“Dave, where did it all go wrong?”

Malcolm would welcome the source of the famous George Best anecdote, with that punch-line. Some claim it was from George himself.

But where did David Cameron’s woes begin?

Nick Robinson hasn’t — as far as Malcolm can see — offered his definitive analysis yet [UPDATE: see here]. That cannot be long in coming. His most recent utterance was Europe – That Tory row ‘made simple’, which took the tale back as far as last week. Which cannot be the authoritative version.

James Forsyth, in the Spectator and still pre-occupied exclusively with the Europe thing, went back only to last October:

Shortly before the Conservative party conference last year, the head of the Fresh Start Group of Eurosceptic Conservative MPs went in to see the Prime Minister in Downing Street. The group had heard that David Cameron might make his big Europe speech at the gathering and its head, Andrea Leadsom, wanted to set out what to ask for in any renegotiation.

When Leadsom returned from the meeting, her colleagues were desperate to know what the PM had said: which powers did he most want returned from the EU? What would be the centrepiece of his great diplomatic effort? All Leadsom could do was repeat what Cameron had told her: ‘I don’t like shopping lists.’

This sums up Cameron’s attitude towards this renegotiation: announcing it is enough for the time being. When he eventually did make his big Europe speech in January, it contained nothing as clear as a shopping list. There was lots of hifalutin’ language but painfully little detail.

Of the same parish (and the Speccie is about the best barometer of the local Tory weather), Alex Massie throws  gay-marriage into the argument, and then takes it further:

Gay marriage has cost the party members in (I think) every constituency in Britain. That does not make it a bad policy but it demonstrates, again, that it is better to win the argument than to impose something of this sort upon the party and expect everyone to fall into line because the thought of Prime Minister Miliband is enough to trump all other concerns. There comes a point at which people simply say Sod it, I’ve had enough.

The bigger problem still, however, is that the Tory party increasingly does not look very much like Britain or, especially, England. Worse still, it frequently – and despite all the talk of modernisation – does not seem comfortable with modern England. This is, for sure, in part a feature of the conservative temperament but it does make it harder for the party to recruit new members and harder for it to retain existing members. It is caught in a cleft stick.

The single sex marriage Bill

One day, in retrospect, we may untangle why this became so important. At one level, Malcolm wonders if it is not a form of code, a catch-all for a whole series of gripes and grievances (see below).

The Church of England is no longer the Tory Party at prayer (which axiom the Catholic Herald once attributed to an anonymous 18th-century wag; though it seems more likely to be derived from the suffragist and Congregationalist Maude Royden, reported in the Times, 17 July 1917). We live in a secular (even aggressively so) society, where even the remaining Tories of the shires do not seem the most observant of worshippers. Yet this non-issue has become a cause of massive grief to vocal Tories.

It has to be more signifier than substance: a shibboleth to distinguish “us” from “them”. One to watch here is that pillar of the Tory Right, John Redwood. In February he blogged his view:

I have found this a difficult and divisive issue within my constituency and in the Conservative party. I came to it with no preconceptions.

As a modern Conservative I understand the wish to allow people to live their lives as they choose, as long as they do not harm others.  There is a strong impulse to freedom in Conservatism which can pioneer desirable social reform. I suspect the reformers will win the vote today on the grounds that the law should not prevent same sex people marrying if they wish.

I also understand the strrength of feeling of many traditional Conservatives, who say Parliament should not change or reform long established institutions without good reason. They write to me to say they support civil partnership,  but for religious, historical and legal reasons think marriage has to be defined as a relationship between a woman and a man.  They do not write as bigots, though they are often criticised as such. They point out that the Conservative Manifesto of 2010 did not contain a pledge to change the law of marriage. They point out my personal Manifesto did not do so either.

He then voted “no”: the absence of a manifesto commitment being more important than freedom … which can pioneer desirable social reform.

Cameron: a poisonous, slippery individual

Malcolm has serially rehearsed the view of Ian King, published by The Sun (then still in the Labour camp), on the eve of Cameron becoming party leader:

Along with other financial journalists, I was unfortunate enough to have dealings with Cameron during the 1990s when he was PR man for Carlton, the world’s worst television company. And a poisonous, slippery individual he was, too.

Back then, Cameron was far from the smoothie he pretends to be now. He was a smarmy bully who regularly threatened journalists who dared to write anything negative about Carlton -which was nearly all of us. He loved humiliating people, including a colleague at ITV, who he would abuse publicly as “Bunter” just because the poor bloke was a few pounds overweight.

A recent Sun interview with Cameron generously called him a former Carlton “executive”. No, he wasn’t. He was a mouthpiece for that company’s charmless chairman, Michael Green, who operated him the way Keith Harris works Orville.

The financial press had one thing in common with Cameron  — he hated us and we hated him.

If we had any doubts, Cameron insisted on proving King correct: the oft-stolen bicycle (with his papers in the following Lexus),  hug a hoodie, the useless wind-generator on his Notting Hill house, the huskies …

Even then, there were rumblings:

What, many wondered yesterday, did the leader of a major political party hope to gain by dressing up in a duvet and driving a dog sled across the Arctic during the local election campaign? …

[Tory officials] fear Mr Cameron’s snowbound adventure will be seen as a photo-opportunity that will serve only to reinforce the impression that he is a nice chap without any firm policies.

That from the Telegraph, no less.

The Lisbon Treaty kerfuffle

Matters got serious with Cameron’s September, 2007, promise of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty; and his breaking of that commitment in 2009. Barry Legg, ex-MP, Iain Duncan Smith’s Chief Executive of the Tory Party, was incandescent:

The Tory leader stands condemned by his own words.
David Cameron’s future European policy is now incoherent, disingenuous and utterly unconvincing. This is a dark day for the Tory party, but a worse one for Britain.

That opinion did not stand on just one Legg. As recently as this January, Melissa Kite was regurgitating that, significantly again in the Spectator:

Tory MPs have fallen for David Cameron’s cast-iron pledges to hold a referendum before. So are they right in buying into his latest promise? …

Cameron has form on evolving his cast-iron pledges as he goes along. He promised in opposition to allow the British people a vote on the EU Constitution, then when it morphed into the Lisbon Treaty, and was ratified, he said rather legalistically that this meant a referendum was no longer possible or relevant. Then he promised that there would be no new ceding of powers to Brussels – and once the Coalition was formed that pledge was broken as well.

