Hopi Sen

Via Marbury

Message discipline and a strong personal brand is essential in to achieving cut-through in the crowded modern political environment.

From the New York Governor’s hustings:

The Cuts won't work

How can you resist, eh? And Tories, look at it this way, if you buy it, you’ll be contributing to Private sector GDP growth, and will help to ensure the belief emblazoned on the clothing does not come to pass.

Anyway, Since I have a free T-Shirt, I’m going to give it away.

The prize to whoever provides the names of the most recent Labour and Conservative MPs to have been professional footballers.  Stick your answers in the comments. (I have an answer I believe is correct, but I am willing to listen to corrections if I have missed someone in error)

Stylistically, David Cameron is at his best when making speeches like the one he made today to the CBI . He plays the eager enthusiast for modernity rather well. When it is combined with praisng businesses and criticising bureaucracy, it’s pretty much a home fixture for him.

In substance, there is nothing in the Industrial policy proposals he put forward that I would argue is foolish, unnecessary or destructive. 

That might sound like damning with faint praise, but that’s a pretty good standard to reach in any industrial policy speech, since it’s so easy to jump off into mercantilism, corporatism, beggar my neighbouring and sundry other sins.

So it’s actually quite a compliement, though sadly one that doesn’t apply when it comes to the government’s overall economic policy.

So let me be supportive for a bit.

Technology Innovation Centres are a good idea, and worth backing. I’m glad that we’re not slashing infrastructure spending.

A review into innovation is good too, though Labour’s Innovation Nation White paper was pretty good, and the Dyson review by the Tories, while decent, said little particularly new.  

Disclosure – I’m a fan of encouraging innovative research in small businesses via a lottery for research vouchers, cutting out the bueracracy of deciding who gets what, which discourage Small Business.

I’ve also been convinced by ideas like expanding the Student Loans system to include vocational, part-time and day release education, to improve our skills and innovation base and build HE-Business links. I’m pretty convinced the government would like these things too. So I wonder how much more we need to review it again.

So, there’s a fair bit of decent stuff here*. Stripped of the unavoidable rhetoric that pretends it’s a huge break from the past,  Cameron’s speech has the makings of a sensible continuation and refinement of the previous government’s Infrastucture, science and innovation policies.

Here’s the big but.

David Cameron began his speech with two big questions – “Where is the growth going to come from – where are the jobs going to come from?”

His speech was a decent answer to a totally different question.

The proposals Cameron discussed are nowhere near enough to deal with the scale of our needs. At a Conservative estimate, we’ll need to create some two million jobs over the next few years.

It is just not a big enough deal. The measures announced today, and the ideas put on the table for the future are decent, but they’re small.

This speech sets out some useful micro-interventions, but it is nothing compared to the big problem of the overall economic approach. 

The big problem we have is high unemployment and low investment. (It’s worth reading Duncan Weldon’s post on this problem in the US, as it applies to Britain too)  The government has decided we should complement that with lower public sector investment too.

We need to create around two million private sector jobs in the next five years.  How?

Chris Dillow nicely sets out why it might be difficult, given the government’s plans.

 Jobs and Growth are the two key issues the government faces.

So David Cameron asked the right questions today.

Unfortunately, The Prime Minister then spent the rest of the speech carefully not answering them.

That’s the problem.

*Though I find it odd that we have this argument about the need for a broadbased economy, when the business models that always get namechecked in these speeches are Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Google and Cisco. These are service industries, and mostly ones that survived  a huge boom and bust cycle, when a huge number of firms got flooded with cash, and not all survived.  I suppose you can point to Cisco’s router business, but that’s like pointing to the California Pickaxe and Panning Company as a model for post Gold rush businesses.

I don’t like to talk about things I know nothing about, but there’s a lot of excellent  articles about the Tower Hamlets Mayoral electionby people who do know what they’re talking about.

So read Ted Jeory on the whole saga (especially this sort of thing), this article by Jessica Asato on campaigning yesterday, Luke Akehurst on the consequences for the Mayoral election and the Labour party in London and the ever fascinating Dave Hill at the Guardian.

For another perspective, the SWPer’s over at Lenin’s Tomb regard the election of Lutfur Rahman as a triumph for  the”candidate who is foregrounding the material needs of the working class, such as housing and incomes” over “Unpleasant bullies who have a patent disregard for democracy and whose message to ethnic minorities is to behave better than everyone else, be above reproach and effectively capitulate to racist hatemongers”.

Read around, then make your own mind up.

