Picking up the slack: Labour's economic doomsayers are proved wrong, again

By Mark Wallace
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There's always been something of the religious mantra about the Left's refusal to believe that the British private sector was capable of picking up the slack by creating jobs to replace those lost in the public sector.

Perhaps it's a lack of imagination which leaves them unable to conceive of jobs being created through mechanisms which they don't understand. Perhaps it's egotism, driving a belief that their actions in government will always be more effective than anything the private sector could do. Perhaps it's simply a desperate hope that economic suffering will help them to prosper politically.

Consider the following six quotes, from senior figures in the Labour Party, prominent commentators and Ed Miliband:

Ed Balls, Hansard, 12 October 2011:

"We were also told that public sector job cuts would be more than outweighed by the rise in private sector jobs, but I am afraid that employment is falling because the private sector has been unable to deliver the recovery we were promised. It has been a complete fantasy."

Ed Miliband's "predistribution" speech, 6 September 2012:

"I'm afraid the Government believed its own propaganda – that they could cut as far and as fast as they liked and the private sector would pick up the slack."

Alan Johnson's first speech as Shadow Chancellor, 18 October 2010:

"...in the current climate there's nothing inevitable about the private sector picking up the slack, when the public sector starts laying people off." 

 SImon Jenkins, The Guardian, 27 October 2010:

"David Cameron and business leaders claimed in unison that the private sector would "take up the slack" of some half a million workers ejected from the public sector. They cheered, but nobody could illustrate how that would happen."

Westminster Digested, The Guardian's "satirical" take on politics, 1 December 2011:

 "Cameron:...Only a moron would have imagined the private sector would suddenly pick up the slack in the worst depression since the 30s!"

David Blanchflower, in the New Statesman, 16 March 2012:

"The private sector isn't picking up the slack"

Then consider the new figures released today by the ONS, which show that:

"Private sector employment has jumped by 1.3million to a record high of 24.1million under the Coalition Government – while public sector employment has fallen by 423,000. But last year the increase in private sector jobs was almost five times the fall in public sector work."

So despite Ed Balls' fervent hopes, it turns out the private sector could and did take up the slack - and then some.

To paraphrase a great Norwegian: Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Keir Hardie, Gordon Brown, Eddie Izzard, Len McCluskey...can you hear me, Polly Toynbee? Your boys took one hell of a beating.

Has Polly Toynbee actually read what Tim Montgomerie writes?

By Peter Hoskin
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Paul Goodman recently wondered if Jonathan Freedland reads ConservativeHome before writing about us.

Now we have cause to wonder whether Polly Toynbee reads Tim Montgomerie before writing about him. Last week, she described him as the "master-manipulator" of the Conservative Party. Yesterday, she wrote that he was "dominating the scene ... tugging [David Cameron] ever rightwards". A-wha?!

Perhaps we should be flattered by Polly's valuation of ConHome's power – but I'm not the only one to notice that her account of the ConHome/Montgomerie philosophy is rather faulty. At our New Year's party last week, George Osborne paid tribute to the positions Tim has taken on same-sex marriage and international development. Another George, the New Statesman's Mr Eaton—no rightie, he!—tweeted that on gay marriage, wealth taxes and aid spending Tim couldn't be thought to be tugging the party in any crude right-wing direction. And, what's more, both Georges could have added to their lists Tim's support for further devolution to Scotland, the restoration of the 10p tax band, the triple lock for the basic state pension, financial help for low-income parliamentary candidates, and his opposition to the NHS Bill as well as to large parts of the arms trade.

Tim has explained his 'and theory' before now – the idea that the party hasn't ever needed to abandon its traditional positions on Europe, tax, welfare or immigration, but it has needed to broaden its appeal. Yet, speaking as a friend, I think he tells it better in the breadth of his own writing and in how he's run ConHome over the years. I, for one,wouldn't be employed here if we were in the business of dragging the party to the right.

And that's what I hope ConHome will continue to be about. It's what Keith Joseph called the broad middle ground, not the narrow centre ground. No tugging or manipulation necessary.

Polly Toynbee's opinion of the rioters? They were nearly as bad as the bankers!

By Matthew Barrett
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A fine, cut-out-and-keep column from Polly Toynbee today. She kicks off by calling this government "small-staters":

"So far, the small-staters are losing. A small state means – and Cameron has not budged – a smaller police force and shrunken social programmes, with more potential for anarchy."

The left's solution to dealing with an elite is...for its own elite to organise another elite

by Paul Goodman

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Charles Moore's recent scourging of Britain's banking elite struck a nerve - and not only among bankers - so the new campaign trailed in today's Guardian to rein it in may strike another one.  The campaign says that -

"A 1,000-strong "public jury" should be selected at random to draw up a "public interest first" test to ensure that power is taken away from "remote interest groups" which currently treat the public with contempt, according to the group's declaration."

But hang on a moment.

• The campaign lumps together bankers' bonuses, MPs' expenses and illegal phone hacking.  But are, say, bankers, MPs and senior figures at Trinity Mirror PLC all part of a single "elite"?  How many MPs are bankers - or have any contact with banking?  How many Mirror journalists had any contact with MPs expenses, other than writing about them?

