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Embarrassment for David Cameron over Tory hopefuls’ lobbying links
Mar 14th
Conservative drive to ‘clean up politics’ faces test over failure by several candidates to fully declare their work for lobby firms, says Nick Mathiason
David Cameron’s drive to clean up politics is facing an embarrassing public test after it emerged that a number of prospective Conservative MPs have failed fully to declare in their campaign literature that they work for lobby firms representing powerful business interests.
The revelation threatens to destabilise Tory hopefuls in the upcoming election as voters in constituencies where alleged “secret lobbyist candidates” are running will be the subject of a targeted online advertising blitz on Google and Facebook orchestrated by 38 Degrees, an innovative online campaign group.
Only last month, Cameron warned that lobbying “was the next big scandal waiting to happen”. But campaigners claim that while secret lobby links extend across all parties, the Conservatives are the worst offenders.
Last night, the Tories hit back saying they “are committed to shining the light of openness onto the lobbying world” and suggested Labour candidates’ links to lobby firms were far more extensive. But several Tory candidates seem to have kept back details of their work for lobbying firms, including:
■ Priti Patel, the Tory candidate for Witham, a new seat in Essex. On her website, Patel says she is a director of a company providing “business and communication strategy” advice but fails to clarify that she works for one of the world’s most powerful lobby firms, Weber Shandwick, personally advising Microsoft and bank lobby group, International Financial Services London.
■ Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative candidate for Labour-held Portsmouth North, who is a 15% shareholder in lobby firm Media Intelligence Partners, which boasts among its clients Sony, Orange, and DHL. Mordaunt is also listed as the firm’s director in Companies House. Mordaunt also worked for 10 months last year at leading public PR firm Hanover.
■ George Eustice, Cameron’s former press secretary, fighting the three-way marginal in Camborne and Redruth, Cornwall, has failed to disclose on his campaign site that he works for powerful Westminster lobby firm Portland, which acts for Google, Tesco and McDonald’s.
■ Prospective Labour MP Emma Reynolds on Friday hurriedly updated her biography on her campaign website to include details of her work for lobby outfit Cogitamus, which advises the biggest names in the construction industry on government relations.
The Observer is aware of a significant number of parliamentary candidates who will be unmasked in coming days as part of a co-ordinated campaign by Spinwatch and 38 Degrees aimed at introducing a statutory register of interests. This would force lobby firms and parliamentary candidates to clarify who they represent and work for.
David Babbs, 38 Degrees executive director, said: “The election is a chance to clean up parliament, which is why it’s time for all PPCs to come clean about their links to lobbying. 38 Degrees members are going to work together to make sure that those people who want to be our MPs promise to put their voters first, not their friends in big business. 38 Degrees is a 100,000-strong, people-powered movement, and during this election we plan to work together to cut through the spin and make sure politicians answer to us. We’ll be challenging PPCs on their lobbying links, and if they refuse to draw a line under their past business interests we’ll be raising money for ads in local papers to make sure local voters hear the facts.”
Tamasin Cave, from the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency, said: “The public is calling for – and deserves – a new type of politics, so it’s vital that prospective MPs are fully transparent about their links to lobbying. If they are helping powerful companies get privileged access to key politicians in the runup to the election, we have a right to know who they are lobbying for and which policies or contracts are being discussed. Covert lobbying harms public trust. Lobbying firms clearly hire these parliamentary hopefuls to both open the door to politics now and to secure a direct line to any future government. If you want to influence politics, it pays to employ political insiders.”
Eustice defended the lack of information about his work for Portland, saying his campaign website was intended to set out his beliefs. The one-time Cameron spin doctor also said there was a welter of publicity when he left Cameron to join Portland. In addition, he had been a tireless campaigner for more transparency in the public relations arena.
Mordaunt said her role at both Media Intelligence Partners and Hanover was centred on communications work rather than public affairs. She explicitly denied she was a lobbyist and said she supported the campaign for a statutory register of lobbying interests.
Patel did not comment on her links with Weber Shandwick. But the firm’s corporate communications and public affairs chairman, Jon McLeod, confirmed that Patel advised Microsoft and the International Financial Services London. He stated: “Weber Shandwick is clearly an agency with a political dimension. We would not be good at our job if we weren’t.” McLeod confirmed he was a vocal supporter of legislation to create a statutory register of lobby firms.
Last night, the Tories said they would introduce new rules to stop central government bodies using public money to hire lobbyists and “push for the lobbying industry to ensure greater transparency of their operations through self-regulation, and we would be prepared to legislate if this fails”.
