CentreRight

New and old: to really help Africa, we must be Eurosceptic

The image to the right, which is used to promote the EU's African aid policies, was brought to my attention this week by a colleague who had stumbled across it whilst doing research into aid spending.

As well as being immensely patronising, and betraying the EU's love of exactly the kind of imperialism that its supporters so love to claim it counterbalances, the image is one of staggering hypocrisy. Whilst the European Union does distribute aid money, its far more notable impact on Africa is one of huge economic damage.

The Common Agricultural Policy, and the trade barriers that make it possible, do untold harm to millions of farmers who would dearly love to sell their produce to European consumers. It is sickening that while British and other European people are hit by spiralling food prices, a continent of farmers who could provide cheaper goods are effectively barred by massive tariffs from doing so.

This is one area where eurosceptics must take the EU on, and could do so to great effect. Morally, fighting against the protectionism and dumping of subidised produce into African markets that kills large numbers of people and impoverishes millions more is clearly the right thing to do. Strategically it has benefits, too.

There is a lot of manufactured tension between euroscepticism as a supposedly old-fashioned view and the new ideas of a rebranded Conservative Party. When David Cameron urged people not to “bang on about Europe”, he did so on the basis that rejecting eurosceptic politics would cast him as a moderniser. 

The British taxpayer is spending 60pc more on the EU

Last month I noted that the Tories wouldn't just protect the Health Service and overseas development from spending cuts but also Britain's EU contribution. Courtesy of the News of the World we learn that that commitment just got a lot more expensive: "Britain's contributions to Brussels will rocket by 60 per cent next year, meaning every household will pay the EU £257. Documents slipped out by the Treasury reveal we will fork out £6.4 billion in 2010-11, compared to £4.1 billion in 2009-10. And it means Britain will be the second biggest contributor, behind Germany. Much of the increase is down to the reduction in the rebate won by Margaret Thatcher in 1984. It made up for the huge proportion of the EU budget that went on the Common Agricultural Policy, which benefited Britain less than other countries. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown surrendered a big chunk of the rebate in 2005, making it worth just £3.3 billion in 2010, compared to £5.1 billion this year."

"It seems to me an utter perversion of the meaning of compassion, both in law and morality, to suggest that an unrepentant, mass murderer of entirely innocent human beings should not be required to end his life in prison."

I am indebted to Martin Bright for blogging the above quotation from Geoffrey Roberston QC.

Martin also republishes the words of Libyan novelist Hisham Matar, the author of In the Country of Men:

"I am imagining my father today. For the past 20 years he has been a political prisoner in Libya. The Libyan government continues to deny his existence. This even though Amnesty International has documented the case. In this time he has not been able to see or communicate with anyone outside the prison. Then I think of him listening to the celebrations of the prison guards at the news of al-Megrahi's rturn. The prisoners might have been given presents to make the occasion. Then I think of al-Megrahi's children welcoming him home."

How reforming the banks could help fix ‘broken Britain’

Earlier this year David Cameron declared his support for ‘social investment banks’ to encourage social  entrepreneurs, who he hopes will play a big part in fixing ‘broken Britain’. He should go much further and establish a new type of high-street bank – a saving and enterprise bank – to compete head on with the big corporations that dominate the industry at present. Banks that combine social and economic objectives have worked well in Germany for many decades.

They would serve three main purposes. First, they would be safe homes for the savings of ordinary people who are trying to work and save their way to independence. Second, because they would be required to invest in local enterprises only, they would help to reinvigorate business and overcome their dependence on international corporations that withdraw loans at short notice and impose excessive charges for borrowing. Third, by investing in productive enterprise they would encourage a renewal of responsible proprietorship, a natural evolution of Mrs Thatcher’s strategy of encouraging a property-owning democracy.

The Taliban are not the only threat to peace in Afghanistan

This week the BBC obtained a rare video clip of Afghan warlord Gubadddin Hekmatyar leader of the notorious Hezb-i-Islami group. The appearance was hugely significant, not simply because Hezb-i-islami was the most brutal and radical of all the Afghan mujahaddin groups, but also because a number of other recent events, including terrorist attacks that Hez-i-islami have claimed responsibility for, suggest that he may be seeking to stage a come back. If so, it could potentially lead to a new front to the east and north of Kabul that coalition forces would have to fight. 

Who is Hekmatyar and his Hezb-i-Islami faction?

