CentreRight

Just tinkering with welfare is a huge missed opportunity

by Dale Bassett

Today the Commons will debate James Purnell’s much-discussed Welfare Reform Bill. When the DWP published its green paper last month it was lauded by many (myself included) as a rare show of reforming zeal from the Government. It talked tough, promising to end the something-for-nothing culture and the perceived “right to a life on benefits”. It promised sanctions for claimants who refused to try to get back to work.

In a new paper published today by Reform, Frank Field criticises the Government’s proposals as “toothless”, saying that they will not help people back into employment. The former Welfare Reform Minister argues that welfare should be “an important weapon” used to fight unemployment as it surges in the recession.

Recession is not an excuse to avoid welfare reform. Quite the opposite – as unemployment soars it is essential that the Government provides both a proper security net for unfortunate people who have worked hard, and strong incentives for them to return to work as soon as possible. At the height of the last recession, more people were leaving unemployment benefit than at the height of this decade’s economic boom. Over three million new jobs have been created since 1997, but welfare rolls have fallen by just 400,000 (to 5.1 million). And this despite the staggering £75 billion spent on the New Deal.

The Corporation is right not to run the Gaza appeal. Oxfam and others are clearly anti-Israel

So says Andrew Roberts over at The Times.  He says this because

many of the 13 charities that make up the DEC are even more mired in anti-Israeli assumptions than the BBC itself.

Go read the whole thing.

It would be risky for the BBC to broadcast the Gaza appeal

Oh, well, I'll say it, since no-one else seems inclined to.  Surely the elephant in the Gaza disaster appeal room is this.  Once the BBC agreed to broadcast the Gaza appeal, sympathisers with the Israeli position would be bound to organize an appeal for the victims of the rocket attacks in southern Israel, complete with pictures of children in shelters and so on.  The BBC would probably not be at all keen on broadcasting this, but how could it refuse after the Gaza appeal had been aired?  Then the authorities in the West Bank would raise an appeal for the impoverished children there, complete with pictures of the suffering.  Then the Israelis would have an appeal for the families of the victims of suicide bombings.  Then one of the many charities that are organised by Hezbollah would have an appeal for the "redevelopment" of southern Lebanon.  Then...

This process would end only with the six personal-and-rebutting broadcasts by Osama, Obama, and Benedict XVI.

Do we really want to pressurize the BBC to go there?

Don't promote your enemies - fire them

There is a fascinating little vignette in the Sunday Times's profile of Frank Field.

Mr Field was famously made a minister by Tony Blair and asked to look into radical welfare reform. But he was given a junior role to Harriet Harman, and emerged unsuccessful. In the Sunday Times Mr Field lays into Gordon Brown for the failure:

'He blames the then chancellor and now prime minister for kneecapping his welfare reforms. Blair, having asked Field “to think the unthinkable”, failed to back him against opposition from Blair’s jealous satrap. Blair at that stage, Field says, should have sacked Brown, not just for Field’s sake but to give Blair the opportunity and space to be an uninhibited PM. As Field tells it, Brown was a consistent roadblock, failing to produce alternatives to Field’s plans or even to participate in cabinet committee meetings. The result, as Field says Brown intended, was at best inertia and at worst “general chaos”.'

The reason that I found this particularly interesting is that it backs up something I have believed for many years; Lyndon Johnson's maxim about J Edgar Hoover - "It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in" - is a bad guide for leaders.

Of course by demoting or completely firing Brown, Blair would have incurred his wrath. But didn't he incur it anyway? Gordon Brown caused Tony Blair and his reformist ministers no end of difficulty. There is no guarantee that people will act in a loyal fashion if they are given a good job. Instead, they may find it easier to build up a power base and gain credibility from their enhanced status.

Moreover, a minister who has been banished to the backbenches for disloyalty is seen in that light by everyone else. Perhaps they can still build a coalition of the disaffected, but if that coalition has a realistic chance of usurping the incumbent regime then the game is probably up anyway. You may as well surround yourself with the people you want, and do everything you can before your political capital runs out.

If Blair really agreed to give Brown his head on domestic policy, he made a monumental mistake. I believe that Blair would have defeated Brown in a straight fight for the leadership. Yet even if I'm wrong, in Blair's shoes I would rather have risked a loss than allow myself to be a neutered prime minister.

I have felt the same when observing how certain Conservative leaders handled disloyal Shadow Cabinet members. On each occasion, I think they would have been better off sacking them than placating them. It's just as easy to pick up a phone and brief against your leader when you are on the front bench than when you are off it. Yet it's more newsworthy if you're on the front bench.