• But let's concede the existence of a private sector elite for the sake of the argument.  By the same token, isn't there also an elite which gains from a bigger public sector?  And aren't former Director-Generals of the BBC, such as Greg Dyke, and Guardian columnists, such as Polly Toynbee, part of it?  Needless to say, they're among the campaign's supporters.

• Shouldn't the "public interest first" test which they propose, therefore, apply to all big interests that could be considered vested, not just some of them?  Is it in the public interest that the BBC consumes 70 per cent of the viewing share of national and international news?  That the state provides public services as well as commissioning them?  That it treated Fiona Pilkington or Baby P as it did?

• And if there is to be such a test, why should only a thousand people in a country of over 60 million have the privilege of applying it?  Wouldn't an elite selected by lot be an elite none the less?  And end up producing exactly what the campaign is complaining about in the first place - namely, an elite exercising disproportionate power?

Blinded by hatred. Deafened by the sound of its own anger. The world of the Left-wing commentariat.

By Matthew Barrett
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There are many forces inside and connected with the Labour Party that are discouraging modernisation. The unions. The lack of private sector voices in the parliamentary party. And, the subject of this post, the Left-wing pundits.

There is a thoughtful centre left commentariat but there is a much bigger section of left-wing opinion which relentlessly plays to the Guardian-reading gallery. It never challenges the prejudices of its readers. It never questions left-wing conventional wisdom. It demonises the Conservatives, attempts to frighten the poor and excuses violent protest.

Will the Left stop pretending Michael Gove is planning a mass expansion of faith schools?

By Matthew Barrett
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One of the left's main objections to the Coalition's Free Schools policy since the election last year has been the possibility of religious groups setting up schools. This left-wing opposition has involved smearing people of faith and whipping up fears about the spread of religious schools (as if the Christian faith was some new experiment to be mistrusted until deemed safe). The left's rejection of new faith schools has also involved being very liberal with the facts. Here is one of Polly Toynbee's columns from April: 

"This government is increasing faith education, with seven out of 10 applications for free schools coming from religious organisations. The education secretary, Michael Gove, urges faith schools to become academies. Writing in the Catholic Herald, he recommends avoiding secular critics' accusations of "selection on the sly", as "by becoming an academy, a Catholic school can place itself permanently out of range of any such unsympathetic meddling". Academies and half of all faith schools set their own admissions, key to their league table success."

On Planet Polly all profit-making is bad. Conservatives must never make the mistake of thinking all government is bad.

By Tim Montgomerie
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Earlier this week Paul Goodman wrote about the failures of some private providers of residential care. He called for better regulation and suggested local control of care watchdogs.

Polly Toynbee offers less reasoned reflections about Southern Cross' financial difficulties and the Winterbourne View scandal in her Guardian column today. She relishes the opportunity to kick every part of the profit-making sector. "Public tolerance," she concludes, "for privatising services for the weak and sick may have been tested to destruction." Read it if you wish but, in summary, it's her predictable public equals good and private equals wicked shtick.

On Planet Polly people motivated by profit can't do good. She obviously doesn't use the profit-making supermarkets that have enabled low income households to enjoy a range and quality of food that would impress any king or queen from history. She can't be using any of the life saving and life enhancing drugs that have been delivered by profit-hungry drug companies (which the Left derides as Big Pharma). I'm sure she doesn't use the budget airlines on her trips to Tuscany that mean British families can afford to fly to the sun in a way that was impossible when every country's airline was an expensive nationalised carrier.

And, on the other side of the equation, Ms Toynbee should remember that the state is capable of ugly failure too. I think of the pensioners neglected on NHS wards. The council houses built so badly that they have become infested with crime and are decaying because of damp. The police who did nothing about the anti-social terror that drove the Pilkingtons to suicide. The children abused in local authority 'care'. The welfare bureaucracies that treat vulnerable people as numbers rather than individuals.

Polly Toynbee leads Topshop protesters on to picket Guardian office. (Not.)

By Paul Goodman

According to Guido Fawkes/Paul Staines, who has today issued a blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of looters, the Guardian isn't averse itself to tax avoidance (which of course, unlike tax evasion, is perfectly legal) - see here, here and here.

The man in the basement with a match, a matchbox, a fuse, and limitless supply of gunpowder writes -

"The Telegraph quoted Grant Thornton’s senior tax partner Mike Warburton saying: “Guardian Media Group has enjoyed a tax holiday courtesy of some very helpful rules introduced by their friend Gordon Brown. They are taking full advantage of the relief legally available to them, which all businesses should do. That’s fine, but don’t knock people who do exactly the same.”

Thornton was right - doubly.  Right to say that there can be no reasonable objection to a newspaper planning its tax affairs rationally (whether or not it is owned, as the Guardian is, by a trust originally set up for the same purpose).  And right again to suggest that those in glass houses, etc.

Which is why Polly Toynbee doubtless marched today's Topshop protestors on towards King's Place...

Polly Toynbee snapped at Topshop protest: captions, please

 

Tories want "final solution" for the poor says Guardian's Polly Toynbee

By Tim Montgomerie

Earlier Tristram Hunt argued that Tories wanted the poor in Victorian workhouses. Polly Toynbee thinks we want a "final solution" for the poor...

Hat-tip: Guido Fawkes.