The one thing that troubles me more than any other in current circumstances is the perception by both front benches that it would be politically damaging to explain how bad things really are.

Like you I do not believe we are on the edge of economic oblivion, but we are in a deep hole and it is hard to get out of a hole unless you know how deep it is and where the hand and foot-holds are that can aid your clamber out.

It is necessary – necessary in the sense that there really is no alternative – to acknowledge that the so-called boom of 2004-7 was pure pretense. It was based on pretend money magicked out of bubble equity in residential premises and pretend profits from banks selling hot air to each other. This country’s base-line sustainable level of wealth as at May 2009 is not the level of wealth calculated by reference to magic beans in 2007, it might not even be that which was perceived to exist in 2005.

Every available realistic assessment suggests at least a 5% fall in national wealth by the end of 2009 from the (pretend) level at Autumn 2007. A major realignment is required to reflect the reality that we are probably as wealthy now in real terms as we thought we were in unreal terms in 2004 or 2005. That, in my view, should set the scene for the future. It is going to be a very rocky ride and I would like to see front bench spokesmen being brutally honest about this.

Incidentally, it was nice to see my old friend Steve Hammond chipping in with a couple of excellent interventions. Did you know he was an very fine hockey player in his younger days? Real hockey, I mean, not the version played by padded thugs on ice.

Reply: Thanks. As you say, an honest appraisal and work on what is now a sustainable growth rate from here would be helpful.

You say, “at the margin [the tax rate] is rather higher than [50%]” – actually it can be a lot higher. My marginal tax rate is currently 73%. (This is made up of 40% income tax and 33% withdrawal rate for tax credits.) And for somebody earning a bit more than £40k, which is a decent but not enormous salary, that seems quite high to me.

Of course they are not a decent Government. They pursue power at any price. The Country is just a commodity to be exploited by their stupidity and greed. This whole exercise is Brown’s scorched earth policy to destroy the next Government.

In the context of Political Correctness+Liberal Human Rights we see Socialism failing – it’s too expensive to try to make everybody have equal outcomes in life with these constraints imposed on a Government. The process of “social annealing” (i.e. pouring the energy into a system to shift the natural state at room temperature) has been shown not to be able to afford its own cost when Political Correctness means you can’t target poor outcomes as a result of culture and Liberal Human Rights means you can’t target poor outcomes as a result of individuals.

Social Engineering has been tried to death. Labour have no where to go unless they change their goals or their constraints. I don’t believe they can do this in even 10 years.

I think you are also right to mention that not raising income tax was a Labour manifesto promise. Like breaking the promise on an EU referendum, irrespective of whether raising taxes & preventing the people have a say are good things is the fact that Labour have broken their most specific promises.

Parties tend not to be trusted after they have blatantly lied. Wise politicians realise that their word is the only stock in trade they carry & when it is gone they are bankrupt.

Now please let your followers into the secret. That speech was 45 minutes long; had around 48 topic sentences, (paragraph openers) and you had circa., ten interventions that did not break your delivery. Where were the notes? Just how the hell do you do that, I has to know?

Reply: I make it up as I go along, but it is a subject I spend a lot of my time thinking about and writing about.
I have always spoken without notes, save for a few Ministerial speeches where colleagues required me to get approval for a draft.

We will have to wait until the next election, and if the Conservatives win we will see if you can get the same message through to them.

Andrew Rosindell mentioned the largest petition on the Downing Street website. “Twice as many people are calling for his resignation as voted for him at the last election.” There was another petition on Gordon’s site begging him not to resign. It had 234 signatures and today it’s gone. The reason? All the names were things like Juan Kerr (it took me a moment as well).

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/simon-carr/the-sketch-people-as-tired-as-gordon-brown-are-usually-in-hospital-1680393.html

Really funny.