Cave said: “As David Cameron said just last month, this isn’t a minor issue with minor consequences. It’s not just public policy that’s affected by lobbying – government contracts worth billions are potentially at stake. Cameron has spoken about the urgent need to shine the light of transparency on lobbying. But words alone won’t bring public scrutiny: we need new rules that force lobbyists to come clean about their activities.”
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Brown draws flak over role in handling military budget
Mar 14th
Cameron uses prime minister’s questions to challenge Brown over military funding claims made to the Chilcot inquiry
It was possibly the most supercharged prime minister’s questions of the year so far. At 12:09pm last Wednesday the ritual jousting turned toxic as David Cameron challenged Gordon Brown’s testimony at the Iraq inquiry days earlier.
Brown had told the Chilcot inquiry that he never refused urgent requests for more military funding. Cameron did not believe him, citing two former chiefs of the defence staff who had criticised the prime minister for offering the inquiry evidence that was “disingenuous” and “dissembling”.
Several Labour backbenchers could not hold their tongues. But, they roared, Lord Guthrie and Admiral Lord Boyce were “Tories”. The implication was damning; these men might once have been characters of honour whose duty was to serve the nation but now their criticism could be dismissed as readily as, well, Cameron’s.
It was a poisonous putdown. In their view, the opinions of two of the most powerful figures in modern military history had become corrupted to the extent they were no longer impartial.
Some blamed Sir Richard Dannatt, the former army chief, for politicising the military. After all, Dannatt’s consistent criticism of defence spending in Afghanistan had preceded reports that he would become a defence adviser to the Conservatives. Beyond the hullabaloo over political bias weighed against genuine concern over soldiers’ welfare, the debate boils down to whether Guthrie and Co have a point? Did Brown starve the military of funding when he was chancellor, leaving the forces short of vital equipment?
The answer may depend on whose side you are on. Guthrie and Boyd remain adamant that Brown mishandled the defence budget when chancellor and that his prudence meant, for instance, fewer troop-carrying helicopters in Afghanistan, one of the most vexing issues facing commanders in Helmand province. Their critique was bolstered by an inquest verdict hours before Wednesday’s Commons exchange. Four soldiers were unlawfully killed after troops were given “inadequate” training, according to Wiltshire coroner David Masters.
Brown, too, remains unmoved. He told Cameron that “every request” made by defence officials for “urgent operational requirements” was met. In fact, said the prime minister, £18bn had been invested in Afghanistan and Iraq on top of the military budget. In real terms, spending was up. The Tories, claimed the prime minister, cut it by 30% in the 1990s. But the truth, as so often, is somewhere in between.
Analysts point out that the MoD has a long-term core budget while the additional cost of fighting wars comes from the Treasury reserve. Many believe this dynamic fuelled disagreement between Brown and the military men.
However, the future for defence spending appears less ambiguous. Swingeing cuts are a certainty. Days before last week’s PMQ, the defence select committee bemoaned a £21bn funding gap for scheduled military projects. If they win the election, the Tories will have to preside over huge cuts in military spending. The question is, will Guthrie and Boyd sit quietly on the sidelines when that happens?
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Conservative defector condemns party’s ‘vile letter’ and hostility towards Europe
Mar 14th
MEP Edward McMillan-Scott accuses Tories of euro-scepticism and ‘double standards’ for expelling him while only suspending Lord Archer
The former leader of the Tories in Europe launches a scathing attack on David Cameron’s Conservatives today, accusing them of “visceral euroscepticism”, “twisted” thinking and bullying tactics that forced him out of the party.
Edward McMillan-Scott, who defected to the Liberal Democrats on Friday, has also accused the Tories of “extraordinary double standards” for expelling him permanently, having only suspended Lord Archer, who was sentenced to four years in prison for perjury in 2001.
Writing in today’s Observer, McMillan-Scott, who remains a vice-president of the European parliament, says the Tories unleashed a “campaign of vilification” against him after he claimed that Michal Kaminski, the Polish MEP who now leads their centre-right group in the EU, had an antisemitic, homophobic and racist track record.
A strong pro-European and member of the Tory party for 43 years, McMillan-Scott gives voice to years of frustration at the party’s hostile attitudes to the EU under present and past leaders, including William Hague.
In his outspoken attack on the party over its handling of his expulsion, McMillan-Scott says he has been smeared by Tory press officers who have tried to claim he is the one who holds antisemitic views.
He adds that they have distorted facts about his defection and claims that the party produced no documents to support its case when he appealed against expulsion. “I am not bitter, but they are twisted. It is not a nice party now,” he writes.
He accuses Cameron of tolerating eurosceptics who depart from the party line while persecuting him, a pro-European, for daring to express sincerely held doubts about the leadership credentials of a controversial fellow MEP.