Hekmatyar was one of the leaders of the original student Islamist movement in Kabul in the early 1970s and led most of the student demonstrations between 1965 and 1972. It was this student Islamist movement that was largely responsible for the initial spread of radical Islamism in Afghanistan.

However, the movement split over its response to the overthrow of the Afghan monarchy in 1974 when the King’s cousin Daud, with the assistance of the Communist Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan, seized power creating a republic. Within the Student Islamist movement, the more ‘moderate’ elements and Persian speakers led by Burhanuddin Rabbani (who later became Afghan president) planned to infiltrate the army until the country was ready for an Islamist revolution, while the radicals led by Hekmatyar and others attempted to start military uprisings. This split eventually formalised in 1976-77 into the Jamat-i-Islami party led by Rabbani whose most famous military commander was Ahmed Shah Massoud and the Hezb-i-Islami party led by Hekmatyer. These two parties each came to have their own quite distinct ethos.

Love is not blind

Ian Birrell has a profoundly disabled daughter. He has seen the NHS at its best and at its worst. He wrote powerfully about the impact this has had on his political views back in 2005, when David Cameron became party leader. He writes again today, detailing the ways in which he and his family have been inexcusably let down as well as wonderfully well-served. His final point is that it is precisely because our health service is so important that we need to be clear-eyed about its faults and ruthless about remedying them:

"My daughter is still alive, for which I give thanks to the support, dedication and friendship of many in the health service. But it is precisely because I am such a fervent admirer that I believe it is so shameful that the NHS is allowed to limp on in its current state. For too many people, especially many of those most in need of its help, it is something of a disaster zone. The NHS is a sick institution, and cheap political point-scoring will do nothing to solve the problems. We need to find a cure."

Do read the whole thing. Love is not blind. It is not the same as sentimentality. It can be tough. It is honest. It celebrates what is good, and puts right what is not. You cannot love the NHS and leave it unreformed.

Letter to America – we both need to improve our health systems

As part of the ongoing debate on the NHS and US healthcare systems, earlier today I debated the merits of different systems with UNISON on Good Morning Wales. As part of this show we were asked to write letters to America on what lessons they should draw from the NHS. My letter drew on earlier Reform research and follows.

"I am Dr Patrick Nolan, Chief Economist at Reform, and a person who has been watching your health reforms with interest. Getting health right is fundamentally important – with health systems not only costing huge amounts but also playing a key role in shaping quality of life.

Countries are competing in the race to deliver high quality healthcare. This race is being won by the Swiss and Japanese health systems. These are followed by France, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands. The UK and the US lag behind.

The universal cover provided by the NHS is a valuable strength. In contrast the USA is the only major developed country that relies on voluntary private insurance. This voluntary coverage is ineffective and unfair and, although you have Medicaid and Medicare programmes, many of your population have no coverage at all.

But the NHS has weaknesses too. It lacks the elements of insurance that are common elsewhere. This means that it places too great an emphasis on treating people once problems arise, rather than preventing problems from developing in the first place. This also means that relatively little effort is given to ensuring that resources are used in the most cost effective ways possible.

The NHS provides both good and bad lessons for health reform. In drawing lessons from overseas I would, however, encourage you to look further afield. Many countries have found ways to combine the best of all worlds – universal coverage and strong elements of insurance. We can both learn from them."

As I noted on the radio this morning, debate on the NHS is increasingly looking like the story of the Emperor with no clothes. Attacking suggestions that the NHS is in need of further reform, or that it could learn from health systems overseas, as being “unpatriotic” or “talking down the NHS” misses the point.

There needs to be an honest debate on whether the NHS is performing as well as it should and whether it will be able to cope with the challenges that it will face in the future. As Professor Karol Sikora, cancer expert and member of Doctors for Reform steering committee, has argued “blind religious faith does not provide a solution to the real problem.”

This problem is, as noted by David Cameron, that the gap between what we will have to do and what we can afford to do presents an urgent need for reform. But advancing reform will require honest debate and difficult decisions – and the time to have this debate and start making these decisions is now.

Top ups are not only necessary – they are desirable

By Elizabeth Truss, Deputy Director, Reform

Despite the political turmoil it created at the time, the introduction of tuition fees in 1998 and top-ups in 2006 has been one of the most successful policies of this Government. Ten per cent more students from low income backgrounds have gone to university since top-ups were introduced. There is a new stream of funding into higher education. Students have the muscle to demand better teaching. Yet Britain still lags behind the international leaders on funding for top institutions and in many cases undergraduate teaching is being subsidised to the tune of £10,000 per year.

