"The reason why the badness of contemporary pamphlets is somewhat surprising is that the pamphlet ought to be the literary form of an age like our own. We live in a time when political passions run high, channels of free expression are dwindling, and organized lying exists on a scale never before known…

…A good writer with something he passionately wanted to say — and the essence of pamphleteering is to have something you want to say now, to as many people as possible — would hesitate to cast it in pamphlet form, because he would hardly know how to set about getting it published, and would be doubtful whether the people he wanted to reach would ever read it."

George Orwell, Pamphlet Literature

So, yesterday's post was a little bit of self mockery.

Last night the good people at the Orwell Prize announced that I, along with a media non-entity called Suzanne Moore, who daubs her scrawls on dried tree pulp for actual money, will be the Judges of the 2012 Orwell Prize for Blogging.

Why would I want to judge, rather than enter, the prize this year?

For one thing, I think the Orwell Prize handled the Johann Hari storm with remarkable grace and fairness, and I wanted to show show a degree of support for them after they had to investigate a previous, highly regarded winner.

Second, I'd been rather teasing of previous Judges, and also forced them to read my posts, and thought it only fair to go through the misery I inflicted on others. My turn in the barrel.

Finally, I've entered the Orwell prize each year since they opened it to blogs, and been long-listed, short-listed and not-listed, so I've experienced all it has had to offer, with one glaring exception. The Bastards.

This teaches me one thing. Prizes are inherently subjective. Was my Blog significantly worse the year I was ignored entirely than the year I was shortlisted? I don't think so. Someone just felt that someone else's was better. Those people were idiots, clearly, and I will equally be an idiot,  mistaking brilliance, over-admiring some gross stupidity, or just plain having appalling taste.

I'll try not to be a numbskull, and will do my level best to stick to the Values of the Orwell Prize, but the possibility is always there. Trying to reach such standards also means an attempt to throw my own political predilections out of the window. I might think that a political movement is the biggest load of cobblers ever dreamed up by slack-witted dullards, but if the writing lives up to Orwell's prose, my prejudices shouldn't weigh heavily.

In practice that probably means being aware of my underlying bias ("Hey, this person agrees with me, they must be great") and massively over-compensating for this.  So if you write an insider politics blog concerned mostly with the minutiae of Labour politics from a relatively centrist point of view, you're probably shit out of luck, in the prize as well as in life*. Also, get the hell off my turf. (Though I might try to compensate for the over-compensation, in an increasingly frenzied series of attempts to second guess myself and Suzanne might go the other way, so who knows.)

I do reserve the right to apply Orwell's critique of the impact of Totalitarian thinking on literature to blogs that appear to embrace such ideologies. (I'm thinking mostly here of fascists and suchlike, though if there is a proud proponent of Juche thinking out there, well, you better be damned good).

You can now enter the Orwell Prize for Blogging. I suggest you do so. I did, and though I never won (bastards), I did get a lot out of it. At the very least it made me think about my writing, and that is worthwhile in itself.

There's one final reason Bloggers should enter the Orwell Prize, even if you have no expectation of even the smallest modicum of success.

The mere act of entry contains within it a hard guarantee that some nobody called Susan More, who I am told is well known in Soho drinking dens, will be forced, under duress, to read ten of your posts. That's got to be worth a few minutes of your time, surely?

After all, even if you don't like Suzanne, or think me an idiot, that's two guaranteed readers.

The time I devote to blogging is best explained by the pleasure I felt when my blog had it's first visitor who was not me. If anything is the "spirit of blogging", perhaps it's the thrill in finding an audience, regardless of size.

In the end the Orwell Blog prize is a good thing because at the very least it guarantees every entrant a wider audience, if only by two.

* I don't  really mean this, disheartened authors of moderate centre-left blogs. I'll try to play nice to everyone.

It's been a bit serious around here recently, so since I've not been able to launch a thousand word broadside at you today. (I've been working, and hob-nobbing, and sampling the delicious combination of coffee and irrelevance), then here's the next best thing.

A cat video.

