Gordon Brown, and the Labour Party have some big problems coming their way in the coming elections. Many within Labour have already given up on the next election and some are even calling for Brown to resign for the sake of the Party. Both the Prime Minister and his Party are sinking further in popularity, but don’t seem to be doing much about it.
Brown has tried to rally support through international efforts such as the G20 meetings, but this has been greatly frustrated with the latest meeting of the U.N. and rumors of President Obama’s snubbing of the Prime Minister. Although U.S. President Obama may not have intentionally snubbed Gordon Brown, the media coverage did not help him, nor did the Prime Minister himself in responding to the allegations at all. Brown’s futile attempts to meet with Obama looked more like an unpopular adolescent during middle school, trying to appear ‘cool’ by being seen with the ‘in group’.
The problem that Brown faces is that he is not seen as someone the people can trust. The latest polls from the Guardian show that less than 14% of the population feels that the Labour Party is honest and upfront about the economy. Brown himself is sporting a remarkably low 26% approval rating. The Party just doesn’t seem to be able to add or subtract; if £5 goes in £20 can’t come out. Individuals are expected to balance their own budgets and they have a right to expect their government to do the same. Cries to either decrease spending or even to increase taxes have fallen on deaf ears within the governing party, and it appears Brown may be more concerned about building his own popularity abroad than mending fences at home.
Back in 1997 many felt the country was on the up, over the past 12 years of New Labour many things have certainly gone in that direction. Our debt levels have climbed from £357bn to £613bn, government expenditure has rocketed from £318.3bn to £631.3bn. There is though one area we can excuse the sarcasm, and that is with GDP which has risen from £815.9bn to £1.439tr (or £497.6bn to £844.2bn excluding government expenditure). How much of that GDP growth is natural or down to the governments pro- active business attitude over the past three administrations is difficult to measure. Back in 1997 if Mystic Meg had gazed into her lottery crystal ball and announced a 101% rise in government spending and a 72% rise in the level of debt would we have sought to constrain their future prolificacy somehow?
It seems that when you appropriate efficient sources of wealth creation and term it as 'investment' few people mind. After all the thieves are promising that the imposed cost will be compensated by the supply of 'world class' services in return. And when these services don't arrive the promise is that more needs to be taken to ensure their delivery. This ends with the word 'cut' being made to sound evil. Yet it would be nothing more than justified compensation for the failure of the past 12 years. Cutting government spending on public services by 50% over the next 12 years will have the same affect as increasing it by 101%: it will be negligible and hardly noticed.
The debt and expenditure has only succeeded in inhibiting progress. Where would this country be now if the government had spent the past 12 years living within their means, not increasing taxation, leaving us to live our lives? The next government should strive to cut taxes and rein in spending, it's the only way to increase government revenues and begin to clear the debt without retarding the populace any more.
These won't be cuts to public spending. They will be compensation payments to the taxpayer for the lies, ineptitude and waste of the New Labour years.
The general disarray of the Labour Party continues to amuse those of us on the fringes of politics. Former Home Secretary Charles Clarke MP publicly stated that he believed more than half the Cabinet thought Gordon Brown should go, and that any other party would have eased him out already. Clarke is probably right: Labour's complicated and protracted leadership election procedure is not one that any MP would willingly drag the party through. It's a recipe for looking torn with divisions over a long period. And there's an election coming up, after all.
The other bad news is polling evidence from Populus shows that Labour faces a landslide in London, its 7 point lead having deteriorated into a 12 point deficit. If that 9.5% swing worked uniformly across the capital, Brown's team would lose 17 of their 44 seats. High profile MPs like Jon Cruddas, with a 7,605 majority, would be gone. And the Conservatives are even ahead in parts of the North of England – that's how far Labour's land has slipped.
And it's quite possible that the landslide will get even bigger. Polling has now become so reliable that everyone has a pretty good idea of who's going to win an election long before it's even called. And that feeds on itself. It's like the 'must have' Christmas toy – kids with cred want a Bizzi-Blaster, so the Bizzi-Blaster gets reported as this year's 'must have', whereupon more kids think it must be really cool and want one too. Shops sell out of Bizzi-Blasters, which just adds to the parents' panic that they need to move fast. Of this are bubbles made (Paul Ormerod is good on this).
