The Progressive

The £120 effect?

Gordon Brown’s well received Labour Party Conference speech mentioned how he felt ‘stung’ by the reaction to the abolition of the 10p tax rate and he pledged that ‘where I've made mistakes I'll put my hand up and try to put them right’.

This month, basic rate taxpayers earning between £6,035 and £40,835 will start benefiting from the increase in the personal allowance announced following the abolition of the 10p rate. According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies this gives £120 to ‘almost all' of these basic rate taxpayers. The first £60 is included in the September pay packet - which is currently being received by taxpayers - with subsequent payments of £10 for the rest of the tax year.

 

Although not a huge sum, the money arrives at a time when many are feeling the pinch of higher food and energy prices. Will the public feel that the payments combined with the Prime Minister’s words of contrition do enough to make amends?

Omar Salem is chair of London Young Labour and a member of the Young Labour executive

Could things get better for Gordon? My top 3 suggestions for the autumn fight back

The successes of Team GB at the Beijing Olympics have ensured that Gordon's summer has been a good deal better than it might have been. If he can keep his nerve and if he is prepared to grasp a few nettles then the golden rays of summer may just shine through to the autumn and beyond.

Here are 3 popular and populist things that Gordon should, in my humble estimation, seriously consider implementing as part of an autumn fight back:

1. He should go back to the future and rediscover the radicalism that as Chancellor saw him slap a £5bn windfall tax on privatised utilities in 1997 to fund job schemes. Yes Gordon you really should introduce a windfall tax on the energy companies. Such a levy would demonstrate whose side we are on and draw some important red lines between ourselves and the Tories.

2. Announce a Royal Commission into the effects of academic selection on standards and social exclusion (similar to the one held in Northern Ireland - which recommending the ending of selection at age 11). This would force the Tories to defend existing selection and challenge Cameron's claim that the Tories are the true party of progress.

3. Follow the Welsh and put an end to hospital car park charges - believe me when I tell you that this would be very well received in many parts of the nation and would give a concrete example of how fairness needs to be at the centre of public policy.

So what do you think? Too simplistic? Too radical or not radical enough?

Calm down, calm down!

Some of my fellow Labour bloggers, party activists and members have short memories. Less than 12 months ago the Tories were disintegrating over academic selection and Labour was 14% ahead in the polls. The next election is not due for another 24 months, the economy is probably over the worst and Gordon Brown - though he admits that he has made mistakes - is not stupid.

If Labour hold Crewe, the economy remains reasonably stable and if Gordon loses the PR men and allows himself to be, well Gordon, then things just might begin to change. Cameron is 'likeable' but not really liked or trusted (particularly by his own party) and he is happy to come across as a leader who is all style but no substance. Once the Tory lead in the polls starts to close in Labour's favour the press will turn on Cameron and the 'traditional' tendency in his own party will start to make rumblings about how he needs to move further to the right etc.

A week really is a long time in politics and two years is a lifetime.

http://mike-ion.blogspot.com/

Brown needs to return to familiar language

At last year’s Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth, Gordon Brown laid out his pitch to the nation. Like any good salesman, he picked his audience carefully, and the buyer of brand Labour for a fourth Labour term was Dudley woman. It’s widely assumed that Brown’s PPS, Ian Austin, wrote large segments of the speech, and so as Dudley’s MP, this Midlands suburb featured large.

Brown made it clear he wanted to reassure the aspirational middle classes with a heady punch of patriotism, family values and Stakhanovist emphasis on hard-work. It struck a clearly different tone to Blair’s speeches, far more conciliatory, and much less ideological. It was down to earth and rooted in understandably British values, not Blair’s more internationalist agenda. But Dudley woman is angry, fears for the future and thinks the government has lost its way: can Cameron capture the agenda, or could Brown’s speech provide a blueprint for a new governance that could capture the mood of the nation?

Britain is gloomy. Not since the early nineties have the storm clouds gathered so quickly. The pound in your pocket is worth little against the Euro, inflation is biting, and house prices have begun to fall. Brown needs to return to his core theme, that if you work hard, the government will be ‘on your side’. Anger at the City is growing, there’s a palpable sense amongst the middle classes that they’re not getting their fair share of the cake: that the workless are taking too much at the bottom, and the feckless are getting too much at the top. Brown’s narrative about working hard and playing by the rules makes sense to people in the middle: the 10p tax cut didn’t.

