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Oberon Houston: The time for action on fuel duty was 2005

Oberon Houston is currently in charge of developing one of the most prospective oil provinces in the world, West Africa, and is an external examiner at the Heriot-Watt Institute of Petroleum Engineering.

Oil prices are soaring and people are hurting, we all recognise that, but where does the solution lie, with government or with industry? Well, in the long run, with both really, but I’m going to argue that the time for effective measures has already passed. Reacting to large fluctuations in supply and demand in the oil industry is something that takes a generation to correct. To understand why, one needs to appreciate that the oil price cycle can only react slowly to major and sustained price changes. To illustrate, let us look at the last major fluctuation...

Oil prices crash (1996-1999)

Supply is outstripping demand, prices are falling to record lows, and the effects were severe for oil companies. Costs were slashed, a complete halt to long-term investments initiated, drilling contracts cancelled, exploration plans shelved, offices closed and redundancies imposed, scything down staff numbers. Many experienced professionals leave the industry for good, leaving behind a rear-guard consisting mainly of (cheaper) graduates and inexperienced engineers and geoscientists to struggle on.

During this period, revenue for governments with petro-economies is also reduced, especially within OPEC, meaning severe difficulties were experienced in agreeing to reduce production quotas, as this would double-whammy fiscal budgets in the short term, and therefore there was a brief, but devastating, war of attrition as OPEC members bust their quotas to offset lower revenues, hammering prices further. The effects of all this were largely hidden from consumers in Britain as reduced fuel prices were offset by the government increasing fuel duty rapidly to compensate.

Oberon Houston: A vision for Britain

The Abolition of the 10p tax band may have been a disaster for Brown. He may have confused even his own backbenchers, when he accused the Tories of being for it, and then against it. Presumably he was for it when he introduced it, and is now so against it he is abolishing it. Confused? I was. However in the ensuing debating frenzy, we have been constantly challenged as to whether we would re-instate it or not, to which the rather feeble response is that we cannot say. A couple of weeks ago on The Marr Show, David Cameron was being pressed on exactly this, "So if you won't re-instate it, what will you do?" said Marr. 

What happened next, I regard as a defining moment in the debate on this issue. Cameron retorted angrily:

"What I can promise is this; I will never single-out the poorest workers in this country for a tax increase."

This is the stuff people want and need to hear. To react to specific fiscal policies such as the 10p rate abolition, as many involved in the debate rather vacuously wish us to do, isn't responsible. A budget needs to be integrated, balanced, correct for the time it’s presented, and above all, consistent with every policy. Further, government policies need to complement each other; most are in some way connected and have a cause and effect relationship. Together they form the government's ‘vision for Britain’. To debate the specifics of one party’s specific, detailed policy in isolation does little to the quality of the debate. So if the ‘vision for Britain’ is the way to go, how to the two main parties compare?

Oberon Houston: St Pancras represents all that is good about our future, and our past

St Pancras Station opened to the public on Wednesday after an £800m reconstruction project that sees the Victorian masterpiece, after decades of neglect, returned to all its original splendour. Those now arriving in Britain on the Eurostar service will be treated to the view above the platform of the "Barlow Shed". One of the great feats of engineering, the station roof is 689 ft long by 100 ft high and with a 243 ft span it was the largest enclosed space in the entire world. Restoration work has seen the shed completely reglazed with 14,080 glass panels and the paint work taken back to its intended pale sky blue, and the construction is a wonder to behold.

Outside, the station boasts one of the most impressive facades in the world, instantly recognisable to millions of Harry Potter fans. The grandiose gothic design was the most successful project its architect George Gilbert Scott ever completed, and he can rest in peace (in the similar splendour of Westminster Abbey) knowing his station is still standing strong, and beautiful, today. Yet this station was lucky, many irreplaceable landmarks across the Country were not so fortunate and completely destroyed in the 20th Century during a period of terrible destruction. Yet, the Luftwaffe were not to blame for this wave of demolition, local politicians were.