Something of the same now happens in elections. In 1997 everyone knew Labour was going to win because they seemed united, polished, slick, and normal – unlike the Tories in every sense. And who wants to vote for the losing side? Tory voters deserted to Labour, or stayed at home. It's beginning to look the same in reverse for 2010. Who will want to vote for the slow-motion train crash that is Gordon Brown's government? Populus asked me what I thought the outcome of the next election would be (they flatteringly have me down as an 'opinion former', so how can I resist?) I thought, and said 'Tory Landslide'. Perhaps, in this world of instant polls and 24hr news, landslides are how elections are going to work from now on.
One of the annoyances of my privileged position as someone watching the political and economic world go by (and yes, it is indeed a privilege to be able to combine work and interest so) is that almost no one on the political side of that divide is ever willing to actually take their own ideas seriously.
For example, localism is something that everyone at least pays lip service to (we here take it very seriously of course) whether it be under that rubric or "more power to the community". But as this letter to The Times makes clear, everybody then acts as if local power wielded locally by locals is the very last thing that any system should allow to happen. As the famed boat, Raedwald, pointed out about the Magistrates Courts:
Many of the arguments against the old systems are around objections to (hateful term) a 'postcode lottery'. Well, those 'postcode lotteries' often reflected very accurately the values and relativities of local communities; the Welsh benches from 'dry' shires that savagely disposed of alcohol-related offences, and the harsh penalties for thieves imposed by benches in the northern Mill Towns. When I was a lad the bench covering the seaside retirement towns of Frinton and Clacton had the reputation of jailing speeding youngsters - and the message was understood; don't race in Frinton.
That's exactly what localism means: that locals get to run their locality as they wish. We should also not forget that while the authority was indeed handed down from the centre to those JPs the methods of deployment of that authority were not. Hand the power back and let people get on with it.
We should also note that Magistrates are unpaid volunteers (as the letter notes) and are very much part of Burke's "little platoons". That voluntary collectivism which has so enriched our society over the centuries and which the current state of politics seems so insistent on trying to snuff out.
In our latest report Zero Base Policy, Dr Madsen Pirie argues that minor changes to existing policies is no longer an option, given Britain's dire economic and social fabric. Instead the need is for "zero base" policies to provide new and effective ways of achieving policy objectives.
Topping the agenda is economic change. Dr Pirie has set out measures to turn Britain from a high tax, high debt economy into one on the virtuous circle of low taxes and increasing growth and revenues. The Treasury's 'static' model of the economy needs to be rejected in favour of a 'dynamic' one, which factors in the growth impact of lower taxes.
As in previous reports we propose to lift the low paid out of income tax by raising its starting threshold to £12,000 p.a., corresponding to the minimum wage, or about half the average wage. This eliminates the need for vast welfare transfers to low earners by letting them instead keep what they earn. At the top end the ASI proposes to expand the tax base by successively raising the threshold for the 40% rate until no-one pays it. Local finance needs overhauling, replacing Council Tax by local sales taxes as in the USA, and setting business rates locally. Local budgets should require popular vote approval before coming into effect.
A one-year judicial commission should be set up to review civil liberties and make recommendations. Public body CCTV surveillance needs to be limited to police and security services, and for anti-terror powers must be restricted to cases of suspected terrorism. Also, government policy on drugs has proved a failure, and need a total rethink. Most narcotics should be made available at medical centres, and the production and sale of recreational drugs legalized under controlled conditions.
The biggest opportunity for reform is in education. Parents should of course be permitted to use their child's education allowance at any school which is non-selective and requires no additional top-up fees. Regulation can be addressed through the use of 'sunset' clauses under which regulations expire unless specifically renewed, and for regulation to be implemented by case law, with the findings of tribunals and juries filling in the details of broad statutes.
Zero Base Policy contains 33 radical objectives including the abolition of regional tiers of government and agencies, and the phasing out of most capital taxes.
David Cameron is seeking to institute another step along the road towards more power in the hands of fewer parliamentarians. This time putting forward a cut in public spending via the curbing of the excesses of the Houses of Parliament. He wants to see a reduction of 10% in the costs of parliament, a 5% pay cut for ministers and the abolition of MPs' communications allowance. This along with a reduction in the number of MPs to 585 would see an overall saving of £120m a year. Or 0.0169% of the projected government expenditure of £710b in 2010/11.