Brown needs to return to this story – by slashing tax for everyone at the bottom with a large increase in the tax-free threshold for earnings, and a new top rate of tax of 45p in the pound for earners above £150,000. It must be done simply – every penny raised at the top, must go down to the bottom. None must be diverted to tax credits, even if this means the money is less well targeted – the economic down turn affects everyone.

Further to this, Labour needs to think the unthinkable about unemployment benefit. It isn’t progressive to allow people to linger on the dole with declining mental health, and a declining sense of worth for years on end. The dole should be restricted to a maximum of 18 months before it is cut off. Extra funding should be provided to charities who work with the unemployed: not to provide financial assistance, but to provide training for work. Although few people take benefits willingly, a tiny minority abuse the system: racists point to work shirkers and ask why we need immigration when healthy young men stand idle. Both proposals should be announced simultaneously – the work ethic must be at the heart of what Labour stands for, for it contrasts with the Tory record of mass unemployment.

Brown also needs to rediscover his radical side. No Labour government has ever won a fourth term, and sadly at the moment it looks unlikely that Brown will either. So, rather than spend two years outlining plans for a fourth term, Brown should unveil radical reform that can pushed through Parliament in a year. Serious House of Lords reform would split the Tories and re-establish in swing voters minds why they voted out the reactionaries in the first place.

The house building programme unveiled by the government must be made more radical still: with the housing market in meltdown it is unlikely private contractors will be in any position to build new homes. The government should announce an intention to sell off a million Council houses, and also an intention to provide capital to housing associations to replace every one of those Council houses with low-rent properties (rent-fixed for a decade). Giving Council tenants a stake in their estates is good for communities, and proved popular under Thatcher.

The Tories have no response to the failures of the housing market, except to provide subsidies to middle-class mortgages which would do nothing to increase our housing stock. Let’s place the emphasis on building and securing mortgages, and enter the next election with cranes on the landscape of British cities providing work - “Homes for heroes” won Labour votes in the 40s, market failure in our decade could provide a platform for a 4th term Labour government.

In London, on the doorsteps voters who turned out for Labour mentioned Ken’s 50% affordable housing pledge. The London Mayoral elections showed that much of Labour’s core vote held, in all but two GLA seats Labour’s vote rose – and in 6 it rose more than 5% (including traditionally Tory Merton and Wandsworth).

Project Labour hasn’t collapsed, this isn’t ’97 for the Tories yet: but in London there was a clear Labour agenda, this needs to be returned to nationally. Dudley woman worries because her children can’t afford to get on the property ladder, wants decent schools, and wants her hard work recognised. The two Etonians running the Tory party with their emphasis on the polar ice caps, hugging hoodies, and increasing the inheritance tax threshold to £1m give her absolutely nothing to vote for. The Tories’ current platform makes them an upper-middle class irrelevance. They’ve nothing in their basket of goodies for families who though aspirational, still want the state to provide their education, healthcare and pension.

Cozy nineties Blairite centrism is dead, anger at the filthy rich is rising fast. Brown needs to wake up to the new reality, set out a radical stall, and not flinch. He needs to find courage, and fast.

No better thing than bad press

Gordon Brown's sudden lifting in the polls, in the head to head numbers, on issues and on personal qualities is all the more striking because it follows months of bad press. Gloomy commentators reported the suicidial depression of unnamed ministers on the prospects of a Brown premiership.

Meanwhile David Cameron spent the first period of his leadership, up to grammar schools, in a kind of flacid, golden haze of good publicity. He must now be cursing his good press, just as Brown must now be delighting in his previous bad write-ups.

The consquence of Cameron's effortless ascendency was to breed a palpable sense of entitlement, and worse a kind of laziness. Tory spokespeople, particuarly George Osborne, started talking about the next Tory government as though it was a racing cert, counting perhaps on the public's well known love of tories who are pleased with themselves. And contrast Cameron's relaxation after his very good local government results this year with Tony Blair as leader. Blair took every piece of good fortune as an opportunity to put further pressure on his party to change. The sense from TeamCameron was that they had already crossed the finish line, that the work of reform the Conservative party was finished.