Oberon Houston: Project Cameron's elephant is still in the room

David Cameron may have had a privileged upbringing, and influence may have been brought to bear to help him into the fast-track option of the Conservative Research Department (CRD) when he left Oxford University, proudly sporting a first class honours degree in ‘Politics Philosophy and Economics’. Although, even at this tender young age, raw talent probably made any helping hand unnecessary. The young David Cameron, however, was soon to find out that privilege and natural ability are no protection from the rough side of politics. This first came home to him in a nasty episode, when he went to the Treasury in 1992 as Norman Lamont’s special advisor. Just a year later, Lamont’s loyalty in implementing John Major’s doomed economic policies of the day had all but finished him off, rising taxes, the ERM fiasco, and the drip-feed of damaging personal stories - that only seem to surface when one is clinging on for dear life - left him staring into the abyss. This had not gone unnoticed, and Tebbit’s private advice to Lamont at the party conference in 1993 was:

"I’d find an issue on which to resign if I were you. The two faced bastard will push you in the end, when he feels safer and it’s more convenient for him."

Soon after, as predicted, the end came, refusing Environment Secretary in a reshuffle, Lamont was duly sacked. The incoming Chancellor, Ken Clarke, had his own team and Cameron was told, with regret, that he wasn’t needed. David Cameron’s political career, beginning with so much hope suddenly looked to be over. He was eventually given a reprieve however when the new Home Secretary, Michael Howard, agreed to give him a go. The Home Office taught him a lot, but this was no easy time to be closely involved with the government, and by 1994, a job outside Westminster seemed appropriate, whether this was the end of his political career was still uncertain. But, if David Cameron thought life in business would be any easier for him, he had a nasty shock coming.

Oberon Houston: Gordon Brown and the real New Labour project

In this, my fifth contribution to ‘Your Platform’,  I have again decided to dedicate a piece to Gordon Brown. Whilst the recent pensions raid scandal emerging around the Chancellor will be uncomfortable for him, it is interesting that it has taken so long for this story to surface, and that this is the only one to emerge from a large number of unsavoury episodes our Chancellor has been deeply involved in. In this piece, I will explain that this is because our probable future Prime Minister employs ruthless and dishonest tactics to manage the news agenda around him, and it is this system of manipulation and duplicity that is the real essence of the New Labour project, typified by Gordon Brown.

Prior to gaining office, Brown created an inner circle of lieutenants around him to ensure tight security and to insulate himself from the disreputable black arts he was to employ to gain and then underpin his power in government. He recruited, at the recommendation of Peter Mandelson, Charlie Whelan as his press spokesman. With a public school education, and a poor politics degree from the City of London Polytechnic, Whelan started his career as a foreign exchange dealer in the City, but a year later he adopted a cockney accent and went to work for the AEUW as a researcher. A member of the communist party for fifteen years until 1990, the raffish Whelan was perfect for Gordon. He set about mercilessly manipulating the press and instigating Brown’s dirty tricks agenda. Ken Clarke, when Chancellor, was one of the first to suffer from the underhand use of leaks used to destabilise the Conservatives. His private correspondence to European commissioners was leaked to the Sunday Times and a total of twenty nine embargoed budget press releases were leaked to the Mirror newspaper. Jill Rutter, the Treasuries official spokesman, enthused that Whelan was;

“Doing a great if disreputable job. His Guerrilla tactics are creating problems for us all the time. The leaks are spun in a damaging way for the government”.

With feigned sincerity Brown commented that;

“Nobody can condone the leaking of sensitive budget matters the day before a budget.”

