CentreRight

Labour's weapons test in Crewe

Apart from who will win, the really interesting thing about the Crewe and Nantwich by-election is the virulently anti-toff character of Labour’s campaign. One has to wonder whether Labour’s election machine has simply gone mad – or whether there is nevertheless some method here.

It is obviously a measure of desperation to use such an attack, but it is based on some elementary rules of persuasion. As it happens the current issue of New Scientist lists eight research-backed persuasive techniques and the current Labour strategy fits four of them:

1. There’s ‘framing’, turning the voting issue into something you feel comfortable with (class, instead of the government’s record).
2. There’s simplicity: giving lots of reasons for making a particular decision works less well than giving just one or two.
3. There’s a variation of mimicry, saying ‘we’re more like you, the other guys are different’.
4. And there’s anger, rousing negative feelings such as envy. The only problem is that people aren’t so well persuaded once they see that manipulative techniques are being used, and in this case they’re pretty crass.

My guess is that Labour are quite deliberately experimenting with the class issue for future use. This is a weapons-test: they think maybe they have a nuclear device with Tory Toffs. The real target, of course, is David Cameron. The Bullingdon photo in the silo for deployment in the general election, and they want to use Crewe to see if it works.

Gordon Brown's Berlin Wall gaffe

Amongst all the criticism thrown at Gordon Brown in recent months, few have yet had reason to question his attention to detail, at least until now. I couldn't help but notice in today's Sunday Telegraph his speech to the Church of Scotland Assembly yesterday:

"If anyone had said 50 years ago that the people of our world would achieve black civil rights, tear down the Berlin Wall, end apartheid, no one would have believed it."

He's right. In 1958 nobody would have thought we could tear down the Berlin Wall - it wasn't built until 1961!

My wife, who was born and brought up in East Berlin, was distinctly unimpressed...

Bestial reputations

Watching Michael Heseltine on Question Time the other week got me thinking. Which of New Labour's big beasts will still be around in ten years, not in power, but in a position of high public regard?

First of all, one needs to set some qualifying hurdles: Firstly, 'big beast' is not a synonym for 'statesman', a record of substance and achievement in office is not necessary, this is more about crude political clout – which is why John Prescott gets to play. Secondly, I'm going to limit this to New Labour's heyday, not to the current fag-end period in which hopes for future recovery are beginning to emerge – so no Milibands, Ballses etc just yet. Thirdly, I'm excluding the backroom boys and girls, this is for frontline politicians only – so no cronies, party workers or civil servants.

So given those rules, here's my bestial shortlist:

Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Jack Straw, John Prescott, Peter Mandelson, David Blunkett and the late Robin Cook. If one is feeling generous, one could extend the list to John Reid, Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn.

Labour PPC mocks major Crewe employer

The hapless Lucy Powell is Labour's PPC for Manchester Withington. She's written a piece for Comment is Free on the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

As she says, the constituency is "nearby" her own.

Not much local knowledge, then, Lucy? You'd think a PPC from the area would know better than to sneer like this:

"In this Labour town, they're not convinced that the Tory candidate will do this. (Driving around campaigning in Bentleys isn't helping)"

Bentley is, of course, a major employer in Crewe, and local people are proud of this exceptional British car. Incidentally, the link Lucy gives us is to a Mirror story calling the car a "luxury motor...gas guzzler". So, New Labour is not the party of aspiration anymore. Or employment in Crewe, either.

Anyone know anything about the FT?

I am not foaming at the mouth.  I genuinely wonder if anyone knows why the Financial Times flies the EU flag outside their HQ on Southwark Bridge Road..?

On victim narratives

All of us are influenced by narratives, tales of why our lives are as they are, how other people will act in certain situations and how they will react if we behave thus-and-so.  Religious people may adopt accounts of how they tempted into Sin, but how Truth will be victorious if we persevere.  Feminists and Christians alike criticize the Myth of Love and Marriage.  Terry Pratchett makes a great deal about how our lives can be dominated by perfectness narratives, particularly in his best book, Witches Abroad.

I, however, on this occasion, want to write about victim narratives.  What is a victim narrative?  A victim narrative is a story about the world that I have internalised and act as a character within, according to which my character is a victim.  I believe such narratives are amongst the most destructive forces in our society as well as a key factor limiting development particularly in Africa.

How the police ensure we all get along fine

On his blog at the Telegraph, Damian Thompson has posted this disturbing and depressing clip which shows the police utterly craven and helpless in the face of the hysterical ranting of a radical Islamist. Do watch it, and as Damian says, watch it to the end.