I hope the initial confidence being shown by eurosceptic Tories about his latest promise proves founded.

A life of grind

And, of course, the feet of clay were again spotted. Cameron, was called to order by his back-benchers, and had to up the ante with the nonsense of the draft bill on a 2017 referendum.

There are umpteen very obvious reasons why that one will fall short:

• it won’t get support outside the Tory party;
• it won’t get parliamentary time for the same reason;
• it attempts to bind a future government;
• it requires the Tories to win outright a General Election;
• it needs the co-operation and complicity of the other EU nations (all more than a bit pissed at Cameron’s inadequacies and posturings);

and — perhaps above all —

• it defies prime ministerial life-expectancy. Let’s assume that all the above “ifs” came to pass; and by Wednesday 1st November 2017 a mythical Prime Minister Cameron was launching his in/out EU referendum campaign. Cameron would, by then, have occupied Number 10 for 7 years, 5 months and 22 days (2732 days in total). That would make him the 15th longest-serving PM of all time, all the way back to Robert Walpole. Longer than Baldwin, nearly as long as Harold Wilson’s two sessions.

Cameron’s juvenile tendency

The starting gate for Malcolm’s ramblings here was Steve Richards in today’s Guardian. The headlines suggest this is quite an “end days” offering:

Cameron had the chance to defy the ‘swivel-eyed loons’ and remake his party. He failed

This week he’s been exposed. There was little thinking on what modern Conservatism might be like. Now he can only busk it

Richards starts with the Tory Party itself:

Relations between the leadership of the party and its activists are more strained and complex than at any point since the removal of Margaret Thatcher in 1990. Focus on the policy trail rather than the Harold Macmillan-like emollient character of the prime minister and Cameron is implementing a radical agenda that should largely delight his activists. He has delivered an economic policy to the right of the Republicans in the US, overhauled the NHS and welfare in a way that Thatcher would not have dared, and offered an in-out referendum on Europe. Yet the so-called loons are not content and want much more.

That is quite provocative. We are back where we started: where did it all go wrong?

Richards argues it isn’t that the Tory grassroots have gone “loon”, or Tea-Party, or are lost in the elephant grass to the far right of the fairway. It’s the inconsistency of the whole programme:

The Tory activists have a case too. They have been subjected to a clunky, unsubtle “modernisation” project in which social liberalism, while sincerely espoused, has been added on to the rightwing programme partly in an attempt to secure broader appeal. There has been little deep thinking from Cameron about what a modern Conservative party might be like, but rather a shallow effort to retain most of the thinking on Europe and the state that lost the Conservatives three successive elections, with the addition of support for gay marriage.

The result is an unsatisfying, insubstantial clash between unreformed dwindling local parties and a leadership that acquired the top positions far too early in their careers with only half-formed ideas about what they wanted to change in relation to their party and the country.

Ooof! There’s one deep in the solar plexus!

Now for some archaeology

For Richards, the cleaving goes back back:

The likes of Cameron and his senior advisers make their tentative moves at the top of a Conservative party that has changed fundamentally. None of Thatcher’s successors has addressed the nature of the change. Famously, she transformed the party from the top, making it much more ideological. Much less reflected on is when it became far more rebellious in spirit. The change from below can be precisely identified, taking place at two key moments in its recent history.

That’s the trouble with ideology: once the bacillus is out of the test-tube, the plague is imminent. Particularly so among Tories, who had no previous exposure to any -logy, and so had no immunities.

Then Richards retraces to two seminal moments:

The first was the activists’ response to the introduction of the poll tax in the late 1980s. Previously ultra-loyal Conservative councillors, the rock on which the party was based, were passionately opposed – and for the first time in their lives vented their anger in public…

The next key event was the Conservative conference in the autumn of 1992, held after the government had been forced to leave the European exchange rate mechanism. The anger aimed at the then prime minister, John Major, in speeches from the platform was unyielding and, crucially, the insurrectionists were starting to enjoy themselves.

That’s quite convincing. It traces a direct life-line from the Bruges Group, through John Major’s “bastards”, to (the wasted talent of) Hague, to the loopy enstoolment of Iain Duncan Smith as Hague’s successor, the “dog-whistle” politics of Michael Howard’s 2005 Campaign (when Lynton Crosby whistled to a dog that wasn’t there), through the growing distaste for Cameron’s PR-style, to the present “loons”.

Richards may be in error in several respects:

• He omits the anger over Cameron’s double-standards and double-dealing at the time of the expenses scandals. Some Tory MPs went to the wall, while other offenders (Gove, as one example) were exonerated.
• He misses the further resentment over Leveson, that Cameron turned loose a beast that came back to rend his natural allies in the Press. Clearly, The Daily Telegraph does not easily forget and forgive, even if Murdoch may.
• He glosses over the NIMBY factions, all steamed up over wind-turbines, HS2, lessened building controls, loss of local authority powers (and revenues). Malcolm suspects all, and more, of that is in the sub-text of resistance to “gay marriage” — someone, something has to be blamed for the diminution of Tory power in the shires.

There’s three ways in which Cameron has offended the Code, betraying the old loyalists, the Press barons, and the “turnip Taliban” (remember them?).

• And over his assumption about Labour:

They ["the insurrectionists"] have been enjoying themselves ever since while Labour, though with its own deep structural problems, has acquired an iron discipline in public.

And again:

Cameron had an opportunity to remake his restive party and perhaps widen the membership when he won the leadership in 2005, although it would have been a titanic struggle. In terms of daunting context he was much closer at that point to Neil Kinnock, who acquired the Labour leadership 1983 and began a long, painful, arduous journey. Cameron opted for the primrose path instead, declaring that his party must be nice to the poor in Darfur and being photographed on a council estate or with huskies. This did not amount to a significant challenge to activists in the way Kinnock and then Tony Blair updated Labour, partly because on many issues Cameron was at one with his grassroots.

