Pottymouth’ Cameron knows what he’s doing

By Greg McDonald

If David Cameron’s years in PR taught him anything it’s that he needn’t fret about being the first British political leader to turn the nation’s airwaves blue.

Cameron’s “slip” – swearing in a down-wid-da-kidz kinda way on a down-wid-da-kidz kinda radio show was about as accidental as that occasion when Tony Blair was photographed taking his guitar to work in the middle of an election campaign – y’know, in case he felt like strumming some Oasis tunes and “chilling out”.

And far from signalling the death of Conservatism, Cameron’s on-air-swear was merely evidence that, as their man heads off on his summer break, the Tories have every right to relax, for the one thing Cam’s political brilliance has turned blue in the last four years is the polls.

Indeed such is the red-faced desperation in Labour ranks today that Peter Mandelson has started volunteering Gordon Brown for live TV debates, and bookies have slashed odds on Mandy himself running the country by Christmas.

Yet short of Tony Blair dusting down his six-string for a comeback it’s hard to envisage anything now standing in the way of Britain electing its first ex-PR PM.

Was Dave’s deliberate slip an insult to Absolute Radio listeners’ intelligence? Absolutely.

But it was the sort of brilliant politics which has made Cam as sure-fire a bet for PM as that “straight kinda guy” Tony Blair looked a year before he was strumming “Wonderwall” in Downing Street.

Meet the new Speaker

By Alan Tyers

Born in Finchley, the son of a cab driver, Bercow took a first class degree in Government at University of Essex. He was chairman of the (very) right-wing Monday Club – a Conservative Student group – where he was secretary of its in-no-way sinister-sounding Immigration and Repatriation Committee.

He worked in a merchant bank, then as a lobbyist, then a local Councillor in Lambeth. In 1996, he chartered a helicopter so he could attend the selection meetings for two safe Tory seats in one day; he got the nod for Buckingham and was elected at the 1997 General Election.

He rose to be a member of IDS’s shadow cabinet but resigned when he refused to follow the party line of being anti gay adoption in a three-line whip. He also mocked (his then-boss at the Shadow Home Office) Ann Widdecombe’s draconian views on cannabis smoking as “transparently absurd.”

It would appear that Bercow has made a journey from the right-wing of his party all the way over to the left – and indeed he is more popular on the Labour benches than on his own.

It has been suggested that Labour, knowing the jig is up, have only voted for him out of spite, leaving the Conservatives something stinky behind the sideboard on the way out, as it were. He was cheered to the Speaker’s chair by the Government benches; the Opposition sat on their hands.

He is certainly out of step with the Tory command – having been a very strong supporter of Michael Portillo and having dismissed David Cameron as unsuitable for leadership on the grounds of his posh background.

He came out of the expenses row cleaner than most and now faces the challenge of helping to restore public confidence in parliament – as well as remaining above suspicions of personal party-political bias.

The only question seems to be: in favour of which party?

Mandy’s the only handy man for the job

by Greg McDonald

As Gordon Brown’s battered ship sinks there is only one man who can save the Government. I never thought I’d say it, but: Peter Mandelson, your country needs you.

Make no mistake, Gordon’s game is up. Kicked out of local government in England, and trailing the Cornish nationalists in the European vote – it simply doesn’t get any worse than this, and if Labour is to avoid catastrophic defeat in 2010 Brown must go.

Yet with backbench plotters failing to come up with the necessary numbers, and the cabinet’s biggest beasts cowed into a show of unity, the only remaining alternative to a General Election landslide carrying Gordon Brown out of Number 10 is for someone to persuade our notoriously stubborn PM to make a dignified exit by his own volition.

Can it be done? If Brown’s to be made to see sense it won’t be by a minnow like Purnell, a friend-turned-enemy like Alistair Darling, or even a would-be successor like Alan Johnson. It’ll be by the figure Brown today counts as his closest political ally, chief confidant and deputy: Mandy.

For the sake of the Government, the Labour party and the country, Brown must go – his MPs know it, and though few imagined this day would arrive, the Prince of Darkness is the one figure with the Machiavellian instinct and political gravitas to make the call. Lord Mandelson, England expects…

Electoral reform is the only real solution

by Greg McDonald

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg’s challenge to “totally reinvent British politics” in 100 days, by banning MPs from taking their summer breaks until they’ve overhauled the electoral system and abolished the House of Lords, is the most radical political gesture to emerge from the current situation.

As the crisis rages this is no time for consultations and inertia, and Clegg is right to strike before the dust settles back to where it’s lain since Winston Churchill’s days as a reforming Liberal.

While a month ago such a bold proposal would have sounded as risible to Westminster’s home-flippers as Joe Taxpayer’s thoughts on duck islands, such is the scale of this crisis that for the first time there is a real chance of the public voice being heard.

