Hopi Sen

One of the problems with politics, as in business, is people constantly try and plan two or three steps ahead in an environment which is constantly shifting and changing underneath them.

 So David Cameron commits to matching Labour’s spending plans in order to head off an attack on tory cuts, only to find himself in a situation which makes both the spending plans and his repsonse to them redundant. 

Similarly, no-one voting in the general election in 2001 was aware of the choices the government would soon be pressed to in relation to terrorism.

Still though, we try and find a way to plot a path through the unknown future. Usually, these are in the form of “informed” commentators writing a future history, which like all such revelations are either quietly buried or celebrated endlessly, depending on whether they come to pass.

I was going to try and write one of these, an embodiment of my expectations, hopes and fears over the next four-five years. Yet it strikes me that brilliant though I am, there is little reason for me to be believed other than my word.  

It occurs to me that it would be a helpful exercise to construct a more statistical “central forecast” for the next few years of politics, taking into account likely outcomes of key events- growth rates,  unemployment forecasts, general trends in government popularity and so on. This would be an attempt to create a data based version of the sort of “conventional wisdom” that dominates political planning. 

For example, what does the country feel like in three years time if the OBRs main forecast for the British economy comes true? What if it turns out to be optimistic? Is there a way of relating key data points like unemployment, interest rates, and tax burden to overall paths of government popularity, or could we try to create models and test them against reality?

I’ve no idea whether such an exercise is possible, but the nerd in me has come to believe that the attempt, even though certainly flawed, would be more insightful starting point for discussions of the political future than the endless predictions based on gut feel and experience of a few commentators. Those predictions are both constantly changing and consequence free, which makes them worthless.

I’ve just calculated the results of the Shadow Cabinet prediction competition. I’m going to check the details in a moment, before announcing the winners, so here’s some awards for the runners and riders.

The wisdom of crowds award goes to… Yvette Cooper, who was the number one pick of over 90% of entrant.

The Dark Horse award goes to… Ivan Lewis, who was nominated by only one of our 57 entrants. Well Done to Molly Bennet for her unique insight.

The “By a nose” award goes to… Emily Thornberry, whose by missing out by one vote on an impressive 99 votes,  scuppered the predictions of many. If only she was the MP for a yorkshire seat!

The downed favourites award goes jointly to Peter Hain and Pat McFadden, who, after Emily, recieved the most nominations of the candidates who didn’t make it. Given that Pat is a big loss to the Shadow Cabinet, and the PLP managed to somehow elect a top team with no Welsh MPs, I’d suggest that this makes our voters slightly more sophisticated than the PLP!

A couple of comments on the results themselves. There a really strong showing by Yorkshire MPs as, when you include the Leader and Chief Whip, the Shadow Cabinet includes nine members from from Yorkshire and the Humber Region, I suspect a certain Nan Sloane will be smiling tonigh!

In fact, it’s even more impressive than that – If you drive the rectangle of motorway bounded by the M18 to the south, the M62 to the north and the M1 and A1M to the west and east, I think you’re driving through the constituencies of the Leader of the Labour Party, the chief whip and the top three vote getters in the shadow cabinet! You’re also Going through Mary Creagh’s constituency, and are right next to Caroline Flint. That’s some concentration of opposition influence. Time to become pally with the regional director of the Yorkshire and Humber Labour party, everyone!

With Harriet Harman as deputy, there’s also four members from London, and another four from the North West (Burnham, the two Eagle sisters and Ivan Lewis.) There’s a issue though with a lack of representation for the North-East, Wales and West Midlands. that will need to be balanced in the Junior ministerial appointments,

I occasionally get the chance to transcribe a letter from a wily old cynic, a veteran survivor of many past battles. Today, a copy of a sulphurous letter arrived, addressed to a not particularly prominent supporter of David Miliband. I thought it was worth sharing. Names have been changed, naturally.

BY HAND -PRIVATE

Dear M,

Well, I bet I find you a trifle embarrassed, as having backed one Mili with vigorous enthusiasm, you now find yourself trying to reverse gently into supporting another. 

I did try to warn you that unbridled enthusiastiasm is only appropriate in a walkover, but would you listen? No. A degree of distance would have made you useful to either winner, as the few Ballsites are discovering. But you had to throw yourself in to a contest where the outcome was uncertain and your contribution to victory was minimal. Foolish.

Frankly I can’t understand why you did it. After all,  even if your man had won, he could have offered you nothing significant. That Prince’s council was chosen an aeon ago, and you were stuck in a distant ante-chamber.