David Cameron really does seem to be blessed with a tremendously supportive team. Kenneth Clarke has clearly been brought back because of what he can offer, not because his frank and fearless approach has been disloyal. I disagree with Mr Clarke about a lot, but he is admirably candid and open.

However, if someone steps out of line, David Cameron should sack them and publicly brief against them. The only way to stand up to bullies is to confront them, and so it is with those who are not onside.

Instead of being consumed by paranoia and agonising about whether he can trust his ministers, Prime Minister Cameron should back his supporters to the hilt, seek to win new ones - and treat those who work against his efforts ruthlessly.

The Bigger Picture

Rome

I move away from the guide-lady. I've already had a row with her, anyway. I asked her if she'd seen i Prigioni in the Accademia in Florence, surely the most powerful sculpture in existence. It is thirteen years since I stood in front of them, but I hear their whispering still. It is possible to fall in love with a statue. Anyway, she told me, yes, she'd seen them; they represented Michelangelo's belief that to get close to God, you have to chip away at all the unnecessary stuff of your existence, until all that's left is perfection, rising from the dust. I thought this was nonsense and told her so. I don't know how you can look at Michelangelo's statues and think about God. I look at them, and I think about Man. Walking away from my group I can hear the guide gleefully pointing at a picture of Plato and Socrates: They are in limbo! Limbo! and I'm thinking Don't you dare diss my heroes and pull the earpiece and her voice from my head, thinking, as usual, that Forster was right (I abhor Baedeker. If it were up to me every copy would be flung into the Arno). I enter the Sistine Chapel.

Beware triumphalism and hubris

Whenever I hear talk of a Tory landslide at the election, as a marginal seat candidate, I get very nervous. Sure Brown and Labour have made a mess of things, the voters are realising who is to blame for it all and the polls look promising. But we need to be careful, for triumphalism leads to hubris. Sheffield rally anyone?

I don't want to sound like Cassandra, yet let's not forget there have been two Brown bounces in two years. There is up to a year and a half to go until the election must be held and we cannot rule out events seeing a further Brown bounce.

As Tim has said, there is no room for complacency. We should take nothing for granted, campaign for every last vote, not rest on our laurels, remember we seek to serve not to rule and, above all, beware the pride that comes before the fall!

You've gotta laugh...

Hat tip: Phil Martin

Bust banks are better than nationalised banks

First it was Northern Rock, and now it looks like RBS, Lloyds/HBOS and Barclays will follow.

We’ve become used to hearing how these banks are “too big fail”, but plainly that’s utter rubbish.  They are, in fact, too big to save.  Our banks have vastly outgrown the size of their domestic economy and – no matter how you cut the numbers – the UK cannot, and should not, nationalise them.

Yes, banks have a critical economic role to play in our economy.  But, no, that does not mean that the state should take full ownership and control of them when they fail to function properly – as nationalisation will only exacerbate the problem, delaying our eventual economic recovery for years.

Andrew Bolt is back!

After a month's break (which seems like a very good idea to me) the indispensable Andrew Bolt is blogging again with this post on how 'Gaza was spun'.

Beating the BNP

The estimable Jon Cruddas MP is promising "the biggest anti-fascist campaign ever".  More here.

I can't help but thinking we should deny the BNP this sort of oxygen of publicity and beat them by working harder than they do and by addressing issues such as housing, jobs and immigration.

What do you think?

Damian Green vs. the Labour peers

A (Bob) Quick question for a Sunday morning... Damian Green, in the course of doing his duty as an Opposition spokesman, was arrested, his house raided, his love letters read, held for multiple hours, his wife and daughters were in tears and lastly he was bugged without his knowledge.

This was on suspicion of, and I forget the exact term, "conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office".

In comparison, Labour peers are on tape offering to amend legislation for cash. The Metropolitan Police's response to that will be very interesting, won't it?

With its 45p tax plans, New Labour is as dead as a dodo

Brown’s proposal to increase the top rate of income tax from 40 to 45% shows that he is retrenching into class warfare. As the severity of his self-induced economic crisis kicks in he realises that come the next general election the best he can hope for is his core vote. That motley lot now consists of the dogmatic extreme left and the scroungers who think it just that hardworking families pay for their lifestyle on benefits and TV. 

Brown wants to make the rich pay. He does not hesitate to ditch his previous claims to be the party of aspiration. If aspiration is helped and results in social mobility – the aim of Conservative policies – then everybody would be a potential top rate tax payer. Not so under Brown whose policies keep the little man firmly in place. Social mobility has substantially decreased under the socialists.

