Open Road

Monday Sep 29th 2008

George gets it right

Very neat.  That was the conference verdict on George Osborne’s pledge to freeze - in effect at least - Council Tax for two years in his speech today.  Tax cuts were always looking impossible given the dire state of the nation’s finances.  But no-one ever sees any benefit from the way in which Council Tax has been pushed up above the rate of inflation under Labour’s watch - unless bin compliance inspectors and anti-smoking officers are counted as positive developments.
Salieri has never seen any reason why Council Tax should rise above the rate of inflation, ever.  Until local government raises its own taxes and pays its own way then the system is broken and the only way to manage it is by tough capping.
Judging by the mood in Birmingham George got it right.  And more to the point he managed to divert attention from the fact that unlike the estimable Vince Cable (who sometimes seems the only MP who ever understands the economy) GO was no better than Brown and Darling in spotting the credit crunch ahead.
Speaking of which, if there was ever any entity that should be brought into public ownership it would surely be clever old Vince himself.  Can’t we buy him for the nation and make him a permanent feature as special adviser in the Treasury?

The Tories - a lesson from history

Over bacon and eggs in Birmingham this morning a long-standing Tory activist offered an intriguing theory.  In his view, now would be a really bad time to win an election.  We could end up with a directionless Tory administration lost in a sea of economic troubles:  just like Ted Heath (younger readers might like to know he was Prime Minister between 1970 and 1974 and was an exponent of the namby-pamby neither one thing nor the other school of middle ground thought known as Butskellism.  Here endeth the lesson).
Heath ended up losing not one but two elections in 1974 and Labour had another five years until the Iron Lady consigned Butskellism to history - at least until now.
Could Cameron be a similar one-term wonder?  The downturn looks frightening and there was already no sign on the Tory leadership’s part of ideological fervour even before Western liberal capitalism became as popular as Gary Glitter at a High School Prom.  But under the rhetorical radar, Cameron and Osborne are still saying the right things about markets and wealth creation.
What people forget is that Heath started out himself as a free-marketer but lost his nerve while in governmnent.  That’s the lesson from history today’s Tories should remember.

Sunday Sep 28th 2008

Reality check

Two reality checks this evening in Birmingham.  The first from a long conversation with a Conservative front bencher.  His verdict:  any Brown bounce from Manchester was irrelevant, What matters is the Glenrothes by-election.  Lose that to the SNP - as seems likely - then the horrible possibility of serious damage in Scotland will concentrate minds wonderfully in Labour ranks and Brown will be defenestrated come what may.
The other is the scene in central Brum this evening.  As well as hosting the conference, Broad Street offers a strip of nighclubs and bars packed out with West Midlands youth on a Sunday night (do these people have no jobs to go to?).  Odds-on that very few of them care tuppence for which party has the best policies to deal with the credit crunch:  if they vote at all, it will be on gut instinct.  The challenge for the politicians is connecting with that to make either ‘safety first’ or ‘time for a change’ the most appealing.  Politics is frequently both very simple and hideously complex.
More tomorrow from Toryland. 

Party like it’s 1979

If a Labour revival is on the way no-one seems to have realised it in Birmingham.  A tour of the bars in the Hyatt Regency - the main conference hotel - revealed a collection of very happy delegates busy ignoring the leadership’s suggestions that they should look serious in the face of looming economic disaster.  Typical quote:  ‘Whatever he [Brown] does he’s finished.  Everyone’s fed up with him’.  Perhaps they have all read George Osborne’s economic reconstruction plan as leaked to the BBC.  Or perhaps they’ve all had too much to drink.  Either way the atmosphere is a lot more upbeat than Manchester.

Battling the bounce - the Tory conference

Although Salieri would never admit it, the possibility that the Tory conference would be - well, a bit dull ,was beginning to hang in the air like a nasty smell.  Adversity is interesting, dominance isn’t.  The polls were fantastic but the leadership would spend all its time looking as uncomplacent and downbeat as possible.  And as for the idea that the fringe would be a bubbling fervent of new ideas, backers of that one had obviously forgotten that Tories only have one real idea:  getting and staying in power.  Ideas are for socialists (and look where they have got us):  the Tories are rightly proud of being the stupid party.
But now as Salieri speeds toward Brum (£15 on Virgin for a first-class upgrade - very reasonable) things are livening up.  It might be a paradox for Brown to pose as the voice of experience when he landed us in this mess but it seems to have given him a lift.  And frankly economics would never be DC’s Mastermind specialist subject.  So a lot hangs on whether Gorgeous George can repeat his triumph of last year.  It could be very interesting…