The Stolen Bacillus

Ah! we’re into H.G.Wells at last! We’ve been waiting for this!

Indeed. In the ’70s, in Opposition, Labour took the ideology wholesale. It didn’t infect all-comers. It did inoculate the host, though it took many years for the infection to clear the body. And Labour is not readily going to take the Kool-Aid so soon again.

Now it’s the Tories’ turn. We must observe closely to see if their infection becomes the UKIP pandemic we are promised (Malcolm suspects not).

As H.G. finishes his neat little tale of the bacteriologist and the purloined bacillus:

“You see, that man came to my house to see me, and he is an Anarchist. No – don’t faint, or I cannot possibly tell you the rest. And I wanted to astonish him, not knowing he was an Anarchist, and took up a cultivation of that new species of Bacterium I was telling you of, that infest, and I think cause, the blue patches upon various monkeys; and like a fool, I said it was Asiatic cholera. And he ran away with it to poison the water of London, and he certainly might have made things look blue for this civilized city. And now he has swallowed it. Of course, I cannot say what will happen, but you know it turned that kitten blue, and the three puppies — in patches, and the sparrow — bright blue. But the bother is, I shall have all the trouble and expense of preparing some more.”

Trusted truths

Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.
His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.

Psalm 146, a chorister’s favourite (it has just ten verses — and that could be one of few verifiable truths in this post).

And so, by a natural progression, to Anthony Wells at ukpollingreport.co.uk.

Wells had spotted an oddity in the ICM/Guardian poll:

More unexpectedly the ICM poll also found a jump in support for the BNP, up to 4%, the highest any poll has had then at for years. This is strange. The BNP have certainly not had any great publicity boost, at the local elections they seemed essentially moribund. It may just be an odd sample, or perhaps as Tom Clark suggests it is just a case of confusion amongst respondents, with some people getting the names of the BNP and UKIP mixed up.

ICM also asked about voting intention in an EU referendum, finding voting intention fairly evenly balanced – 40% would vote to stay in (22% definitely, 18% probably), 43% would vote to leave (32% definitely, 11% probably).

UPDATE: ICM tabs are up here. Topline figures without reallocation of don’t knows would have been CON 27%, LAB 35%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 19%, BNP 5%.

That strange boost of support for the BNP is almost wholly amongst women, almost wholly amongst C2s, almost wholly amongst over 65s and almost wholly in Wales. The unweighted number of 2010 BNP voters in the sample was 1, increased to 18 by weighting. What that strongly suggests to me is that there was one little old C2 BNP-voting Welsh lady who got a very high weighting factor, and probably makes up almost all of that 4%! Such things happen sometimes, but it means the BNP blip is probably just a data artifact that can be ignored.

A euphemism newly minted

Now, there’s a nice one: “just a data artifact”. Try typing that, and most spell-check utilities flag up an error. That’s because the preferred version is subtly different, another form of “truth”.

It’s also a prime example of word-drift. Once upon a  time there was:

artefact: An object made or modified by human workmanship, as opposed to one formed by natural processes.

At some point the alternative spelling seemed to be the norm for an alternative signification:

artifact: Science. A spurious result, effect, or finding in a scientific experiment or investigation, esp. one created by the experimental technique or procedure itself. Also as a mass noun: such effects collectively.

As a point of fact, Mr Chairman, the entire public opinion polling business is based on such “data artifacts”. Notice, even in what Wells says there, how an eight-point Labour lead (35-27) is manipulated down to just six points (34-28) for a headline figure.

Today there are two types of truth …

That’s the start of page 40 of the current Private Eye (#1340, 17th-30th May, so verifiable, if not a “truth”). It becomes an exposé of a criminal Yorkshire property developer who is running the usual rings around the Serious Fraud Office, but begins with a telling generalisation:

Today there are two types of truth. Electronic truth — provided via the ever expanding knowledge universes of the internet. And historic truth — provided by those facts not yet or no longer recorded on easily searchable internet databases.

An American truth

There is a poem by the American romantic, Professor John Russell Lowell, which Malcolm has always assumed to be essentially anti-slavery and pro-”freedom”. Its best-known snippet is the eighth stanza:

Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness ‘twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

A bit too theist for Malcolm, but he appreciates the sense and sensibility.

[For the record, Lowell was President Chester Arthur's appointee as US Ambassador in London. Here he was a literary lion, running Henry James around the Bloomsbury salons, and becoming Virginia Woolf's god-father.]

Trussed truths

Electronic “truth” contains too many “data artifacts” for comfort. Pseudo-statistics (those perpetrated by serial-offending politicians as much as by their natural allies, the opinion-pollsters) are just one source of this creeping corruption.

Psalm 146, of course, prefers the eternal (and unprovable, and frequently controvertible) truths:

Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God:
Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever:
Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners:
The LORD openeth the eyes of the blind: the LORD raiseth them that are bowed down: the LORD loveth the righteous:
The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.

Therein you may find your “truth”. If so, it is where you find all you need to know about:

• how Huhne was released after 62 days of an eight-month incarceration (and there are still many of us wondering why Vicky had to go down, too),
• why Tory policy on immigration is misguided (thank you, Gordon, we knew you still had decency in you),
• why Iain Duncan Smith needs to review his unChristian welfare policies,
• why ATOS are malevolent rascals,
• indeed, all about life, the universe and everything. Though that “electronic truth” comes close to the mark:

Any hope of realities here?

Malcolm had forsworn utterances — there are other priorities in his complex existence.

Then came the forked-tongues of the spinners of the English County Council elections.

So, let’s start from the top

We are talking of the shire counties. These are, largely, where the fox is routinely pursued by the unspeakable after the uneatable. They amount to a moderate part of the UK populace. But no cities. Not London. No metropolises at all, at all.

The big news is that, among the hicks and rubes and bumpkins, the weirdos (hereinafter “UKIP”) got one-in-four of a less-than-30% poll. That will be front-page news on Saturday. The Earth is expected to tremble.