“David Cameron shields his europhobes,” he writes. “No murmur was made when last weekend Lord Tebbit in effect encouraged Conservatives to vote Ukip in the general election against the Speaker, John Bercow. The dog whistle is really at a lower pitch: that Ukip supporters know that there is a real home for them, back in the Conservative party.”
Last night, speaking from the Liberal Democrat spring conference in Birmingham, McMillan-Scott said the party had shown “massive double standards” by expelling him while suspending Jeffrey Archer for five years.
When the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, mentioned McMillan-Scott’s name at a rally on Friday night there was a huge roar from activists. Yesterday he was seated in the front row for a question-and-answer session, so Clegg could welcome him.
The row over McMillan-Scott blew up last year when he stood as vice-president of the European parliament against Kaminski, who was Hague’s choice. Following McMillan-Scott’s stand, Timothy Kirkhope, leader of the Conservative MEPs, withdrew the party whip.
On 15 September, without any prior notification, McMillan-Scott was expelled from the Conservative party after 25 years as an MEP, four years as leader of the MEPs and three years on the party’s board.
• Hague is also likely to come under fire if he declines an invitation to appear this Thursday before a parliamentary committee investigating the granting of a peerage to Lord Ashcroft .
The three Tory members of the public administration committee – David Burrowes, Ian Liddell-Grainger and Charles Walker – have already said that they will not attend the one-off meeting, at which confidential Cabinet Office records relating to the decision to grant Ashcroft a peerage in 2000 will be discussed.
But the event is now in danger of running into farce. Ashcroft, a “non-dom” who does not pay UK tax on his overseas earnings, is unlikely to appear in person and Hague, too, looks doubtful.
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Edward McMillan-Scott: Standing up to extremism in Europe cost me my place with Tories
Mar 14th
What the Conservatives say publicly about Europe is not what they really think, says the MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber
William Hague has been using positive words to describe the Conservative party’s future relations in government with our EU partners. I have been around the higher circles of the party for long enough to know that a visceral euroscepticism has been growing there since John Major’s day. I had a stand-up row with Hague when, while leader of the Tory MEPs, he tried to get me to back his “Never to the Euro” ticket.
It was chilling to hear the then party leader say to one very senior spokesman at an EU meeting some years ago: “We can say what we like here, but it will be different when we are in government.” I should have left then, instead of carrying on the pro-European fight from within.
David Cameron shields his europhobes. No murmur was made when last weekend Lord Tebbit in effect encouraged Conservatives to vote Ukip against the Speaker, John Bercow, in the general election. The dog whistle is really at a lower pitch: that Ukip supporters know that there is a real home for them, back in the Conservative party. Dan Hannan MEP plays the same game, even declaring that he had resigned his spokesmanship in Europe to campaign full-time for a referendum on EU in-or-out. No slapdown there, either; certainly no expulsion. But then he is a chum of Sam Cameron’s; they were at Marlborough College together.
My decision to join the Liberal Democrats this weekend was made easier by the vile letter the lawyers conducting my appeal against expulsion last year from the Conservative party received last weekend. They described it to me as “intemperate”, and advised me that, since the party refused to supply any documents about my expulsion, there was no hope of a fair final hearing next Thursday at Tory HQ. So I withdrew from the appeal and thereby resigned from the Conservative party I have served more or less faithfully for 43 years.
No doubt my successful stand for re-election last July as European parliament vice-president against the “official” candidate from Poland’s Law and Justice party, Michal Kaminski, put forward by Cameron’s controversial new group, caused him some discomfiture. But the campaign of vilification against me when I explained my reasons – that Kaminski had a recent antisemitic, homophobic and racist past – was so bizarre that it began to attract attention.
Indeed, Toby Helm in this newspaper was the most attentive. He had been present at the national commemoration in July 2001 of one of the most notorious massacres of the second world war in Nazi-occupied Poland. At Jedwabne in July 1941, more than 400 Jews were rounded up by their Polish neighbours and herded into a barn where they were burned.
At the time of the apology, Kaminski was the local MP and he made it his business to organise opposition to the commemoration. He denies this now, as he denies so much else of his easily discovered past, using the Nick Griffin defence: “If I said it then, I would not say it today.”
Last week Cameron was interviewed by the Jewish Chronicle and assured its readers that he would bear down hard on extremism in Britain. This sits uneasily with a man who propitiates it in Europe.
Conservative press officers hounded Labour over Damian McBride. The same pack have been repeatedly reported to me by journalists as using heavy tactics. One hapless Yorkshire Post journalist was called one week by six Tory boys demanding a right of reply for Kaminski. He coolly and properly said that, if he accepted that, he would also have to give space to Nick Griffin. The same team put it about that I was antisemitic because I once met Hamas – actually to tell them to stand for election. They are out again this weekend distorting the facts about my defection to the Lib Dems. I am not bitter, but they are twisted. It is not a nice party now.