Meanwhile Brown has benefitted from lowering expectations. Much of the commentary on him fostered the impression that far from being a consumate politician, he was going to wander into No10 dressed in a stained donkey jacket and the proceed to lose Labour every vote south of the Tweed. He has also had the chance to tailor his first moves against the criticism. For example by devolving power and by making an asset out of his less showy style.

This simian is damned if he can draw a lesson from it all. Except too much good press can be too much of a good thing.

English Votes for English Issues

I welcome Gordon Brown’s firm position in the House of Commons today. The simple fact is that under a constitutional settlement of devolution, it is a completely wrong to have the debate on the premise of a federation.

Westminster still has a massive baring on the Devolved institutions - there budgets are fundamentally tied and their policies inter relate.

Take the policy of Tuition Fees/Top Up Fees, the UK happens to have three different policies on this but for one reason alone – the changes that were started in the Westminster Parliament. The creation of the graduate endowment in Scotland was a response to the fee introduction for the UK in 1998, the Welsh flexible fee for English Students and the top up fees charged on English Medical Students in Scotland have a direct relationship with what English students have to pay in England. Welsh students will not pay top-up fees – a policy position only needed to be reached after the passing of the 2004 Higher Education Act. The polices might be locally determined but the need to decision-making in the first place was triggered by Westminster legislation.

The best thing a Scottish/Welsh MP could have done to stop the costs being passed on to Scottish students would have been to defeat the Bill in Westminster rather than their MSP/AM voting with their hands tied in Edinburgh or Cardiff.

This may be a difficult argument to make when parading devolution as a great achievement of the government but an important distinction to make. We are not a federal nation, but an devolved one. The history, systems and social mobility make us more interdependent that any other part of Europe and this is seen strongly in the way the House of Commons can set an agenda or at the very least raise questions for the legislatures else where.

I call for “MPs votes of all constituent issues”.

This is a dubious position for the David Cameron’s Conservatives to push - their unionist credentials has well and truly left them. They now seems more like a sister party of Alex Salmons SNP than Trimble’s UUP.

Labour's defending the Union both sides of the boarder!

The 'Green' Brown budget!

Is Gordon Brown about to unveil tax breaks for households that generate their own green energy? Will he use his eleventh - and possibly final - budget to challenge the environmental credentials of David Cameron?

I think the answer to both questions is probably yes. Most commentators think that the Chancellor will contrast his "carrots and sticks" approach to tackling climate change with the Tory party's planned clampdown on air travel.

To further highlight the difference in approach, Gordon Brown is expected to increase road tax on the worst polluting vehicles while reducing excise duties for owners of more fuel-efficient cars.

Education is expected to benefit substantially from this summer's comprehensive spending review with Brown probably announcing increased direct payments to all primary and all secondary schools.

Brown leads Cameron by 27 per cent among swing voters

For the last few months it has been hard to get through a newspaper without some article pontificating about David Cameron's allure to swing voters. His boyish, Blairish, pram-pushing, nappy-changing, mug-washing, blogtastic friendliness.

What those articles haven't mentioned is that out in the real world and away from the media village, swing voters are not actually warming to David Cameron. Contrary to the media narrative, focus groups I have conducted have increasingly shown ambivalence, and often hostility to a man who, as one participant put it, is beginning to come across as all mouth and no trousers.

So it came as no surprise to us when an opinion poll we conducted alongside Populus for our new think tank - the Opinion Leader Forum - found that it is Brown, not Cameron who swing voters prefer. When asked who they would prefer to be the next Prime Minister, 24% of swing voters picked David Cameron, while 51% picked Gordon Brown.

Looking behind these figures, it seems that one reason for Brown's lead is that that swing voters are more likely to trust him to set the country in a better direction as Prime Minister. While 41% of swing voters agreed that Cameron would set the country in a better direction, 48% agree that Brown would. And, because more people disagree that Cameron would than Brown would, Brown enjoys a 12% lead in the net scores (total proportion who agree minus proportion who disagree).

Swing voters also rate Gordon Brown's personality more highly than David Cameron's on several key measures. Brown has a 27% lead on the net proportion of swing voters who see him as 'strong', while Cameron is 22% behind on having 'substance'. The only crumb of comfort for Cameron is his modest 8% lead on listening to the public - a lead dwarfed by Brown's astonishing 92% lead on being experienced.