This is our cat, Persephone, or Purrs for short (Our cat is Elitist and Demotic, just how I like it). She likes to play fetch. Altogether now, Awwww.

Compliment Purr's cuteness, or if you prefer, discuss PMQs, in the comments.

Steve Richards has a characteristically excellent article up in the independent today, arguing that Ed Miliband, by partaking in, even leading, a debate about the morality of capitalism, "captures, to some extent, the mood of the times".

Steve draws an explicit contrast between the debates of today and of the nineteen eighties, arguing that events were clearly flowing in favour of Thatcher on issues like Unilateral disarmament, while today opinion is swirling the other way. " Thatcher and Heseltine were winning the argument, and then forced even Neil Kinnock to move away from unilateralism. Events were flowing in their favour." he points out.

Further, Steve sees the mood of the times in the very fact there is a debate about the morality of capitalism at all.  "In the 1980s and 1990s, a debate about the morality of capitalism would have gone nowhere. An unswerving consensus formed that we all benefited from a few getting filthy rich."

Well, I was quite young in the eighties, so my memory is imperfect, but when I was going on Youth CND marches, and anti-Cruise marches a million strong, I have to say it didn't appear quite so certain we were wrong, and that the argument was flowing away from us. 

Nor am I quite convinced there was an "unswerving consensus" about Thatcherite policies and wealth creation…

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I like Deborah Orr.  There you go. She seems like a nice person, she lives near where I used to live, and has written well about it. Like every other leftish columnist on a national broadsheet newspaper she seemed to have a blind-spot regarding the journalist depredations of Johann Hari, but I put that down to the natural loyalty people should generally show to a friend in need.

Frankly, I can imagine a few writers must have felt a shudder of sympathy for Mr Hari when watching him faced with an angry mob of internet fame led by grumpy nobodies who appear to have no achievements to their name but an excess of bile and a broadband connection. I have some sympathy for that perspective, even as I bash out a few hundred words of spittle flecked invective. It is good to know oneself.  

I guess the English gentry rather felt the same way about the sans culottes and the French aristocracy. "Of course, they brought it on themselves, but really, the rolling tumbrils are too much".  They had a point too. Who doesn't favour the scarlet pimpernel? 

Anyway, as I say, I rather like Deborah Orr. Of course, as we are cut from the same liberal-left metropolitan cloth, and so our differences assume enormous proportions and significance in my mind, so I don't tend to agree with her very often, but such is life and thus and so. This weekend she wrote an article on choice that sparked great rejoicing amongst many on Twitter. I read that same article and was left baffled. Had I made some terrible error?

The opening of Deborah Orr's article is beautifully written and moving. In recounting her recent experience of Medical treatment, I suspect the give voice to the private feeling of many of us, when faced by choices that seem to overwhelm our capacity to make the right choice. "You're the Doctor, you tell me". 

From the human recognition of a desire not to choose, but instead to be guided by the one who knows, Orr (when do you shift from full name to surname? "Deborah" seems presumptive, "Ms Orr" patronising, "Orr" slightly lunatic) builds a case against choice overall. Or rather she builds a case against some choice, while supporting other choices.

Thinking about the first, personal example, I was reminded of Socrates in Plato's republic, in the famous section on the "Ship of State", Plato has Socrates say "the truth is, that, when a man is ill, whether he be rich or poor, to the physician he must go, and he who wants to be governed, to him who is able to govern".  Choice between expertise and ignorance is meaningless choice. Only the deluded would choose the ignorant.*

But  it's worth remembering where this reasoning took Plato. Choice may be foolish, or flawed, but once it is renounced, the acceptance of the authority of the knowing can lead to pretty unpleasant extremes. I'm not sure Deborah, or anyone else, would like to live in the Republic.

If we are to accept the authority of "those who know", whether it be a ship sailing, our own health, or the governance of our state, at what point do we get to say "Well hold on just a moment, I know you know best, but I do not think that waving healing stones over my child will improve things. So decease with the hocus and halt with the pocus".