A move to the Lib Dems is easier because I have known, liked and respected Nick Clegg for some years, whether as a key negotiator on trade while Sir Leon Brittan was EU commissioner or later as an MEP.
Most of my family are liberals and I am comfortable joining the Liberal family. From being a liberal Conservative I have become a conservative Liberal. And it is not a nasty party.
Edward McMillan-Scott is MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber and continues to sit as an independent vice-president of the European parliament
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Lib Dems refuse to support Tory spending cuts
Mar 14th
Nick Clegg describes George Osborne’s plans to slash budgets as ‘economic masochism’
The Liberal Democrats have distanced themselves from the Conservatives by warning they would not support plans to cut public spending too early in the next parliament.
The party’s leader, Nick Clegg, said early deep cuts would be “economic masochism”. It came as the Lib Dem treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, hit out at the Tories’ economic plans. In his speech at the party’s spring conference in Birmingham, Cable accused the Conservatives of engaging in a “phoney war over cuts” that would affect millions of lives. He also hit out at George Osborne, the shadow chancellor.
Cable said the Tories were trying to present their economic team as “‘Slasher’ Osborne and the Hard Men”. But, he added, they appeared to have taken cuts straight after the election off the table – at least for now. “Or at least that’s what I think they said. I’d love to attempt a critique of the Tories’ budget plans, but I have no idea what they are. I think the present line on the budget is: ‘Trust us and we’ll tell you after the election’,” he told cheering delegates.
He added: “People are desperate to see the back of this Labour government. But they don’t want the same old Tories. And make no mistake they are exactly the same.”
He also claimed that David Cameron’s party and its “cronies” were trying to create financial panic to frighten people into voting for them. “Playing fast and loose with the financial stability of this country for political gain – destabilising the markets – is dangerous, irresponsible and wrong,” said Cable.
He did not limit his criticism to the Conservatives. Cable, having famously compared Gordon Brown to Mr Bean, this time made delegates laugh when he said the prime minister sounded like the Chelsea footballer Ashley Cole, pleading: “Give me another chance.”
The Lib Dems had identified £15bn worth of reductions in public spending that would cut the deficit, he said. The party has come under an increasing level of scrutiny as the polls narrow. Observers are watching for any signs to suggest whether the Lib Dems would be prepared to make a pact with Labour or the Conservatives in the event of a hung parliament. That is the scenario suggested by two polls released today.
YouGov research for the Sunday Times finds that the Tories’ lead has narrowed from five points to four over the past week. An ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph places Cameron’s party seven points ahead – not enough for a majority. The same research suggests that the Lib Dems have strengthened their position and are now on 21 points.
Clegg will discuss a hung parliament when he addresses MPs today. “People often ask me what the Liberal Democrats will do after the general election. Some days I read we’re planning a deal with Labour, some days that we’re planning a deal with the Conservatives, other days that we’ll refuse to talk to anyone at all,” he is reported as planning to say.
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Messy, funny and a little bit irritating: Samantha Cameron on ‘the Dave I fell in love with’
Mar 13th
Wife of Conservative leader David Cameron steps out of the shadows and firmly into the spotlight
Her buzz words are obvious: “strong” and “reliable”; “passion” and “drive”.
Sprinkle in the references to his being “incredibly funny and really interesting and clever”, too, and Samantha Cameron’s election-honed lexicon is near perfect for getting those boxes ticked for her husband on polling day. Which, presumably, is the purpose behind this, her first ever television interview.
The wife of the Conservative leader David Cameron steps out of the shadows and firmly into the spotlight tomorrow night when she is grilled – well, gently sautéed – by ITV’s Trevor McDonald about life with “Dave”, the would-be prime minister.
On their first meeting: “It was a sort of holiday romance”. On her attraction to him: “He was quite different from any of my friends”.
On “Dave” the husband: “He’s definitely not perfect and like any husband he has lots of very irritating habits.”
And on his prime-ministerial ambitions: “So much of the Dave that I first met and fell in love with is Dave the politician. “.
After Gordon Brown’s highly personal interview with Piers Morgan last month, Conservative Central Office will be anxiously monitoring reaction to Mrs Cameron’s performance, particularly now that the papers have branded her “SamCam”.
Could Cameron’s good-looking 38-year-old wife even depose the formidable and accomplished “tweeting” PR, Sarah Brown, to become Britain’s favourite political wife?
