The raison d’etre of the Tories is to ensure the state runs smoothly in the interest of the 1% of the population who own 70% of the wealth. Blair made sure New Labour had the same objective, the only purpose of the party structures now being as career ladders for the likes of Blair to join the 1%.
The Tories have learnt the lesson of Thatcher, that if you keep 42% of the English happy and feeling economically secure, and advantaged over the rest, then you can stay in power through the first past the post system. This needs an inflated housing market, a few tax cuts, and a rhetoric identifying and excluding the outsiders, be they immigrants, benefit claimants or other groups. Osborne has this political truth down to a fine art, as his budget showed. If you are a middle class family able to spend 10,000 a year on childcare, you can now in effect get 2,000 a year from the government. It is complex to administer, but most of the families who benefit much will be the kind who have accountants. Similarly the pensions plan liberalisation will not mean a great deal to the poorest in society, although not wrong in itself. Meanwhile endless benefit cuts are the lot of the needy.
New Labour are left spluttering on the sidelines because the differences in what it would do are so marginal as to be pointless. What the country needs is massive state intervention to extract funds from the financial services industry and from those with obscenely accrued capital, and put them in to infrastructure in transport, energy efficiency, renewables, housing and high tech manufacturing, areas in which economic benefits are broadly spread in society including through employment. There are legitimate areas of debate about how you do that – I favour tax incentivisation, or rather heavy tax disincentivisation of non-productive use of capital, rather than direct state agency, although you would need a mix.
Anyway, there is no radical economic choice of any kind on offer to the electorate, and the Tory/Labour divide is one of tribal adherence rather than real policy difference. But for what it is worth, with New Labour only leading in the polls by 4% just a year before the election, all precedent suggests that the Tories will easily recover that within the final year and there will be at least six more years of Tory government.
I do hope that Scots are quite clear-eyed about that before September. The choice on the ballot is simple: Scottish independence, or Tory rule from South East England for the forseeable future. The rest is smoke and mirrors.
Yes indeed Mark MacGregor Mary now Deputy Director of Policy Exchange.
Policy Exchange has been addressed by members of the Labour Governments of Tony Blair (1997-2007) and Gordon Brown (2007-2010), such as John Hutton, Peter Mandelson and Andrew Adonis, and by members of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government of David Cameron (2010-), such as Chris Skidmore, Charlotte Leslie and Jesse Norman, as well as by many non party-political figures. The New Statesman named it as David Cameron’s “favourite think tank”,[2] a view shared by the Political Editor of the Evening Standard Joe Murphy, who referred to it as “the intellectual boot camp of the Tory modernisers’”.[3] Its alumni include Anthony Browne, one of London Mayor Boris Johnson’s policy directors, and a number of the Conservative 2010 intake of MPs, including Nick Boles, Jesse Norman, Chris Skidmore and Charlotte Leslie.[4][5]
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/
This ‘think-tank’ is now under my own microscope Mary – thankyou – I am currently going over with a fine tooth comb past and future events:
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/events
Brian Wilson looks like he has a permanent stomach ulcer.
He is from the islands, and always reminds me of that old joke about the Wee Free Church.
They banned their congregation from indulging in sex whilst standing up, in case it led to dancing.
“The choice on the ballot is simple: Scottish independence, or Tory rule from South East England for the forseeable future. The rest is smoke and mirrors.”
I suspect (i.e. I have no evidence and this is my capricious thought today) that Scotland divorced from England may become become very conservative / laissez faire in its outlook. Its not now obviously, but free from English Tories being left of centre will no longer be a badge of honour / of loyalty and opposition to the English.
A mirror is a terrible thing in the hands of the unwary.
“I do hope that Scots are quite clear-eyed about that before September. The choice on the ballot is simple: Scottish independence, or Tory rule from South East England for the forseeable future. ”
On the other hand, a “Yes” majority could condemn the rUK to perpetual Tory government.
Rob, 8:50 pm:
I agree this would happen for a while. But continual Tory rule would take its toll, and after three or so terms the electorate would react against it. Eventually I think it would free-up the log-jam which Westminster politics has become.
I think Blair would still have had a majority in 1997 & 2001 without the support of 50+ Scottish Labour MPs. Plus, there is always the chance the Tories will split over the EU.
@Mark Golding
Policy Exchange recently published a report in which they seemed rather surprised that tens of thousands of JSA claimants had their benefits unfairly withdrawn.
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/publications/category/item/smarter-sanctions-sorting-out-the-system
Permanent Tory rule without Scottish votes is a myth.
http://wingsoverscotland.com/why-labour-doesnt-need-scotland/
Six more years of Tory rule…. with boorish Boris i/c??
David Cameron wants Boris Johnson back as MP for next election
The Prime Minister said Boris Johnson should not be criticised for harbouring ambitions to be Prime Minister adding: “There is nothing ignoble about wanting my job”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/10713216/David-Cameron-wants-Boris-Johnson-back-as-MP-for-next-election.html
One of the paper reviewers on Sky News last night suggested that there was something of the homo-erotic about their relationship!