As the scandals keep coming we have every right to feel angry, but we needn’t feel powerless. In the next few months our voices can shape this debate by demanding an end to unaccountability: no more unelected Prime Ministers, no more unelected heads of state, no more unelected Lords.

Clegg’s challenge is the boldest heard, but I have a greater test for him. If the other parties block such radical reform, make the first line of the LibDem manifesto a promise to introduce a new electoral system in 100 days – and call an election under it.

Soak the rich? They barely got their feet wet

by Tom Kilkenny

In the run-up to Alistair Darling’s speech today, there was a lot of chatter about a “soak-the-rich” Budget. We were told the Chancellor was under Cabinet pressure to make those on higher incomes pick up the bill for the Government’s tooth-loosening fiscal deficit.

And, lo and behold, the biggest headline to emerge from the 50-minute speech was the introduction of 50% income tax for the lucky few among us who trouser more than £150,000 a year.

Combine that with the removal of personal allowances for people earning more than £100,000, and it looks like the cash is going to come rolling in, doesn’t it?

Maybe not so much. Stephanie Flanders, the BBC’s economics editor, has chewed the end of her pencil and worked out that ditching the allowances will only earn the Treasury £180m by 2011/12. Similarly, restrictions on tax relief for high earners’ pension contributions will contribute only £200m a year.

The move might have more serious consequences once the impending election starts to exert its pull. Will the breach of Labour’s manifesto promise not to increase income tax during this parliament come back to haunt Gordon Brown’s administration? Remember George Bush and the “read my lips, no more taxes” pledge that contributed to his defeat in 1992?

As much as an attempt to balance the books, this is a pre-election move to lure the Conservatives into the swampy mire of a fight on tax. David Cameron refused to take the bait this time round, but will he be able to resist once he’s got a few well-scripted retorts pencilled on his cuff?

Can he fix it?

by Tom Murphy

When Alistair Darling delivers his budget on 22 April, any voters who aren’t too preoccupied with the price of petrol and cigarettes will be looking for some effective plans to revive the economy.

At least he’ll have a bit longer to do his sums. This will be the latest spring budget since Labour came to power in 1997, coming after parliament’s Easter break and the G20 meeting of the world’s leading economies.

He’ll probably appreciate the extra time. Since the date was announced, the Treasury has revealed that tax revenue in January fell by an eye-watering £6.7bn, or 11%, from the same month a year earlier.

It seems likely that voters will eventually blame PM and former Chancellor Gordon Brown for what’s happened to the UK economy. The crisis will be the main election issue for one in three voters, according to the Guardian, and the poll also claims that Brown is a liability to Labour.

But is it fair to blame the PM for an unprecedented breakdown in the global financial system? HBOS whistleblower Paul Moore certainly thinks so. He claims to have proof that Brown’s lax regulation of the financial system created a culture of reckless lending, excessive debt-fuelled consumer spending and inflated property prices.

In the Independent, Darling blamed attributed the difficult conditions to “bad decisions by international banks”, who took on too much risk without fully understanding the possible consequences. Their exposure to each other’s losses created the credit crunch, which soon became a global recession.

However, he has also located some of the blame a bit closer to home, telling the Daily Telegraph  that bankers, regulators and the government bore a “collective responsibility” for the culture that led to the credit crunch.

Darling also remains optimistic that he can turn things round. As well as increasing government spending to stimulate the economy (adding to public debt already in excess of £700bn), he plans to reform the banking sector, support key industries and use the UK’s presidency of the G20 group to co-ordinate a global response.

So what do you think? How much blame should Brown – as both Chancellor and PM – take for the crisis? And can Darling do enough to get the UK economy through its present disorder and leave it ready to face whatever’s waiting on the other side?

Unemployment: mountain or dolehill?

By Greg McDonald

Today’s unemployment figures put the number out of work at 1.9 million, as employees at Ericsson, Sainsbury’s and Woolworths join the lines at Britain’s Job Centres.

But while our hearts must go out to the ever increasing number of applicants going for an ever decreasing number of jobs, and while we must demand the Government does everything it can to help families affected, nothing is more harmful in a recession than sapping confidence – and for that reason, if no other, we must also keep today’s numbers in perspective.

Early in 2008, as the initial dash to scenes of economic bad news became a stampede to proclaim the end of the pound/system/universe as we know it, economic sages breathlessly informed us that unemployment figures would smash through the two million mark before Christmas. They didn’t.

So while today’s numbers contain within them thousands of personal tragedies, let’s at least be thankful that the national Armageddon we were told to prepare for has not – at least, not yet – materialised.

The current figure is now only where it was in Tony Blair’s 1999 heyday – hardly recalled as a time of crushing societal deprivation. And while it will worsen, crying Armageddon at every new set of figures only serves to sap confidence and sink us deeper into the mire.

For those whose best chance of getting back into work is a confidence-driven recovery, we should take care not to overstate the problem.