Progressive Conservatism?

Can the Left simply dismiss this phrase as an oxymoron? Some on the Left (despite their initial sniggers) are trying to engage with this idea. Personally I simply do not believe or trust the Tory front bench when they talk of being progressive. How can we reconcile the vast growth in inequality during the Tory years with the Tory claims of today, that they will reduce inequality, especially when every policy they announce is clearly unreconstructed Thatcherism that increases inequality - tax cuts for savers, higher IHT thresholds, slashing public spending on infrastructure, public transport, social services etc (while increasing expenditure in areas that do not benefit the poorest - higher defence budget, increased police, managers and consultant wages, PFI and court costs). In the end the Tories spent similar amounts of taxpayers money but they shifted the burden onto the lower paid and cutback vital services that the poorest rely on the most. It was the exact opposite of progressive and I see no change from Thatcherism in the ideas emanating from Cameron and his Eton ilk of cabinet colleagues.

Public expenditure is the crux of the matter - the Cameron mantra, like Thatcher, Reagan and Bush before him is 'less state is good', while the new right 'bloggertarians' revel in 'McWhirter' ideas of freedom where the state is shrunk, they fail to see Tory history repeating itself, as Barack Obama stated in his inaugural address 'The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works'.

All progress comes from advances in efficiency (usually technological and scientific advances but also organisational) - this is where right wing bloggers like Mark Wadsworth, Devil's Kitchen and me can agree - we can see the benefits of a citizens income, land value tax and more competitive elections (i.e. proportional representation). We can all agree that some areas of government are poor value for money - where we differ is in our solutions. The Right want to do away with the state completely, whereas I want to replace the bits that don't work and expand the bits that do. I have always chosen evolutionary action over revolutionary action. While the first can be very slow, it is much less messy and without the risks of the latter. If welfare causes laziness (a key right-wing argument) then why are workers from Eastern Europe (after decades of the most interventionist state) seemingly so industrious?

Still, after saying all this - I hope there is such a thing as progressive conservatism and that the 'new Tories' defy the evidence of their mounting manifesto and subscribe to it. It seems whatever the Tories have planned for us, we will find out in less than 18 months time. The large Tory leads in the polls and Gordon Brown's inability to do humility and give the people something to like him for, all point to us finding out exactly what the Tories do have in store for us.

Stockwell

Wednesday night's drama 'Stockwell' on ITV1 brought together two of my biggest prejudices - my hatred for rubbish ITV and the incompetent arrogant police that we have. Prejudices which my wife would tell you make my judgement on this not worth much.

I am sure we can all agree that in the aftermath of the tube bombings and the failed bombers that were still on the loose - the police were under impossible pressure to deliver 'something' and that a catalog of failures by the police led to a tragedy - firearms officers late for work and faffing around wasting time, inadequate procedures to ensure proper surveillance, woeful communications, poor ID photo, an order 'from above' to 'shoot to kill' without clear guidelines of how to apply it. All of this could be forgiven by myself - we all make mistakes and hopefully learn from them.

What I cannot forgive though is the sense that the police were in any way 'protecting us' with their actions or that any of this was unavoidable or that individual police should avoid prosecution - all the officers involved are back in the same jobs (or promoted).

If De Menezes had been shot outside his flat - I could have understood how it maybe protected the public. If De Menezes had been carrying a bag I could understand him being shot dead on public transport - even though it was clear they gave him plenty of time to detonate any device if he had of been a terrorist .

What is clear to me is that this was a 'revenge' killing - a take that for the events of the previous week - an officer with anger in his eyes and a sense of needing to do 'something' murdered a member of the public who clearly was not carrying a bomb. Even with the right man - this operation would have protected no-one and coupled with the incompetence of the police it was almost bound to end up with an innocent man's death.

ITV have typically let the police off the hook with this poor examination of events and no real mention of the ensuing attempt at a cover up, yet alone the outright contradictory evidence from eyewitnesses present.

Unemployment Is Actually At 1.16 Million

This claimant count figure is still at least 2m below what it was under the Tories - the Tories only ever used the claimant count figure.

Now the media can also use the higher Labour Force Survey figures which Labour highlighted as their preferred figures when they came to power in 1997, which were never quoted during the Tory era, which is very convenient for our sensationalist Tory press.

Unemployment reached as high as 15% of the working population under the Tories - today it stands at 6% - which should give us some perspective on these figures - if only people would ever get to read this in their daily propaganda sheets, some hope of that!

A Speech Brown Should Make..But Never Will.

"I welcome Barack Obama as the new President of the United
States.