Where it mattered, the forces of decency (hereinafter the “Labour Party”) seemed to do quite well. There was a parliamentary by-election, which Labour took at a stroll. Of course, the mainstream rightist media won’t say that, but take away a top-name and drop an odd percentage point, and you might think differently. Anyway, Labour took South Shields with a plurality.

Misrepresentatation

Now there was Paul Staines (by name, by reputation) of Guido Fawkes telling us:

the extent of Labour’s thoroughly underwhelming day becomes clear

This, incidentally, before the final results are in.

This odd presumption had to be reinforced by reference to Mark Pack, the Lib Dem snake-oil salesman. Odd, isn’t it, that Fawkes — who normally has a hot-line from Tory Politburo — has to reach out to Pack?

Pack had taken an incomplete return and quantified it, to “prove” that the Labour vote was down by more than either the LibDems or the Tories. Wonderful things numbers. Here are some more:

Tonight there are:

• 26% fewer LibDem County Councillors;
• 23% fewer Tories;
• 1838% more UKIPpers; and
• 217% more Labour councillors.

Apparently it would in Tory terms have been a massive disappointment had Labour not gained 300 seats. They didn’t. It was only 291.

Similarly, the prognostication from Labour was that the Tories could lose 200 seats … and hooray! Well, 335 Tory county councillors are now without a seat. Sad, that.

Good choice, Eastleigh!

As Owen Paterson stews in his own Bisto (see the Slugger O’Toole exchanges for how it is seen outside the Westminster enclosure — and how Malcolm elucidates thereof), the good news of the evening is that John O’Farrell waves the scarlet banner high in the by-election.

It’s quite amazing how Louise Mensch (Desperate, New York City) and John Prescott (good old Labour, Hull) can both find something positive to say about the nomination. Prescott wins, by capturing the O’Farrell wit and wisdom — Malcolm always preened more party feathers in pubs and with cheap sherry than in GMCs or Labour Group meetings (which must be why the Corbynistas of Haringey and Malcolm never saw eye-to-eye).

With all due respect to the other two worthy candidates, it had to be O’Farrell and the modicum of national recognition he drags with him. For crying out loud, neither of the two front-runners, Tory and LibDem, look anything more than old nag in-a-fancy-lasagne-packet.

The pointless grump of a downtrodden man

There is, none too far from Redfellow Hovel, a parked car. It is big, long, black, sporty, Mercedes and a recent model. To Malcolm’s untutored, and definitely non-petrolheaded eye, it looks distinctly expensive — the kind of hardware that costs as much as a three-bed home in many parts of this fragmenting kingdom.

The Merc-monster has been there, unattended, a couple of days now.

Quite a bit transpired, yesterday, when an anonymous white van also arrived. The van contained the the heavy mob from the collections agency. They had come to chain up said Merc-monster because a string of parking tickets were outstanding.

Seeing Malcolm hard a-blog, the more elephantine of the heavy mob rang the door-bell of Redfellow Hovel. Did Malcolm know anything about Merc-monster?This Malcolm decoded as, “Is it yours? We have a tidy account for you to settle. Then we can head off to the pub.”

Most definitely no, never seen the thing before. Shouldn’t be there. etc.

While his mate was dealing with the chain on the Denver Boot, Mr Pachyderm explained why this was under way (hence the information three paragraphs previously) and then fished out one of those telephones that contain major computing power. He was then able to display in Malcolm’s face a name and address. Again Malcolm decoded, “Does this name and address chime with you?”

Well, actually, in a dim recess of the less-visited parts of Malcolm’s cortex, it did, but the synapse didn’t instantly connect.

Only later did Malcolm recognise the connection. The name waved electronically before him seemed to lack a title. Not “Mr” or “Dr”, but “Sir”. It is — perhaps by coincidence, the name of a prominent and publicly-honoured architect, of the modernist tendency, who has scattered the landscape with some exotic structures.

The gravy train

Well, Malcolm has no envy that such talent has earned so well to afford the Merc-monster, and to pay so promptly the inflated fines (by the evening, Mr Pachyderm and his mate had returned and doffed the chains).

On the contrary, such a show of wealth is part of modern Britain.

As is the lack of opportunity for others, and the failure for wealth to percolate downwards.

Consider the story by Patrick Wintour in today’s Guardian, Labour to use US research to shape election campaign. In the print edition that comes with a nice little line-graph. On-line we have to settle for:

Labour is drawing on research by the New Democrat Network (NDN) central to the Obama re-election campaign to shape its own election thinking.

The research was described by the Obama campaign as its North Star. It tracked three trends in the US economy between 1992 and 2009, showing how two – higher growth and higher productivity – had not been matched by a rise in living standards for the majority.

The Resolution Foundation thinktank, the leading voice on UK living standards, will next week produce its own State of the Nation report showing how long it will take to return to rising living standards in the UK even if growth returns. Labour will also launch its own exercise – “the condition of Britain” – next week, its policy review chief, Jon Cruddas, has revealed.

Padded out with some choice quotation, there’s also this:

It also indicates that the crisis of living standards predates the City-induced recession of 2008.

“The reason this is happening is because of rising global competition, the defining new economic challenge of our time,” Simon Rosenberg, the head of the New Democrat Network, said in a recent interview.

“In the actual experience of the American economy, there has become an enormous gap between the upper one-third and everyone else.”

The chart hung in the Obama campaign office, along with a caption derived from a focus group participant: “I’m working harder and falling behind.” That same line was repeated by the president in a campaign stump speech.

So some have Merc-monsters, and can ignore parking fines, on the assumption that it’s only money (and expenses can be set against taxes). The rest of us have to obey the rules and muddle along as best as we can afford.

There are two ways of looking at this.

On one refined level we can take the research and graphics of — say — the Financial Times, to show just how dismally the ConDem government have perpetuated the Great Depression of 2008-2018 (as in the graph — Malcolm likes simple graphs — right).

Along with that, we can take the wit-and-wisdom of the Office for National Statistics, who tell us the same, with numbers attached:

Incomes squeezed more than in previous recessions

Real national and household incomes have been falling due to a combination of the recession and high inflation. That is the analysis published today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) as part of the Measuring National Well-being Programme.