Of course, Deborah knows this, and explains that she is not against choice. Indeed, in some areas, notably Stockwell, she would like rather more. We need more local shops, and bakeries and ironmongers and so on. Instead, we have a Tesco with two hundred types of olive oil, which is no good to anyone. (Though I doubt Tesco sell so many. I'd bet on about forty at most. To get a couple of hundred, you'd need a specialist Olive oil retailer.)

There is indeed a ludicrousness about such choices.

For a while, I had a minor hobby of noting down the extent of the pretensions of the Waitrose "Essentials" range . Waitrose asserted that seven different types of exotically scented shower gels were essential, but I was unconvinced. "Sea salt and Kelp"? Maybe. But, friends,  I drew the line at Sweet Plum and Mimosa. No pasaran, I said, with their shonky definition of "essential".  Though it did smell rather nice.

But even at this level of consumer madness, choice is laughable until it is removed. I used to be able to buy seven different types of Portuguese Custard tart on my way to work. Could I judge between them with any expertise? Of course not. Did I resent it when I was deprived of such choice? Oh, indeed.

In the same way, Deborah wants the state to intervene to ensure choice in certain things. The provision of local shopping is her chosen example, but I suspect she would also like to see greater choice in the housing market, so people can rent, and choose to live where they like, not be told where they can live by some central agency simply because they happen to be poor.

I assume, perhaps wrongly, that she also wants people to have enough income to choose how they dress, and not be forced to buy simply what they are told. Then again, this may not apply to School, where many of us feel that choice in clothing is a negative, as it highlights differences when there is a value in children identifying with each other as being the same.

In the same way, the problem with choice is not that neo-liberals fetishise Choice uncritically (these Neo-liberals appear to have assumed the role of bogeyman. No-one admits to being one, or has seen one who believes all the terrible things they believe, but the Neo-Liberals are everywhere and are responsible for all the worlds ills) , it is that we do not think about our choice on Choice critically enough.

We see that choices appear meaningless if you have not the knowledge to be fully informed, and thus forget that choice is itself is an imperfect choice. The principle and practice of choice as a mechanism for service delivery can be foolish, and silly and laughable, and yet it can has more value as a governing concept that the alternative, – which is still, usually a variant of rule by those who know, or claim to know, or hold a big stick and tell you you better agree that they know, or you'll be saying hello to Mr Baton. So it is not that I have a fetish for choice, but rather a bias against no-choice.

In the end, choice is always a worthy consideration, not least because it gets in the way of tidy minded Platonists and so helps those, like Deborah Orr, who would like choice sometimes, but not always, and those who like me, who aren't entirely sure which choice is best and when we should get to decide and when it should be decided without our intervention.

At least, if we start from an assumption in favour of choice, we can always find a way to choose not to choose. Perhaps, ultimately, that is the best argument for choice.

* I am determined not to get into a debate about Far-scrying, homeopathy or other forms of hoo-ha and delusion.

Gavin Kelly has an interesting piece up at the New Statesman about how to move from Economic Bingo to a proper growth plan.

Gavin identifies Labour's success in terms of defining the debate "Squeezed middle" promise of Britain") and framing the need for a growth plan, while identifying the challenges. (basically how the growth plan would work). Well worth a read.

Before getting into the policy issues raised,  I want to challenge a premise Gavin mentions (though does not endorse) that somehow Labour is poised to be the beneficiary of a political shift in the terms of trade. You hear this a lot from Labour types. If it's not the end of the Neo-Liberal consensus, it's a protest as symbolic of anger, or disgust at energy companies, all representing a shift in the political waters.

I don't buy it. The data says people aren't really listening and certainly aren't changing their minds.

Why do I feel this? After all, every Labour hack I talk to is convinced that Labour's message is cutting through, that we're setting the agenda, and moving the political weather. I hear that whether it is the need for action on energy companies, belief in a "productive" capitalism, or the Occupy protests as symbolic of wider discontent, Labour's leadership team basically agree with Polly Toynbee that they are in tune with the public mood in some powerful new way.

Which leave me wondering what it is I'm missing, because what's most noticeable to me about public opinion is how little it has shifted despite all the political storms of the past year.