Once in office, Brown was determined to manipulate the system to ensure he would not fall victim to the leaks he used so effectively against the Tories. To do this he would set about completely controlling the news agenda around him. Prior to his arrival, the Treasury considered its relationship with the press to be restricted to the minor but necessary task of releasing carefully checked statistics and figures into the public domain, but to the incoming Brown, the press was a weapon to attack opponents, conceal mistakes, and protect his reputation. Treasury officials quickly found themselves sidelined and ‘external advisors’ were instead recruited to manage policy implementation, full-scale politicisation of the civil service was underway. Brown eliminated any potentially damaging paper trail by installing his principal economics advisor, Ed Balls, in an adjacent office and communicated with him directly or electronically using floppy disks. He held regular daily conversations with Tony Blair, but in a break with convention, the historic practice of allowing officials to listen to and take notes was dismissed by them both as ludicrous. Gordon Brown had no intention of being held to account by anyone. Once elected and installed as Chancellor, Brown was presented with a state of the nations finances with what Treasury officials described as a ‘fantastic set of figures’, this he immediately resented, and began plotting to mis-represent the facts to bolster his position, undermine the Conservatives, and remove from the record any credit they could legitimately claim.

Oberon Houston: Enfranchise me

I’ve got a small confession to make regarding yesterday afternoon. I was relaxing sleepily in the sunny living room. The kitchen was a bit of a mess, the washing basket pretty full and the wife was at work all day. What’s the right thing to do? I asked myself, as I pushed back in the ‘lazy-boy’ chair. The right thing to do is to tidy the house and put the washing on, I replied to myself, but not just yet. A thought was forming in my mind, and I wanted to explore it a little further.

I was reflecting on Tony Blair, and the damage he has done to our institutions, and quickly came to the conclusion that he just doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. He just wants to have a good time. He doesn’t care about our institutions, even the Labour Party, people, particularly, even Britain, much. He just wants to have a good time. But how then could millions of people vote for such a person? How could the New Labour project be so overwhelmingly sanctioned by the people of Britain? How could we have gotten to the point where nobody cared, everybody just wanted to have a good time. Millions of people had begun thinking that what was important was to look after number one and go it, more or less, alone.

Well, I thought, is that it? It’s as simple as that? Then a nasty little, long forgotten, Blair quote re-surfaced in my mind:

‘My aim is not merely to win elections against the Conservative party but to destroy conservatism itself’

Oberon Houston: A journey through the looking glass

At the 2005 Labour Party spring conference, Gordon Brown delivered an impressive speech to Labour activists. It combined, in equal measures, self congratulation and scathing attacks on the Conservatives. Not much wrong in that, it’s a politician’s lot to do this, but senior Labour politicians have taken these tricks of the trade to new and uncharted territory for British politics. To demonstrate, I have extracted key quotes from his speech and analysed what he said against reality. So let us go on a journey through the looking glass into Brown’s world, and begin with one subject that we may prefer to avoid, the ERM. Gordon Brown said in his speech:

“Today Labour is now the only party trusted with the economy. I give you this promise: With Labour, Britain will never return to the mistakes of the ERM.”

The ERM debacle was an episode that rocked public trust in the economic competence of the Conservative Party. Yet, amidst all the tears and recrimination, one man would emerge from the fallout a political giant, Gordon Brown. Ever since that fateful day, he has doggedly reminded the electorate again and again of the economic incompetence of the Conservatives, and contrasted this to his shining record in office.

As promised however, the truth is very different to the version Gordon Brown invented for himself, and here it is:

April 1992 saw the fourth Conservative General Election victory in a row, but by the end of the summer, John Major’s Government was in trouble. Despite a pledge to reduce taxes, they were actually going up, and spending cuts were about to be implemented, furthermore, unemployment was rising and property prices were falling. This was then turned into a looming crisis, as sterling was hard-linked to the ERM, which restricted the Government’s ability to deal with the situation. Devaluation was the cure so Norman Lamont sought the required assistance from the German central bank, but was snubbed, leaving him to the mercy of speculators in the city. Politically however, this was an unusual situation. Norman Lamont’s crisis was also the crisis of the Shadow Chancellor, Gordon Brown. Brown had enthusiastically supported ERM entry, and even baffled everyone in his own party by refusing to entertain the notion that devaluation was the solution to the crisis.

Sunday 6 September 1992

“There are those, like Lady Thatcher, who believe that Britain should devalue and turn its back on Europe and the ERM, with all the harsh consequences that would ensue.”