The data describes an economy that has been stagnating:

• In the second quarter of 2012 net national income (NNI) per head in real terms was 13.2 per cent below its pre-recession level in the first quarter of 2008; a sharper fall in economic well-being than the 7.0 per cent fall that GDP per head data indicate.
• In the second quarter of 2012, real household actual income per head was 2.9 per cent below its peak in the third quarter of 2009.
• Household incomes have generally been eroded by price inflation, for example in September 2011 inflation peaked at 5.2 per cent whereas the annual rise in household actual income per head was 1.9 per cent in the third quarter of 2011.
• At the end of 2011 national debt was in excess of one trillion pounds, the first time on record, and equivalent to 65.7 per cent of GDP.

Or we can simply look, it is hoped with compassion, at the plight of millions of Britons, trapped in falling incomes, rising costs, lower wages, poorer expectations and increasing misery.

At the start of the ConDem government, David Cameron was buoyant that we could, and should measure “well-being”. And so, at a cost of £2 million and two years later, we were treated to guff like:

Responses by 165,000 people in the annual population survey reveal the average rating of “life satisfaction” in Britain is 7.4 out of 10 and 80% of people gave a rating of seven or more when asked whether the things they did in their lives were “worthwhile”.

Any bets we’ll not be hearing comparisons this year? Even that the ONS be told, quietly, to forget the whole thing?

Or, of course, the ConDems could scatter Merc-monsters across the land, warbling up-lifting ditties (and not the kind of uplifting that Mr Pachyderm & co involve themselves in):

With a hey, and a ho, and a hey-nonny-no,

These pretty country folks would lie

In springtime, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, Hey ding a ding, ding.

Sweet lovers love the spring.

This carol they began that hour,

With a hey, and a ho, and a hey hey-nonny-no.

Nice one, Mister Ed!

The weekly corrida de toros (always a lot of bull, but today a bit of horse) of Dave and Ed was a nice one today. Only the true die-hard thought Cameron did the business. Even the ranks of ConHome could scarce forbear to fleer:

[Miliband] probably won the exchanges on points, despite Cameron having the better of the arguments.  The Prime Minister all but used the “R” word, alluding to consulting the public and gaining the “full-hearted consent of the British people”.  His insistence that a Conservative Government would want to take powers back from Brussels, and that a Labour Government would give more away, was right.  But my sense is that to the lay voter hinting that you want a referendum in future while arguing that you don’t want one now looks muddled.

That’s Paul Goodman who, despite Malcolm’s partisan sniping is good — and getting better:

Downing Street must be anxious about women’s votes.  From the Tory backbenches, John Glen raised the gain which the Government’s proposed pension reforms will bring to some women, and Mary Macleod plugged childcare: I may be wrong, but both questions had the smell of the Whips’ Office about them. Laura Sandys asked about the great horsemeat scandal.  Cue the Rebekah Brooks jokes.

Edible equines

That’s another chewy matter, currently being digested across the media, including Slugger O’Toole, where Pete Baker has opened his Boucherie Chevaline. Not surprisingly, it’s a bizarre goulash of serious concern and dismal punning:

• One of the few, very, very, few, successful native industries Ireland could boast of was its meat industry, specifically beef. Following the Irish economic collapse it was about the only economic success story Ireland could point to. This will absolutely devastate it.
• I was just checking my burgers in the fridge there……Aaaannnnd they’re off!!!

For different reasons, Malcolm likes both of those … and had to participate, in part recollecting an earlier post here:

I know two things about a horse
And one of them is rather coarse.

Even so, the presence of real meat (beef, horse, or whatever) in burgers is the least of his worries. It’s not the meat that concerns him: like the 99.9% of known germs slaughtered by household cleaners … the problem lies with the other and unknown bits.

One small wrinkle: the Irish tests which revealed the horse DNA date from two months since. What’s been happening since? Why does it become public only now?

Back to the bear pit

Miliband’s smirk at PMQs must have registered all the way to Brighton: he was winning, and he knew it.

Inevitably the Tory (and other) commentators are getting antsy. Hence the demands for a definitive statement of the Labour position, usually expressed in the whinge: Miliband must commit NOW! To which must go the answer: No chance!

Simon Jenkins (in the Guardian) tried, rather tortuously, to reel in his sprat:

From the moment in 2003 that Gordon Brown stopped Tony Blair joining the euro, Cameron’s speech was waiting to happen. The evolving euro would sooner or later need a tight political corset to enforce fiscal, budgetary and monetary union. Britain and other states would not join this, and would therefore need to negotiate their relationship with this euro-specific regime. Labour’s Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, both party to Brown’s victory over Blair, know this well. There need be no disagreement.

No disagreement? Come, come: that’s not the nature of British adversarial politics.

James Forsyth, Speccie-lating away, would like to see a Tory ploy in the whole thing:

Those close to Cameron are arguing that Miliband has now shut the door to Labour offering a referendum, putting Labour on the wrong side of public opinion. They believe that once Cameron has actually delivered his speech, the atmosphere will change and Miliband will have to say what he would do.

Oddly enough, Benedict Brogan got the message:

On a succession of vital topics raised in the interview, Mr Miliband said he couldn’t answer because we are too far out from an election: we will have to wait for the manifesto.

One has to read the rest of that, in the context of the tormented Torygraph, fully to realise Brogan’s frustrated pain that Miliband is not to be hooked. The full beef is hoarsely delivered by David Hughes:

Labour is marching on the spot, going nowhere fast. While the party’s policy review is churning away, Miliband appears to think that he and his front bench can confine themselves to lobbing bricks at the Tories and leaving it at that.

Is that wise? At the last general election Labour won just 8.6 million votes – that’s just a smidgen more than Michael Foot got when facing Margaret Thatcher in 1983 in what is generally regarded as Labour’s most abject post-war electoral performance. That suggests there’s a big job of work to do rebuilding the party, thrashing out a credible post-Blairite position. Instead, Ed Miliband seems content to coast, apparently seduced by Labour’s opinion poll lead into believing the next election is in the bag.

Big mistake.