Still, you at least came to ask for advice, and for the price of a decent Claret, I am prepared to offer it.

First of all, put out of your mind all thought of revolt, future or present. You are a member of Her Majesties Loyal Labour party, a party so loyal we possess a proud record of being thrown over by our leaders more often than we have overthrown them.

So the new man is in for a good while. There will be occasional mumblings and discontent, but in truth, the next few years will feel like recovery.

As long as we are gaining council seats, press admirers and plaudits from the chin-strokers, as we will, no-one will be rewarded for piping up to say that it may not quite be not enough. Such noisome dissent will be both  ludicrous (you are no Tiresias) and counter productive (for such comments would be seized upon by our enemies).

So put such thoughts from your head.  In any case, if the unthinkable did happen, then like the Roman Senate after the fall of Sejanus, it will be far better to not be a Macro, sand ufficient merely to avoid being a known Julian.

You now need to walk a fine line. First, do not suck up. If you suck up ( by which I mean, going around telling the new leader and his complement of pale twenty and thirty-something assistants how wonderful they are, or being interviewed by some gawking 2am newsreader about how superb the new leader is),  the Leader’s team will disdain you.

Why? because  however grateful they appear to be, ultimately they will know your support is false, a cheap thing, to be obtained by the mere scent of authority and in opposition, forsooth. Knowing you sell yourself so cheaply, they’ll assume that one day you could be bought cheaply too.  You badge yourself as fickle and untrustworthy.

Since you’ve got yourself into this mess, don’t think you can get out of it by pricing your integrity at a mess of pottage.  

Instead,  as you cannot be a fast climbing lackey, you have to take a far harder road. You must  make yourself an attractive target for political seduction. You must make them desire you, need you, long for you. Then you can sell your integrity for what it’s worth, which in your case is a good shadow cabinet position with the promise of promotion.

So be loyal and supportive, perhaps a letter sending to the leader or a chance meeting with his chief of staff where you say quietly that “of course, while I take a different view on some issues, I know that Ed has won the right to loyalty.”  But then, stop. If you are asked to help, murmur “of course”, but do not push yourself along with the other greasy pole climbers. You have to make them want you.

So what political pheromones can you spray yourself with that will lead you to appear a tantalising conquest? first, realise that opposition is bloody horrible. Things will go wrong, and when they do, the person who is useful is not the lickspittle, but the man who knows. In a crisis, we all become followers of Plato.

So your challenge is to find some coming storm and become expert in it. Make your own way, never challenging the leader, but building your reputation. Then, when the storm comes, you will have your umbrella ready to unfurl.

The good news is that you have many options – Jobs, Welfare, Defence, public services, pensions, each of these will be fertile ground, I’d go for employment, but I’m an old eighties man, so you might prefer something more vague and etherial that can be applied to any crisis.

“The good life”, or some such, will suffice. Start a think tank called Eudaimonia. (Don’t write it in Greek, for gods sake. It’s purpose is  to be a title to go under your name when on Newsnight. No-one will know how clever you are if it’s all greek to them). Write a report on the social consequences of insecurity. Write a book with several hundred footnotes. Make speeches. Get some sallow youth to spend a month staring at databases while camped out in the commons Library.  Build your stock of intellectual capital, loyally and quietly. Praise your leader, if asked, but be circumspect. Your mind is on higher things. Say you wish to attack the ideological underpinnings of the enemy, not second guess the position of a friend.

Then, at the moment everything looks like it’s going tits up, then you offer support. Bring to bear your newly acquired reputation.  Speak up, and save the day. Don’t worry, you won’t be rescuing a drowning man. You’ll be coming to the aid of the party. Showing your truebackbone when the fair weather friends are flapping. A man of iron, of indefatigable will, of real grit. Just the sort of fellow we need in the thick of battle.

So, off you toddle. Play the long game.  You’re a substitute, so wait until you’re desperately needed before trying to get on the pitch.

Toodle pip.

Lord Tapescrew PC

That was…. alright. It was a perfectly servicable conference speech. 

It didn’t drop any huge clangers (The quiet man… is turning up the volume!) nor did it hit any career defining heights (the grotesque chaos of a Labour council — a Labour council — ) but it didn’t need to. 

I re-read Tony Blair’s first conference speech as Prime Minister today, and I was struck by three things. 