- Gordon Brown, Sunday Express.

Tom Bower’s biography of Gordon Brown tells us what really happened on Black Wednesday, 16 September 1992:

“Late in the afternoon, Brown was in his office in 1 Parliament Street, overlooking the Treasury building. That morning he had still been convinced that the government would remain in the ERM, helped by Germany’s revaluation of its own currency. He would be vindicated he reassured John Smith, despite his critics including Ken Livingstone, who again had advocated devaluation. Around Brown were his advisers Neal Lawson, Michael Wills, Lord Eatwell and Geoff Mulgan. The tension was high. The constantly updated television news bulletins reporting Norman Lamont’s battle to save sterling were unnerving: If Labour had won the election in April; Brown would have been the focus of the TV cameras outside the Treasury, and the target of baying Tory MPs inside the commons. His plight was better than Lamont’s, but the politician whose talent was to ridicule his opponents knew that he was vulnerable to mockery. He had allied himself to a policy which, to his amazement, was collapsing - and worse, he did not understand the reason.”

Oberon Houston: Britain is not working

This Christmas day, after the turkey and bubbly have gone down, take a short stroll outside before the light goes. During your walk, the chances are that the only others you’ll see are children lucky enough to get bicycles from Santa. I remember a Christmas ten years ago, when my son was six and we got him his first ‘proper’ mountain bike. It was a big present and we had to save up to afford it, however it is probably one of the most important moments in a child’s youth, and we can all still remember spending a joyful afternoon, despite the grey and drizzle, in an empty car park teaching him to ride his shiny new bike.

Today, that bicycle won’t be such a costly present. A Mountain bike that would cost you £400 a decade ago, can be bought today for less than £100. The only difference is that they are now imported from developing countries for a fraction of the cost of one made here a few years ago. Globalisation is here, and it is benefiting us all in remarkable ways. The cost of goods is falling, we get more for our money, interest rates are low, meaning cheaper mortgages and credit for consumers. The slight downside is that to fuel the expansion of manufacturing capacity in the east, the price of natural resources have risen. However, on the whole, we are better off now than we’ve ever been. Things are good, and why shouldn’t it continue? Well after your stroll, as you settle back in the sofa to enjoy the special edition telly programs, you might want to ponder this, if the rest of the world is working so well, how do we compare?

Gordon Brown boasts today that there is no need to worry about this; he has, and is, achieving for Britain. Before Labour were elected, Gordon Brown said that he wanted to create a ‘classless society with equality of opportunity’. He believed that to achieve this, the poor would need access to education to allow them to participate in the opportunities that they would need to succeed in life. This would be done through the ‘University for Industry’ and ‘Individual Learning Accounts’ (ILAs). This would then create a ‘new society based upon learning, skills and a work ethic’. Markets could be improved by the state, Brown believed, by introducing regulation. He would scrutinise company directors to make markets work more effectively, ‘where they create external costs that are not fully priced in the market’. Heady stuff this, for the former student of history, a potent mixture of meddling in markets and social engineering on a grandiose scale. So how is his project going so far?

Not good. Brown has pushed Britain from fourth to fourteenth in the world competitiveness league. Because of the waste and bureaucracy Brown has created, workers in Britain will have to work the equivalent of ten years longer than their counterparts in France, Germany or the States during their lifetime, just to achieve the same results. In manufacturing the growth in productivity has fallen back to the level of 1974.".

Brown boasts that his ‘New Deal’ created thousands of jobs, unfortunately there is nothing new about this deal, virtually every country has tried this form of job creation, despite the evidence that it is ineffective and expensive. In Brown's case £3.5 billion worth of ineffectiveness. ILAs were not new either, they were considered by the Tories in 1994 and rejected as ineffective. Undeterred, Brown forged ahead and 2.5 million people signed up for training in new skills, 3 times more than expected. By October 2001, the scheme was in crisis. Corruption and fraud was rife, phoney companies and phoney students were stealing hundreds of millions from it. Estelle Morris tried to get the scheme abolished, the Chancellor refused, and therefore she had to stand up in the commons to announce the ‘temporary stop to this successful program’. Ivan Lewis, the parliamentary under secretary of state admitted that ILAs were ‘one of those glossy strategies that do not lead anywhere’. Meanwhile the number of researchers working in Britain is falling and the closure of university physics and chemistry departments is sky-rocketing and our universities are facing a funding crisis.

