George Osborne « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘George Osborne’

Time for politicians to be straight with the voters

10/05/2012, 07:00:10 AM

by Peter Watt

Real life is full of doubt and ambiguity; shades of grey dominate and we are rightly suspicious of people who peddle certainty.

But when it comes to politics it seems that certainty is still the preferred currency, or at least that is the perceived wisdom. Politicians cannot express uncertainty, only 100% assurance, because to allow for anything else is to invite a charge of weakness and ridicule.

Much of the time we are all complicit in this nonsense. Can you imagine if Ed Miliband, or any of the other candidates in the leadership contest, had said ‘I think I will make a good leader – but I’m not sure’? Or if David Cameron had stood at the despatch box yesterday and after being excoriated by Ed Miliband, angrily asserted he was ‘reasonably certain’ that Ed was wrong!

Yet the truth is that most political decisions are subjective involving the weighing up of evidence and options and then making a decision that is hopefully right. It’s not surprising that the public are increasingly sceptical about politician’s ability to tell the truth. They just do not believe that politicians can or will deliver.

Remember how polls said that Ken’s fares policy was popular? Well the same polls often showed that the public also did not believe that Ken could make this happen. So for all Ken’s façade of certainty over his policy, including a promise to resign if he failed, the public were unmoved.

Politicians are caught between a rock and a hard place. They must appear certain at all times or they will be seen as weak. But this certainty does not mean that they are believed and in fact feeds a sense amongt voters of politicians as liars who do not, or cannot, deliver.

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Whips Notebook: Is Number 10 Thinking of Sacking the Wrong George?

07/05/2012, 07:00:02 AM

by Jon Ashworth

Was it the smartest move from Tory spinners to put George Osborne up as the face of the Tory fightback this weekend? The chancellor has had a shocker since his budget and his performance on Marr coupled with his Mail on Sunday piece won’t be enough to rescue his plummeting reputation.

By the time this hitherto presumptive heir to Cameron arrived at the BBC studios on Sunday, opinion polling had been published which showed just 10 per cent would consider him well suited to be prime minister against 73 per cent who said not.

What a turnaround for Osborne. Before the budget he was lauded by commentators and Tory MPs alike. Tories would approach me in the tearoom and proudly out themselves as really being in George’s not Dave’s gang. Political magazines would produce photo montages of him looking brooding and serious in the No 10 political meetings he apparently spends too much of his time in.

Now his budget is ridiculed by Tory MPs as the bodge-it and is generally seen as the beginning of the great omnishambles of jerry can fiascos and £40,000 give-aways for millionaires.

All while ordinary people were clobbered by further squeezes on their living standards. It was extraordinary in the Commons’ budget debates recently on the various VAT rises on caravans, pasties and church renovations that Tory MP after Tory MP stood up to criticise the chancellor’s proposals with no one coming to his rescue.

Following the local elections losses more Tory MPs broke out of the traps to criticise Osborne’s budget with one usually loyal Tory MP saying “my own view is that, for example in the budget, that there was no desire here for the 50p tax change.”

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More than anything else, this government lacks purpose

27/04/2012, 08:00:56 AM

by Pat McFadden

Last week I wrote that competence or the lack of it had become a key problem for the government. A number of issues were responsible, beginning with the unnecessary government provoked petrol crisis and running up to the farcical inability of the home office to add up the number of days in three months when trying to deport Abu Qatada. All of this means that politics is being looked at through a different lens compared with a couple of months ago.

This different context in which the government is no longer getting the benefit of the doubt lies behind the recent shift away from the Conservatives and towards Labour in recent opinion polls.

But this week, something even more serious than government competence came into question. It is the government’s purpose. If the coalition had one purpose it was supposed to be “sorting out” the economy through fiscal austerity. There isn’t a debate or question time that goes by in the House of Commons without some reference to this from government ministers. It’s the glue that holds the Tories and Liberals together – all that stuff about “sorting out Labour’s mess” and “working together in the national interest.”

Except it isn’t working. The economy is back in recession. All those Cameron and Osborne quotes about the economy being out of the danger zone look hopelessly, as the phrase of our times puts it, out of touch.