Which amounts to a genteel version of those pointless and repetitive demonstrators’ chants:

— Wha’ d’we want?
— A target to hit!
— When d’we wan’ it?
— Now!

A problem made in and by the Tory party to eviscerate itself

The bottom line has to be there is no European crisis. Thanks to a steady steer from Angela Merkel, the worst of the €-mess seems to be passed. Ireland is selling bonds again. The appalling Berlusconi is polling at 20-25% and won’t be coming back. Greece and Spain are bleeding; but still only walking wounded. François Hollande has opened his second front (albeit in Mali); and dragged Cameron part-way into the mire: nice one, Frankie!

Only Cameron’s Britain seems to have conniptions; and so — after six months of dither — we may be able to read Cameron’s lips. As Miliband summed it:

The biggest change that we need in Europe is a move from austerity to growth and jobs, but the Prime Minister has absolutely nothing to say about that. This is the reality: the reason the Prime Minister is changing his mind has nothing to do with the national interest. It is because he has lost control of his party. He thinks that his problems on Europe will end on Friday, but they are only just beginning.

The Cameron speech, now on Friday, is:

• not about Britain — though it may include a “shopping list” of unrealisable aims,
• not about a referendum — though Cameron will do his best to imply just that,
• not about Europe, for Cameron and his government have rendered themselves impotent side-liners.

No: it is essentially about:

• fabricating some semblance of Tory unity until the 2015 election (any hopes for the Euro elections of 2014 must already be written off);
• fending off UKIP and Tory back-benchers’ night-stalkers — if Tory policy on Europe came as a stick of seaside rock, the six letters through the stick would read F-A-R-A-G-E;
• The referendum, which Cameron flinched away from before, has now become the last hope: that (not 10% or whatever in the polls) is a measure of how successful UKIP has been.

Bated breath?

Last Monday Nick Robinson, the BBC Political Editor, gave a bald assessment of just how desperate Cameron’s position is:

… he has set out how we might get that referendum on Europe after the next election, but there is a series of ifs:

• If he wins the next election alone (in other words doesn’t have to get this past Nick Clegg)
• If he can persuade other European countries, particularly Germany that they need and want treaty change
• If Britain can then get what it wants in negotiations
• If he thinks he can then win a referendum

If all that happens, well then, yes, there will be a referendum which he thinks will approve a new better settlement for Europe.

But his difficulty in giving that big speech on Europe in about a week’s time is what if he’s wrong on any one of those ifs?

There’s as much chance of all that coming to pass as Mrs Brooks’s ex-policehorse, Raisa, doing a Lazarus out of the Tesco’s chiller.

Down with your benefits!

Be careful what you wish for!

Let us hope that the Great British Public wake up, and realise what is being legislated in their name.

• Why is the the cost of benefits currently exceeding the Government’s plans? Surely, it cannot be because the wholeConDem scenario has gone whoopsie?

Now consider todays’s  Second reading of the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill:

• The Resolution Foundation has calculated that 68 per cent of households affected by the measures are in work.
• The Institute for Fiscal Studies show that all the measures announced in the Autumn Statement, including those in the Bill, will mean a single-earner family with children on average will be £534 worse off by 2015.
• The Bill does not include anything to remedy the deficiencies in the Government’s work programme or the slipped timetable for universal credit.
• Should there be a comprehensive plan to reduce the benefits bill?
• Should it include measures to create economic growth and help the 129,400 adults over the age of 25 out of work for 24 months or more?
• Should the Bill should introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee, to give long-term unemployed adults a job they would have to take up or lose benefits? This could be funded by limiting tax relief on pension contributions for people earning over £150,000 to 20 per cent.
• Is the Bill unfair, at a time when  the rich are receiving a further bunce, and an additional rate of income tax is being reduced? This will result in those earning over a million pounds per year receiving an average tax cut of over £100,000 a year.

Most of that is taken, verbatim, from the Labour amendment to Iain Duncan Smith’s Make Labour Look Like the Party for Skiving Fat Slobs bill  [© Andrew Rawnsley].

Malcolm confidently predicts that, outside a small circle of friends (the Barclay brothers and their Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, the Murdoch lie-machine), this little Osborne ploy may quickly go sour. It will certainly poison the whole North/South division of British society, and may even do for the devolution debate what Thatcher’s Poll Tax did for the rise of the SNP.

But then, by 2015, the Tory Party may well have ceased to exist outside the plush leafy suburbs and the county areas with equestrian properties.

My enemy’s enemy is — not necessarily — my friend

When David Blackburn at the Speccie recommends a piece by George Eaton at the Staggers, in the bushes something stirs.

Both sides, in short, are evaluating what happens now the Lib Dem vote has collapsed. And whether the UKIP surge can continue. Either way, it is for Labour to exploit and the Tories to repulse  and repel (actually, they do that, en masse, quite well).

Eaton’s piece is the terser, but makes three points (which Malcolm glosses here) on the back of the Corby by-election:

• The Labour vote increased proportionately by nearly 10%. Were that to be the norm at a future General Election — which, we must assume is still slated for 7th May 2015 — Labour would romp it. As it happens, Malcolm would not be surprised if — given the faintest glimmer of an economic silver lining in 2014 — the Coalition didn’t somehow collapse this ‘fixed’ (in any sense you choose) parliament. Indeed, Cameron may be able to achieve just that by his long-trailered, long-over-due ‘big’ speech on Europe — and some kind of pledge/promise/wishful thinking on a referendum (cue Tom Newton Dunn at The Sun — this is one topic where the Murdoch press are a ‘must read’).
• If the Lib Dem decline persists, Labour stands to pick up those Tory/Labour marginals where the Lib Dem vote exceeds the present Tory majority (Eaton counts 37 of these). Several of those are seats (such as Clegg’s) with a large university student vote. The previous generation of those students (who will have passed on by 2015) were blinkered by the Lib Dem hypocrisy on fees, and by natural resentment at Labour’s involvement in US wars: go figure.
• If the Lib Dems do a Lazarus, and/or if the incumbency factor works in the Lib Dem MP’s favour, the Tories also lose out — because, again on Eaton’s arithmetic, there are 38 Lib Dem seats where the Tories run second. What Eaton doesn’t include is the West Country factor, where the Lib Dems (in fact, unreconstructed Liberals) have deep roots, and should continue to blossom.