This interview is the first of some eight high-profile events to be conducted by Samantha Cameron. As David Cameron himself tells Sir Trevor: “I think you’re about to see, in the election … probably a lot more of Samantha as the trail gets hotter.”
She’s his “secret weapon”, so how is he going to deploy her?, questions Sir Trevor. “Well, she’s one of those secret weapons that will have a pretty clear view of how she wants to be deployed,” replies Cameron.
Of aristocratic heritage, a high-powered businesswoman in her own right, and a working mother – Ivan, the first of their three children and who suffered from severe epilepsy and cerebral palsy, died aged six in February last year – she has hitherto steered clear of such direct politicking. But that all changed with Sir Trevor.
Just as Sarah Brown has humanised Gordon as “my husband, my hero”, Samantha’s interview serves to flesh out Dave, the man.
“I’d say one of the brilliant things about him is he loves cooking. But he, you know, he makes a terrible mess,” she says.
“He is not very good at clearing up as he goes along. He is not very good at picking up his clothes. He’s a terrible channel flicker. I have to be quite firm about him not fiddling with his phone and his BlackBerry too much, ‘cos it can be, you know, quite annoying.”
She continues: “He’s a fantastic dad. [The children], they really make him laugh.” She gives insight, too, into their work-life balance, he as party leader and she as creative director of the upmarket luxury goods firm Smythsons, as they split their busy lives between homes in north Kensington and Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire.
“We do have very different jobs … But we talk a lot at home. His job is fascinating … when he comes home for supper, there’s always lots to talk about.”
The couple have been together 18 years, meeting through Cameron’s younger sister Clare, a close friend of Samantha’s and who invited her to join them on a family holiday in 1992.
At the time, Samantha, the upper-class bohemian daughter of the Lincolnshire landowner Sir Reginald Sheffield, and a descendent of Nell Gwyn, was studying art at Bristol Polytechnic, and hanging out and shooting pool with musician friends.
Cameron was based in London and working as a special adviser to Norman Lamont, who was the Conservative chancellor at the time. She was 21 and he was 25.
“He was quite different from any of my friends and anyone who I’d sort of met before,” she says. “And I found him really fascinating. He had a very serious job, but he was, you know, he was incredibly funny and really interesting and clever, and we just got on really, really well from day one.”
Two years later they were engaged. “I was very young when we got engaged. I was only 23. But I think I felt fairly confident that … Dave was the one for me for, for lots of reasons. He’s a very strong kind of reliable person.”
On his decision to enter the leadership contest for the Conservatives, she said: “I was very encouraging. It’s a big commitment. But I really felt he was right for the job. I thought he had the right views, he had the passion and the drive.”
Acknowledging that their life together has not been without tragedy, she says: “We’ve been through some fairly tough times – and I can honestly say that I don’t think in all that time he’s ever let me down. And he’s always been incredibly strong, and kind and supportive.”
Now it is her turn to be publicly supportive. “If he did become prime minister I would be incredibly proud of him. And, and our life would change – and that is daunting – I’m sure we would have to make sacrifices.
“But for me personally it would be a huge honour to do everything that I possibly could to support him and make sure that he could do the job to the very best of his abilities.”
Analysis
Soft soap, and other handy hubby hints
It’s stretching it a bit, isn’t it? You look at David Cameron, someone tells you that he’s not very good at clearing up as he goes along, and that’s the most annoying thing about him.
I mean, sure, I bet he doesn’t do a lot of washing up. If she’d said: “He has this insufferable sense of entitlement, which extends to a high-handed failure in all aspects of domesticity,” I would buy that more, even thought it would effectively mean the same thing.
This, though, it doesn’t even sound that personal. It sounds like she’s flicked through Take-A-Break, put together a compendium of innocuous things women say about men, chosen the most innocuous and ta-da! Here he is, a three-dimensional human being, not-very-convincing-wart and all!
Sarah Brown, meanwhile, said on Mumsnet last month: “I am protective of our big family Sunday lunches round the table. No exceptions made, no football for DH [darling husband] or Moshi Monsters for the boys!”
Sure, because that’s exactly what he looks like. A man who has to be torn away to the table, because otherwise he’d be yelling at the telly. Anything you’d like to add to this picture? Perhaps he’s in his underpants, drinking a stubby? Or is that Homer Simpson? Sorry, ladies, but this is all so unlikely.
Michelle Obama set this scene. Under the cover of the critiquing her spouse, she exclusively revealed he has no fashion sense; he sometimes makes annoying remarks; and on occasion, this tendency and the ignorance coincide, exploding like potassium permanganate in an annoying remark about her wardrobe. The formula became: don’t say he’s perfect. That sounds a bit Stepford Wife and will damage your credibility, and not just as first lady. But likewise, don’t say anything that might be meaningfully true. Where do you think you are, Relate? This is the campaign trial.