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Back in the real world, it’s still the budget, stupid

02/04/2012, 03:17:59 PM

by Ian Lucas

As the dust settles on a tumultuous couple of weeks it is becoming clear that outside the Westminster bubble, only one event has truly cut through to the general public: the budget.

With the cut in the 50p rate of tax and the imposition of the “granny tax”, this was truly a Budget for “the premier league” – those top rate taxpayers who had the ear of the prime minister and have benefited directly as a consequence of George Osborne’s announcements.

What is clear is that securing economic growth and new jobs was not a key topic of conversation at the Downing Street dinners. Before the Budget, and after it, the failure of this Government is its failure to build growth.

A cut to capital projects has taken away key Government support for private sector job creation. Whole industrial sectors – such as construction – are suffering as a result, and both large-scale firms and their smaller subcontractors are holding back.

The uncertainty in the jobs market is reducing employee confidence. People are postponing major spending decisions. If you are worrying about your job, you won’t move house. Income for the local economy, agents’ fees, finance to builders is held back.

Worries about jobs are hold back spending; yet the Government has increased taxes on consumers. Every penny more on VAT for central Government is a penny less for local business.

It is necessary to reduce the deficit. But the most damning statistic for the Government is that it is borrowing £147 billion more than predicted – because the economy is not growing and more people are out of work.

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Revealed: Secret ministerial transport memo

01/04/2012, 08:00:53 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Labour Uncut can reveal the existence of a secret government contingency plan to transport ministers to meetings around Whitehall in the event of a fuel shortage.

Ministerial cars will be mothballed for the duration of any fuel strike in order to show “we’re all in this together”. Instead ministers who need them will shuttle between appointments across Whitehall by… sedan chair.

The novel idea, brainchild of Chancellor George Osborne, will see unemployed young people specially trained to carry ministers around. The ability to carry a sedan chair may also be used as a means of qualifying for DLA in a tightened ‘fitness to work’ test.

According to a leaked memo entitled: ‘Contingency Ministerial Transportation: Safari Old Ploy’, Ministers will be carried around as if they were on safari. “It is important” the memo says “that we do not give rise to the impression that ministers are behaving like Roman emperors.”

The original plan was for rickshaws, but Osborne vetoed this move, claiming they would need a road fund license. Also, it is believed the Chancellor in fact has his own sedan chair, which he is eager to use in public.

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George Osborne’s ugly society

25/03/2012, 08:30:04 AM

by Helen Godwin Tiege

The news is full of the budget, and it seems George Osborne is getting himself into a pickle after breaking the “don’t mess the with pensioners” rule. Even the Daily Mail has turned on the Tories, along with almost every other newspaper.

We have also heard how great this budget is for business, with the scrapping of the 50p tax rate and further reduction in corporation tax. The CEO of Glaxo, Sir Andrew Whitty, was quite happy for the chancellor to claim their announcement today, that they will create over 1000 new roles, was a result of new measures announced in the budget, as well as the Labour-led changes to patenting laws.

We heard from several “business-leaders” who felt that the scrapping of the 50p rate would mean that Britain was once again “open for business”. And this is all great news, only a twisted cynic would want to see the economy fail or go into stagnation after what has been a troubling and difficult 4 years. If these measure really will bring investment and job creation to Britain then I would not want to oppose them.

However, I cannot see how such changes which ultimately benefit individuals can be introduced at a time when there is still rising unemployment, a very real threat of a “lost generation” and millions of people around the country about to face their darkest times as a result of local authority cuts that come into effect from April.

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After this budget, the Lib Dems are all over the place

21/03/2012, 02:49:31 PM

by Amanda Ramsay

The focus today has been on George Osborne. Understandably so. But one of the stories in the days to come will be how this budget has exacerbated the cracks that were already spreading through the Liberal Democrats and the instability this will bring to the government.

Like them or loathe them, the Conservatives have made their position known. As NEC candidate Peter Wheeler puts it: “Tories make it clear what their priorities are – Tax cuts for the rich and pay cuts for the north.”

But they are burdened by a partner who lacks their self-assurance and discipline.

Long-suffering Tories, already struggling with David Cameron’s leadership, are tiring of having to put-up with on-the-hoof Liberal Democrat solo policy announcements such as Vince Cable’s off-piste mooting of a mansion tax that was never going to happen.