The voting intention polls have barely moved. In May, Labour were getting pretty much exactly what they're getting now, and so were the Tories. (there was an uptick for Labour over the summer, but that seems to have dissipated post Conference). Nor have the leadership ratings shifted much. In June, David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg all had basically the same leadership rating they do today.  Best Prime Minister? virtually unchanged. Rather have a government led by Ed Miliband or David Cameron? Identical 

What about on individual issues? On taxation, Labour enjoyed a one point lead as best party at the start of the year. Today, the Tories.. enjoy a one point lead. The economy in General? Well, at the start of the year, the Tories had a five point lead. Today they have.. a four point lead.

There has been a significant swing on who would be best for the economy, but it's been to none of the above /don't know.

What's more, the public attitude to the way the Cuts hasn't changed. Their view of the likely impact on the economy remains roughly the same it has all year, with a little over one third thinking it a positive and a little over a half thinking then negative, 

Perhaps the answer lies in something else that hasn't changed much in 2011. 40% of the public blame Labour most for the cuts, only 25% blame the Tories. While a consistent 55-59% of people have said all year that the cuts are necessary.

Labour can rightly claim that some of their message is received with agreement. A consistent 45-50 have said through-out this year that the cuts are too deep, and while there has been a decline in the number saying the cuts are happening too quickly (from c58% at the start of the year to c50% now, that probably just the effect of the passage of time, than any great shift in public opinion.

But however you cut it, it's hard to identify any great shift in the public mood.

Why is this? I suspect it's because a large number of swing voters have consistently think something like the following:

"I don't like the cuts, and I'm fearful for the future, but at the same time, I suspect we need to cut back on spending. You can't spend what you don't have forever, so I'm not sure spending more money will help in the long term, though I do wish things were a bit easier now." 

Some of those who think like that are convinced by Labour's alternative to the government. To others our plan barely registers, or can't be taken seriously because of our record.

Turning, to the policy issues, I wonder if that part of the reason our plan isn't shifting hearts and souls might be that, to be honest, its' not enormous in scale. Gavin mentions that our growth strategy is not fleshed out. Perhaps the reason for this is because it's a growth strategy on a low cal diet.

I  haven't seen any modeling of the likely economic impact of Labour 5 point plan for Jobs and Growth, but I suspect it would be real but very limited. It's a shame that the OBR can't score it, because I'd love to see some neutral data on the overall impact of a temporary cut in NI for small business, reduction of VAT and likely impact on demand of 100,000 jobs for young people (and, equally, some lower demand effect of Bank Bonus tax).

Add all that together and what do we get? Maybe an extra 0.5%-1% growth over next year? Perhaps unemployment modeled at 120,000 to 150,000 lower?  These are big differences, but they're also differences that could be overwhelmed by an external shock, or be made up by unexpected external growth. Next to Greece, or the possible implosion of the Eurozone, our growth plan probably looks rather small beer.

The left might well ask why Labour so cautious, given the fearful risks for the economy. 

Well, ultimately it's because the Labour high command know they don't have a lot of money to spend. Splashing cash on a dash for growth is neither economically feasible, nor politically smart. (See the immovable 56% who think the cuts are needed). Plus, the invisible Bond vigilantes might be incorporeal right now, but the problem with invisible Bond vigilantes is that like the Spanish inquisition, nobody ever expects them when they do turn up.

All of which makes me wonder if Gavin poses Labour the wrong challenge.

Shouldn't Labour's prime mission not be to convince people that it is in favour of spending more for growth, (which hey, I suspect they already know, as it's what we always stand for) but first to convince them that we can be trusted not to spend too much, once that is established, then the space for a small, practical, limited plan B for a productive economy becomes much easier to hear.

Whatever you think of my plan, it's pretty clear that what we're doing now isn't making much of a difference at all.

Though there's always next year, I suppose.

Why would I want to write a paean to Conservatism? I have devoted my political life to opposing the Conservative party, and in my own minor way, wish to dedicate the remainder of my political and writing career to the self-same cause. To adapt Orwell, every word I have written since 1997 has been an attempt to advance the cause of social democracy and drive a stake through the heart of Conservatism, in whatever form it presents itself.