First, how good it was. Second, that despite this I did not remember a single line of it. Third, how similar it was to the speech David Cameron gave today. 

I suspect David Cameron has read Blair’s speech, because there’s some striking similarities in the structure and delivery of both. It’s almost as if someone took Blair’s 1997 speech and ran in through a Conservativamizer(TM) to produce Cameron’s speech. 

Structurally both begin with a recognition of the privilege of office, then move to a tribute to the “lost” leaders and activists, and then to a recitation of the pleasure of being able to act on cherished beliefs. 

Then there’s a ritual, but perfunctory attack on the opposition, before a discussion of the enormous challenges the nation faces, an extended musing on the meaning of a word (Blair:change, Cameron: fairness) then a passionate setting out of the solutions the government offers to social ills, before a closing focussed on how to delivering those changes will require the support and involvement of a whole nation, not just ministers, with a peroration that says that the British spirit is vibrant, energetic, go getting and caring, so the Prime Minister is convinced that everything will work out fine. 

Tonally too, theres are likenesses. 
Blair : “I am proud,  privileged, to stand before you as the new Labour Prime Minister of our  country.” 
Cameron: “It is an honour and a privilege to stand here, before the party I lead, before the country I love, as the Conservative prime minister of the United Kingdom.” 

Blair:  ”No cockiness about the Tories even now.  They’re  not dead. Just sleeping.” 
Cameron “They said we had ceased to be. That we were an ex-party. Turns out we really were only resting – and here we are” 

Blair ” Believe in us as much as we believe in you. Give just as much to our country  as we intend to give.  Give your all. “ 
Cameron: ” Society is not a “spectator sport. This is your country. It’s time to believe it. It’s time to step up and own it.” 

Blair: “And when people say sorry, that’s too ambitious, it can’t be done, I say: this is not a sorry country, we are not a sorry people.  It can be done. 
Cameron: “Don’t let the cynics say this is some unachievable, impossible dream that won’t work in the selfish 21st century – tell them people are hungry for it.” 

Nor are the similarities are just the occasional phrase, or structural move. 

In Blair’s first speech we find a young girl who writes in to say how much she liked going to a summer camp. In Cameron’s a young girl writes in to help pay off the deficit. 

In Blair, an argument about it being right to have higher interest rates now to ensure stability later. In Cameron a similar argument about the deficit. 

Neither speech contains much actual news, but rather focusses on the big vision for the next few years. 

Finally, both speeches contain extended lyrical descriptions of the nation they would like to build and the wisdom, generosity and courage of the British people, though I suppose this is compulsory. I’d like to see a Leader’s speech that claimed that a large proportion of the British populace were bothersome blighters. 

Obviously, I think Blair’s speech is better, because I don’t think Cameron ever quite reaches the same heights of Blair. While both are ultimately forgettable, and say nothing truly new, The echo makes Cameron oddly hollow sounding, at least to me. 

But if this speech isn’t a conscious tribute to Blair, it is certainly at some level an unconcious one. 

That’s a compliment to Labour’s old leader, and a challenge to our  new one.

At Conference, I got the chance to have an extended conversation with John Healey, MP for Wentworth.

John Healey - moving to a Des Res?

I got to know John when he was a Treasury minister, and was responsible for PLP links and campaigning.

It’s fair to say that many ministers, even certain up and comers who were planning to run for the party leadership, didn’t regard this as a priority, but John did (along with Jim Murphy, Pat McFadden and James Purnell).

That group of ministers seemed to understand that helping MPs campaign, providing the opportunity for them to have serious policy discussion and keeping people informed served a wider political purpose than simply keeping MPs happy.

That understanding is one of the reasons that those ministers handled difficult issues, from Housing reform to Industrial strategy to Europe to Incapacity Benefit reform, without a huge internal fight.

It’s also the one big reason why Healey is likely to be elected to the shadow cabinet. Another is that as well as being a minister, Healey has roots in the Union movement, having been a union head of communication and the TUCs head of campaigns. These things matter.

But backroom skills like  campaigning and engaging with MPs doesn’t guarantee frontline political success.

An effective shadow cabinet minister need to focus well beyond the PLP, the union movement and the party. We have to find a way to communicate to the millions whose support we lost, One of the dangers of opposition is navel gazing is attractive when the alterantive is confronting an unpleasant truth.

So If Healey does make it to the shadow cabinet, he’s made it clear his focus will be on keeping Labour in touch with the concerns of the “squeezed middle”.

