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Whip’s Notebook: Izzy whizzy George gets dizzy and blows £200 million

08/06/2012, 07:00:54 AM

by Jon Ashworth

Tory MPs regularly receive briefings from their parliamentary resource unit (PRU) giving them lines to take, suggested responses to letters on policy, attack lines for use in the chamber and that sort of thing. Until last week the PRU will have had standard response scripts on the stocks about the importance of the pasty tax, caravan tax, church renovation tax and charity tax. No doubt these scripts would include a line reminding their constituents that backing down on these new revenue raisers would be deeply irresponsible given the size of the deficit. Loyal Tory MPs will have emailed out these responses whenever a constituent got in touch complaining about the new tax hikes. They will have used the lines in their weekly MP’s column in the local paper and in interviews on local radio.

Behind the scenes some poor staffer in the PRU will have been relieved and grateful that the briefing was available for their Tory MPs. No doubt she or he had been getting a barrage of calls and emails from MPs’ pesky researchers asking for a line.

The poor staffer will have called the junior special adviser in the Treasury who would actually rather focus on important matters like making sure his name is on the list for the Spectator summer party. The special adviser will have no doubt grumpily despaired “why can’t they use the budget PRU briefing, don’t they realise how busy we are?!” Our heroic PRU staffer persists ”but we’re getting lots of calls, didn’t you see the finance bill debate? No one spoke up to support the policy apart from that chap desperate for promotion who founded YouGov.”

Eventually the Treasury special adviser relents and signs off an agreed brief while remaining irritated that his more important special advisor colleague Rupert Harrison gets the Spectator summer party invite not him.

But at least the tenacious staffer is happy and finally emails the pasty tax brief out to a grateful parliamentary party and now turns attention to the “Hunt hasn’t really broken the ministerial Code” brief that the Number 10 Political Office are demanding goes out.

But an updated PRU brief wasn’t enough to satisfy MPs or more importantly public opinion.

The Government’s majority had already been reduced to just 25 on the votes on the pasty and caravan tax. They should be winning votes in the Commons by 83. Overall 31 Tory MPs – around 10 per cent of the Conservative Parliamentary Party – voted against one or more of George Osborne’s budget measures.

And if Osborne thought winning the votes was enough to put this issue to bed, he was wrong.

Lib Dem MPs were handing out pasties in Parliament, 4 Tory MPs brought petitions to the Commons on the caravan tax even though they voted for it, Labour’s frontbench Treasury team were constantly up and at them. MPs were calling adjournment debates forcing ministers back to the Commons to defend the policy. Just two weeks ago poor David Gauke, Exchequer Secretary was sent out to defend the pasty tax in a Westminster hall debate and confirmed that samosas cooked and sold in sweet shops, many of which we have in Leicester, will have VAT as well.

And then in the week that Tony Blair, Vince Cable and Jeremy Hunt were all at Leveson we witnessed what appeared like a dizzying u-turn a day from Osborne. In total he makes £200 million of u-turns with no explanation of how these latest unfunded commitments will be paid for. That’s a lot of cash for Osborne to spend to try to save his draining credibility.

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The uncomfortable truth about party politics is that loyalty trumps morality

07/06/2012, 07:00:28 AM

by Peter Watt

This week there was one story that depressed me more than any other. It was actually quite a small story and you may well have missed it. It involved Baroness Sayeeda Warsi and a referral to the City of London Police following various allegations in the national newspapers about her expenses.

Putting aside the actual allegations and whether or not the police should be involved, for me the really depressing part of the tale was actually an interview given on LBC 97.3 by the MP who referred the matter to the police, Karl Turner.

Karl was being interviewed on the James Whale show and you can hear the interview here. Basically Karl appears to concede that, despite the matters being considered being serious and a non-party political issue, he would not have referred a Labour MP in the same situation.

Now I don’t know Karl and I am sure that he is an excellent MP. But inadvertently he has allowed something to be raised in public that is a pretty uncomfortable truth about party politics. Worse, it is something that most people involved in party politics will recognise and actually completely accept. In the words of Disraeli to errant MPs, “damn your principles!” and “stick to your party.”