Currently constituencies in the UK average around 68,492 eligible voters (England averages just over 70,000, Wales 55,000, Scotland 65,000 and NI 63,000). Under Mr Cameron's plan this would rise to an average of over 75,000 (if not more as the population grows) a distinct erosion of representation and yet more power coalescing in the hands of fewer (and lesser) MPs. Despite much of the UK's legislation being decided overseas this is a move that weakens our democracy. This piffling reform is yet more tinkering around the edges rather than attacking the real problems of our democracy.
Parliament needs to be able to concentrate on two things: defence and the implementation of a system of justice. Local government needs to be the level where decisions over health, education, welfare etc are made. The abolition of quangos should not mean that government departments take over the work, it should be left for local councils to pick up and ask the people to decide. Indeed government departments define how centralized this country has become. We may all live on an island but we all are different with different wants and needs. The time has come for a radical reshaping of the structure of democracy in this country. It would actually give power to the people.
It has emerged that the USA’s National Endowment of the Arts (a government agency) has been encouraging the arts community to create more ‘obamaganda’- although this time regarding contentious policy under legislative consideration. During a conference call, the NEA encouraged America’s creative elite “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda – health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal."
This basically boils down to the fact that a government agency is asking artists to create work that gives a positive atmosphere towards proposed government policy- and in particular areas which are embroiled in fierce debate, such as health care reform and cap-and-trade legislation.
Given the fact that the NEA is the largest funder of the arts in America, its clout could be far-reaching. It is disturbing that the NEA is adapting its role of “supporting excellence in the arts" to “supporting government supporters in the arts", using artist’s work to mask genuine dislike for policy and actions with manufactured support, and quite simply, propaganda.
More worring still to consider what could happen should Gordon decide that a nice bit of artwork could revive his flagging popularity.
Sky News proposes a televised election debate between the three main party leaders, They have written to them, saying that if anyone declines, the debate will go on with an empty chair. That would make them seem frit (if the equal-time laws didn't thwart the plan).
David Cameron and Nick Clegg have jumped at the chance to debate. They have everything to gain from more TV exposure, of course. No answer yet from Gordon Brown, though: he has nothing to gain from bringing himself down from the level of statesman to that of mere candidate. He does not want a debate.
The odd thing is, neither do I. Politicians know that they have to re-connect with the public, but if they think that pontificating on TV will achieve that, they have seriously misunderstood the problem. A TV debate would just reinforce the presidential style of politics that has grown up in the UK. We are not voting for the head of an Executive Branch as the Americans do when they vote for a President. We are voting for Members of Parliament – who are there not just to represent us, but to protect us from a powerful Executive.
A debate would further bolster the role of Downing Street, with all the centralization of power which that entails, at the expense of an already weakened Parliament. The Prime Minister has much of the power that George III did. We ought to be stripping that power away, not boosting it by setting our party leaders up as if they were modern kings. We should be glad to have a majority party that was well managed by an effective leader, however mild-mannered or self-effacing. If the test is that the majority leader has to be a presidential-style superstar whom everyone fawns over, then we have little chance of re-gaining the liberties that the centralization of Executive power have already taken from us.
Gordon Brown, and the Labour Party have some big problems coming their way in the coming elections. Many within Labour have already given up on the next election and some are even calling for Brown to 
Back in 1997 many felt the country was on the up, over the past 12 years of New Labour many things have certainly gone in that direction. Our debt levels have climbed from £357bn to £613bn, government expenditure has rocketed from £318.3bn to £631.3bn. There is though one area we can excuse the sarcasm, and that is with GDP which has risen from £815.9bn to £1.439tr (or £497.6bn to £844.2bn excluding government expenditure). How much of that GDP growth is natural or down to the governments pro- active business attitude over the past three administrations is difficult to measure. Back in 1997 if Mystic Meg had gazed into her lottery crystal ball and announced a 101% rise in government spending and a 72% rise in the level of debt would we have sought to constrain their future prolificacy somehow?
The general disarray of the Labour Party continues to amuse those of us on the fringes of politics. Former Home Secretary Charles Clarke MP publicly stated that he believed more than half the Cabinet thought Gordon Brown should go, and that any other party would have eased him out already. Clarke is probably right: Labour's complicated and protracted leadership election procedure is not one that any MP would willingly drag the party through. It's a recipe for looking torn with divisions over a long period. And there's an election coming up, after all.
In our latest report 
David Cameron is seeking to institute another step along the road towards more power in the hands of 
It has 
Sky News