The 45% income tax would raise very little money - as even Denis Healey admitted in The Telegraph.  It proves that Brown’s intention has nothing to do with funding state coffers but everything with declaring class warfare. The rich rarely pay the top rate – because the amounts involved justify paying tax experts to reduce their tax bill. The only ones who will pay Brown’s 45% income tax are the middle classes. So Conservatives should feel encouraged: Brown’s tax promise proves that he has given up hope to win the middle class vote. New Labour is as dead as a dodo.

While Brown harks back to a nasty past Conservatives fight for a better future. Socialist re-distribute the pie; Conservatives make the pie grow. Tax cuts, reducing the size of government, cutting red tape, and re-introducing the free market will make everybody better off – as it has done in all times and in all places. Mass prosperity in peace instead of mass poverty in class warfare. The politics of aspiration versus the politics of envy.

This crisis is not a failure of market economics

Matthew Parris was in bracing form today:

"This recession is not a failure of market economics. It is a reassertion of market economics after a decade in which we paid ourselves more than we were producing, and funded it precariously and temporarily by complicated credit instruments that it took a while for the market to rumble. Now a prosperity that always baffled ordinary citizens has collapsed. The collapse of confidence is not irrational; it's the correction to a long run of irrational confidence. All that stuff about the emerging Asian giants wasn't just phrasemaking for party conference speeches. It was true. We're falling behind. We face a mountain of debt: the difference between the life we are able to sustain and the life we were enjoying."

He's right. This wasn't a free market failure; it was the failure of a highly-regulated market. We are where we are because of inadequate bank governance, badly-designed regulation and profligate government, aided and abetted by all of us who have been over-stretching ourselves. Only some of that is "global". We need to keep saying this loudly and clearly, because Gordon Brown continues to claim otherwise.

Matthew Parris warns us to watch out for Labour hokum about the way out of the recession; beware of government attempts to "generate new models of high-added value industrial hi-tech innovation" for example - the market will drive any of that that will be successful, not our government. I disagree with his conclusion, that Britain is destined for "the world's second-league", but that's due to stubborness as much as anything else. He's right that we need to tighten our belts and adjust our expectations. All he leaves out is what that means for public spending.

A different definition of ‘Love Bombing’

Love bombing is not, as Tim Montgomerie wrote, about ‘appearing to agree with the electorate who vote Liberal Democrat’. It is a much more substantive strategy - and less cynical - than that.

‘Love bombing’ means distinguishing between the extremism of Liberal-Democrat party activists and the moderate views of those members of the public, who are not members -  but often vote for them.  The difficulties Conservatives have always had to contend with, is responding to the often hard-faced and extreme tactics of the Liberal-Democrat activists, particularly fighting in local and parliamentary By-elections.

In the past, Liberal Democrat shenanigans on the ground has provoked Conservatives into tarring all Liberal Democrat voters with the same brush and attempting to fight fire with fire.  As I understand Mr Pickles, ‘Love bombing’ means that, whatever the provocation, we should ignore machinations of the Liberal Democrat activists and go over their heads to woo moderate voters.  These voters will appreciate our stance on issues like Heathrow and Civil Liberties. Far from being a cynical approach, it is one which reaches out to mainly floating voters, and shows the Tory party to be speaking for them rather than responding to the petty politics that emanate from the Cowley St political machine, which, incidentally, is not nearly as good as it once was.

MPs must set the lead on public sector pensions by agreeing to a one-third reduction in their own benefits

Out in the real world beyond the Houses of Parliament there is growing alarm at the next tsunami threatening to engulf our beleaguered economy - the inequitable state of affairs between public and private pensions.

Businesses faced with the prospect of lean times or liquidation are being forced to look upon their pensions obligations with a more discerning gaze. In December, the Pensions Protection Fund revealed that Britain’s final salary schemes’ pensions deficit increased to £195 billion as companies struggle to raise funds. Meanwhile this week it was reported that more than half of those defined benefit pension schemes still open to new members will be closed due to the current economic situation. This came hot on the heels of a warning from the National Association of Pension Funds that we are likely to see final salary schemes being closed even to existing members.

The scrapping of pensions benefits, falling equity and bond yields, lower interest rates, increasing life expectancy and even the risk of employers’ default on pensions provisions all now combine to create a sobering economic outlook for those reliant upon occupational or private pensions. The government should take heed.

For amidst all this private pension gloom, the taxpayers’ bill for public sector pension provision seems to grow exponentially. People retiring from the wealth creating sector with inadequate, money purchase pensions – or in fact none at all from their failed employers – are not going to watch happily as folk from the public sector, whose wages they have paid over many years, retire on guaranteed index-linked final salary pensions. The greatest vitriol will no doubt be reserved for MPs whose gold-plated pension scheme will be even harder for people to stomach amidst private sector woe and further controversy over parliamentary expenses.