Of course it's still relatively early days for Cameron and there is plenty of work for Labour to do before the next election. But these numbers show that it is Cameron, not Brown with a mountain to climb amongst swing voters.

It is worth briefly thinking about why these swing voters matter. Our poll picked out two groups of swing voters: those currently intending to vote Labour but open to voting for another party, and the much larger group who are currently not voting Labour but are open to doing so. Ultimately it is these people in marginal seats who will decide the next election. If Labour holds on to the voters currently planning to vote Labour, then on current horse-race standings, the Tories will need to reach something like 44% to win an outright victory - a number they haven't reached since the 1970s. If Labour make inroads into the group of swing voters that are open to voting for them but not currently doing so, the Tory task becomes just about impossible.

In light of this poll, there are two interesting things to watch out for. Firstly, these numbers should lead to a change in the media's assumptions about how Cameron and Brown will shape up against each other. With Brown clearly leading amongst swing voters, and with the latest Mori poll showing Labour to have a two point lead, it will be interesting to see if Cameron's media bubble bursts.

Secondly, it will be interesting to watch Cameron's strategy. There are of course two ways to secure votes. You can attempt to appeal to the swing voters - as Cameron has so far- or you can focus on mobilising people who would vote for you if they were to vote, but are not currently likely to make it to the ballot box. This was the approach the Tories focussed on unsuccessfully in 01 and 05, and they are right to have knocked this strategy on its head this time. But if Cameron's efforts to enter the middle ground are seen to be failing, the pressure from the right of his party to jag back their way is likely to rise. This is exactly what happened to  Michael Howard, IDS and William Hague, who all started out by tacking to the centre, before being dragged back to the right when they lost the ability to control the right of the party. Will history repeat itself?

About the poll

This poll was carried out in the weekend of 13-15th October. 1018 people were interviewed at random, of whom 242 were swing voters. The margin of error is ±3%.

The questions used to pick out swing voters were:

Q1. If there was a general election tomorrow, which party would you vote for?

Q2. [for all non-Labour voters] Although you are not currently intending to vote Labour, what are the chances that you will decide to support them in the next general election in three years time? A fair chance, a small chance, a slight chance, or no chance at all?

Q3. [for all Labour voters] Although you are current intending to vote Labour, what are the chances that you will decide to support another party in the next general election in three years time? A fair chance, a small chance, a slight chance, or no chance at all?

Swing voters are defined as people who say 'fair chance' in Q2 or Q3.

Can Cameron do a Sweden on Labour's employment record?

Is David Cameron taking a leaf from the book of Fredrik Reinfeldt, the charismatic Conservative leader who brought the New Moderates to power in the Swedish general election in September, by attacking Gordon Brown on his employment record?

Reinfeldt, you will recall, led his party to a narrow victory over the incumbent Swedish Social Democrats, who had been in power for the previous 12 years. Although a number of factors have been attributed to his success, most commentators agree that of central importance was his questioning of the Social Democrat's employment record during the campaign.

In the run up to the election, the Social Democrats, led by Goran Persson, boasted an official unemployment rate of just 6 per cent, and an economic growth rate of 5.6 per cent. However, Reinfeldt successfully exploited popular anxieties over the global competitiveness of the so-called ‘Swedish model’ by suggesting that the true unemployment figure was much closer to 20 per cent, if you counted those on youth training schemes, early retirement or on long-term sick pay who might otherwise have been in work. The message stuck, and was enough to secure Reinfeldt's New Moderates a seven seat majority over their Social Democratic rivals.

Meanwhile, yesterday Cameron attacked Gordon Brown for disguising the level of unemployment in the UK. In a speech on disability in Edinburgh he said it was 'morally wrong and economically stupid' that five million people were left 'on the scrap heap' while firms dealt with the resulting labour shortage by employing migrants. Cameron was immediately accused by Labour of wildly inflating the unemployment figures, and berated for implying that even the seriously ill and disabled should be forced back into the job market. But could Cameron be attempting a re-run of the Reinfeldt strategy by questioning the accuracy of Labour's employment statistics? If so, what are his chances of convincing the electorate?