Despite this, I've never been able to generate in myself the hatred and loathing for Conservatism that some regard as an essential feature of the left.

Oh, I despise certain Conservatives, and many policies, and am angered and dismayed by the unnecessary suffering and hardships that, as I believe, many suffer because of an unthinking conservatism, but at the same time I am aware that there have been great atrocities carried out in the name of progress over the centuries, and that conservatism has a persistent enduring appeal that cannot simply to ascribed to self interest, or greed, or a desire to lark about in top hats, thumbing ones nose at the needy and deprived.

So if there is something valuable, something important in Conservatism, something that speaks to people beyond the grubby offer of more money in your pocket and devil take the hindmost, then surely this is worth praise, worth appreciation, worth a salute? What's more, in trying to understand the strengths of conservatism, perhaps we find a way to strengthen the alternative. So then, who is the ideal conservative, and why do I find myself nursing an affection for what he stands, or more accurately stood, for?

I should make clear I am talking  from ignorance and necessity, about a specifically British form of Conservatism in what follows. One of the qualities that appeals most about a conservative philosophy is it's closeness to the landscape that it occupies, it's tight integration to the mores and prejudices of it's time and place. A Conservative today might not recognize the values and policies of his ancestor of three centuries back, or her cousin a continent away. There may be a grand Conservative world-view, but it expresses itself so varyingly, so uniquely from time to time and home to home, that it becomes almost useless as a guide.

This is the first thing i admire about Conservatism. It's malleability.  Conservatism, as a doctrine, intends to be inflexible, to stand astride history yelling stop, in the Buckleyan phrase. Yet it's practitioners know that this is impossible, and that change is a constant. So they adapt, and shift, and take no shame in doing so. Try and attack a conservative for the views of a forebear, and you find yourself fighting a phantom. If change succeeds, it can be co-opted, integrated, defended by those who did their utmost to oppose it.

Nor is this malleability cynical.  The best conservatives acknowledge that the world is not perfect, and something better would, on the whole, be preferable. They merely point out that it is not of necessity true that change will make it better. If it so turns out that change did make it better, that can smile, and join in the general jubilee. If the central rallying cry of the left is "A better world is possible" then the Conservative reply is a whispered, "Yes, old boy, and so is hell on earth, so watch whose apple you're slicing".

Further, the good Conservative has a healthy respect for the world as it is. He doesn't regard it as perfect (not least in the matter of gendered personal pronouns in English), but he appreciates that the way it is now has utility, and sometimes style, and change could involve a certain galumphing ugliness.

The left tends to restrict its appreciation of this strain of conservatism to the merely nostalgic. the flicker of lamplight, the crimson of a London phone box, the affection for an open-platform bus, but it equally applies to our national institutions and our way of governing. Do the Lords represent the power of the land and the wealthy and are undemocratic? very well then, they do, but power and wealth will always have a voice, an better it be dressed up in ermine and made to feel obligation to all, and besides, who else would speak of Bees and sealing wax in parliament?

The good Conservative believes that the world is the way it is for a reason, and so, whether God given, or made by the complex interactions of millions of souls, it is wise to understand that this reason is likely to still be valid, even if it seems strange, or cruel, or old fashioned. After all, this is a world made by men, and if it is cruel or harsh or unfair, then perhaps it is because we are cruel and harsh and unfair.

This brings in two other qualities I have come to admire in Conservatism. The first is a sense of the human scale, of the enormous difference between the individual and the mass. this can lead to a fatalistic pessimism and resignation, but it can also lead to a belief in the value of the smallest adjustment, the worth of the provisional step, the great good of the smallest compassion or charity. The ideal conservative says to the world "I cannot change all and do not intend to waste my time in trying, but I can help my neighbour, and that is no small thing".

