No wonder UKIP cut the prices for their conference tickets yesterday: Guido understands the party is expecting just over 1,000 attendees in Doncaster this year. That’s half the record 2,000 delegates they managed last year, and as low as it has been in the last five years according to one veteran.
Not exactly swamped…
Rock star former Greek finance minister and self confessed “unapologetic Marxist” Yanis Varoufakis used his slot on Question Time last night to compliment George Osborne for not actually implementing austerity.
“I don’t believe that we need an alternative to austerity because austerity is not an option. And indeed, I’m going to give a compliment to George Osborne and to the Tory government, it’s going to create some consternation I think in the Tory party. He hasn’t really practiced austerity, he’s talked about austerity, he did a little bit of it and then it didn’t work. He killed off this nascent recovery after 2009 with the little bit of austerity he did and he stopped, and indeed I can assure you that in discussions I have with good friends of mine in the Tory party, they have been very supportive to us here in Greece and to me personally in our struggle to end austerity in Greece.”
Varoufakis is right, Osborne jacked up welfare spending by £28 billion during his first four years on the job and is still overspending by £2 billion a week. In office Varoufakis, a socialist Greek finance minister, was more of a deficit hawk than the Conservative British Chancellor, Osborne’s austerity is only rhetorical, he is currently running a higher deficit than Greece…
Communities Secretary Greg Clark appeared to have quietly backed down to housing associations on “Right to Buy”. Furious Housing Association fat cats were opposing giving tenants the chance to own their own homes because they argued they were being forced to sell their assets at a discount. Following negotiations and heavy lobbying over the summer, Clark has this afternoon said he is considering their new offer to ‘voluntarily’ introduce the extension, ensuring market rate sales with discounts to tenants subsidised by the government. This looks like a complete cave in and effectively a U-turn on a manifesto promise.
“We will extend the Right to Buy to tenants in Housing Associations… It is unfair that they should miss out on a right enjoyed by tenants in local authority homes.” Conservative Manifesto 2015
Guido isn’t quite sure how it could be described otherwise. If landlords only have to sell to tenants on a voluntary basis, tenants won’t have a ‘right’ to buy, landlords will have an “Option to Sell”, just as they do currently…
UPDATE: DCLG sources get in touch to insist there is no U-turn, that the proposal from the Housing Associations will have to “absolutely ensure a right-to-buy”. They were unable to confirm whether or not legislation would be required. When Guido asked if the proposal seen today matched the right to buy commitment in the manifesto he was told “We haven’t read it”.
UPDATE II: Greg Clark calls to tell Guido forthrightly “If they [housing associations] want to extend the right to buy to more people that is all well and good. My bottom line is that their proposal must match up to the ‘Right to Buy’ manifesto commitment and if they want to do it voluntarily they can start implementing it right away. There will be no compromise on introducing ‘Right to Buy’.”
Downing Street snapper Steve Back (@PoliticalPics) has once again papped someone indiscreetly holding up “sensitive” papers as they walk into No. 10, this time revealing the government are looking at privatising Channel 4:
When will they learn…
Jeremy Corbyn has had his likeness reproduced as a small stuffed amigurumi doll. Amigurumi is a Japanese art form rooted in ‘the belief in the existence of spirits inhabiting objects‘. It all sounds all a bit voodoo to Guido…
Blairites will be pleased to hear they can pick up their very own Jezza doll for the princely sum of £25. Pins to stick in it must however be purchased seperately…
Owen Paterson has laid out his claim to lead a new sort of environmentalism he likes to call ‘ecomodernsim’. Writing in the Telegraph and speaking at an event hosted by his think tank UK2020 this morning, Paterson described ecomodermism as the antidote to the alarmist scaremongering of the big green lobby:
“The key idea behind Ecomodernism is that the more technology human beings adopt, the more they can decouple from dependence on the natural environment and live lives that are prosperous but green. The great Green Blob that dominates the public and NGO sector, whose reactionary tendencies I referred to when I left office as Environment Secretary last year, still refuses to recognise this.”
Paterson, who has long positioned himself as the green blob’s arch-nemesis, was dropped as environment secretary last year following his handling of the summer floods and the badger cull. He has been on the warpath to return himself to the environmental front line ever since. Will ecomodernism catch on?
Political Betting’s Mike Smithson points out that Jeremy Corbyn is the first Labour leader ever to score a negative personal net satisfaction rating in his first Ipsos Mori poll:
But apparently “Corbynmania is sweeping the nation”…
… Reports MediaGuardian. Bye…
UPDATE: Contrary to the Guardian claim that Hopkins “resigned“, Guido understands her contract was allowed to run down and was never going to be renewed. A Sun spokesman says:
“She leaves for the Mail Online with our best wishes.”
WikiGuido profiles the new SNP intake in the new issue of Spectator Life:
Standing on chairs in Parliament’s Sports and Social bar, a band of portly gentlemen are bellowing out Scottish folk songs. A young barmaid, only in her
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“I have always struggled to come to terms with the right to buy which, for decades, took homes and money out of a system designed to help those most in need.” The words of Labour councillor Lynn Worrall, who holds […]
Liam Byrne has just told the Today Programme diplomatically that Jeremy Corbyn is “the craft ale of the Labour movement He’s authentic, he’s has strong flavours.” Liam is trying to keep his head down, as an ex-Rothschild’s investment banker […]
Readers of Guido’s Sun on Sunday column will be dismayed to hear that turnout for the Lib Dems Conference Bisexual Flashmob wasn’t as high as one would expect from such an esteemed event. Despite their calls for ‘all bi, pan […]
Shadow environment secretary Kerry McCarthy says…
“I really believe that meat should be treated in exactly the same way as tobacco, with public campaigns to stop people eating it.”