The higher education sector is expecting to be hit hard in spending cuts. As one academic put it “we didn’t know it at the time, but these have been golden years for public financing of higher education.” The new financial reality presents a stark choice for universities. One alternative is to see the quality of resources falling as the government tries to get more students for less money. The other is to obtain more financial contribution from individual students.

However this pain can become a gain. Giving more financial responsibility to students is a good thing. Contributing to your own education is empowering and helps students take the decisions they are making seriously. Investing in education should be seen in the same positive way as home ownership. Students will stop being loss making for the top universities and start being something that helps the institution thrive. Additional fee income will fund bursaries and scholarships for poorer students.

A good attack on nanny statism

Did you know that it's not safe to type a text message whilst driving?  Well, just in case you didn't, some fool thought it would be a good idea to spend good money on a flipping study saying so.

There's a superb bit of drollery on this front over at the New Yorker, where Drew Dernavich contemplates other things you shouldn't do whilst driving, such as, inter alia,

Writing diary entries. Not because it’s dangerous, but because if you’re really honest with yourself, you’ll write “I’m just writing some thoughts while I’m driving…” and then later on, when somebody reads it, you’ll probably get arrested

Playing the accordion

Driving a second automobile

Whilst safe things to do whilst driving include, inter alia,

Putting icing on a birthday cake, because nobody pays any attention to what the icing looks like, plus it’s usually that disgusting sugary stuff, and it’s better to scrape it off and just eat the moist cake part

Planning the seating chart for your wedding, because you just put Uncle Louis anywhere, and he’s good, as long as it’s an open bar

Go read the whole thing.  You'll love it.

Polling shock: Labour in ten point lead

Now that I’ve got your attention, let me explain. According to YouGov’s latest, Labour do indeed have a ten point lead… over the Lib Dems. The shock is that the Lib Dems should still be doing so little to trouble Labour for second place.

Some might think this entirely unsurprising given the Conservative resurgence under David Cameron. However, I’m not talking about the overall political battleground, but the fight on the centre-left of British politics. Among that part of the British electorate that would never vote Conservative, it is clear that Labour is still the leading party.

If you were to ask most lefties what were the two worst things to happen to this country in the last decade, most of them would surely answer Iraq and the credit crunch (quite a lot of rightwingers would give the same answer, but that’s another story). However much they might want to blame these two disasters on George W Bush and the bankers, they can hardly deny what is, at the very least, the supporting role played by the Labour Government in both cases. Nor could they deny that, in each instance, the Lib Dems took a position that was distinctly opposed to that of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

So given the gravity of both of these issues, why do centre-left voters continue to back Labour by such a substantial margin? What else does Labour have to do to lose this zombie vote? Invade Cuba? Ban the trade unions? Bring back capital punishment (for shoplifting)?

“Dan Hannan is a boggle-eyed, slap-headed, unpleasant, revolting, heartless, ****-brained, attention-grabbing, foetid excuse for a prick.”

...And Channel 4 want licence fee payers' money to make MORE programmes like that.

There is nothing funny about that. Just the Left at its hateful worst.

Hat tip to James Delingpole of Telegraph blogs.

Conservatives can win the health debate. Conservatives must win the health debate.

As the dust settles on surely the silliest silly season story ever – Dan Hannan on Health, henceforth known as Dangate – the silver lining of that bizarre storm may well be arriving.

President Obama I understand has a motto. Whilst Gordon Brown adopted the rather hollow self-satisfied one of his alma mater – “usque conabor” [I try my utmost] – when he became Prime Minister, Obama’s is more a piece of practical advice: “Never waste a crisis”.

It’s a good rule to follow, for in this week of outrageous headlines and Labour lunacy a strange if stormy planetary alignment occurred in the political solar system that is a very rare occurrence indeed. Healthcare was not only the main issue in political saliency but it was in an international perspective – where the UK performs poorly, especially in comparison to Europe – and, to top it all off, the ruling party was showing a shocking level of complacency, arrogance, and – quite frankly – utter delusion.

Although it is later than I would have advised, the big speech expected will hopefully take advantage of this so called crisis.

Not only is it an opportunity to emphasise the fact the NHS is rightly a priority of the party and how this is a change from the “old”; it is more importantly a chance to cast Labour as the out dated, old fashioned and the [in the anti-reform sense] “forces of conservatism”, with the Conservatives as the modernising, fresh and reformist “progressives” of the show.