All political parties make much of the fact that they “stand up for” people; that they are “working together” for the greater good. All try and portray their positions as being in the national interest and of being a selfless pursuit of power that once achieved would give them opportunity to deliver for others.

To a very large extent of course this is true. But there is another side; a side that allows things to become, well a little less balanced: namely that when push-comes-to-shove all that really matters is that my team wins. Quite often this trumps the more altruistic elements of political motivation.

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A polling question to which the answer is yes (or at least probably)

06/06/2012, 07:08:08 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Earlier today Anthony Wells posted a response at UK Polling Report to a post of mine, “Is Labour’s lead actually 3% not 10%?”

Anthony makes a series of reasonable points defending the accuracy of YouGov’s 10 point Labour lead. He cites the high level of precision of YouGov’s final poll in the London election and the greater robustness of polls today compared to twenty years ago. Fair enough. But this misunderstands the purpose of my piece.

Polls measure how people feel at a point in time. There are adjustments and various psephological tricks to ensure respondents reveal their true preference, but the emphasis is on measuring how voters are actually feeling when the poll is conducted.

In mid-term, with an election some way off, many people might feel thoroughly hacked off with the government and be convinced they want rid of them. But when faced with the real choice, when it is days before polling and they engage with the arguments, a significant minority will change their minds.

By definition, this cannot be picked up by polling several weeks out from an election because voters haven’t switched yet.

The point of my piece was not to contest the accuracy of current polls, but to try measure this effect: to attempt to quantity the proportion of respondents who are relatively convinced Labour backers in mid-term but will then switch when the campaign ramps up and the polling booth beckons.

In fact, it is only because modern polling is so much more effective that we can be confident that a shortfall between mid-term polls and actual election results reflects voters who changed their mind rather than those who simply lied to the pollster in the first place.

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Is Labour’s poll lead actually 3% not 10%?

06/06/2012, 07:00:07 AM

by Atul Hatwal

So what is the real Labour lead? Sure, we’ve all seen the polls, and they tell a consistent tale across different pollsters. Looking at YouGov, the latest results from the weekend have Labour 10 points up over the Tories, 42% to 32%.

It’s a commanding lead but for those who remember the 1980s and 1990s, there remain nagging doubts.

At the end of 1980 Labour was registering week after week of double digit leads, peaking at 24% for Gallup in mid-December. But we all know what happened in the 1983 election.

Almost a decade later, it was déjà vu.

In 1990, Labour was once again posting massive poll leads. Between the end of February and end of April, Labour averaged a 22% lead across nearly 20 different polls. Impressive. Except, once again, we all know the result of the 1992 election.

The purpose of this trip down a rather painful stretch of memory lane isn’t to be a Cassandra. The future is not written and any form of poll lead is better than a deficit.

But caution is needed. Taking these leads at face value can breed complacency and for Labour, the experience of the past thirty years is clear: as the actual general election draws near, the poll leads have regularly evaporated.

Since those heady days of Dave and Nick in the rose garden, there has been a fundamental shift in how the public regards the government; and David Cameron in particular. The question is how would this translate in the polling booth? Would voters turn away from the Tories, and more pertinently, would they choose Labour?

The problem with attempting this judgement has been the absence of polling data that can be compared to an actual election, outside of the general election.

While there is a regular cycle of local council elections punctuated with by-elections, the pollsters rarely poll these specific areas, and even on those rare occasions when they do, only after the campaign is underway. So it’s almost impossible to compare like with like.

But regional elections offer a new opportunity. London has been polled by YouGov regularly since 2010 and recently voted.

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Celebrating the jubilee…in the British republic

04/06/2012, 07:00:20 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe…

What have you been doing this weekend to celebrate the Jubilee?

It is of course ten years since Britain became a republic, ending centuries of monarchical rule, following the abdication of Queen Elizabeth the Second.

Her withdrawal from public life followed the disestablishment of the Church of England, abolition of the House of Lords and the overwhelming vote in favour of Scottish independence.

With her role as ‘defender of the faith’ and symbol of the Union and heredity superseded by the will of the public the Queen decided there was no longer any point to the monarchy. The public agreed and the British Republic was born.