Statistic of the day

40% of  Australia's teachers are due to retire in the next 6 years.

I wonder what the percentage is like for this country?

Hat tip: Julian Leeser of the Menzies Research Centre

Thank God that Barack Obama wasn't aborted

"Arrogant", "disrespectful", "aggressive", "condescending"

"He did not come across as the foreign minister of a friendly nation."

This is what was said in India, by government spokesmen, about our Foreign Secretary. Miliband didn't just make a massively ill-judged speech about terror in Mumbai and lecture them on Kashmir (an issue in India which needs enormously careful handling by foreign diplomats) he was ineptly rude as well, to the extent that official complaints have been made about him by his hosts. And if Guido's right, Uncle Peter's had to hot-foot out there to clear up after him, with only limited success. Will Miliband Major ever be allowed out by himself again?

I'm really surprised that more hasn't been made in the media about this - although both governments are now dampening it down as much as they can. India is a key strategic and trading ally. This sort of stunningly non-diplomatic performance is worthy of Inspector Clouseau. Last summer Miliband saw himself as the next Prime Mimister. On this form he's lucky to be any sort of minister at all.

Oaths of office

This could scarcely be more geeky, but this video shows how Presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt have fared in taking the oath of office. Barack Obama is not alone in struggling a bit (nor in deciding to do a retake - so too did Calvin Coolidge and Chester A. Arthur).

George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton both slightly jumped the gun. Richard Nixon did it in a masterful voice, ably led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Reagan was good too, as one might expect from an actor! And the famously tongue-tied George W. Bush cannot be faulted either.

Real props go to FDR, who managed to recite the whole thing in one go. Although I can't tell if he is reading or not!

Finally, note that Judge Sarah T. Hughes (not a Chief Justice) swore in Lyndon B. Johnson on Air Force One, so becoming the only woman in history to swear-in a President. This of course had to be done in a hurry, following the murder of John F. Kennedy.

Don't be too quick to dismiss "Red Toryism"

ToryDiary discusses "Red Toryism" as espoused by the Director of the Progressive Conservatism Project at Demos, Philip Blond.  It will be no surprise to you that I personally disagree with several of its apparent tenets, some of which appear very distant from anything we are used to thinking of as "Conservative".  It is easy to see the whole project as a bizarre mess into which David Cameron should not have allowed himself to be dragged.  That is, for example, the view of Iain Martin.  But I think dismissing this Red Tory approach out of hand would be an error.

I have argued before that I believe we have (through our mistaken support for the ending of Private Capitalism in the bailouts last September and October in the US and UK) ushered in a new era of State Capitalism (which we can, perpetuating a solecism, term a "Socialist Settlement" for convenience).  I have set out Five Conservative Principles that I think particularly relevant to this new era.  To remind you, these were:

1. Personal love and justice vs collective love and fairness
2. State religion as the inspirer of morality
3. Pragmatism and compromise
4. The strength, integrity and personal substantiality of our leaders
5. The quality of our nation

I suspect that the Red Tories would find Conservatism modelled along these lines rather to their taste.  One does not have to agree with the Red Tory agenda to believe that it is worthwhile for Cameron to investigate whether there is something valuable that its believers may have to offer us.

Jacqui Smith as Labour leader? Don't bet on it

The Telegraph's Andrew Porter reports the latest Labour leadership gossip on Three Line Whip this afternoon.

He goes through the list of names who you'd expect to be vying to take over from Gordon Brown when the times comes and goes on to suggest that the dark horse candidate might be none other than the home secretary, Jacqui Smith.

She might be quoted at the odds of 33/1 at Ladbrokes, but I wouldn't wager a penny on her, since I don't believe she'll even be an MP after the next election (and I don't foresee a challenge to Brown before it). Her already marginal constituency of Redditch becomes even tighter after boundary changes and at the next election she will be defending a majority of barely 2,000 votes.

What's more, the energetic Conservative candidate, Karen Lumley (pictured), will be fighting the seat for the third election in a row and now needs a swing of less than 3% to win it next time. The seat is 47th on the national Conservative target list and I would recommend investing any spare cash you have on the Tories winning Redditch at 8/13 rather than throwing it away on the notion of Jacqui Smith winning a leadership election she won't even be in a position to enter.

Good on Alan Duncan!

Update: Several sources to whom I have spoken dispute Paul Waugh's account of proceedings and instead suggest that Alan had the overwhelming support of the meeting and that it was a very small minority which expressed dissatisfaction with his call for transparency.