Labour shouldn’t worry about our polling numbers. We should be worrying about how we fix the internals.

If I was to distil Labour people’s expectations back in August, they would probably go something like “Labour will get close to the Tories ahead of the new leader being chosen, get a short boost over Conference, then probably overtake the Tories after the CSR, or perhaps in the new year ,when VAT rises and departmental cuts begin to become clearer.”

So Labour gets a new leader, the Tories mess up their conference and then spend a month talking about cuts, and arguing, then cut defence spending, and spending on vital public services, like the police.

The result? Nothing. A small Tory lead in the Polls and Labour exactly where we were without any leader at all.

So when will Labour start to panic?

After all, if Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot both got Labour up to 47 in the polls, why haven’t we breached 40%?

After all, by common consent Ed Miliband has passed every political test he’s been set. He’s intelligently attacked irresponsible strikes. He’s apologised for past mistakes. He won his first PMQs handily, his reshuffle was well conducted and unifying and his response to the issues like Child Benefit and the deficit have been measured, reasonable and moderate.

Further, Ed Miliband is personally popular, with an impressive satisfaction rating one month in.

So why hasn’t it made a damn bit of difference?

My thoughts after the jump
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Politicians are a piece of work sometimes.

A wealthy man stands up, prattles about fairness, and then announces a set of measures which fall hardest and worst on the poorest, those who need help for a safe, secure  home, young families, and young people looking for work or trying to stay in education.

Later ths week we’ll find out a lot more about the working tax credits cuts, the housing benefit changes and the impact of childcare support cuts. It will take time to unpick exactly what it means to lose Tax credits, reduce your childcare, council tax benefit and see rents rise.

One thing I do know. It won’t be pretty for a lot of struggling families.

What’s more, it’ll be the poor and middle income families who are hurt most by the cuts in crime and prison budgets*.

So where should Labour focus? We can credibly claim to have a “investment boost” we can apply because we would reprofile spending cuts over a longer period. So what should we do with it?

First, support the Science, research and regional growth agenda and call for further investment there. This is key to future growth and jobs. Argue that there is need for more support for private sector R&D investment.

Second, criticise attacks on very poorest and low income working families, especially on housing costs, police, childcare and tax credits while broadly supporting reform of ESA, though opposing a crude cut off point. We should do this both on fairness and demand driving grounds. The cuts announced to day will hurt those who need help most. There is a real problem we need to deal with.

Third, identify a “trigger point” for a stimulus based growth programme if global and UK economy looks like it is tanking. We would hope not to access those funds, but setting out the need for a plan B, we will also set out a useful purpose for not immediately “spending” the differential between our plans and that of the Governments.

A strategy like that would allow us to keep our focus on the big  economic challenge – private sector job creation, the big challenge for families- opposing deep cuts in support and services that help poor and lower income families and the big “what if” question – what happens if the Coalition plans go wrong and we find ourselves in a Japan style prolonged recession.

*There’s another story too. This marks the first step in the undercutting of Iain Duncan Smith’s overall strategy. By saving money now  on welfare transfer payments, you only have the funds to design a “universal” credit at a level that is either extremely painful for hundreds of thousands of people or incredibly expensive. My guess is that when you look at folding things together, you’d need a very low universal credit and a sharp taper to make the sums add up.

To the answer I gave back in July.

“…faced with the outrage of an angry middle England over services cuts, the Government’s easy option will be to to clamp down on welfare transfer payments, claim they are ending the easy life for the idle and use the savings to retain vital public services from the worst of the damage.

In that, they’ll have the support of those who regard the benefits system as a luxorious and greedy suckling on the welfare teat.

Which makes it all the more important that the opposition is able to present a credible alternative scenario of public spending reductions and tax increases – allowing the comparative savings to be focussed on support for job creation and lowering poverty via tax credits and support for working parents, while dealing with the abuses and distortions that generate the biggest “scrounger” headlines.*”

and in August:

“I’ve long said that the deal IDS would be offered is a substantially lower value of benefits in a new structure. This would leave hundreds of thousands of families worse off, and likely increase poverty, but it would give the Coalition the “reform” badge it seeks.”

and earlier this month:

“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…   …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 slowly decline over the next few years”

My suspicion is that there will be a “Welfare gap” in the CSR, the elements of which which won’t be discussed upfront, but be badged as “savings from reform” or somesuch.

We will then have to work backwards to understand exactly how that will be paid for.

*Also note the next couple of lines. Prophetic, eh?