It brings to mind a memorable piece of footage which was carried on BBC's Newsnight during the Danish Cartoon protests in central London a few years back. This showed a passing driver, who had stopped and got out of his vehicle in protest at the murderous placards being waved by the demonstrators, being sworn at and threatened with arrest by the police, who were heard clearly to shout at him 'It's the way they do things.'  Interestingly, this particular clip was seen nowhere else, not on any of the main bulletins.

The 'sensitivity' training which the police receive is obviously bearing fruit.

Gruesome photographs of Mugabe violence that the Daily Mail wouldn't publish

Yesterday I noted Peter Oborne's chilling article about a young woman called Memory, in Zimbabwe.  Memory had her buttocks repeatedly thrashed by wooden poles - all because she is a supporter of the opposition to Robert Mugabe.

I was speaking to Peter about his undercover journalism yesterday evening and he has emailed me two photographs of Memory's savagely beaten body.  The Daily Mail - quite understandably for a family newspaper - didn't want to publish the photographs but I reproduce them below as one powerful proof of the horror that Mugabe is presiding over in Zimbabwe.  They are gruesome so please do not press "Continue reading..." if you are disturbed by bloody images.

If you missed Peter's article - which describes a process of "electoral genocide" - it's here.

Happy Birthday, Dear Israel

Israel turned 60 last night / this morning.

The BBC has a feature here and Mark Steyn has a forceful piece here.

No prizes for guessing the tenor taken by those at the respective links, or for guessing which I prefer.

Brown's fingerprints all over Labour's 'disgusting' campaign in Crewe & Nantwich

Labour MP Steve McCabe is the one being vilified in The Guardian today for Labour's controversial "dogwhistle" campaign in Crewe and Nantwich, focusing on ID Cards for foreign nationals. The controversial leaflet was first featured by Guido Fawkes and here on CentreRight by Simon Chapman.

I am surprised that the national media hasn't picked up on this before, as Gordon Brown has regularly been trying to taunt David Cameron at PMQs, asking him why he won't support ID cards which are only for foreign nationals. See PMQs on 19th January, 19th March, and yesterday.

In fact, the "ID cards for foreign nationals" slogan is as much the PM's as the "British jobs for British workers" mantra. McCabe is merely echoing his master's voice.

Politicians hide behind the United Nations while Burma, Darfur and Zimbabwe bleed

Peter Oborne has just returned from Zimbabwe.  He pretended to be a businessman to get into a country that does not allow journalists free movement.  Peter found evidence of systematic abuse of supporters of opposition parties by the thugs in the pay of Mugabe.  His article begins with this horrifying story:

"Robert Mugabe's paid assassins came hunting for 22-year-old Memory, a married mother-of-two.  They burst into her home, seized her and her children, and took them to their temporary headquarters in the local village school.

Four men held down her arms and legs, while a fifth gripped her head, placing his hands over her mouth to prevent her screams being heard.  Two others, wielding heavy wooden poles, then took turns to thrash her on the buttocks in a beating that lasted half an hour.

I saw Memory in her hospital bed after she had been brought in from the bush more dead than alive a week ago last Monday, several days after her beating. She was lying on her front: it was obvious why.  Where her buttocks should have been was just a mess of raw flesh.

I watched as a blue-suited nurse removed one of the bandages.  Memory whimpered and moaned with pain. With me was a hardened welfare worker who had witnessed many terrible things.  She broke down in sobs. I must tell you that tears poured down my cheeks, too."

Peter calls for the world to do more.  But in Darfur, Burma and Zimbabwe the so-called 'international community' seems only capable of talk.  'We must go through the United Nations' is the cry of politicians who want to appear purposeful but know that the UN will do nothing.

Read Peter Oborne's article here.

Not such a great deal after all

Gordon Brown was keen to trump in the Commons today, just how much he had allegedly done for those on lower incomes. This is of course after adding £2.7 billion to the Government debt mountain.

Today I received an email from a constituent, Ann Richards, in Harlow who shows that not quite everyone has benefited from Mr Brown's 'largesse'. I reproduce it below for Centre Right readers:

"Pensioners age 60 to 64 are still being taxed an extra £103 a year after the personal allowance was increased by £600  for the year.

My personal allowance went up by £600  giving me  £120 extra.  The 20p tax band means that I am still £103 worse off.

With the withdrawal of 10p tax band I was paying an extra £233 a year tax

Now only paying an extra £103. That equates to £2  a week out of my pension

Single women pensioners betweeen the ages of 60 and 64 are the worst off section of the population.under the latest tax changes."