This may have been political point scoring on Cable’s part, but even whispers of such a tax will have wrought terror in Tory heartlands, particularly in London where such talk could cost Boris Johnson’s political life.

It’s part of a pattern of ill-disciplined behaviour that has increasingly dismayed Tory MPs. For example, there was the failure to support their own leadership line from Nick Clegg over the health bill, not to mention February’s leaked letter from Vince Cable, when the business secretary told the prime minister and the deputy prime minister that the government lacks a “compelling vision” for Britain.

For restive Tory backbenchers and political advisers, all of this will have steeled Tory determination to make this their budget.

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Budget preview: The polling that explains why George Osborne is cutting the 50p rate of tax

21/03/2012, 08:10:41 AM

by Atul Hatwal

When George Osborne steps up to the despatch box later he will publicly launch his campaign to be leader of the Conservative party.

David Cameron can breathe easy though. It will not be a throwback to the TB-GBs. Osborne’s real target will likely be shuffling about his city hall office, watching the TV coverage, thinking that he could do it all so much better.

Until now, Boris Johnson has been the darling of the Tory faithful. He shone at last year’s party conference, has repeatedly tweaked the prime minister’s nose on issues like cuts to policing and has been the king over the water to true blue believers who see too much yellow in the government.

In contrast, his rival to succeed David Cameron, has been conducting his campaign in stealth mode. But away from the bright lights of media scrutiny, in the corridors of Westminster, George Osborne has been very active.

If any evidence were needed, just speak to any first term Tory MP: Osborne has been almost indecent in courting the new intake into the parliamentary party.

The chancellor has deployed the full range blandishments: from hand written notes in the pigeon hole to invitations to select dinners, each and every member of the class of 2010 has had unbelievable amounts of personal attention lavished on them.

Team Osborne is confident that two years into government, they have the parliamentary vote locked up. For all of Boris’s grandstanding and media profile, few in the parliamentary party view him as a serious alternative to either David Cameron or George Osborne.

Recently, at a private dinner, one member of the 2010-ers went so far as to suggest that Osborne might even defeat Cameron in a vote amongst his contemporaries.

But that still leaves the blue rinse legions swooning for their blonde mop-topped heir apparent.

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Budget preview: Osborne plays politics with Britain’s economy

20/03/2012, 07:00:25 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Literally no one alive today has experienced a period as economically bleak as we face today.

There could be hope. The chancellor retains a capacity to improve our situation through bold policy and a display of leadership. Instead we can expect a Budget of ruses, a rearranging of the pieces on the political chessboard with little or no thought for the wider reality in which the rest of us reside.

Osborne’s capacity to frame political debate should not be underestimated. He has the bully pulpit of office, a sympathetic media, and the public have bought into his central narrative: there is no alternative to his tough deficit-reduction medicine and anyone who suggests otherwise, particularly on behalf of Labour, who he paints as wholly culpable for our economic predicament, represents an unaffordable risk.

It is a powerful argument, a train rumbling down the track straight for Labour, threatening to smash us into another parliament in opposition. Some think the train will change direction, almost irrespective of what Labour does. They hope and believe that exasperation with Osborne will build such that his prescription is rejected.

Some contend that the train is immutable and that Labour had better adjust – deficit reduction will remain the key issue and Labour must do more to demonstrate how we would deliver this.

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Whips notebook: part two

06/01/2012, 11:03:04 AM

by Jon Ashworth

Just before the Christmas recess we won a vote. It was at the end of a debate on the economy and our quick thinking and experienced chief and deputy chief whip forced a division when the government was least expecting it. There was panic on the faces of government whips, with one senior government whip, with the rather splendid title of comptroller of Her Majesty household seeming especially agitated.

It was no wonder that the government whips were so hot under the collar. When the final scores on the doors were read out by the Labour whip (who just so happened to be me) only 79 government MPs voted, compared to 213 from the opposition. Of course winning a vote is nothing to get carried away with. Defeating the government on what was effectively a procedural matter doesn’t really change anything, though it does make the government look like a bit of a shambles and puts a spring in the step of a Labour MP.

Labour Uncut readers don’t need reminding that winning the central argument on the economy is vital to Labour’s future electoral success. In squaring up to George Osborne our shadow chancellor Ed Balls has a formidable opponent. (more…)

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