What is this squeezed middle?

Healey argues that there are seven million people on household incomes of between 14.5k and 33.5k a year. By and large these are working families. They feel they get little help from the state in benefits, and have to struggle by on their own. On top of that, their working hours are long, their jobs are increasingly insecure, they either have a significant mortgage or must rent in the private sector.

The challenge for Labour will be to develop new policies to appeal to this group, as Labour have never won without their support.  This means, in Healey’s eyes, looking once again at the world of the workplace, specifically at family friendly issues, from child care to working hours. Income security should be as big an issue as Income inequality, he argues, as many families are one or two payslips away from disaster.

Healey isn’t dismissive of the Tory approach on these issues. He says at one point that the Coalition’s move to increase the personal tax allowances is a good move for many people, but that the dismissive attitude many Tories seem to have over “small” sums of money is a sign they don’t understand what life is really like for people on middle incomes, and how important even a limited amount of state benefit can be. This was before the Child benefit announcement. Perhaps we were unconsciously foreshadowing.

Listening to this, I feel a “yes, but” rising in my throat. I accept that this is the key electoral battle ground (Politicians love nothing better that to gove another label to what is essentially the same group of people, qv “White Van man”, “Mondeo man”, “Worcester woman”, “Middle England”, Mosaic’s “Happy families” and “School gate mums” and so on and so on) but I’m not sure that all the concerns of this group are economic. Aren’t we in danger of missing the social concerns that are just as significant as tax and spend. Issues like crime, community and respect?

John’s response is that Labour must be alive to is the importance of community. John points out that his constituents have aspirations, ambitions, but they are also proud of their home-town, where they have roots, family, network and support. They don’t want to have to move to London to succeed in life. Labour needs to be a party that helps both families and their communities meet their aspirations.

It is this support for aspiration that Healey thinks is the key. John was an early advocate of a graduate tax and points out that for families in Parkgate, just north of Rotherham, where his son went to school, had one other family where the parents had gone to university. For that family, and for other parents,  the thought of taking on significant debt would act as a barrier to aspiration (a point also made by Jon Cruddas about his own family).

The argument isn’t about specific policy proposals, claims Healey, but something wider – a constant focus on ensuring that Labour supports the aspirations of “squeezed” families, and doesn’t appear to put a brake on them. You gt the sense that he believes that a media-political class, all earning over £40,000 a year, are divorced from the reality of what life is like for those working hard to get by.  The challenge is to change that.

To succeed Healey suggests Labour will need shadow ministers in departments like DWP, Communities, Treasury, Education and business to work together, alongside people from outside both outside politics and London, to craft an agenda that runs through Labour’s manifesto

The issues raised could be anything from crime and burglary to home building. The comon theme is support for those who feel they are too often denied a helping hand.  Of course, all this costs money, so Healey suggests that we use support for the “squeezed middle” as a measure when deciding which government cuts we will support or oppose.

Healey argues that in government too often Labour used different definitions of “middle england” as a way to fight proxy battles within government and party.

In opposition, he argues we must make the “squeezed middle” a touchstone for policy making. If he wins in the Shadow Cabinet, John Healey may find himself shadowing Local government or the Chief Secretary tasked with the job of making that happen and making the sums add up.

I was a bit intimidated by the Tory media strategy for their conference.

I thought the pitch to “the national interest” was smart, I thought the message of tough decisions for the long-term was a good one, and I was worried that after a week of Labour talking (by necessity) to ourselves, the Conservatives would look serious, decisive and moderate as they spoke to the nation.

Then they went and spoiled it all by saying something stupid like “I’ll cut you”.

There has been a firestorm over plans to save a billion a year by axing Child Benefit to higher rate tax payers. Remember that billion. It’s the whole justification for the decision.

Today we’re hearing that in response to this unhappiness the Conservatives are once again proposing a transferable Married Couples Tax allowance as the solution and hinting it might be extended to Higher rate taxpayers.

 I suspect that Tory strategists think proposing a ”Transferable tax allowance” is a sort of patent medicine that cures all internal Tory ailments. It’s certainly got little or nothing to do with why people are unhappy with Osborne’s announcment yesterday.

So how much would a transferable tax allowance cost?

Well, the Centre for Social Justice (Prop: I. D. Smith) estimated a total cost of £3.2 billion, but that includes Basic Rate only (p108, P18). The Chartered Institute of Taxation’s John Whiting is quoted in Telegraph as estimating a cost of c £2billion, even if only one million basic rate taxpayers use their tax allowance.