That’s the result of Gordon Brown's education revolution. What about the business environment? In a CBI survey, 75% of members complained of Governments poor understanding of business and 80% blame increased regulation for inflicting ‘significant damage’ on their performance. Brown boasts at the health of Britain’s economy, but the strength he cites is illusionary.  Expenditure as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, 35% under the Conservatives, through taxation, has soared to 42% of GDP today, and is still increasing. This is fuelling a public sector boom that has masked a sharp reduction in the country’s manufacturing output. Two million public sector jobs have been created by Brown, yet the manufacturing jobs that pay for them have decreased by one million since he came to power. Public spending increases are at record highs under Brown, yet the benefits to frontline services have been so poor that the Prime Minister wants to re-introduce policies that were in place when Labour came to power and were scrapped, by Brown after he was elected. On top of this, most public building programs have been financed with private money but do not show on the books as debt. Our future generations, outside on bicycles from Santa on Christmas day, will have to pay for it. Brown has mortgaged this debt to them.

Economic growth, again, is lower under Labour that it was with the Conservatives and Britain’s trade gap is the highest it has ever been. To top it all off, Brown has had to recently break his own ‘golden rule’ and is spending more than he gains in tax receipts, thus fast accumulating debt that must be paid for by future generations. Despite this, he plans to accelerate spending until 2008 and further increase taxes and public debt to do so. Yet despite the money he has poured into the health, because of his strangling central control structure, the NHS struggles to improve front line services and many are deeply in debt.

Up until now, we have benefited from globalisation, but it’s a false dawn that we cannot afford to ignore any longer. As the capabilities of developing countries grow, the next generation of Britons will need to rise to the challenge and participate at the leading edge of the process. To help them succeed, it is vital that there is full participation from Government. From education, to business and health, every level will need to participate. But, just as Britain should be gearing up to face the future with optimism and strength, Gordon Brown is dragging it back into the 1970s. Thanks to Gordon Brown, this disaster of a man, Britain is not working.

If you would like to know more about our Chancellor and Future Prime Minister read the book “Gordon Brown” by Tom Bower.

Oberon Houston: The Conservative Party should not support the Education White Paper

If you have an idea for a Platform article, your suggestion should be sent to conservativehome@mac.com.

What's 104 pages long, will cost you £21, and I claim should not be supported by the Conservatives? The Education White Paper of course! Entitled "Higher Standards, Better Schools for All" the paper was launched by the Government in October, and, (oh oh) re-launched last week due to the hopeless confusion it created.

It was interesting that Tony Blair referenced the schooling system in Sweden as an example of where his proposals are a success. Except the Swedes don't operate the system he is proposing. The private sector in Sweden can run state funded schools that are free to pupils, without daily interaction with a state education authority. The White Paper is a watered down version of the Swedish system that takes many of the difficulties with the current system such as LEA control, without the advantages of allowing the private sector to run schools. So, one wonders, what the point in all this is. Schools currently control most of their budget, can opt for Foundation status if they want to own their assets, and many obtain external funding from sponsors.

Well there is a point to it all, but not a very honourable one. Blair's 'middle way' politics might seem like a joke, but it's deadly to opposition parties. Blair does not treat politics as a vehicle for change, to him, its a vehicle for manoeuvring to a point of advantage. Usually over the Conservative Party, or sometimes it can be powerful figures in his own party. Perhaps this White Paper is an opportunity to do both?