After all, we have seen Labour nail their colours firmly to the zero reform flagpole with a “my country, right or wrong” attitude to healthcare policy. Opposition to reform can never be progressive, can it? With statistics such as National Health Service patients being four times more likely to die than Americans in surgery, Cancer survival rates in Britain being among the lowest in Europe, and stories such as ‘Woman gives birth on pavement after being refused ambulance', their healthcare patriotism can be ridiculed.

The cause of Change can be easily made, all we need to do is make it.

And “Change”, as we know, is a very powerful message...

What the Times didn't say about Lord McColl

The smear-a-peer reached new depths today with the Times allegations of embarrassment against the Tory shadow health minister Lord McColl. Iain Dale has already blogged as someone who doesn't know him, but having known Ian McColl for 17 years I wanted to add some more perspective.

In brief, this is a man whose Christian faith has driven a career which has been dedicated to not just to 50 odd years of NHS surgery but to human rights and social justice. He spends up to 3 months a year unpaid on board a Mercy Ship undertaking life-saving and sight-saving operations off the coast of Africa, often accompanied by his GP wife; a man who promoted compassion for Aids victims through his involvement in setting up Europe's first palliative care centre in 1988, the Mildmay Hospice; who then continued this work in Uganda; who was awarded his life peerage for services to the disabled and to medicine; who has supported the work of the Leprosy Mission (he may still be its president). I could go on with stories of his incredible generosity and philanthropy, but he would be mortified if I did.

The only embarrassment that should be felt today is that of the Times journalists who cannot have failed to discover some of the above compassionate activity as they scraped around in no-news-season, like urban foxes in your dustbins, to deliver a summer shocker: that Lord McColl believes in freedom of choice in healthcare.

What does Labour think of people who use private health services?

Just back from being away, and seeing all the column inches devoted to not debating the NHS, a question occurred. If Labour politicans are so attached to the NHS as it now is that they can tolerate no criticism, and so opposed to anything that might smack of a two-tier system, what do they think about people who have the temerity actually to use private health services? Either as self-funders or through health insurance. What do they think about employers who fund healthcare for their employees? Or self-employed people who fund it for themselves? Or Trade Unions, like Equity, which negotiate a BUPA discount for their members? Surely Labour must strongly disapprove.

Andrew Flintoff has been seeing lots of doctors recently. I have no direct knowledge, but would be absolutely astonished if any let alone all his recent medical treatment has been on the NHS. If it's alright for Flintoff and/or his employers at the ECB to pay for swift and expert treatment to get him fit for work as quickly as possible, rather than wait in line, why not the rest of us? I assume that most Labour politicians think it's a good thing Freddie is fit for the Oval tomorrow, but perhaps not?

Reports are that about 6.7 million people have health insurance. Back in 2001, Danny Kruger found that 3.5 million Trade Union members had private insurance (I haven't found a more up to date figure). And many others besides pay directly for treatment. That's an awful lot of voters.

Sir Patrick Cormack is just plain wrong

Guest post from Mark Wallace, TPA Campaign Director

Fresh from his attempt to become Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Patrick Cormack is in the headlines for advising Sir Christopher Kelly’s Committee on Standards in Public Life to double the pay of MPs in return for abolishing all allowances and expenses.

This proposal would be completely the wrong response to the recent scandal and the current crisis of confidence in Parliament. That is the case for several reasons:

1. To do so would be to accept the shoddy argument that some MPs behaved greedily and dishonestly because they are poverty-stricken or underpaid. As the TPA laid out in a recent research paper (PDF), MPs are already in the top 3% of earners in the UK, and are among the best paid representatives in Europe (even before taking into account their generous final salary pensions).

2. The idea that any MP – guilty or not – should be rewarded for the dishonesty of their colleagues is unacceptable to the public and clearly contrary to any sense of justice. If anything, the recent scandal demonstrates that MPs have had too many opportunities for personal enrichment. Legitimising such greedy behaviour does not make it ok, it compounds the problem and insults the public who have a totally different set of rules to live by.

3. Against the background of a recession in which huge numbers of ordinary taxpayers are losing their jobs, taking pay cuts or accepting pay freezes, a large jump in remuneration for MPs could only harm the already poor standing of Parliament. If the people think you are a bunch of greedy swindlers, the way to prove them wrong is not by demanding an extra £66,000 a year.