What about if you look only at Higher rate taxpayers? (though the politics of creating a tax allowance of higher rate taxpayers _only_ would be suicidal). Sunder Katwala at the Fabians estimates a cost of £750 million.

Even if you take the Tory manifesto commitment of a tax break of £150 per couple per year, limited to basic rate taxpayers only, that would cost £550 million. Obviously, married basic rate taxpayers are by definition not the higher rate taxpayers losing out at losing child benefit. (Ironically, It would be a progressive move, though also a really bizarre piece of ineffectual Dali-esque micro social engineering. As my Tory friends never tire of pointing out, the two are often compatible).

Extending that allowance to higher rate taxpayers, as Cameron hinted today, would probably cost another £150 million or so (there are c3 million higher rate taxpayers - so let’s say a third of them are eligible for the allowance)

So, in order to stop the media coverage of a Child Benefit cut that saves £1 billion, the Conservatives are proposing a policy that would cost 70-300% of the original savings, with the rewards going to a very different group to the pain.

In doing this, they would save very little money, create an over 100% tax rate for parents in the 40,000 + salary bracket, create a transferable allowance that is inequitous for those of us not lucky enough to be married or unlucky enough to be divorced, while at the same time,  making the tax system even more complicated. It’s a quadrafecta of bad policy.*

I disagreed with the Tory proposal to axe Child Benefit for higher rate taxpayers  because the method they’d chosen to do it was manifestly unfair. 

However, I had to concede that the fundamental purpose was at least a useful and important one. We do need to reduce the defict, and it’s right the wealthy pay their share.

But this? This is just something stupid.

*Weirdly, these proposals are like a Tory caricature of Gordon Brown at his worst, headline focuses, fiddling, social engineering, creating unintended consequences and complex to administer. Perhaps this is all some sort of post-modern joke.

This is the last chance to enter the Shadow Cabinet prediction competition – Entries close at 6pm. Have been really chuffed with response so far. Remember – if you want to stay anonymous, you can, just let me know what you want to do with prize if you win.

A couple of people have said oh noez, at work, can’t finish it by six”, so If you don’t have time to do your list by 6pm, let me know you want to enter, and I’ll generously accept that as a provisional entry that you can fill in properly when you get home tonight, or summat.

It occurred to me last night that

a) A universal credit is the policy of this government.

b) One of the obvious options for reforming child benefit would be to fold it into the existing tax credit structure, starting to tapering off at (say) 40k household income but preserving some  income up to (say) 60k hhld income (like family element of old tax credits), thus preserving some universality.

Do it right, and you might even be able to slightly increase Child Benefit for those on <30k, which is what Osborne did quite successfully when withdrawing Tax credits for higher earners.

c) That the coalition hadn’t done this, though it is an obvious step to both lowering costs and moving towards universal credit.

So why didn’t they?

Answer A) is that it wouldn’t save enough money. Which points to Universal credit being relatively expensive to introduce, as if a Tax credit system doesn’t save money over a high take up universal beneft, it has cost problems.

Answer B) is that that the sums would lead to substantial numbers of people losing significant money. In other words, the political judgement that the obvious political pain of annoying single earner higher rate taxpayers and those on c40k with two or more children was less than the political pain losers from a tapered child benefit would give government.

If that’s the answer then a Universal credit is going to be painful to introduce. After all, it relies on doing exactly that for child benefit, tax credits, allowances and a host of other benefits. 

Answer C) is complexity – that the tax credit system would be hard to manage with extra workload, that means testing households would cause problems, and that people would miss out on needed benefits because they don’t grasp system.

In which case, isn’t there a problem in using exactly this mechanism for all major benefits?

So here’s a question to ask IDS’s office today – “exactly why did the Treasury choose to axe Child Benefit for higher rate earners, rather than tapering it for higher income households?” 

Whatever the answer is, the follow up is “what does that reason imply for the introduction of Universal Credit?”

We’ve had two announcements on Benefits spending over the last 24 hours. Child benefit is no longer to be paid to higher rate taxpayers, while no family will be able to claim more than £500 a week in benefits.

If you were paying only slight attention, you’d think that this was the core of the coalition’s short term benefit savings. In fact it’s only a small percentage of what is needed.

This is for two reasons. The first is that both changes are misleadingly complex. The second is they don’t save as much money as the coalition say they need to meet their spending targets.