It’s an absolute knife-edge between something that sounds like a believable aspect of a human being, but could be used against him by an opponent (“a bit flaky”; “tiny penis”) and something so saccharine they might as well have left first lady at home.
Personally, I think Sam Cam fell off this particular knife (she doesn’t even call her husband straightforwardly messy! He’s messy while he’s cooking. Even when he bad, ladies and gentlemen, he good). Better luck next knife.
Zoe Williams
Trevor McDonald meets David Cameron on ITV1, Sunday 14 March at 10.15pm
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Letters: Fear and loathing in New Labour
Mar 13th
In light of the articles by Simon Jenkins (The bankers lied. And Darling, merely a puppet on their string, knows it, 12 March) and Mehdi Hasan (It’s defeatist nonsense to talk of a crisis of leftwing thinking, 12 March), it seems evident that there is the need for a rearticulating of the political discourse. The hegemony of neoliberal thinking has defined the political space for 30 years, so much so that even in the present crisis, when we all should be marching on the streets against the bankers, New Labour is still running in fear of framing the debate in social democratic terms.
For the 30 years the right have had a stranglehold on how we define freedom. The political classes have been fearful of any reference to the state as a means of solving problems. Individual freedom, essentially defined in terms of freedom from the state, has been their mantra. For example, George Osborne’s first reaction to the nationalisation of the banks was to jump enthusiastically up and down, claiming that old socialist nationalisation is here again. Cameron is careful that his slogan that there is such a thing as society is followed up by a clear rejection of any idea that this means a bigger state.
The current crisis has left both parties searching for ways to rearticulate a progressive politics, but it is up to the left to grab this opportunity, because they won’t have another like this, to reshape the political discourse and redefine the state and its relation to individual freedom. This is a hegemonic struggle to reclaim the terms of liberty and equality in social democratic terms.
Robert Proni
London
• Donald Hirsch is quite right to say that decent employers should pay a living wage of at least £7.14 an hour, and more in expensive areas (The wages of dignity, 10 March). However, we also need to realise that the legal minimum wage of £5.80 an hour is not being paid to many thousands of employees. The root of the problem is that the statutory enforcement powers are held by Revenue & Customs, and they are failing to do their job properly. That is hardly surprising as there are only 123 enforcement staff for the whole of the UK.
In Hackney, where I live, only 258 investigations have been carried out in seven years. Anecdotal evidence of illegal avoidance abounds, but the onus is on the individual to complain, and few feel able to do so. Ideally the enforcement powers should be transferred to local authorities, but in the meantime high-profile awareness campaigns could be organised by councils with advice and information points located in their buildings. This policy will be part of the Hackney Labour manifesto for the forthcoming local elections.
Tim Webb
London
• Neil Kinnock (Letters, 10 March) utterly fails to comprehend the burning sense of disillusionment that has driven so many former Labour supporters either into cynical abandonment of politics or, like John Kampfner, to embrace the Lib Dems. The charge against the New Labour project is not that it did not deliver the benefits he lists. It did, and there were others which curiously he omits, above all the lancing of the Northern Ireland carbuncle and significant constitutional reforms – devolution and human rights legislation. The charge is that it squandered its massive parliamentary majorities and the goodwill that the electorate bestowed on it to transform a divided, sick society.
On the contrary, it took to its bosom the neoliberal ideology that nourished that divide, extending privatisation; it renounced and even demonised public sector initiatives and went back on the welfare state concordat that was the hallmark of the postwar Labour settlement. So, Labour administrations have presided over the widest gulf ever between the haves and have-nots and now the inevitable massive recession. We have witnessed a generation of politicians intent on feathering their own nests, the expenses “scandal” being a minor part of this. Not to speak, as Neil Kinnock dare not, of the criminal adventure that was the Iraq war. I, a onetime Labour activist, like John Kampfner, have joined the Lib Dems, who I see as a catalyst for, and working partner of, a rejuvenated Labour party once it is purged of the New Labour virus.
Benedict Birnberg
London
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This week: Rahm Emanuel, Corey Haim and Samantha Cameron
Mar 13th
Lucy Mangan on the people hitting the headlines this week
Naked rage
Rahm Emanuel
Come in, Malcolm Tucker, your time is up. This year Frothing Politico award goes to the White House chief of staff who was accused by Democratic congressman Eric Massa this week of “inappropriate behaviour”. Massa, an opponent of healthcare reform, claims he was showering “naked as a jaybird” in a locker room when an equally naked Emanuel burst in and started lambasting him for not voting for Obama’s budget.
“Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?” Massa added plaintively. Well, as it happens, Mr Massa, yes I do.
Lost boy
Corey Haim
So farewell then, Corey Haim, the Corey that was not Feldman but was great friends with him. The actor who came to fame in early 80s goth-shrine The Lost Boys (which still totally wipes the floor with your weedy Twilight nerd-fodder, today’s teens, because we had Kiefer Sutherland who grew up to be Jack Bauer and you have R-Pattz who will grow up to be Hugh Grant. If he’s lucky) was found dead of a suspected overdose at the age of 38.
Somehow he parlayed his success in Lost Boys into roles in the forgettable and forgotten Watchers, License to Drive and Dream a Little Dream. In recent years he and his friend had also starred in their own reality show called The Two Coreys.
But not no more. Thirtysomething teenagers everywhere shall mourn the passing.
Election aide
Samantha Cameron
The smile, the fringe, the dainty diminutive – Sam Cam’s got it all and the Tories are going to use it. Having successfully fought off Ed Vaizey’s recent suggestion that she might have voted for Blair in 1997, she is now being readied to humanise Cameron and help him engage with voters when he hits the campaign trail.
It is thought that the daughter of a baronet, stepdaughter of a viscount and creative director of Smythson is that much closer to The People than most of her husband’s exquisitely awful cohort and that her ability to out-dew Sarah Brown may be the deciding factor in what looks likely to be a closer-fought election than expected.
I suggest we all leave the country for the duration and send in postal votes. Already, already, it is too, too much.
What they said
“Paint Never Dries.” Theatre blogger West End Whingers on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera sequel, Love Never Dies.
“From the way he is able to dress it would seem that Mr Woodward’s little hobby is highly lucrative and this would also account for his non-enthusiasm in securing employment.” The labour exchange notes on Tom Jones (real name Woodward) from his days on the dole in the early 1960s.
“Did I really earn this or did I just wear you all down?” Sandra Bullock accepts her Best Actress Oscar.
What we’ve learned
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has ousted Bill Gates as the world’s richest man
The Shambles, in York, has been voted Britain’s most picturesque street
Half of all towns have five supermarkets within a 10-minute drive
Britain’s most expensive house, in Grosvenor Square, London, is worth £250m
Elgar will cease to appear on £20 notes at the end of June
… and what we haven’t
Whether jumping plant lice will vanquish the Japanese knotweed
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MEP defects to Liberal Democrats after Tory links with extremists
Mar 12th
Edward McMillan-Scott tells David Cameron he is leaving party because it propagates ‘extremism abroad’
A former leader of the Conservatives in the European parliament today defected to the Liberal Democrats in protest at the Tories’ decision to form a group with “extremist” politicians.
Edward McMillan-Scott, a veteran campaigner for human rights who led the Tory group in Strasbourg between 1997-2001, told David Cameron he was leaving the party because it propagates “extremism abroad”.
In a statement released to coincide with the opening of the Lib Dem spring conference, the vice-president of the European parliament said: “I have long fought against totalitarianism and the extremism and religious persecution it brings. It was wrong of Cameron to associate with MEPs who have extremist pasts.”
McMillan-Scott was deprived of the Tory whip last year after he stood successfully for the vice-presidency of the European parliament. This meant that the Tories’ key new European ally, the Polish MEP Michal Kaminski, was deprived of the post.
Kaminski then insisted on assuming the leadership of the Tories’ new group, the European Conservatives and Reformists, formed after last year’s European Parliamentary elections in the wake of Cameron’s pledge to withdraw from the mainstream EPP-ED group.
Kaminski, a member of the rightwing Law and Justice party, opposed a national apology in 2001 for the notorious anti-semitic pogrom at Jedwabne in which hundreds of Polish Jews were burnt to death in a barn in 1941.
In a letter to Cameron, McMillan-Scott wrote: “You continue to refuse to accept that Michal Kaminski, who now leads the ECR and against whom I stood and won re-election as vice-president of the European parliament last July, has had ‘antisemitic, homophobic and racist links’. You say that you are against extremism at home, yet you propitiate it abroad.”
In an article for the Yorkshire Post the MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber wrote: “It was wrong of Cameron to associate with MEPs who have extremist pasts in his new European alliance.
“Next Tuesday, his associates in Latvia will no doubt join, as usual, in commemoration of the role of the Waffen SS during the war. His partners in Poland will continue to voice their opinions on the vile anti-Semitic Radio Maryja and preach homophobia.”
McMillan-Scott’s remarks about Latvia were a reference to Roberts Zile, a member of the For Fatherland and Freedom Party (LNNK), some of whose members commemorate the Latvian Waffen SS. Zile says the ceremony, attended by members of other political parties, is to commemorate soldiers fighting for independence from the Soviet Union.