It was the role, not the person that the public had fallen out of love with. The enduring esteem for Queen Elizabeth was matched by an equally certain rejection of the Prince of Wales as her successor. He led the campaign to retain the monarchy, but lost the subsequent referendum by a 70/30 margin.

Some said antipathy at the prospect of Queen Camilla lingered, others that the public had the measure of him and found him wanting. Too old and unlikable was a common view – while his son William was likeable but too young. Daylight had flooded in on the magic following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and the public did not like, or perhaps respect, what they saw.

Either way the house of Windsor ended with a whimper.

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Four ways Labour can step up a gear

01/06/2012, 02:53:23 PM

by Richard Angell and Alex White

So now we know: the Labour party fightback is winning arguments and elections, and we have the hardest-working and most committed activists. A total of 824 councillors gained in last month’s local elections is the best of starts.

But there is still room for improvement. Ed Miliband’s speech to the Progress conference outlined a desire to change and a plan to get out and speak to voters. He should carry that through with other measures while the party is doing well – sitting back is not an option.

Next year we do it all over again for the county council elections, and Ed has the perfect opportunity to really strengthen his hand. Here are five ideas for aiding that step-change in those results and putting us on track for 2015.

1. Start campaigning early

First, we need to be clear about the battleground. The leader’s office has a clear role to play in setting this focus. It should distribute a list of PPCS who have already been selected to all MPs (policy advisers, party affiliates and friendly groups might also be included). Our parliamentarians and shadow cabinet should then focus should on organising campaigning and policy visits, helping with fundraising and organise phonebanking and other acts of solidarity from their own area.

In the seat where we already have Labour candidates fighting in a sea of blue, they need all hands on deck. Second, a list of swing marginals should be drawn up so MPs can get deep into Tory territory and start winning these constituencies before we even have a candidate in place. Each seat should have a detailed plan for funding, campaign days and staff. Labour groups such as Progress, Movement for Change and the Fabians could be helpful additions to capacity on the ground.

2. Twin boroughs and sitting MPs with key southern and eastern seats

Second, considering all the support that was focused on London for the 2012 mayoralty, in 2013 – a fallow election year in London – those 32 London borough parties should be twinned with each of the 35 south-eastern, south-western and eastern seats we lost in 2010. All of this with the sole focus of winning back much-needed county council seats in marginals that will decide who is in government after 2015.

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How twitter and Leveson have destroyed the government’s media strategy

01/06/2012, 07:00:45 AM

by Atul Hatwal

So he’s still got a job. Jeremy Hunt hangs on, defying political gravity. His performance yesterday at Leveson was woeful. Between the further revelations of his simpering texts to James Murdoch and near tearful demeanour, it was by any standards, a dreadful day for the Tory.

But despite all of this, thanks to some catastrophic media management choices made at the top of the government, Jeremy Hunt is still standing.

It’s almost possible to see the meeting: Craig Oliver, Gabby Bertin, George Osborne, all sat round the table at their morning huddle. Yes, it is going to be tough. Yes the evidence is damning. But the public don’t get the detail of Leveson. They just think all politicians are in hock to Murdoch and besides, as long as Hunt stays in post, he remains the story.

Which means David Cameron is not.

This was the rationale behind the PM’s decision to continue backing his critically compromised secretary of state for culture, media and sport: a whole-hearted vote of confidence in his personal, human shield.

In one sense the government media panjandrums are right. David Cameron is nowhere to be found in today’s headlines. It’s all Hunt. But everything has a price to pay, and in this case it is the collective confidence of the lobby journalists.

Although individual newspapers are no longer as influential as in the past – it’s unlikely that the Sun will ever again be the one wot won it– the club of parliamentary journalists still wields massive power when they form a common view.

On these occasions, this shared perspective becomes the lens through which all news, print, broadcast and online, is projected.

For the government, after just two years in office, such a view has formed. The leitmotif in the lobby narrative on the government’s media strategy is now incompetence.

It colours all reporting and increasingly undermines the government’s ability to run the news cycle. Positive stories are treated with suspicion, negative stories with credibility. For Labour, it took over a decade to reach this nadir.