4. If the Telegraph’s revelations have demonstrated one thing, it is that transparency is essential to make sure taxpayers’ money is not being abused. What Parliament should be doing to win back public trust is publishing all expenses claims in full on a regular basis, for all to see. By replacing a system of receipts with a pay rise, Parliament would be choosing opacity and denying the public the right to know anything about how their money is spent.

5. Sir Patrick conveniently fails to mention the massive knock-on costs of a pay rise due to the various final-salary benefits that MPs enjoy. For a start, they are on final salary pensions – meaning that a doubling of their salary would produce a massive hike in their taxpayer-subsidised pension pots. Furthermore, the parachute payments given to MPs who leave Parliament are also calculated based on length of service and final salary. The windfall from a massive salary hike would be huge.

6. Replacing travel and accommodation expenses with one pay band would produce an inequitable settlement for different MPs. If you are an MP on the outskirts of London, you will be considerably better off than an MP from Manchester, Glasgow or Cornwall simply because you don’t have so far to travel.

7. Even if you accept the dubious principle of replacing expenses and allowances with a pay rise, this is a hugely excessive rise. Sir Patrick wants a pay rise of £64,000 to replace a system of expenses from which he claimed £28,201 in 2007/08. That’s doubling the cost for taxpayers, and even after Sir Patrick has paid the extra income tax and NI on that figure a quick calculation would suggest he might be around £10,000 better off.

Anonymity on the Internet may be a thing of the past

In an important judgment which will have repercussions for internet providers and users everywhere (including, I suppose, our own anonymous conhome commenters and indeed the pseudonymous centreright authors), Google has been forced by a court to reveal the name of an anonymous blogger. The story is here.

A Labour MP beats three Tories to win this year's gong for the top blogging MP

As Iain Dale runs through the results of his annual poll of the best political blogs, today he has unveiled the top thirty blogs which are written by MPs.

Three of the top four were must-read Conservatives (No. 2 - John Redwood, No. 3 - Douglas Carswell, No. 4 - Nadine Dorries), but they were pipped to the top spot by the ever thoughtful Tom Harris, who remains my favourite Labour blogger, with this post from him today being a good example of why he is always well worth reading. Congratulations, Tom.

Other favourites of mine which made the cut include David Jones, who made No. 9 in the list and Frank Field, who was the second highest new entry to the list at No. 12.

Seven defences of political blogging

The leader writers at the FT have had a bit of a go at blogging today:

"Readers can, if they so wish, live within a bubble where they are presented only with streams of evidence that support their prejudices. This is a particular problem in political blogging, where the effects of this tendency are intensified by writers’ habit of linking mainly to like-minded sites..."

"Tribalism, groupthink and outright deceit form a large part of online political debate..."

"Complaints from the fringes now carry further, and so politicians must placate their parties’ outer edges, who expect constant barrages on their opponents and uncompromising language..."

Here are seven quick defences of political blogging:

1. It's true that some people who use the internet only read blogs/ sites that reinforce their views but I now read The Guardian, Independent, FT and a whole range of left-wing new media when in the pre-internet age I only really read one or two (right-of-centre) newspapers each day.
2. All opinions are represented in the blogosphere.  All barriers to entry have been blown away.  Take ConHome's Platform blog.  Voices never heard before are now heard by the leadership of the Conservative Party and beyond. Power has been transferred from a small Westminster class to 'a wiser crowd' and the transfer has only just begun (and will accelerate as the mainstream media retreats behind payment walls).
3. The mainstream media is held to account.  This is one of the blogosphere's most important functions.  Shoddy or biased journalism is now exposed instantly.  Cosy relations between certain journalists and titles meant a lack of scrutiny between old media organs.  Pre-blogosphere people had to wait days in the hope that their letter might be published in a newspaper that had misled or misrepresented.  The right to reply was often never given and very often never in full.  Fisking is one of the blogosphere's great innovations. 
4. Blogs also hold other blogs to account.  It's true that a lot of blogs write a lot of rubbish but plenty of other bloggers exist to point this out whenever it happens.
5. Not all blogs are same. Yes, some are tribal and deceitful.  Some newspapers can also be described in those terms.  Blogs are at least as different from each other as the FT is from the Daily Star.  Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale and ConHome are invariably lumped together but they are very different products.
6. Blogs are often more specialist and, in a good way, more obsessive than anything in the mainstream media. PoliticalBetting and UKPollingReport on polling, Defence of the Realm on military issues, John Redwood on economic policy and Burning Our Money on government waste are stand out examples of this.
7. The blogosphere is often attacked for passing instant judgment but it also can debate topics for longer and in more detail than any traditional newspaper.  ConHome's sustained examination of the next generation of Conservative MPs and Harry Phibbs' scrutiny of Tory councils, for example, are unmatched by traditional newspapers (who are replacing political coverage with more and more lifestyle journalism).

