Month: August 2008

The only refrain most Labour people in power seem to know is the demand for higher taxes.
No sooner has the Income Tax hike unravelled, than the Vehicle Excise Duty increase comes under fire.
Learning nothing from this, today we hear from the Local Government Minister that Councils should put up Council Car Park charges, as another way to tax motorists off the road.
Using a cloak of green policy and a further urge to nanny us into walking more, the true aim of this Minister is to tell the municipal raiders seeking more cash that they should get it direct from motorists, rather than demanding it in grant requiring the government to get it from motorists.
Any Council which puts Car Park charges and Council taxes up by more than inflation in current conditions is asking to be unpopular. People have had enough and cannot afford any more.
The Chancellor has had to rule out windfall taxes on utilities, urged by many in the Labour movement, and is thinking what to do about further noisy calls to tax the rich who are still here after the last round of taxes on rich foreigners who come to do business in London.
The economic problem the government faces is not the shortage of tax revenue, but the failure to spend all the tax revenue they do raise to best effect. The problem is not that the public sector spends too little, but that it wastes too much for the productive potential of the economy. So often the spending achieves the opposite of what they intend.
I am sure the government intended the huge sums they spent on Northern Rock to protect jobs in that northern business and to shore up the mortgage market. Instead, thanks to EU Competition rules, it does neither. The workforce will be more than halved, and the mortgage book will suffer a similar fate. Huge sums are being wasted on running down the very asset they bought.
Similarly, the move of Railtrack to the public sector Network Rail led to a huge surge in costs to deliver the same amount of track, running up massive borrowings which the markets regard as public sector borrowing (with a Treasury Guarantee) even if the government doesn’t think of them like that.
We now see the public sector is some disarray. This week there will be tube strikes, thanks to Union unhappiness about the pay regime following the financial problems within one of the government’s most expensive and absurd Public/Private Partnerships. The taxpayer was predictably left picking up the bills when it went wrong.
There will be a long period working through this government’s creative borrowings and expensive projects. I expect them to sign up as many as possible in the next few months, to tie hands of an incoming government. If they do it will represent a further deterioration in the UK’s already very overstretched public finances, and mean more grief sorting it all out in due course.

It comes as no surprise today to see a poll telling us that David Miliband would be no more successful against David Cameron than Gordon Brown. The problem is primarily economic. Mr Miliband has not put forward an alternative, is not a critic of the PM’s over his poor handling of the economy, and offers no reassurance to the British public that a government under his leadership would change things for the better.

When John Major was in a similar position to Gordon Brown, with the two Michaels (Heseltine and Portillo) widely tipped for his crown and endless speculation about their possible leadership bids, John Major told all of us in Cabinet to put up or shut up. I felt obliged to resign and take the argument to the country that I had been waging for years against his economic stewardship – as a fierce opponent of the ERM, the higher taxes he imposed and the failure to curb public spending. I had been putting (in confidence within government) a consistent alternative and felt I could not “shut up”. Major’s device stopped the two Michaels from prosecuting their leadership ambitions at that stage, and sealed their fate never to lead the party. Unfortunately John Major did not listen to the need for an alternative economic strategy, so that also sealed his.

Gordon Brown would be less at risk of a challenge if he tried what John Major successfully executed as a personal survival strategy as Leader. David Milliband would not run. He would not be able to show he had consistently opposed the mistaken economic policy the government has pursued. I find myself in agreement with both the government spin machine and the official Conservative one that David Miliband is neither the answer to Labour’s problems nor to the country’s. It shows a complete lack of political judgement to allow the story to emerge that Alan Milburn would be his Chancellor. That is no way to win more hearts and minds for a Leadership bid in the left inclining Labour party. It shows a lack of political maturity for someone to be counting so many chickens so soon.

NICE has been in the firing line recently. This body which has the duty to decide which drugs the NHS can buy and which are unsuitable on grounds of efficacy and cost has been caught in the crossfire. On one side the pharmaceutical companies have been running effective campaigns to claim NICE was wrong to reject their new drug. On the other side patient groups have started to lobby in ever more media friendly ways for spending on the latest drug that they hope will alleviate or cure their symptoms.

It is what you should expect when you have a near monopoly health service provider controlled by this particular group of politicians who live by the media. Because the NHS has such colossal power in its buying decisions drug companies have to throw everything in to selling to the single purchaser in the English market. They are very disappointed if it does not work.

Similarly, patient groups have come to realise with this government that only media friendly prominent lobbying is likely to get Ministers attention and possibly lead to a change of policy. One of the newer features of an MP’s life is a stream of invitations to attend functions organised by groups whose sole aim is to change the drug purchases and the medical and clinical protocols of the NHS for treating a particular disease. Most diseases now have their action group. They feel forced to behave like this, competing for the attention and money of Ministers in this heavily centralised top down system Labour has devised. Too much rests on the decisions of just a few people at the top, in the Ministry, and in NICE.