The Conservatives’ attitude to Israel back to Churchill.
Conservatives airbrush their history on Israel and Jews
Tory attitudes to Israel have a tangled history
By James Vaughan, The Conversation
March 20, 2014
http://jfjfp.com/?p=57558
Mary
“One of the paper reviewers on Sky News last night suggested that there was something of the homo-erotic about their relationship!”
________________
Did he/she convince you?
@Daniel
“And that will also apply to the Scots should they vote for independence.”
Happily, that is not certain. One unexpected phenomenon in the referendum campaign has been the unprecedented consensus on the left (the real left, not Labour). More people attended the Radical Independence Conference (RIC) in 2013 than are attending the ‘Scottish’ Labour conference now, and by a distance. I’ll be going on a mass canvass with RIC tomorrow in Glasgow. I think there will be about 100 lefties on the street, digging up the invisible million – the disenfranchised working class who never vote. They’ll be voting in September and they’ll be voting Yes because – not for Salmond, or any other politician or party: they will be voting for themselves.
@James Chater
“If the Scots vote for independence, the rest of the UK will be lumbered with a permanent Tory majority. Ugh!”
Please let’s nail this recurring bullshit once and for all. The UK gets whichever flavour of Tory gang it votes for, and Scottish independence won’t change that. You can see detailed analysis here. Moral: if you don’t like Tories, stop voting for them.
The Times today have taken the subject up now. Another Old Etonian has taken umbrage at the suggestion that a clique is operating. He is Brent Hoberman of lastminute.com fame. He is pictured with a Lily Barclay whoever she is. There is also a thumbnail photo of another Old Etonian wearing a blue velvet jacket.
Further in there is a Brookes cartoon of Johnson holding Miliband with his head down the lav and Boris pulling the chain. Cameron is doing the same to Gove. Graffiti on the wall behind and a caption ‘Pour encourager les autres’.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00552/Brookes_22_552298c.jpg
See Hoberman’s connections to the Tory partei.
Biography and Education
Brent Hoberman was born on November 25, 1968. Hoberman was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford, then Eton College and subsequently at New College, Oxford. He is married with two daughters and one son.
Inspiration and Motivation
Hoberman says his mentors have been his father, and South African grandfather Leonard Shawzin who built an empire of over 650 clothes shops from a single store. He credits his entrepreneurial drive to the business successes of his father and grandfather, and says the catalyst for him starting his own business was being fired from his first job in investment banking for being “a prima donna”.[7]
Hoberman has stated that he believes what makes a business successful is passion; in an interview with BBC ‘The Bottom Line’,[8] he states his belief that the most successful small businesses are those where the founders remain passionate about their business, and are themselves part of their target market. He believes that by building a business to offer a solution to a problem you have yourself – as he did with lastminute.com and mydeco.com – founders stand a greater chance of remaining passionate and being successful.
Public and Political Activities
Hoberman is a member of the New Enterprise Council, a group of entrepreneurs who advise the Conservative Party (UK) on policies related to the needs of business. [9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Hoberman
Aside, the Lily Barclay is also shown in this set of photos taken at Sir David Tang’s Chinese New Year Party in 2013. Who he?
http://www.tatler.com/bystander/events/2013/march/sir-david-tangs-chinese-new-year-party#!/9549/image/1
Also there were some minor royals, the arms salesman P Andrew and his daughter, a fashion model, some aristos and then the BLiars. Also SamCam’s stepfather Viscount Astor shown with Vivien Duffield, the Clore heiress, a fervent Zionist supporter and founder of the new Jewish Museum in London.
Circles within circles and wheels within wheels. What a bunch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivien_Duffield
“I’ll be going on a mass canvass with RIC tomorrow in Glasgow. I think there will be about 100 lefties on the street, digging up the invisible million – the disenfranchised working class who never vote. They’ll be voting in September and they’ll be voting Yes because – not for Salmond, or any other politician or party: they will be voting for themselves.”
Just tell them they’ll be able to put their feet up after the Royal Navy contracts have gone to Belfast.
That should do the trick.
Changed days over there in Belfast I’ve heard, I wonder if they’d have harder time over there running sectarian employment practices and discriminatory workplace conditions, still allow masonic and orange lodge members free-rein for their prejudices, which blight BAEs Scottish factories and yards (with a knowing colluding nod and a wink from both management and unions) -tending to intimidate victimise terrorise and drive out their token RC employees.