On the surface, a contest with Gordon Brown over Labour’s employment record looks like a highly risky strategy for Cameron to pursue. As chancellor, Brown has presided over a record decline in the unemployment rate - the current figure, according to the ONS, stands at just 1.7 million, or 5.5 per cent of the UK workforce (although, more worryingly, the rate has risen by 280,000 over the past year to its highest point since 2000). Cameron will also be aware of his party’s own abysmal record in this regard. Under Margaret Thatcher, the number of people on the dole queue in Britain in 1986 hit 3.1 million, 10.6 per cent of the UK work force.

However, in raising the issue yesterday Cameron will no doubt be mindful of the 2.7 million on the government’s books currently claiming incapacity benefit (all of whom are included in Cameron’s 5 million figure as being ‘on the scrap heap’ and therefore potentially able to work). In his speech, Cameron attacked the government’s record in this area by suggesting that more should be done to incentivise the disabled back in to work, and that the current range of employment-related benefits should be consolidated into a single benefit and assessment.

Labour is aware of its potential vulnerability on this issue. Unlike the unemployment rate, the number claiming incapacity benefit has risen since Labour came to power, from 2,370,500 in May 1997 to 2.7 million today (although we shouldn’t forget that the biggest rise in those claiming the benefit occurred in the 1980s, under the Conservative’s watch). Earlier this year, the pensions secretary John Hutton committed the government to shaving 1 million off the 2.7 million figure within 10 years by replacing incapacity benefit with a work-incentivising employment allowance, and providing more support to get the disabled back to work.

Some studies, however, have questioned whether this target is achievable under the government’s current proposals. If this proves to be the case, and the government fails to make significant in roads into the number claiming incapacity benefit by the time of the next election, then a Swedish-style dispute over Gordon Brown's 'true' unemployment figures could well be on the cards.

Never can say goodbye

Back in the real world after spending Sunday/Monday/Tuesday in 24 hour party city of Manchester for the Labour party conference everything feels slightly anti-climatic now. The last thing I saw in the main conference hall was Blair's speech. It was one helluva a speech. The man is really a class act. He will be difficult to follow and he will be sadly missed.

On the way out I was asked for a voxpop from a camera crew. A furry mike on a broom was thrust before me. I enthused about what we had heard. 'Why do you think it was so different to Brown's?', I was asked. 'I don't think it was that different,' I insisted. If you look at the content they both reflecting on the past, identifying futire challenges, talking about personal experiences on the doorstep and in their backgrounds'... The guy cut in 'but the reaction was very different', he declared.

Ok Tony has always been the great communicator and this was a shining example of how he does it. The tone that manages to be statemanlike, humble and human all at once, the broad sweep of content, the gags delivered with perfect comic timing. At some moments there was not a dry eye in the house. Gordon is more of a cerebral facts and figures man, the polysyllables from a chap who's fond of neo-endogenous growth theory and the like. His tub thumping zeal, banging at the lectern, forelock a la Henry V (ok wonky parallel that last one) are his trademark. People have said that the man is something of an unknown quantity but he began opening up in his speech with some biographical info and stamping on a rumour of his own - the Arctic Monkeys tag. I found myself in a seat next to Nick Brown for the speech who was guffawing his head off to that one but then I guess he's parti-pris. GB and TB are stylistically different but they're both ultimately for the same thing. The media had been waiting Brown's speech to end up as his David Davies moment. They didn't get it so the 'Cherie fumes off' story and looking for a comparison between GB and TB to create a split was what filled their gossipy vacuum.

One of the jokes directly made reference to the latest installment of Cheriegate. You'll have heard it by now. The one about the zero likeliehood of the missus running off with the bloke next door was potentially risque but actually very clever - astute move in that it stamps on the rumour withour exactly denying it. It's sad that this whole business displaced what was being trailed as the speech of Gordon's life but in the Heat magazine celeb culture times this couldn't go uncommented on and I guess there's never any smoke without fire.

It's not a competetion; both Brown and Blair delivered in their own ways. The context was different - leader in waiting setiing out his stall one day and departing leader assessing his balance sheet the next. Anyway here at my desk with my dayjob stuff beckoning it feels like I am - as the song title went - 'back to life, back to reality'. Blair really was/is a class act - but then again don't get me started on class - that's probably another blog for another day.