The government has invited people to make the NHS the central concern of modern politics. They have shown them how to lobby and use the media, and they have so centralised the NHS that people conclude the only thing that matters is to get to the Minister. They have ended up fashioning a boomerang that is beginning to hurt the very government that designed it as their own political weapon.

Labour believed that if they spent lots more on the NHS most of the problems would go away. If they centralised decisions they could guarantee good standards across the country and claim the credit for all that was going on. Such a strategy means they must also be to blame for things that are not working well, for the hospital infections, the delays and shortages,and to blame when people cannot get access to the drugs they think they need or the treatment that would make them better.

I have been meeting GPs during the summer break from Westminster. They complain to me that too many top down targets are making it far more difficult to serve their patients well. They dislike features of the very expensive centralised computer technology being introduced into their lives. They too are unhappy about the endless fiats from the centre and from too many judgements being made by too few people.

Labour had better be careful. Its attempt to play politics with the health issue, showing itself as the beneficent provider of more cash from the centre, is becoming a cause of angst with patient groups, with drug companies and with GPs. That is a very powerful alliance of interests to turn against you. Never has so much money been spent by so few people with such negative effects.

This week-end was the week-end of transformation in the UK’s feelings about the Olympics. Scepticism bred of Chinese politics and spin, of government targets and the government elite piling out to Bejing at our expense has been banished by the sheer guts, determination, skill and talent of Uk competitors. Many of them have decided to live their dream. Many of them have made their dreams come true. It is wonderful to read of their exploits. Congratulations to them all. Best wishes to all those still to compete. They are a reminder to everyone that if you really really want something, you might be able to obtain it – after you have put in hours, days, years of effort and concentration.

I have enjoyed the season at the Globe this year. Their Merry Wives has received much deserved praise for its light hearted romp through the lives and loves of Windsor housewives, and their Midsummer Night’s Dream stresses the comic, with well played scenes from Bottom and the mechanics. The production which has made the biggest impression on me was the depth and tragedy of King Lear.

The tragedy seems so topical because it is on one level about a King who gives away his kingdom to the wrong people, splitting it physically to do so and causing civil discord through the gross lack of judgement. It has been a bad few years watching our present government giving away our powers of self government with a similar lack of judgement, stirring up disagreements where there need have been none, and splitting the country into European style regions. Gloucester also makes a rank misjudgement by choosing the advice and word of his illegitimate son over his legitimate son, setting himself up for loss of title, and loss of his eyes.

Both Lear and the Duke of Gloucester bring their misfortunes on themselves by making gross misjudgements about their children. Lear refuses his sweetest daughter a third of his kingdom when he dismembers it for his three daughters before his own death, because she does not express her love as flatterers do. Gloucester, who wishes to keep his inheritance whole and is not in the business of giving it away before his death, rashly decides to disinherit his heir, giving the promise of it to his bastard son who is falsely undermining his brother and then his own father. Neither old man can see clearly. Lear goes mad. Gloucester, in one of the most shocking scenes in theatre, has his eyes put out, to make the point that he has not been using them well. He is stripped of his title and powers thanks to the duplicity of his illegitimate son. Had Lear not made the error over Cordelia and given her her just third there would still have been trouble in the kingdom, for the whole idea of splitting it with daughters like Goneril and Regan was fundamentally ill conceived. Both old men lose their revenues and their authority through their stupidity.

Shakespeare is not suggesting there are easy answers to the war between the generations.His play reminds us how fragile a thing peace and good government is. A single rash misjudgement on the scale of Lear’s or Gloucester’s can set in train a series of events that leads to the destruction of a person’s health, wealth and status. There are always people in the world of politics – or most other worlds – who will lie and cheat to gain office. Once in office they will abuse or even destroy it. Others will have to obey them for they have “authority”, and some will willingly obey them because they have patronage.

Like Lear, this government’s tragedy is they cannot see clearly. They are unwilling to admit the magnitude of the economic errors they have made. They refuse to accept that their mismanagement of the public sector is a big part of the problem the UK now faces in adjusting to the credit crunch. Indeed they wish to make it worse by their extreme policies of public spending and borrowing. They too have set in train a series of tragic events that will do harm to the United Kingdom. Just as Lear’s splitting of the country caused grief, so Labour’s lop sided devolution is now destroying them through the pressure of the SNP and the strength of English resentment at its unfairness.

Shakespeare’s masterly use of the theatrical – Lear’s madness in the storm and Gloucester’s pathetic attempts to kill himself – are extreme to illustrate wider truths about the human condition. Seeing Lear again in such a good production was a poignant experience. Our country is beign dismembered by politicians who cannot see clearly. Once again powers to govern ourselves are being given away. Once again those in power are making rash judgements, and cannot distinguish good advice from false.

No wonder this too is a time of troubles. Bad economic misjudgement and a bungled constitutional settlement with Brussels and the regions will bring the government down eventually . The tragedy is we are still so far away from a possible change of government, and this government is so far away from understanding what is wrong, let alone wanting to do anything to put it right.