The 'middle way' Tony Blair invented is based on a game called Boiling the frog, with the opposition being the frog. This goes back to the story where one puts a frog in a pot of water and heats it up so slowly that each incremental change is barely noticeable to the poor wee thing. Eventually the frog is boiling away without understanding how it happened. Tony Blair's version goes something like this: Firstly he comes up with a proposal that the opposition like and his own back benchers don't. If the opposition don't take the bait, they are exposed as hopelessly compromised. If they get on board, the trap is sprung. Concessions are made again and again to Labour back-benchers until the frog is at boiling point, the PM literally cooks us with everyone else looking on. It's a stage-managed battle of conviction for Tony Blair, and he acts his part brilliantly. He is left looking like the good guy and everybody else nasty trouble makers. The unfortunate side-effect of this is that the Country suffers as a result. It's inevitable with these proposals. Everyone will, at best, be right back where they started, but with schools in a mess and nobody thanking the Conservative Party for voting it through Parliament.

David Cameron, in support of the Education White Paper, said;

"If the Labour Party puts forward proposals which we agree with, then we should support them and not just oppose for opposition's sake. That is the sort of Punch and Judy politics that people in Britain are tired of and which we must end."

The trouble is, with Blair, one is guaranteed "Punch and Judy" politics, but before the curtains are swished shut, we should be rushing across the stage with the bat, not the other way round.

The cold reality is this: If the electorate want change, they can get the proper version, by voting Conservative at the next election. They cannot and should not expect us to support a perverse version of Conservatism and Socialism, with 'them' in power, and 'us' perpetually in opposition.

Oberon Houston: Scotland Needs Conservatives

It's been a turbulent fortnight for Scotland's Conservatives.  David McLetchie resigned the leadership of the Edinburgh Parliament's Tories and Annabel Goldie has replaced him.  Regular conservativehome blogger, Oberon Houston, kicks off a Platform debate about the future of our party north of the border...

Ask a selection of Scots whether it would be a good thing to allow the Tory Party to die out, and there is a good chance that the answer would be a collective ‘Aye’.

It’s hardly surprising, the party’s fall from grace has been a long one, but since Thatcher and the massively unpopular Poll-Tax, it has been especially dramatic. Today only one Westminster MP is left clinging on. Things have not always been so bleak, in the time of Heath there were twenty-two Scottish Conservative MPs, and back in the fifties the majority of Scottish MP’s were Tory. However, for the last thirty years Scottish politics has been dominated by the Left. But is this a good thing? If one was uncomfortable with the policies of the Left, who would you turn to for a credible alternative? Who would ensure that the governing party of the day was challenged and their policies scrutinised? Now Scots have their own parliament, who could come into power with an alternative approach, invigorating change and challenging the status-quo?

It’s an unhealthy situation for a country to be in, literally. In Scotland's largest city, Glasgow, despite the highest health spending per head of any city in the world, male life expectancy is lower than Libya – parts of Glasgow have a lower life expectancy than Iraq. Economically things are, if anything, worse, Glasgow is a city where over half of households earn no income at all, and there is little incentive or opportunity for those in this position to escape. Of those working in Scotland, 30% are employed by the public sector, yet the jobs that pay for this are disappearing. Manufacturing output is falling to worrying levels, Glasgow was once the world leader in ship building, yet new Scottish ships are now built for them - in Poland. Traditional sectors such as Fishing and Oil face an uncertain future, and who remembers Silicon Glen? Those that are hoping this is a temporary glitch have got a nasty shock coming. As the realities of globalisation kick in, the economies of Eastern Europe, China and India will continue to expand and compete, leaving those sitting on the fence with a bleak future.

The politics of consensus is failing Scotland, a country that needs to change and adapt to be successful in the years to come. Scotland needs strong political parties from both the Left and Right to form the future of the country, not just the Left.

One can hardly blame Labour for their success, or more correctly, the failings of other political persuasions, one must look to the Conservative Party for answers. Devolution may have appeared a threat, however it is now a reality, and it can be turned into an opportunity. An opportunity to form Conservatism north of the border to provide Scots with their own centre-right alternative. Fresh thinking is something that has been a rarity in the Conservative Party in recent years, but that needs to change, and change soon, for everyone’s sake.

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