She adds:

"Alistair Darling is hitting people who have no prospect of a pay rise as they are not at work.  Please will you inform David Cameron of my protest and get him to redress this gross injustice and say that he will do that before the next General Election. so the conservatives can be assured of a good majority."

I could not have put it better myself!

More people now pay 51% direct tax on their earnings

One point that has been overlooked so far is the damaging effects on opportunity for middle earners.  The Chancellor yesterday reduced the higher rate threshold of income tax from £36,000 to £35,400.  Reform’s latest report on social mobility raised the idea of ‘mobility blocks’ – key points in the tax and benefits system that undermine mobility.  The upper rate threshold is one of these blocks.  Adding on National Insurance Contributions, the Chancellor moved thousands more people into the position of paying 51 per cent direct tax on their earnings.

Imagine the Tories losing Kensington & Chelsea...

...that's what happened to the GOP last night.

The Republicans may be enjoying the continuing Obama-Clinton splits but the overall electoral landscape remains bleak for them.  Last night they lost a third 'special election' for a House seat.  This third, what we would call a by-election, was held in a district that voted by 60%+ for George W Bush in 2004.  The other two seats that the Democrats have gained in recent times were also Republican strongholds.  Were.  The result is discussed in the video below:

Mike Huckabee proves himself in the video to be one of the GOP's best communicators.  He urges John McCain to distance himself from the GOP brand.  If he rides an elephant down Main Street this election, he warns, the elephant is going to be shot from underneath him.  [The elephant is the Republican symbol].  People don't buy Kellogg's, they enjoy Frosted Flakes (Frosties here!).  McCain, he says, must present himself as a different kind of Republican.  McCain's video on green issues is an attempt to do just that.

The polls are relatively close at the moment but expect them to widen significantly once the Democrat nominee is confirmed.  Hillary won big in West Virginia last night but it won't be enough to stop Barack Obama being crowned.  It's just a question of when, not if.

Tax: the rules of engagement have changed

Today's 10p £2.7 BILLION climbdown will not simply be remembered as an unprecendented humiliation for the Chancellor and Prime Minister or the most expensive by-election bribe in history. It has shifted the terms of debate.

For the first time in over a decade the over-riding political imperative has been to reduce the tax burden, with all other considerations (how will it be funded? what services will you cut?) taking second place. It's no longer evil selfish, unfunded Tory tax cuts. Sensible, listening, responsive tax relief is the priority now.

Yes, Labour has gone about this with the incompetence that has become the hallmark of the new regime. It costs £2.7 billion, lasts for one year only, is funded by increased borrowing rather than cutting out waste, still leaves 1.1 million of the poorest people in Britain worse off than they were before the abolition of the 10p rate, benefits millions of people who hadn't lost out at all, and won't take effect until September. After Northern Rock and now this, it's clear that this government is happy to spend whatever it takes to get out of a short-term problem, to ensure survival for another day or another week. As Guido and Danny Finkelstein say, Labour won't get away with "unfunded Tory tax cuts" at the next election.

Behind a BNP vote

To its credit, the Independent today carries an insightful review of the BNP's recent highly localised success in Yorkshire that falls short of the Pavlovian.

Since they quote the local Labour MP (Denis MacShane) in depth - whom I fought during the last election - I'll allow myself a counter turn.

While quite fairly noting factors such as immigration, the rejection of taboo, and a perception of 'unfair play', they might also do well to consider the basics of local politics.

If you have streets where the Labour vote is weighed rather than counted, but where noone has seen a Labour politician bothering to campaign in twenty years...

If you have the self same MP expending his past effort chastising the Conservatives for 'allowing' the BNP to get a hold, despite the vote coming from his own historic supporters...

If local Labour councillors turn to blanking the lead BNP candidates rather than exposing the false veil of human decency behind their party bosses...

...Then why are we surprised that in a handful of areas some individuals on first name terms with the voter should be elected to look after the bins?

Nick Herbert sets out the Conservative Party's commitment to reform

Nick Herbert gave a clarion call for public sector reform yesterday in a speech to Reform (pdf here).  The following points seemed to me to lay down important markers:

> “Real reform is intrinsically modern and post-bureaucratic.”  This suggests that public sector reform is integral to David Cameron’s Conservative Party.

> Successful reform has four principles: “supply side liberalisation and choice”; “meaningful information provided independently of government”; “clear lines of accountability”; “transfer public spending from subsidising failure to incentivising success”.  This is the real deal for public sector reform.

> As demonstrated in Reform’s April paper Shifting the unequal state, “reform is needed to drive social mobility”.

