about the manifesto have been answered. So here, in a fraternal spirit, is how they might be so answered: 1. Why is a pledge on cutting inheritence tax for millionaires a higher national priority than reducing the deficit or tax cuts for low income single parents? Good question! The answer, silly, is that this pleases the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph.
It was Peter Mandelson who reminded me. Oh, I don't think the Dark Lord had any intention of jogging my memory but there it was anyway: this election rmeinds me a little of the American Presidential election in 2000. Now David Cameron's no George W Bush even though I think some Labour types do misunderstimate the young, inexperienced Tory leader but there are times when one wonders whether Gordon Brown is another Al Gore. They share some things anyway, not least the unfortunate habit of being mocked for things they didn't quite say but everyone thinks they did ("I invented the internet!" "Well, I saved the world!"). But neither is wholly comfortable in front of the cameras nor much good at accepting even helpful advice.
Mercifully, the election ain't the only show in town. There's actual, real good news elsewhere. For instamce, 57 years after his death Hank Williams has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to American culture. Better late than never.
Meanwhile, I'm puzzled by quite a bit of Labour's manifesto. Some of it seems rather sullen, defensive and most put-out. Take the passage on defence for instance: there's much protesting that, actually, defence budgets so have risen and it's rotten that anyone should ever think anything to the contrary. And yet Labour seem to concede - implicitly anyway - that their critics have a point. Otherwise why would they feel the need to promise - as part of "the next stage of national renewal" no less - to "conduct a Strategic Defence Review to equip our Armed Forces for 21st Century challenges"? Doesn't this rather suggest that the Armed Forces are not in fact presently equipped for 21st Century Challenges?
This, folks, is how the Nudgers and so-called "libertarian paternalists" work. From the Tory Manifesto's (rather brief) passage on civil liberties: The indefinite retention of innocent people’s DNA is unacceptable, yet DNA data provides a useful tool for solving crimes. We will legislate to make sure that our DNA database is used primarily to store information about those who are guilty of committing crimes rather than those who are innocent. We will collect the DNA of all existing prisoners, those under state supervision who have been convicted of an offence, and anyone convicted of a serious recordable offence.
What a curious election this is. As Tim Montgomerie points out over at Spectator Live (visit!) the Conservative manifesto appears to have been written as though the great Fiscal Crash had never happened. This is either bold or brave or, worse, perhaps both. Then again it's not as if Labour are offering anything more convincing. A chart will help explain this: So there you have it: squabbling over £12bn; total silence over the £155bn rest that might need to be cut. Marvel at how narrow our politics can be. Granted these numbers are taken from the Institute for Economic Affairs but even if you quibble with their calculations the broad thrust of the point is clear.
Little blogging here for the next couple of days as I flee this soggy island for an even soggier one. Am weekending in Dublin and Sligo commencing with this evening's Heineken Cup quarter-final between Leinster and Clermont Auvergne which could be a mighty tear-up, not least since, in my view, they're the two best teams in europe. Poor Ireland; the years of fat were accompanied by no end of vulgarity but they were better than these lean and bleak times. The problem with a populist uprising in Hibernia, this time, is this: how do you muster populism when the party that needs to be pitchforked - Fianna Fail - is itself the traditional haven of populism, cute hoorism and all the other forms of cheap and easy bullshit?
A new cricket season is upon us and something to take our minds off this election caper. Happily this also means it's time for another lovely piece from Frank Keating, still the doyen of British sportswriters. This time he's strolling down Shaftesbury Avenue, compiling an XI of playwrights who have played and loved the noblest game. It is everything you would imagine and hope it to be. Beckett* and Pinter and Stoppard feature prominently of course; so too Simon Gray. There's this too, from Peter Gibbs, once of Derbyshire and subsequently of the stage: In that long ago piece Gibbs had been, in real life, even more metaphysical than Stoppard in explaining how a single stroke had determined his retirement from county cricket.
Standing Cat Video is Surprise Internet Hit. There's a cat. Standing up. There's video of the cat standing up. It is popular. This is the internet. What part of this makes it a "surprise" hit? Shame on you Yahoo! The Standing Cat @ Yahoo!
Via Andrew, I see that Gideon Rachman writes: Like many youngish politicians, Mr Cameron would dearly love to embrace President Barack Obama and to drink deeply from his aura – if such a thing is possible. But the Tory leader has to pretend that the US politicians he is closest too are the likes of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. This is a pretense that is increasingly painful. [...] From guns to God to taxes to climate change, the Tories and the Republicans are really no longer on the same political planet. This problem would become far more acute if a Tory victory in Britain next month was followed by a sweeping Republican victory in the mid-term congressional elections in November.
Speaking at a Spectator debate last night, Tim Montgomerie laid out some of the reasons for thinking David Cameron more the heir to Thatcher than, as some of the old right think he may be, a squishy heir to Heath. I wouldn't agree with all of it but it's a good speech and a good case. This bit in particular is a fine summary of the modernisers' argument: For years there has been an unholy alliance of the Guardian Left and unreconstructed right who only want the Tories to talk about tax, crime, Europe and immigration. [...] But added to this traditional mix Cameron also wants the Tories to be the party of social justice, the natural environment. He wants the party to occupy the full stage. He wants the party to play every instrument in the orchestra.
Everyone agrees that public spending is going to be squeezed and journalists want to hear the pols say what items they would cut. Politicians, understandably, are reluctant to give clear answers to these questions. Hence our poor old friend Mr Efficiency Saving is wheeled into service once more and Mr Government Waste gets it in the neck but that's about it (though there's the occasional nod to big ticket items such as replacing Trident. But since £25bn for Trident can be spread over 30 years it's not obvious that this sort of "saving" makes a big difference either.) All this irritates people. The public professes to love plain-speaking and straight-talking while simultaneously deploring most of the actual, you know, concrete commitments the pols propose.