Take removing child benefit for higher rate taxpayers. It sounds simple, but lets say a PAYE higher rate taxpayer and their partner has a baby. The Child benefit is paid, and then this is claimed back from the higher rate tax payer via a tax charge on their pay.  Three years later, the couple split up. So at some point HMRC has to locate the right person to charge the tax to. Then later, the taxpayer has to tell HMRC they are no longer in a household claiming child benefit, so they don’t get charged.

Of course, they could be lying. So someone has to check. See what I mean about it getting complex?The overnment estimate a billion a year will come in wthis way, but I’d anticipate an awfully large degree of forgetfulness about children amongst higher rate taxpayers. They are very small after all.

What about a cap on benefits?

It’s pretty clear this hasn’t been thought through. Apart from anything else, if you exclude people on Disability Living allowance, the numbers get very small, so the savings are not that big. The biggest impact will be on housing benefit, but the changes announced earlier in the year will negate that anyway. I’d be surprised if many people were caught by this who wouldn’t have been caught by the change to the median rate of housing benefit and cap.  So these changes are more of a headline than a policy. What it does do is hurt larger families living in London, and put fear into people looking for emergency housing, such as those fleeing an abusive partner, who will worry they could reach a arbitrary benefits cap if placed in a hostel while waiting for social housing.

(I note with dark humour that the other thing a benefit cap does  is introduce a very powerful “Couple’s Penalty”. If you are a couple with three children, who having lost your jobs are hitting your benefit cap, and therefore about to lose your housing benefit*, the obvious thing to do is seperate, so you are claiming for two households, not one. It would be funny, if it weren’t so painful.)

So neither capping Benefits, nor stopping child benefit will provide significant savings. I reckon they’ll be lucky to get much more than a billion about both of them together. George Osborne has already signalled he wants much more upfront savings than that, while IDS is saying he’ll be able to introduce a Universal credit at low cost and David Cameron is claiming no-one will be worse off. So only three impossible things before breakfast.

Reading the reports over the weekend, I’ve tried to work out how all these statements could be true.

It does sort of make sense if what you do is freeze cash benefits (or increase them well below CPI), as the coalition has done with child benefit. That way, if Universal Credit was introduced, with the promise to increase at CPI, it would gradually become more attractive, while no-one would lose out at point of change over. You would start off with a Universal credit level as a low percentage of average incomes, so only those like single people on JSA would switch over, then as this inflated up and current benefits were frozen more people would find Universal credit more attractive than remaining on Housing benefit/JSA/ESA**.

Then you could make some immediate savings by targeting Winter fuel payments, Tax credits at the over £30k household income point, and other support offered to the 25k plus household income groups. You could use those savings to meet the Chancellor’s need for immediate savings and to fund the upfront costs of building an enormous IT database tracking the realitime income and household status of every family in the UK.

In effect, this would represent a double squeeze on low income families – first those who currently get a little help from the universal elements of tax credits, child benefits ansd so on would lose them, while those on benefits would see their incomes slow decline over the next few years until it was more attractive to switch to the Universal Credit. In exchange, there would be a benefit withdrawal rate of 60-65% so you’d keep a guaranteed proportion of everything you earned.

The net effect would be low income families significantly worse off, but in a way that would be subtler than before. Perhaps Oliver Letwin learned something from his experience woth the poll tax, as this is analagous to what Conservatives felt they should have done to get people used to the community charge.

The problem is, to make all this work, you need much more significant familiy credits and allowances cuts up front, and that reducing the value of out of work benefits would significantly increase the number of families in poverty.

So if you start seeing a sustained attack on the OECD definition of poverty, combined with a further assault on the idea of universal benefits, it’s likely we’re being warmed up for a double squeeze to make the sums add up.

*All the briefing suggests that limiting housing benefit will be the way the benefit cap is applied.

**None of this provides an answer to the other big problem with Universal Credit – that people’s cost of living isn’t universal – but I assume there will be some sort of “housing element”, but that’s for another time

Thanks to everyone who has sent in their entries for the shadow cabinet prediction competition.There’s been a great response, MPs are voting now, so you might be getting a few cluses about who’s doing well…

Entries will close at 6pm on Tuesday, so make sure you get your list of 19 in by emailing shadowcabinetelex@gmail.com!

Alternatively, if you want a handy form to chose your list from, you can find one here, just make you selection from the drop down menus, save your version of the document and email it to me. Remember, I won’t see it if you don’t email it!