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Paul Waugh writes this morning that the new shadow leader of the Commons, Alan Duncan, was given a "roasting" at the 1922 committee last night.

Many of his colleagues on the Tory benches were apparently unhappy with his decision to insist that Tory MPs oppose the proposed attempt to disregard the Freedom of Information legislation with regard to MPs' expenses.

This left open the likelihood of Labour being isolated in whipping their MPs through the lobbies to keep the details secret, forcing Gordon Brown into an embarrassing climbdown.

Alan's principled stance in favour of openess and ensuring that those who make the law aren't exempting themslves from the law was absolutely the right thing to do. He could have gone along with a cosy deal to protect all MPs from being scrutinised and that may have won him plaudits among his colleagues resisting the detailed publication of their expenses.

But the approach Alan took was the honourable path and he deserves credit for taking it.

When I first liked Barack Obama

I was not a supporter of Barack Obama during or after the election campaign.  I thought him smug and often fatuous.  I found his inexperience deeply troubling, and his voting record appalling.

Now don't get me wrong.  I still think all of those things.  Certainly, there is something inspiring about the election of a black President.  Certainly, he is a tremendous speaker.  But I did not think that those things were enough and still don't.  Furthermore, I have found the gushing from so many (even in this country) about him to be pretty stomach-churning.  I'm certainly no "Obamacon", the strange group of supposed Conservatives whose interest in jumping on any populist bandwagon passing by led us to adopt totally intellectually unjustifiable policies like our brief (thank goodness) opposition to tuition fees.

But yesterday, I was impressed.  In the course of a press conference, Joe Biden had a cheap crack at Chief Justice Roberts.  He was being silly.  No news there.  The news is that Obama, lips pursed, brow furrowed, was demonstrably unimpressed by Biden's quip.  Rightly so.

Because they're not campaigning any longer, they're not swinging against the establishment - they are the establishment and if they're going to get anywhere they will need to work with the other branches of government.  Obama knew this and despite the fact that he was surely sore at the Chief Justice over oathgate he knew clearly what's more important - not personally insulting the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the outset of his Presidency, during which he hopes to Get Things Done.  He was mature and his Veep wasn't.  On this site I know that we all wish America well, whatever our preferences politically - and I took this to be a good sign.

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Postscript: and of course I was also delighted by his decision on Guantanamo Bay, which I have discussed previously on this site

Cameron should reject Clarke's Obama warning

The Telegraph has reported that Ken Clarke is already launching broadsides against Cameron's European policy. The paper quotes Clarke as saying Obama "doesn't want his strongest European ally led by a rightwing nationalist, he wants them to be a key player inside Europe, and he'll start looking at whoever is in Germany or France if we start being isolationist." It then goes on to to quote Europe Minister Caroline Flint, who states: "It's a straightforward test for David Cameron: give up your policy on Europe, as Ken Clarke says, or give up the special relationship."

There can be no doubt that the Obama administration will be more aggressively pro-European than the Bush Administration, and will more forcefully back further European integration. It is ludicrous to say however that Conservatives should support this approach or that British influence in Washington will be eroded if a Conservative government rejects the Euro, the Reform Treaty and other trappings of an EU superstate. 

Both Clarke and his new found ally Flint are sending the wrong message when it comes to the United States and Europe, and neither are speaking with expertise on U.S. foreign policy. In fact it is highly unlikely that anyone in Obama's inner circle has heard of either of them.

No more excuses for anti-American westerners

Obama's inauguration yesterday was a terrific example of democracy in action. Former ambassador Charles Crawford (do visit his blog, if you haven't already) puts it really well:

"For now as a non US citizen I express my humble and hearty gratitude to the USA for showing the world once again how to deal with powerful leaders. Compare what happened yesterday in Washington with the political wreckage in Zimbabwe, Cuba, N Korea, China, most of the Arab world, Russia and so on.

A leader with huge power gracefully accepted that the end of his rule had come and in a solemn yet light-touch ceremony handed over power to a new man, duly elected to replace him. He now in turn has at most some 416 weeks to lead the United States before he steps down.

This is Civilisation. Playing by the rules, and not making sneaky selfish manoeuvres to change them. A fresh start. Which creates the conditions for some positive Change to complement all that Hope."

One great thing about this presidency is that it blows the cover of those in the West who, truth be told, really don't like America very much at all, but have spent the last 8 years pretending that it's just President Bush that they loathe beyond all reason. He's gone now, and that excuse with him. As a pro-American I am delighted that the USA has a leader that anti-Americans find themselves having to like.