Existing contracts spanning decades are of course commercially and legally iron-tight; for new work, competitive tendering rules of the EU amongst other bodies strictly regulates this, r-UK could not and would not ignore the better bid. The Clyde still yet is uniquely suited to shipbuilding and there always naturally will be significant shipbuilding and heavy engineering, invigorated by new technology, there and throughout west-central Scotland, in all probability, new yards, brownfield reclamation and expansion, investment for certain. Scotland does and will still own a significant share of current UK military hardware, but without the obscene cost of a Trident nuke replacement at ninety billion (£90,000,000,000 and counting) and the UKs criminally aggressive war criminal conduct restrained by its own bankruptcy and blood-stained hands, there will finally be the much promised long overdue peace dividend, plus new types of vessels for the changed purely defensive and coastal services, passenger ferries and commercial shipping, straight to European and worldwide ports, as insurance against any r-UK terror or blockade of Scotland’s exports, as well as civil authority support and oil industry, offshore renewables installation and maintenance, cable-laying and so much more.
The future for the Clyde and for Scotland’s willing, capable, creative inventive practical people – with Scotland’s Independence – is several of orders magnitude better when decisions as to their self-interest are made by themselves and fellow Scot’s. Including you Fred, wherever you’re from originally, whatever your accent, race or tragic residual Victorian Empire mindset. You might one day tame your inculcated, hilarious presumption that you deserve somehow to run the whole world, consider soon settling for a 6 millionth share in running well this part of it we both love, nurture and protect.
@Tony
The contracts are with BAE not with Scotland.
I’m sure there will be a clause about building ships in a foreign country.
You’re saying, threatening that a residual UK state (WENI) will act illegally and irrationally, and against their own and their remaining captive peons best interests -that is their modus operandi for sure, but now the consequences of such a lengthy catalogue of reckless conduct are relentlessly catching up with it. It pays never to underestimate such a villainous establishment and elite, cornered and facing a well-deserved and profound reckoning. You’re probably right, but we’ll see who blinks first. We’re certainly not likely to build or supply any new deadly toys for WENI if there’s any likelihood of them using them against us or any other hapless peaceful peoples caught in their high-strung hyper-sensitive cross-hairs. I’m sure an independent Scotland’s new domestic own anti-terror laws would preclude arming such a vile regime. A new England purged of its crooked, corrupt, criminal and oxymoronic ‘great and good’, the very bad and the ugly really, would be an inevitable and different proposition entirely, with which good government only the English people ought and can bring about by any means, limitless co-operation would be possible where moral and mutual interests combine.
Update. Looks like 150 socialists hitting the street in Drumchapel tomorrow. Come and join us, Fred. We wouldn’t have to try very hard to have more folk on the street in Glasgow than there are crypto-Tories at the crypto-Tory conference inPerth.
“Come and join us, Fred.”
Us poor working people can’t afford to be taking a day off.
@fred
Such modesty! We’re all poor working people. I’m sure you’ll fit right in.
A report in the Observer today from the Royal College of GPs saying that they cannot cope with the demand and the NHS funding is inadequate.
‘Family doctor service on brink’, says new GP leader
Growing demand for care and lack of cash are fuelling crisis, says Royal College chief in outspoken attack
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/23/family-doctor-service-brink-extinction
Good timing from Osborne. His plan to allow pensioners to collect their pension pots will enable them to obtain private health insurance. Job done for the Tory boys in one fell swoop. The NHS is privatised and the Cons get re-elected because the people cannot/will not see what is going on.
PS The Observer article was posted at 10pm and already there are over 500 comments. Some of the people DO know what is going on.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/scottish-independence-new-poll-shows-yes-shift-1-3350563
Does anyone else wonder whether Alistair Darling is a mole?
@Sjb
Whenever I’ve used the Sctosman as a source I’ve been informed they aren’t reliable.
@Fred
I wanted to get a link to ICM that conducted the poll, but their website’s “latest articles” is only up to 19 March.
Panelbase’s recent poll also shows growing support for a ‘Yes’ vote, but see commentary by Prof Curtice at http://blog.whatscotlandthinks.org/2014/03/panelbase-now-also-show-yes-vote-up/
@Sjb
It’s OK, I’m sure the Scotsman article is reliable, it’s only their reports which aren’t favourable to the Nationalists that are suspect.
Just like the polls, which mean nothing at all when they predict a Unionist landslide but start to matter when they start favouring the Nationalists.
I saw some politician the other day suggesting the OED change the definition of “scare tactics” to “asking Alex Salmond a question he can’t answer”.
@fred
Watching the Labour conference & wondering what happened to the Scottish Left?
@Vronsky
No, it was on the BBC website.
This wasn’t on the BBC web site, to find stories like this you have to know where to look.
http://scottishlaw.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/concern-as-figures-reveal-nearly.html
Brian Wilson looks like he has a permanent stomach ulcer.
He is from the islands…
He isn’t. Not even Bute. He’s from Dunoon. He voted against the 1979 Devolution Bill, one result of which was the subsequent vote of no confidence (the SNP having withdrawn its support for the Labour government) and the installation of Thatcher. Well done, Brian.