Blackburn attempts to put a good face on what was an appalling day for the Tories:

• the rise of independents;
• that it was all a profoundly anti-politics election, and low turnout is a long-term trend. Err … is it? —

What is agreed by all-comers, is that Cameron is:

• damned if he does — any concessions to the rabid Right and the UKIPpers alienates the centre, leaving that ground open to the Labour ‘One Nation’ ploy.

and

• double-damned if he doesn’t — the Tory Right and the Right Outside are ‘on manoeuvres’, as Norman Tebbit cogently explains:

… there is plenty for the Conservative strategists to worry about. Whilst the BNP did rather poorly, particularly in Corby, UKIP on the whole did rather well. In the very low poll at Manchester, UKIP came within half a dozen votes of overtaking the Conservatives. At Corby, where the Conservative vote collapsed, UKIP scored a respectable 5,000-plus votes, triple that of the Lib Dems, and at Cardiff they marginally increased their vote.

In short, while Labour seems to have stemmed the loss of votes to BNP, the Tories are still losing support to UKIP; and even worse for Mr Cameron, UKIP is strengthening in advance of the 2014 European elections. The Tory cry that a vote for UKIP is a wasted vote may be wearing a bit thin.

All that is the prime focus on today’s editorial in The Independent:

Mr Cameron is caught in a difficult bind. He is facing a Labour Party showing tentative signs of recovery from its 2010 defeat, while to his right there is an anti-EU party attracting votes at a point when Europe soars up the political agenda. But if the Tory leader hardens his stance on the EU to appease Eurosceptics, he risks giving up an even greater share of the more moderate centre ground he once sought to occupy. And his departure from this electorally fertile terrain in other policy areas is one of the reasons his party struggled in the by-elections.

That’s without tangling too closely with the tar-baby (a dangerous metaphor, Malcolm fully appreciates, but one which he can happily defend on non-racist terms) of ‘localism’. ‘Localism’ may have been a good notion in happier times, but the centralisers of Tory policy (Gove, Shapps, Pickles …) have done for it, good and proper.

And another thing …

The North impinges further south each year.

The Tories are rapidly heading towards extinction north of the Trent and outside of the leafiest of shires. David Blackburn, in that piece noted above, cheerfully quotes himself from the previous day:

… the Tories’ woeful showing in South Yorkshire (beaten into 3rd by the English Democrats) and in Durham (finished a miserable 4th), to say nothing of the debacle in the Manchester Central by-election (where the party lost its deposit), should concern the party.

That is, not necessarily, even for socialist bigot like Malcolm, a good outcome.

‘Should concern the party’? Should concern the nation! For all its faults the Tory Party (indeed the two-party system) is essential to British democracy as we know it. Much as the Lib Dems might wish for a “three-party system”, that — as we have painfully discovered through this benighted ConDem coalition — arrives at sterility and even extremism (Gove, Shapps, Pickles … Duncan Smith, secret courts). Of course the whole system could — and arguably should — be given a whole new architecture, by devolution of real power to regions and localities and/or by proportional representation. For the time being, pending that day of universal liberation, we have to work within the parameters we have got.

Now we have the weekend commentariat to expect in the Sundays. That should be instructive, particularly if one or other of the ‘usuals’ comes up with a different, original interpretation. And, as Malcolm’s Dear Old Dad frequently opined: ‘It must be true: it’s in the papers’.

How to distort “news”

The Daily Mail is a low-down, dishonest, corrupting Tory rag — and needs constantly to be exposed for that. Fortunately, the Mail itself does so on a daily basis. Its whole existence is predicated to the Big Lie:

… the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

Malcolm deliberately disguises the source of that quotation, lest it fall foul of Godwin’s Law.

Today’s front page is a magnificent example of the Big Lie:

The essence of the Mail piece is:

Prescott loses police commissioner poll in his own back yard of Hull to a TORY

Except the election wasn’t just for Hull: it was for the whole Humberside Constabulary area. Here is the difference:

The political complexion, as of 2010, of the parliamentary constituencies of Humberside looks very skewed:

Ten constituencies, five Tory, five Labour, which might seem an even balance. The County seats all Tory: the Borough seats tending Labour, as one might expect. A closer look at the numbers suggests the Humberside area is safe Tory country: David Davis’s Haltemprice and Howden is regarded as the second safest Tory constituency in Britain, and has never deviated from that loyalty since 1837.

Add up the 2010 results and we have 40.8% Tory, 34.2% Labour and 25% Lib Dem:

Now consider Thursday’s results of the Police and Crime Commissioner election (though Malcolm never did get the hang of how to ‘commission’ crime):

Accepting that Prescott lost on the Second Round (39,933 to 42,164 or a 48.6/51.4% two-party split), on that first count:

• Prescott caned the Tory — it is, in crude terms, a four or five per cent swing (and it has to be accepted that the “county” types turned out far, far better than the urbanites);
• the Tory vote went AWOL, barely squeaking in ahead of the independent — even the egregious Godfrey Bloom (surely one of the more disreputable and bizarre UKIP types, which itself is saying something) splitting off a sixth of the total poll;
• the Tory candidate was only rescued — just — on that second round by rolling up the odds-and-sods vote: those 19,375 who did express a second preference split for the Tory 2:1;
• the Lib Dems were totally creamed: even proportionately, more than a third of their vote evaporated.

For the record, Paul Davison — who ran that close third —  is an ex-Police Superintendent, and probably the best qualified of all the candidates.

The real determinant was tthe total failure of second preference transfers (which, as every aficionado of Irish politics knows, is key to the whole operation). Only 27% of the odds-and-sods ballots bothered to make a second preference. That is either a failure of voter education or a clear statement by a majority to vote “neither of the above”. 51,665 second preferences did not go for either the Labour or the Tory in the final run-off — which amounts to an absolute majority of those who turned out. We should not forget the “alternative vote” was the preferred option in the Great Constitutional Débâcle of 5th May 2011. If we needed concrete evidence that AV is a sham, and no substitute for proper proportional representation, here is the concrete evidence.

