The Zeal Of The Converted

Wot an odd thing to put on a wall

Throughout the election, Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem cast were very much opposed to cutting spending in this financial year. They attacked the Conservatives’ plan to do so. It was not appropriate at this point.

Now they’re all for it. In fact, they’re so for it that our new DPM did the tour of the TV studios yesterday morning to tell us all about it.

I find something rather unedifying about these kind of scenarios. Yes, people do change their minds, and maybe they really have been persuaded once they got to look at the books. But at no point have we had a credible explanation from Nick Clegg about what is responsible for this change…

It’s that that makes me worry. It makes me think that our so-called “new politics” is nothing but the same old shtick. That Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems all along planned to join in the big budget cuts regardless of what they said to the contrary. In fact, you can bet if the outcome was a Lib-Lab coalition that we’d probably be charting the same course around about now, only it would be Labour too admitting that they needed to start cutting now.

Then the biggest insult is the fact that Vince Cable, the man at the centre of all Lib Dem economic policy for at least the last five years, is going to be tasked with absorbing 1/6 of this year’s cuts in his department, which is ludicrous considering how small the budget of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is relative to the spending going on elsewhere.

Did Vince Cable spend the whole election arguing against immediate spending cuts, only to modify his entire position as soon as the ministerial limousines beckoned?

Because it’s either that, or he has been stitched up good and proper. Nice move of the Tories to put him in the department that’s going to take all the flak. He won’t quite be so popular once he starts wielding the axe.

Government is difficult, I recognise that. But it’s made even more difficult by being dishonest.

And that is what I’m, regretfully, concluding about my own party’s behaviour.

The Voters Can’t Handle The Truth

OK, it was the obvious picture, but who cares...

A few weeks ago I had a small argument with a friend. The subject: spending cuts. In the end, it turned out we were rather violently agreeing. Our expectations of government are too high relative to the amount we are all prepared to contribute.

So yesterday, the Institute for Fiscal Studies thought they would come out and tell us all how much of a bunch of liars our political parties are. This morning, it is front and centre of all the papers, and it dominated the broadcast media yesterday. Political journos love it. Adam Boulton really got his rocks off attacking Peter Mandelson about the lack of information regarding where the axe is going to fall.

Cast your mind back, merely a few months, to September last year. The Tories were banging on about an austerity agenda. George Osborne instructed us all to dig out that hairshirt. Calamity Clegg jumped on the bandwagon, talking about the need for “savage” cuts. Even Alastair Darling joined in.

And what happened?

The electorate didn’t like it. It was all too real. Too bleak. Too depressing. Life is difficult enough already without the politicians seeming to revel in how much they can make it worse for everyone.

We like to pretend we want our politicians to tell us the truth, but the real truth is that we can’t handle it.

If Nick Clegg came out in tomorrow’s debate and said, “We will cut 15% from the NHS, freeze school spending, slash defence by 20%, freeze public sector pay for the next three years and look to make 10% of the workforce redundant,  freeze all benefits for the next three years and scrap all the “bribes” like free TV licences for the elderly and winter fuel payments” you can be sure that the response would be swift and damning.

The truth hurts. And, in reality, the people don’t want to hear it. It cuts too close to the bone.

Trust and responsibility in all forms of life is a two-way street, and politics even more so. Our politicians have a responsibility to be honest with us, but at the same time, they will never trust us. They will never trust us again to act rationally, because we act irrationally. We are too fickle, and too fleeting. We are distracted by whether or not Peppa Pig is going to appear at a Labour Party PR stunt. Our politicians have to talk to us in soundbites, because if they don’t, they won’t keep our attention. And worse, if they try to be more complex, it will invariably get distorted by the echo chamber that is the media.

The politicians can’t trust us to listen carefully, and the people don’t want to listen. We don’t want to listen because politicians in the past have abused that trust, and have acted irresponsibly with the power we’ve given them.

Politicians are to blame. The people are to blame. The media are to blame.

What’s truly worrying is where this cycle is going to end…

Cameron’s Health Budget Gamble

Insert generic hospital related image here. Though I'm pretty sure this one isn't British...

Back when the economy was doing well, Cameron made a pledge. It was sensible at the time as a way of nullifying the issue of whether the Tories could be trusted with the NHS.

Cameron said that an incoming Tory government would match Labour spending plans. The implicit expectation behind that was that Labour would be continuing to increase NHS spending in real terms, and so the Tories would do the same. The consequence of that would be to tell people that the days of nasty Conservatives and budget cuts for the sake of it were over. Reinforcing the message was Cameron’s professed ‘love’ for the NHS.

The pledge to match Labour’s spending plans on the NHS has now been quietly forgotten, replaced instead with a promise to “ringfence” the NHS budget. An idea that Labour have interestingly not backed, while blustering about how much they are going to continue investing in the future.

Of course, none of it is possible. To ringfence the NHS budget in a time of major spending cuts would mean that other departments have to take a much greater share of the pain.

But more spending on the NHS is somewhat inevitable. The population is ageing, and health cost inflation is notoriously high, due to the expensive nature of new patented drugs entering the market. Match that with rising obesity, and a rising population, and the combination is deadly.

We’ll get more idea next week what Labour’s plans are in the pre-Budget report. And I fully expect Alistair Darling to be fairly specific. After all, it makes no sense to be about to legislate for a halving of the deficit if you have no real plans to save money. If they don’t, it’s tantamout to sticking yet another “Kick Me” post-it note on the back of Gordon Brown’s head.

But the other reason to be specific is as a way to back the Tories into a corner, to say that they are not ready for government; that they aren’t prepared to take the big decisions that a sensible government will have to take in this economic climate. And yes, we’ll hear a lot more about Tory inheritance tax policy, but that’s incidental.

But at the same time, Labour are hardly likely to unveil their own huge spending cuts either. Those will be saved till after the election when it’s too late for the voters to complain. And that will be the same whoever wins the election. Such is the nature of democracy.

I think, however, that Cameron will live to regret the many soundbites he’s made about the NHS budgets. After all, there is just as much scope for saving money there as there is in any other department. He will either have to reverse his position – potentially embarrassing – or have to put his words into action, which may be needlessly damaging to other departments that will bear the brunt of the maintained spending levels on health.

How are all these competing demands going to be resolved?

An honest politician might tell you that they’re not.

But there are no honest politicians…

Nevertheless, it’s going to be fascinating to see how the two major parties explain the situation and their plans to deal with it over the coming year.

And if they go in too harshly? Well, there’s that old W shaped recession on the horizon.

Bizarrely, maybe maintaining spending on the NHS will help to avoid that.

It would be richly ironic if a Tory government, spending more on a major area of public spending, stopped us going into another recession as a consequence.

We live in rather strange times…