Part-time support

By Anna Fazackerley, Head of the Education Unit at Policy Exchange

Parents with children awaiting their A-level results on Thursday are right to be feeling distinctly unwell. Last year, if they didn’t achieve the required grades the worst most parents faced was a few exasperating hours on the phone to admissions tutors sorting out a new place. This year if your children slip a grade it is likely to leave them with nowhere to go at all, even if overall they have still done well. With a boom in full-time university applications, but a drastic shortage of places, tens of thousands of eligible students will be stranded in the chill of the recession.

This surge in full-time applications has been driven partly by older learners desperate to change direction or beef up their skills. Applications from students aged over 21 are up by 34% on last year. Ironically, many of these applicants would almost certainly have preferred to study part-time, enabling them to juggle a career or family life alongside their studies. What will have put them off is the realisation that part-timers receive a fraction of the support given to their younger full-time counterparts.

Part-time students now make up one-third of all undergraduates – and they aren’t doing flower-arranging, they are acquiring skills to clamber up the career ladder.  But whereas all full-time students receive some financial support from the Government, a staggering 90% of part-time students receive nothing at all. Lord Mandelson can wax lyrical about social mobility and lifelong learning until we are all grey in the face, but unless he addresses this yawning inequity huge numbers of adults will decide that going to university to retrain is simply impossible. In a report out today, Policy Exchange is proposing a new, fairer but affordable financial aid model, which will lessen the divide between part-time and full-time students.

We show that for an additional £33 million the Government can provide some financial support for 60,000 extra part-time undergraduate students, taking the total number up from 44,000 to 104,000. The cash can be diverted from University Challenge – an ill-judged scheme to build 20 new “universities” for £5-£10 million each in down-at-heel towns. The assumption is that a university, even a £5 million one, will automatically drive regeneration. None of the Vice Chancellors we spoke to were remotely convinced.

Having focused rigidly on trying to push 50 per cent of all young people into higher education, then slammed a severe cap on student numbers just as the recession forces more older learners to reskill, the Government should have expected this week’s car-crash. Now is the time for some proper planning on student provision. And part-timers can no longer be conveniently ignored.

A humbling example of the bravery of our troops in Afghanistan

As the death toll of British troops in Afghanistan reached 200 this week, more names have been added to the the roll call of brave men who died serving their country.

And for every casualty, there are of course countless friends and family who have to deal with that loss. Sky News today features an interview with the parents of John Thornton, a Royal Marine who was killed in an explosion while on active duty in Helmand Province last year.

In the report below, there is an incredibly heart-wrenching clip of John's brother's wedding, where he had been due to be best man: his brother reads out a letter John had sent him "just in case the worst happened", the words of which epitomise the fallen soldier's sense of duty - and sense of humour.

It is humbling stuff and I can only salute the bravery of John and those like him who have made the ultimate sacrifice and those who remain to this day in warzones overseas.

Charlie Elphicke: Getting to grips with what hundreds of billions of government borrowing will actually entail (and alas it may include tax rises)

By Charlie Elphicke

This year, the Government will borrow at least £180 billion. Over the next two years, the Government plans to borrow £360 billion.  By 2013, if things carry on as they are, the national debt will be £560 billion over the 40% of GDP level that the IMF says is sensible. These numbers are so big they lose all meaning.  They might as well be telephone numbers to most people.

So here I attempt to set out how large these numbers are in terms we can all understand.

With the amount the Government is borrowing this year, you could:

• Build an Emirates Stadium in every town in the UK;
• Feed every household in the UK for nearly three years; or
• Build a new secondary school, new primary school and a new hospital in every town in the UK and still have money left over.

With the amount being borrowed over the next two years, you could:

• Replace every car in the country with a brand new car;
• Renovate every kitchen and bathroom in the country;
• Pay the mortgage / rent and all the bills for every household in the country for two years; or
• Clothe every person in the land for 12 years.