Yet the Daily Mail says it was all about Prescott, and the Daily Mail is a dishonourable rag.

And the Daily Mail says it was all about the city of Hull, and nothing to do with the other lands north and south of the estuary, and, for sure, the Daily Mail is a dishonourable lie-sheet.

A chapter of “accidents”?

They were a group of lads (all of Malcolm’s vintage), working out of RAF Wittering . That was the base for ground-attack aircraft (duck as you raced up that bit of the A1!) — hence ‘Hedgehoppers’. Because they were military, they had to be “Anonymous”. And, also hence: Hedgehoppers Anonymous:

And they were good. Far, far better than many of the catch-penny beat groups that “made it” longer.

Indelible

For those of a certain age, of a certain disposition, that lyric stays imprinted:

It’s good news week:
Someone’s dropped a bomb somewhere,
Contaminating atmosphere,
And blackening the sky.

It’s good news week:
Someone’s found a way to give
The rotting dead a will to live,
Go on and never die.

If the first stanza/verse explains why these guys were out-of-kilter with the 1960s RAF, the next one remains omni-present.

Take the last few hours

The Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell story has been one that kept giving for the Labour opposition. There will be broken hearts among the Labour Party tendency that Mitchell finally went for the political equivalent of a Darwin Award:

The prime tenet of the Darwin Awards is that we are celebrating the self-removal of incompetent genetic material from the human race. Therefore, the potential winner must be deceased, or at least incapable of reproducing. The traditional method is death. However, an occasional rebel opts for sterilization, which allows her more time to enjoy the dubious notoriety of winning a Darwin Award.

The bitter-sweet joy is that it took Mitchell this long: a month of poisonous news-stories, which will not have finished with his resignation. The other barrel is loaded with his last-minute as International Development Secretary decision to award £16 million to President Kagame of Rwanda (The rotting dead a will to live):

Downing Street approved the controversial decision last month by the then international development secretary Andrew Mitchell to restore British aid to Rwanda in spite of fears about the human rights record of the president, Paul Kagame.

As Mitchell faces criticism over his decision to grant £16m in aid on his last day in office, it emerged that the move was backed jointly by No 10 and the Foreign Office (FCO). Hours after his decision last month Mitchell took up the post of government chief whip.

What remains inexplicable is the double standard whereby

• President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir  of Sudan  was indicted by the International Criminal Court,

while

• Kagame travels the world scot-free,  unindicted and, by the UK government, well-rewarded (at least until the next discreet volte-face).

But then David Cameron has been well-serviced (not least courtesy of Andrew Mitchell) with juicy photo-ops and news-clips in Rwanda.

Credit where it’s due

As Mitchell departs, Sir George Young is slotted, seamlessly, into his place.

Sir George Samuel Knatchbull Young, 6th Baronet, has been around the block somewhat. He did well enough under John Major (as Financial Secretary and then Transport Secretary) but was one of the decent, unpushy Tories who seemed to miss out when the ConDem coalition was formed. He was Leader of the House (surely the one job for which he was made)  until, as it seemed, he was made redundant in the Great Cameron Re-shuffle — to provide a fig-leaf for the defenestrated Health Secretary, Lansley.

Now he is back; a gentleman to the marrow. Where ‘Thrasher’ Mitchell was supposed to intimidate, the Bicycling Baronet will charm. Where Mitchell swore, Young will soothe. True noblesse oblige.

For once it is an inspired choice.

But we haven’t finished with the rotting dead

Just when Mitchell was going for the seppuku solution, “Gids” Osborne was rubbing in the message of We’re not all in this together:

George Osborne is reported to have stumped up an extra £160 for a first class train ticket after being told he could not sit in the restricted area with his standard class fare.

ITV News correspondent Rachel Townsend said she was travelling on a train to Euston when the chancellor got on at Wilmslow, in his Tatton constituency, and tried to get away without paying the extra charge.

Townsend made perfect use of Twitter to report that journey under the hashtag#getGeorgeinstandard, as an aide to the chancellor reportedly tried to persuade the conductor to let her boss stay in first class away from, for want of a better word, the plebs.

What goes missing there is the female “aide”, who apparently had to sort out the penalty fare (as well as her own?). This from the BBC:

The story was broken via a series of tweets by ITV reporter Rachel Townsend, who works for Granada Reports in the North-West of England.

She said: “Very interesting train journey to Euston Chancellor George Osborne just got on at Wilmslow with a STANDARD ticket and he has sat in FIRST CLASS…

“His aide tells ticket collector he cannot possibly move and sit with the likes of us in standard class and requests he is allowed to remain in First Class.

Malcolm’s emphasis: there are indeed some to whom privilege comes unnaturally natural.

Tin-foil hats at the ready!

Feel free to go all conspiracy-theory at Huffington Post:

Ummm … decisions! decisions!

Underneath the arches

Osborne was hurried, shielded, escorted out of the side, goods, entrance of Euston Station to avoid the welcoming party of assembled press vultures and a few Labourites. Should “Gids” Osborne think he is out from under, he should reflect on a fellow traveller who also tried to take the easy way through.

Further north, there’s  York’s historic Micklegate Bar, one of the four medieval entrances through the ancient city walls. Anyone who has been to York will recognise it as the gate near the railway station, where the A59 from Harrogate and Knaresborough joins the A1036 road from Tadcaster. Most likely the Roman legions, hiking up Ermine Street, came this way. The present Micklegate (from Northumbrian Anglian micil: great or large in size, bulk, or stature — there may be a clue there) has been in situ these seven hundred and odd years. Ignorant modernists find it clearly prefaced with a height warning: 8ft 6in. Even so, this afternoon a delivery lorry attempted the impossible.

God luck to both the lorry driver and “Gids”, as they talk their separate ways out of their present embarrassments.

And the latest from London …

The broadsheet columnists whistle a certain hit from the 60′s as they conceive appropriate stories for the weekend editions.