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The fightback fundraiser kitemark can help free CLPs from central command and control

31/05/2012, 07:00:45 AM

by Peter Watt

The next election is going to be tight. We all know that the polls are in our favour at the moment but in all likelihood they will be considerably closer come the start of the short campaign in 2015. And along with death and taxes the only certainty in life is that elections cost a fortune. In fact if it wasn’t for the occasional aberration (possibly in 1997 and definitely in 2005) then the other certainty is that the Tories significantly outspend Labour at elections. If you take the 2010 election then the Tories spent £18m while Labour spent £8m!

Now let’s assume, quite reasonably, that Labour is still pretty broke at the next election. Let’s also assume that the unpopularity of the Tories impacts on their funding a bit and that Labour is conversely able to raise a bit more. But given this, it is an odds on assumption that the Tories will still outspend Labour once again.

And in a tight race, extra funds in the right places could really make a difference to the outcome. Now we could sit around and hope that the parties sort out the issue of party funding in time for the next election. But if a Labour victory depends on that, then then we are screwed.

Traditionally the Labour Party raises most of its money centrally. That’s not to say this money isn’t raised locally because it clearly is. But the bulk is raised centrally with the big trade union money and high-value donations going into the central campaign pot.

And then marginal seats are effectively subsidised in the long months leading up to the short campaign by the central pot. With the marginal seats being expected to raise a fair old whack themselves of course.

Other local parties support the efforts in marginal seats by sending in activists and by not receiving as much central subsidy. So a relatively large and professional central and regional campaign team ensures direct mail, leaflets, staff and so on is all targeted on the marginal seats.

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Without a revival in the south there will be no new Labour government

30/05/2012, 07:00:30 AM

by Rob Marchant

It is spring, two years into a parliament, and an activist’s mind turns to…elections (well, we are an odd lot).

Candidates start to be chosen and campaigns planned. We have a much clearer idea of what kind of opponents we will be up against in 2015. A new leadership finds its feet and gets to grips with its medium-term political strategy.

The trouble with the end of an era in politics, as in most other branches of human thought, is that in our rush to turn the page, we’re invariably faced with the baby/bathwater problem. And the next election is no exception.

New Labour is dead, and those of us who were part of it need to be sanguine about the need for moving on. But there’s a current fashion in some quarters of the party to go further: to try and convince ourselves that everything which happened after 1994 was somehow a tragic disaster, an aberration from Labour’s true path.

The truth, as ever, lies somewhere in the middle – it was neither perfect nor a disaster, but it was self-evidently a pretty good thing to be in government for thirteen years. But where Labour decides to draw that line, between what to keep from that success and what to throw away, will arguably determine our fate at the next election.

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Could Ed Miliband become the accidental prime minister?

29/05/2012, 07:00:53 AM

by Dave Talbot

As the results of Labour’s leadership election were read out, a collective sigh of relief echoed through the Tory ranks. The prevailing thought in British politics was that David Cameron had already won the next general election.

The Labour party had been demonstrably stupid. The party that had governed for thirteen years had chosen to be comforted, rather than challenged. Ed Miliband would never walk through the door of Number 10, except only as a guest. The party, so the commentariat thought, had chosen the wrong Miliband – and would suffer the electoral consequences.

For many months the analysis held true; the public just couldn’t see the junior Miliband as PM material, the party’s economic reputation was in tatters and barely disguised mutterings of discontent began to ripple through the parliamentary Labour party.

The elephant in the room was Miliband himself. His personal ratings were absolutely dire. At one point only 4% thought he’d be good in a crisis, and 5% a natural leader. Just as Cameron had to prove that the Tories cared, Miliband needed to show he wasn’t a geeky loser. Voters told Tory focus groups that they thought the Labour leader was odd, weird and strange. More odd Ed than red Ed.

How the wheel of political fortune turns. Miliband, for so long uncomfortable in his own skin and unsure of his position, has overtaken the man seemingly born to rule. Cameron’s poll ratings have slumped alarmingly, whilst Miliband’s have increased by 22% – a dramatic shift by any standard. Having triumphed in the local elections, a consistent poll lead has also emerged. It is not quite a transformation from Wallace to Winston, but the shift is in the right direction.

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