The second quality is that of humour, or perspective, or of lightness of touch. The progressive has little choice but to be worthy, or at best controversial.  The left can be funny, and daring, and can epater everyone and anyone, but ultimately the left must take things seriously. This is not always an attractive quality. I recently read the debates in the House of Commons about electoral reform held in the nineteen twenties. Sir Samuel Hoare told the house then that:

"The ordinary elector does not want it at all. He is not very much interested in politics. He is much more interested in the Derby, in the Cup Ties, in the weather, than he is in our proceedings here. He regards a General Election as an inevitable nuisance, and the sooner and simpler it is over the better for him. What he wishes to see is that the man who comes first past the post is declared the winner. Our main object should not be to confuse the elector by a system which he will not understand and which he might resent, but to keep the system as simple as possible and keep him as closely interested in politics as we can."

This was then, and remains today, a laughably patronising statement. Yet underlying it is a truth which remained potent even in a referendum a lifetime later. Most people care much less about politics than about many other things. A conservative recognises this, and uses it their advantage, while a good progressive denies it, or seeks to change it, or worst of all, becomes frustrated, Brechtlike, at the populace's stubborn refusal to care sufficiently about the issues the reformer holds dear.

Thankfully, it is clear my ideal conservative is almost wholly fictional.

He, and it is a he, combines the grace and Noblesse Oblige of Wimsey, the lightness of a Wodehouse, the fundamental decency and human sympathy of a Father Brown. There is no room here for the hard faced men who did well out of the war. No room for the grasping financier or the tyrannical employer or the fat man, the very fat man who waters the workers beer. 

My ideal conservative, is in short, a myth, as fantastical as my dream opponent is a caricature.  The Conservative I fear is mostly a Lord Emsworth,  uninterested in money, or in perpetuating advantage, or in anything much other than enjoying simple pleasures, being a decent cove and trying to get through the vale of tears without too much unnecessary pain for all involved. It is a mythical conservatism. The Conservative I fear most is one who is reasons that the world must change, but admits frankly that it is hard to know quite how, so best err on the side of caution, because things might yet get very much worse. Very often, such a conservative will be right.

As I say, my good Conservative is a myth. He represents all that is humane, and tolerant and gentle about conservatism, while excluding any bitterness, or greed or self interest.

But for all that, it is a powerful, and seductive and wonderful myth, and one which is not wholly without merit as a view on life.

I intend to write something about the elements of a Conservative approach to politics that I admire, and want to steal for the left, or a least import a little of. I'm not thinking of "Faith, Flag and Family" or such, nor attachment to particular rates of marginal taxation, but more of the world view and approach which helps grant Conservatism a hardy perennial appealing.

So an appeal to other lefties. What things about Conservatism do you admire, do you see as positives that could or should be reproduced on the left? Righties, feel free to list screeds of wondrous things, but do add at least one thing you admire about the left, lest you look a bit too pleased with yourself.

To kick things off, my primary admiration is for the inherent skepticism of Conservatism. It is a philosophy that demands a high standard of proof before accepting that change will necessarily lead to improvement. (Of course, this can occasionally get thrown out of the window, cf Mr Gove).  The flip side of this is that healthy skepticism can lead to unwarranted pessimism about any and all reform.

What would you steal from conservatism?

The economy is proving everyone wrong. It always does.

It is, naturally, impossible to project the future accurately, and as politicians must build their electoral strategies on a series of  best guesses about the future, a certain amount of aft agleying is inevitable.

If you are George Osborne, you might take a certain satisfaction in seeing growth return at what must seem like a reasonable rate. After the last year, the Chancellor must have feared doing another TV studio tour casting around for an elemental force to blame for disappointing growth. The Weather. Royal Love. People staying in to watch Strictly. Greeks.   This time though, he can deploy his smirk at one tenth maximum wattage as he intones all that stuff about choppiness and safe havens.

Yet Mr Osborne, if he is not a fool, will know that this quarter's results are no guarantee of future performance. Manufacturing PMI looks bad, unemployment is increasing, Inflation is high, the deficit is stubborn, our major trading partners are fighting major battles, all it would take is one misstep and…. It doesn't bear thinking about.

For Labour, the challenge is almost as hard. Labour invested an awful lot in the government strategy failing, or at least in not succeeding. Since it's neither succeeded nor entirely failed, Labour find themselves in a strange no-plans land. This morning, a succession of Labour figures took to the airwaves, twitter and op-ed columns to point out that growth was still sluggish, that there were many worries ahead, that the government was missing it's own growth targets and would therefore miss it's own deficit targets.