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How many economists does it take to sign a letter?
Mar 14th
Posted by William Keegan in Business
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Confusion over recent round robins that economists have sent to newspapers has revived all the old jokes, but it’s no laughing matter
There has been a spate of round-robin letters from economists to the newspapers recently, superficially suggesting there are huge divides between practitioners of the dismal science, and giving non-economists a field day. Thus we have had a revival of the old joke about economists being laid end to end; and any day now we shall be asked once again how many economists it takes to change a light bulb.
The old jokes are the best, but they come in various guises. One version is that if all economists were laid end to end, they would still not reach a conclusion; another is that if all economists were laid end to end they would reach a conclusion. I prefer the latter, which I think is subtler, and (I believe) was coined by none other than George Bernard Shaw. As for the lightbulb joke, anyone who has recently had a house rewired will tell you that changing lightbulbs these days requires a PhD in electrical engineering, and is therefore not a laughing matter.
But now for the real joke. It turns out that the letter from 20 economists to another Sunday newspaper that started the furore was originally intended as a demonstration of how united the economics profession was on the question of deficits and cuts – ie a return to budgetary discipline was required in due course, but not yet; not until it was safe to act without risking turning what even the prime minister calls a “fragile recovery” into a full-blown depression.
Unfortunately the letter was dressed up as backing for “savage cuts soon”, and presented as endorsing the Tory position – or, at least, one of the Tory positions, because Messrs Cameron and Osborne have been going around the mulberry bush on this issue , blowing hot and cold, sometimes, it seems, depending on the outside temperature.
The result was that a letter intended to demonstrate “consensus” provoked a furious reaction from Keynes’s biographer Robert Skidelsky and others, who highlighted the danger of “instant cuts” when the economy is so fragile.
The episode has revived memories of the occasion on 13 March 1981 when 364 economists wrote to the Times attacking the monetarist policies of the time, and in particular Sir Geoffrey Howe’s apparently deflationary budgetary stance. Since then the 364 economists have been the butt of endless jokes from the Conservative Party (although not its Wet Wing) for “having got it wrong” because eventually there was a recovery. But what the economists did not know at the time of writing was that the government had secretly changed its policy, and decided on a strategy to get the exchange rate down, thereby encouraging an economic recovery. Even so, it was not much of a recovery, because unemployment went on rising until 1986.
In an article entitled “Economists and Policy Letters”, the veteran economist Max Steuer of the London School of Economics takes his colleagues to task for writing such letters, and for causing confusion by signing up to letters using wording with which they are not always happy, but which help them to make a point or “stand up and be counted.”
Given that the recent letters have been concerned with the budget deficit, what especially irks Max Steuer is that “it is apparent that very few of those signing any of the letters have done work on the issues of United Kingdom public debt. What we really want from economists is careful work on this matter. It has to be pretty rapid work to offer useful guidance on current policy. And really good work will not only do that, it will help in improving the general body of knowledge on national debt, work which will be applicable in other situations.”
Well, I am all in favour of good work on the national debt, but, with due respect to Steuer, I think those familiar with their Keynes can be allowed to attack the idea of savage and instant cuts in the deficit when the recovery is far from secure. And this is not, pace a senior BBC political commentator, a “micro” issue of timing or detail. It is a very important macro issue. One of the worst macro economic policy mistakes made since the second world war was when the Japanese introduced a sharp increase in consumption taxes in 1997, when their recovery was still fragile, and knocked that fragile recovery for six, thereby consolidating the deflationary situation which became known as the “lost decade”.
An example of an economist who signed the letter that was presented as favouring instant cuts, but who does not favour them himself, is Roger Bootle of Capital Economics. In his new book, The Trouble With Markets, Bootle notes: “Bearing in mind the fact that the public debt is owed to ourselves, I believe that the greatest threats to economic wellbeing arising from the size of the public debt are posed not by the debt itself, but rather by how we might react to it; that is, by excessive early tax rises, which could have the effect of prolonging the depression.”
Bootle also has soothing words for those who, despite the way the financial sector brought the economy to its knees (and caused the deficit “crisis”), are worried that the British economy will somehow “lose out” from a contraction of that financial sector.
“A good deal of what has gone on in financial markets has been positively harmful,” he writes (and he has observed those markets at very close quarters over the years). “The release of resources from the financial sector and their re-employment elsewhere will bring no net loss and may even bring a net gain.”
This, as he says, requires an end to the recession and the re-employment of those resources. Meanwhile, I should add, if what we are witnessing now is a “recovery”, then we need a recovery from that recovery.