And to pay down £560 billion? That would cost every household £5,000 a year over four and a half years.

The Defence Secretary MUST resign over his attack on the head of the army

General Sir David Richards, recently said that the Army’s role in Afghanistan may need to go on for several decades. Yesterday Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary on BBC's Andrew Marr Show explicitly referred to that professional assessment by the new head of army as ‘ludicrous’ and stated that British troops might begin to be pulled back from front line fighting…in the next 12 months. For the Defence Secretary to openly reject the best professional military advice at a time while we are fighting a major conflict is frankly alarming.

Even more concerning is the timing of this pull back of British troops – within the next 12 months, which just happens to be when the present government has to call an election. Let’s not forget that two years ago Gordon Brown announced a similar pull back of troops from Iraq…immediately before he decided to call off the general election.

For the Defence Secretary to make these comments on the weekend that the death toll of British troops passed the 200 mark is deeply offensive to the hundreds of British troops who have been wounded and the relatives of those who have died.

Instead of his extraordinary behaviour - going on television to publicly insult the head of the army and doing what many people could be forgiven for thinking was playing politics with soldiers lives; Instead of that, the Defence Secretary should be seeking to work with opposition parties to explain clearly to the public why fighting in Afghanistan is essential to our security. Generating that public support is the very least that soldiers on the front line should be able to expect from the Defence Secretary.

However,as the government is not making the case clearly – let’s just remind ourselves why we are fighting in Afghanistan:

#LabourNotUsingNHS

ToryRadio's Jonathan Sheppard started this line of thinking but if Labour love the NHS sooooo much why do they ever go private?

This example of Brown's "unpatriotic" use of private dental care was left on my Facebook account:

From The Daily Express.

I guess there are MANY other examples of #LabourNotUsingNHS.

"Independent" candidates should be scrutinised like anyone else

Martin Bell was interviewed by the BBC - his erstwhile employers - this morning. You can hear the piece here. I was worried by the broadcast. It sounded more like a chat between old pals (which it may have been) than a rigorous cross-examination (which it should also have been).

This is further evidence of an unhealthy trend. The media increasingly make judgements about the psychology of individual politicians and will not deviate from that judgement, no matter what evidence is presented to them. And this assessment of a politician's inherent decency has become more important than the content of their argument.

Thus Dan Hannan is dismissed as an "arrogant right-winger in love with the sound of his own voice" by Adam Boulton, for which Tim Montgomerie rightly upbraided the usually excellent Sky correspondent.  Adam Boulton might know Dan Hannan better than I do, but it's not the conclusion I would draw. Dan has always been supremely courteous and good-humoured in my experience.

Meanwhile journalists are conniving in letting the Left misrepresent Dan's position. He outlines it straightforwardly here, in an article that proves that some of Labour's accusations are untrue and makes a good case on the policy stuff, which is up for debate. It seems to me that in order to assert that someone is venal as opposed to misguided, you ought to have overwhelming evidence.

Paul Goodman MP: Why heretical challengers of orthodoxies like Daniel Hannan are indispensable to progress

By Paul Goodman MP

The Hannan America NHS rumpus (H.A.N – or, better still, D.A.N) was, in at least one sense, absurd.  As has been noted, Dan is a backbencher sitting in an Assembly abroad who has no influence on the Party’s health policy in Britain.

In another sense, however, D.A.N – a conflation of media mania, Labour malice and summer season silliness – was telling, because it raised a important question, namely: does modern politics in general, and the Party in particular, have house-room for heretics?

The challenger of orthodoxies, the man prepared to fly solo, the rebel with a cause, is indispensable to progress.  This isn’t because he’s always right (for what it’s worth, I think Dan is wrong about the NHS, for both political and policy reasons), but because he’s always necessary.

Not so long ago, it was unacceptable in polite society to claim that printing money causes inflation, or that incomes policies don’t work.  Now, these views are commonplace.  The change wouldn’t have happened if the arguments hadn’t been put by senior Conservative politicians – Keith Joseph being perhaps the best example.  As someone or other put it, heresy is the gadfly which makes the horse trot.

It’s never been easy to expound new ideas from the Shadow Cabinet (or the Cabinet itself).  Trying to do so may have cost Keith Joseph the leadership.  The media environment has got far harsher since his day – more manic, turbulent, punishing and fast-moving.  As I’ve argued before, the next election will be the YouTube election.