I like David Miliband's blog

This may not be a popular view but David Miliband's blog has become one of my favourites. I don't, of course, agree with a lot of what he writes but I respect his attempt to explain to the British people what their Foreign Secretary is doing and saying.  I hope William Hague will do the same from 2010.  Topics that interest a foreign policy enthusiast like me - and would never be covered by the mainstream media - become accessible.  In recent posts he has noted progress in Basra, an all-party inquiry into anti-Semitism and a set piece lecture he gave on the geopolitics of carbon dependence.  The blog is here.

On inflation

This morning it was announced that inflation in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose to 3% in the year to April.  The BBC interviewers have been asking whether this means that interest rates will rise.  It does not.  I was among those who, last autumn and winter argued against cutting rates on the grounds that it would be better to fight one macroeconomic battle at a time, seeing off inflation first (preferably without having CPI inflation exceed the 3% threshold) and then cutting rates aggressively from late this year (and also arguing that interest rates were the wrong instrument to use to try to address the credit market problems).  This was not the path chosen.  Instead, the Bank preferred a middle way: to cut a bit and let inflation go a bit above 3%.  I still think that this was a mistake, but that boat has sailed, and there is no question of rates being raised now unless inflation goes above 4% and seems to be still rising (which, though not impossible, still seems unlikely).  What we will face is the problem I was concerned about: that we will be unable to cut rates as the economy slows very abruptly in the second half of this year.

Immigration chaos

Like every Monday, yesterday was surgery day for me, and waiting for me were nationals of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia and the West Bank/ Gaza, all hoping for news from the Home Office on their immigration cases. At the moment, I have just under 800 unresolved immigration cases with me, being the equivalent to about 1% of my adult constituents. In fact, the number is so large, I could devote myself as a Member of Parliament only to dealing with immigration casework.

I have previously written about how I have more immigration casework than any other Conservative MP (according to Home Office stats), and some of the awful stories I have uncovered - both of cases where the person is genuinely fleeing violence and has been let down by the Home Office, or, as is more often the case, hundreds of people who shouldn't be here, are told they shouldn't be here, but nonetheless aren't being evicted. In that case, the Home Office even apologised to one Hammersmith resident for the delays caused in considering his case, but the slowness was caused by him being "on the United Nations list of those belonging to or associated with the Al-Qaida organisation" and MI5 said he had been "involved in terrorism at the highest level."

Crewe and Nantwich - be part of it

Just got back (9pm) from campaigning in Crewe. We decided to just turn up today. We pulled up to find the car park of the campaign office absolutely packed. Got out to discover David Cameron was giving a press briefing about twenty yards away.

Slipped in to the campaign office and signed in. They have a book for your name, address and constituency, so those of you who go to help - people are taking notice. Even though David was leaving, pursued by a crowd of reporters, the campaign offices were thronged with MPs - Shadow Cabinet members and frontbenchers. I saw Alan Duncan, Charles Hendry, several others. Even got to introduce myself to the great man himself, hero of May 1st, Eric Pickles MP.

The same tactics that reduced violence in Baghdad are bringing progress to Basra

See this report from the New York Times.

Save the badger (response to "Badgers: time for a cull?")

Alex wrote supportively, a short time ago, about the proposed badger cull.

I think Alex's conclusions are completely wrong. The government did sponsor an independent, carefully designed, properly analysed experiment into the utility of badger culling as a means of controlling bovine TB. The findings of the experiment are not equivocal - here is a quote from the abstract of the independent committee's final report:

Widespread ‘proactive’ culling [of badgers][...] achieved by a coordinated effort entailing widespread and repeated trapping over several years [...] caused only modest reductions in cattle TB incidence in culled areas and elevated incidence in neighbouring unculled areas.

Gordon Brown is not a failure

Let's get one thing straight:

Gordon Brown has not failed.

At least he hasn't failed to get his message across, which is "let the enterprise economy make money and let the centralised state spend it".

And he hasn't failed to put this message into action. The enterprise economy has made money and the centralised state has spent it.

The trouble is that centralised statism doesn't work, and never was going to work. It is an idea that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown made their own and successfully tested to destruction.

That is why Gordon Brown is not a failure. You can't fail without having some sort of chance in the first place. To lose your way you have to have been on the right path to begin with.

New Labour did not fail. New Labour, quite simply, was wrong.

Weak, weak, weak

Michael Savage asks us to watch the video below and "picture Blair's words coming from the mouth of Cameron, and replace John Major's dispairing figure with that of Brown".

PS If you missed it, do read Daniel Finkelstein's post on John Major and Gordon Brown from last week. Danny's money quote was: "Major had a great deal more public appeal and ability to communicate with voters. He won a mandate of his own, after all, with a massive Tory vote."