It looks like I am going to have to do breathing exercises for the next six months while a bunch of trust fund babies talk about the damage welfare money does to the soul.

The frustrating thing is, that while being walking, talking posterboys for the advantages of unearned income and capital (as are the leader of all the main political parties), they persist in believing that there is some magic property attached to money given by parents which immunises the cash from the corruption which infects handouts proffered by the state.

(Anyway, my simmering class envy is not an attractive quality. I’m better off than 99.99999% of people in all of human history. I doubt I’d change place with a Caesar, particularly a fourth century one. I should be grateful for my good fortune and happiness, rather than greenly muttering about the good fortune of the next pico-centile* up.)

 Still, if you are a political journalist, and you happen to come across a smooth-faced inherited millionaire while going about your business, I understand there is a decent chance the chap is furrowing his brow over the terrible burden and great dangers of  the dependency culture.

If so, do me a small favour and innocently inquire about the great damage done by his personal dependency on the Investment bank of mater et pater? You might go further, and gently enquire, if like Julius before a portrait of Alexander, our hero cries at the terrible knowledge that without the education, the first car, the first job, the mortgage free house, and the social connections weighing him down, he would have achieved so much more.

It will do little good, but it will at lest lift my mind to think about serious things, not rumble on like a latter day Gordon Comstock.

* I just made this word up, but I’m not sure it’s right. It doesn’t mix Latin and Greek, but it does confuse two number values (pico- trillionth and cent -hundredth). If I wanted to express the fact that I was in the top billion of people who have ever lived, and so should not envy the people in the top nine hundred million, what would be a better way of expressing it? If I said top per-peco-ile, I doubt anyone would understand me!

A follow-up to this post on Tactical Victories, Strategic defeats.

Last week Tessa Jowell was pole-axed by an obvious question. It wasn’t her fault. She was trapped in the quandary I outlined last week. Having given a reasonable defence of the Browne report, assented to the statement that Labour had introduced thnoe current graduate fees and loans system, she was then asked the obvious question – what about the leader’s support for a graduate tax?

Tessa, being both honest and loyal, didn’t want to pretend she supported a graduate tax. Nor did she want to oppose her new Leader. So she waffled. Horrendously. Caught between going for the tactical victory of an applause line at a Colchester Question Time and the strategic attraction of endorsing a responsible piece of policy, she found she could attempt neither, and floundered.

That Question Time appearance should have some lessons for the Leader’s team.

They need to find a way out of this dilemma for the whole party.

They need to find a way out for the “tacticians” because given their head they’ll destroy our credibility by accident. They need to find a way out for the “strategists” because by remaining above the fray, they’ll destroy the party’s will to fight.

What follows is my suggestion on how to do that, but hey, what do I know? You might have a better one. Comments box is open.

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One of my interests is North Korea. I’ve got a small library of books on the hermit kingdom, it’s rulers and the gulag nation they oppress and starve. (I recommend the decade old “The Aquariums of Pyongyang” and the more recent “Nothing to Envy” to anyone who wants to know more about the nature of the dictatorship, though what has happenned since)

When you read about a regime as totalitarian as North Korea, you can find it hard to seperate the regime from those who are forced to live under it. This is, of course, intentional.

So I was delighted to see Tania Brannigan’s essay on visiting Pyongyang, and Dan Chung’s photographs in the Guardian*, both of which put a human face on the population of North Korea’s capital.  Both are worth lingering over, especially Dan’s photographs, and the impact is only slightly marred by a few people in the comments trying to persuade themselves that North Korea isn’t as bad as every bit of evidence suggests it is.

Tania Brannigan points out that what they were allowed to see was exceptional – like being allowed to Britain to see only a Kensington and Chelsea swept clean of any poverty. Still though, what both article and photo-essay remind you of is our common humanity. That makes the plight of North Korea even more important, not less troubling.

With the knowledge of what you are not allowed to see, some of the pictures really draw you in, like this one, of a group of women, not dressed for manual work, seemingly trimming a grass verge by hand, presumably ahead of a state celebration. The street lights they work under are all modern and solar powered. A sign of gradual modernisation, or a a symbol of the way the regime uses aid and funds for prestige itself while ignoring their people?

North Korea is a moral challenge to any of us who call ourselves socialists. We must not turn away from the people who suffer there, or shrink from the truth about the nature of the prison that Korean communists and their allies have created for twenty million people.

*Disclosure: I’ve met Dan a couple of times when he’s covered political stuff).