Like myself, Obama is serious about redistributing wealth lower down the income scale (even if only modestly) and is also serious about avoiding a possible prolonged depression by implementing a fiscal stimulus now (the risks of doing nothing (or even worse Tory cuts) easily outweigh the risks of a slightly larger public debt).

David Cameron by contrast and in keeping with Tory tradition, wants to help not the most vulnerable but the most wealthy - his policies on tax cuts for those with large savings and large inheritances signifies this, as does his promise to cut public spending for those who are most vulnerable.

Thanks to a Labour government not the Tories, the UK's public debt is low (in international terms), and health and education spending have been vastly increased (though still low by OECD comparisons) and rising inequality has been slowed and put into reverse (though this is also still high in comparison to other developed nations thanks to Tory policies).

The Tories have just a few good ideas (on Heathrow, high speed trains and a smart grid - though I doubt their delivery on any of these) in a sea of regressive policies that would take us back to the worst excesses of Thatcherism. Where this Labour government has gone wrong is keeping to a Tory agenda on an unregulated banking system that has led to massive personal debt. For this I give an unreserved apology - the Tories cannot apologise because they do not yet think the coming recession is anything to do with short termist neo-liberal policies - a philosophy of greed they still adhere to. As a party of the left - Labour can change and will. In times like these people recognise this and know that deep down Cameron can only pay lip service to ideological change".

A Belated Start To 2009

A lot to catch up on.

1. Tories To Fiddle Boundaries
I don't know why anyone would be surprised with the Tories for re-announcing their determination to reduce parliament by "at least 10%" or by 65 MPs at minimum. They have stated this many times in their previous manifestos - in fact they have mentioned a reduction of 150 MPs. When it comes to constitutional matters it seems governments can act very quickly when they really want to - unlike this Labour government which has dilly dallied for 11 years over their election promises of a PR referendum for Westminster. Of course the Tories do not have a hostile press and Lords to contend with. Don't expect the Tories to offer any say to us in a referendum on this important constitutional change to 150 constituencies that are going to have their MPs taken away at a stroke of a Tory pen. The arbitrary boundaries we have at present are bad enough but now it seems they are just there to be moved around so as to deliver the best results for whoever can get away with it - just like in the US where even computer programmes have been written for such a purpose. The Tories have worked out that urban voters can be disenfranchised if seats are enlarged to cleverly split urban seats up and combine them with enough Tory suburban and rural areas. That low-turnout in safe Labour urban seats due largely to our electoral system will come back to bite Labour. I don't see how Labour will get a second chance to put this right and deliver PR. The Tories could be in for another generation on a small minority of the vote (even less than the 1 in 3 that Thatcher got). Call that democracy?

2. Daily Mail Sells Out To Red Under The Bed.
I had to laugh at this one - you couldn't make it up - The Standard sold to a former Russion Spy. We live in strange times indeed. Well, to be fair I doubt it matters how right wing this Russion thug may be - the Standard couldn't be any more biased and distorted than it already is. It got rid of a great Mayor in Ken Livingstone and replaced him with a sick joke (still fair to Boris, he has finally managed to u-turn and restore half price travel for those on low incomes - I will give him credit for that).

3. Blowing My Own Trumpet
Can't provide evidence for this - you will have to take my word for it, but I wrote back in 2001 that a recession was due soon (I thought 2003) and that the longer the credit boom continued the deeper the recession. I also thought that the Euro would go from strength to strength and that the UK would eventually beg to join - all this guff about how setting our own interest rates has helped us is rubbish - all the experts agree that the B0E cocked it up in not reducing interest rates sooner. If we had been under the ECB our interest rates would have been stable around 2-3% not shooting up to 5.75% and then steeply dropping to 1.5% in a few months. This instability has helped no British business, add in the extra costs of our volatile currency and we can see how bad Brown's decision not to join was. We would have been better off in the Euro - we would have had to sort out the reckless lending in the housing market and personal debt markets before we joined (much to Tory protests) but think of how much money that would have saved the taxpayer now?

nb. By the way, Brown may have swapped Gold for Euros at a few million loss, but no Tory goes on about the £23bn Brown made the taxpayer from the sell off of the airwaves to the 3G mobile phone companies - he would only of got a fraction of that today. These things depend on arbitrary timings and I doubt the Tories would have done much different in either case. In fact I predict the Tories will probably be the party to take us into the Euro (probably in 2050 on really bad terms and after 20 years of rejection from the Eurozone countries).

4. Finally - Brown Really Has To Go.
It comes to something when Brown 'saves his skin' by bringing us to 'only' 10% BEHIND the Tories. What a despairing place the Labour party is in - still unfortunately, under this system it is our only hope.