Here's the political trouble with all of that, true though it is: Ed Balls can't do  that little flat-lining gesture with his hand any more. The growth might be small, and sluggish and provisional. Unemployment may be climbing, inflation too high, demand slow, confidence lower. All of that is true. But the growth is there, and even if it can't be called a recovery, even if it is the lowest bounce of a dead cat ever recorded, it's still something the Government will point to and say "we did that". This recovery may be worse than the 1930's, but remember, the 30's National Government got re-elected in a Landslide.

So both Ed Balls and George Osborne are putting on a mask of certainty. Osborne will say that the only thing keeping Britain from turning into Italy is his firm grip on the deficit, even though there's no firm grip on the deficit and what's keeping us from crisis is the fact we're not in the Euro and we'll always be able to repay our debts. Balls will claim that Osborne's strategy of cuts is damaging the economy, even, though he's missing his spending targets by £46 billion, which implies the cuts are being balanced off by the stabilisers to some extent. Would Labour have announced a plan a year ago that was £46 billion looser than Osborne's? I doubt it.

So both men are at the mercy of events. Osborne desperately needs this quarter to be the beginning of sustained recovery which will fuel deficit reduction, demand and employment, even though it doesn't look like it's happening yet and the government has got no room for manoevure if things go wrong. Ed Balls needs to somehow find a way to always demand more growth without looking like the only plan he has for achieving this is for more spending.

However, there's a bigger problem, one that applies to both front bench teams.

What if, just like this quarter, the economy proves both men wrong? What if we end up with a real, but sluggish recovery, with high unemployment and a sticky deficit, and this slow growth lasted for some time. Then there won't be room for a lot of fiscal action, or for tax cuts, or for spending on needed social services. 

In many ways, life both both Chancellor and Shadow will be much easier is one of them is clearly proved right. If Osborne is right, he can offer tax cuts and Balls extra spending. If Balls is right, he can attack Osborne for failing, while Osborne can blame Balls for the crisis and say he'd only make it worse. There are clear, decisive strategies available in either case.

But if both men are half right, half wrong, then neither has an easy answer to offer the electorate. 

Edit: Fiona MacTaggart MP has rightly pointed out that any Tory candidate who had laboured in Slough would still be in Slough, having been Laboured. I confess, I had known that Fiona and the Labour team in Slough have made it something of a fortress, but their achievement lost out to my lazy mental shorthand. My apologies.

David Cameron gave us a lesson in how he led the Tory partry to near-victory today, and showed doing so might have been a major mistake.

It’s funny that it comes to this. Simmering resentment on the Tory backbenches with a leader who they fear is out of touch and too centrist. A battle over Europe spawned by economic crisis and constitutional failings. Our political leaders may trade insults about being the heirs to Thatcher, Blair and Brown, but they look more and more like Major, over-matched, under-prepared, scrabbling desperately to stay afloat in the midst of a crisis they can neither comprehend nor solve.

Take David Cameron yesterday. As his whip twisted arms in private, and his Dashing brigade of modernising ministers called errant MPs  in for discussions, Cameron did something unusual. He attempt to persuade his backbenchers that they didn’t actually disagree, really. That they shared the same goals, that an attempt to retrench from Europe was his passion too, but that now wasn’t the right time, and there was much to do.

Note what he didn’t do. Tell them that they were wrong. That he was the leader and this was the manifesto on which they’d stood, that a referendum would be a muddle, a waste, and that he would be duty bound to demand the conservative party vote for the EU under such a scenario, thus demonstrating it’s utter purposelessness.

Why didn’t he embrace the chance to have a ding-dong battle with his own side? Because for the last decade, he, and every other leading moderate tory, have held the Euro-sceptic tiger by the tail, given winks and nods about Sovereignty, hired the Euroceptics as speechwriters, or as Press officers, allowed them to climb the ranks, never once confronted them or tried to take them on. (more…)