More memories of 1979 on this blog coming soon......
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The way we were
The latest edition of Total Politics magazine focuses on the 1979 general election which was of course 30 years ago next month. I have contributed a tangentially connected "Where Are They Now?" piece about the former Labour MP Maureen Colquhoun who lost her seat at that election after having become Britain's first openly lesbian MP during the course of the previous parliament. It is not a story that reflects particularly well on British society at the time or more particularly on the Labour Party.
More memories of 1979 on this blog coming soon......
More memories of 1979 on this blog coming soon......
The twenty firsts meme
Mr Dale has tagged me to complete something called the "Twenty Firsts Meme" and since this seems like a chance to take a bit of a trip down memory lane, I'm happy to oblige.
First Job
Working behind the counter at the Barracuda fish and chip shop, Hitchin, on a Saturday. It was, as they say, a good way to meet people.
First Real Job
Trainee reporter on the Mansfield Chad 1986-8
First Role in Politics
Administration and Finance Officer of UCL Student Union 1983-84. The first, and only time, I have ever stood for elected office.
First Car
Fiat Uno.
First Record
The Pushbike Song by The Mixtures. Look, I was nine, okay?
First Football Match
Arsenal v Leicester City at Highbury, with my late uncle Eric, sometime in the 1972-73 season.
First Concert
Genesis at the NEC, 22 December 1981.
First Country Visited
Holland, on a school trip, in 1976. We had to go through Belgium to get there, of course.
First TV Appearance
Songs of Praise in 1978. St Mary's, Hitchin, was featured in the programme and I was in the choir.
First Political Speech
Probably in about 1981 or 1982 at the UCL students union, but I can't remember what it was about.
First Girlfriend/Boyfriend
Her name began with J, but I am certainly not going to be any more specific than that on a public website.
First Encounter with a Famous Person
We were having a family meal at a Hertfordshire restaurant some time in 1971/72 when Eric Morecambe came and sat at the next table.
First Brush With Death
Nearly drowning in the sea off the south coast of France while on holiday there in 1984.
First House/Flat Owned
It was in Sycamore Avenue, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Notts. I moved in on what must have been the hottest day of 1987.
First Film Seen at a Cinema
The Jungle Book.
First Time on the Radio
Discussing the resignation of David Bookbinder as leader of Derbyshire County Council on GMR (Greater Manchester Radio) in 1992. I was the local government correspondent of the Derby Evening Telegraph at the time.
First Politician I Met
I think this was possibly Willie Whitelaw, during a campaign visit to Hitchin in the '79 general election.
First Book I Remember Reading
I don't remember!
First Visit to the London Palladium
Never been.
First Election
Other than the student union election referred to above, I have never played an active role in any election of any kind.
I am supposed to tag five others, and although I don't believe there should be any compulsion attached to this, I gently and respectfully suggest the names of: Barnacle Bill, Little Man in a Toque, Mars Hill, Party Political Animal - either one - and View from the North.
First Job
Working behind the counter at the Barracuda fish and chip shop, Hitchin, on a Saturday. It was, as they say, a good way to meet people.
First Real Job
Trainee reporter on the Mansfield Chad 1986-8
First Role in Politics
Administration and Finance Officer of UCL Student Union 1983-84. The first, and only time, I have ever stood for elected office.
First Car
Fiat Uno.
First Record
The Pushbike Song by The Mixtures. Look, I was nine, okay?
First Football Match
Arsenal v Leicester City at Highbury, with my late uncle Eric, sometime in the 1972-73 season.
First Concert
Genesis at the NEC, 22 December 1981.
First Country Visited
Holland, on a school trip, in 1976. We had to go through Belgium to get there, of course.
First TV Appearance
Songs of Praise in 1978. St Mary's, Hitchin, was featured in the programme and I was in the choir.
First Political Speech
Probably in about 1981 or 1982 at the UCL students union, but I can't remember what it was about.
First Girlfriend/Boyfriend
Her name began with J, but I am certainly not going to be any more specific than that on a public website.
First Encounter with a Famous Person
We were having a family meal at a Hertfordshire restaurant some time in 1971/72 when Eric Morecambe came and sat at the next table.
First Brush With Death
Nearly drowning in the sea off the south coast of France while on holiday there in 1984.
First House/Flat Owned
It was in Sycamore Avenue, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Notts. I moved in on what must have been the hottest day of 1987.
First Film Seen at a Cinema
The Jungle Book.
First Time on the Radio
Discussing the resignation of David Bookbinder as leader of Derbyshire County Council on GMR (Greater Manchester Radio) in 1992. I was the local government correspondent of the Derby Evening Telegraph at the time.
First Politician I Met
I think this was possibly Willie Whitelaw, during a campaign visit to Hitchin in the '79 general election.
First Book I Remember Reading
I don't remember!
First Visit to the London Palladium
Never been.
First Election
Other than the student union election referred to above, I have never played an active role in any election of any kind.
I am supposed to tag five others, and although I don't believe there should be any compulsion attached to this, I gently and respectfully suggest the names of: Barnacle Bill, Little Man in a Toque, Mars Hill, Party Political Animal - either one - and View from the North.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
The election is now as good as lost
The Tory pundits, stuck in the battles of the 1980s and 90s, think the proposed 50p tax rate will lose Labour the next general election, but that's really not the issue now, and there are plenty of other good reasons why the Brown Government is almost certainly doomed. Here's today's Journal column.
It is a measure of how much the recession has changed the nature of political debate in Britain that this year’s Budget headlines focused on the kind of issues which once left most people bemused.
Thirty years ago, the Budget was all about the price of booze, fags and petrol. More recently, the main interest has lain in whether rates of personal taxation were going up or down.
This year, though, people seem to care more about the public sector borrowing requirement and the ratio of debt to GDP than whether they will be a couple of hundred pounds a year better or worse off.
Is it down to our increasing economic literacy as a nation? Or simply a reflection of the astronomical sums of money being thrown around as Chancellor Alistair Darling tries to rescue the stricken economy?
The days when Gordon Brown as Chancellor concluded his Budget speeches with a rabbit-out-of-the-hat designed to send Labour backbenchers into paeans of ecstasy already seem very far away.
Those naïve enough to be looking to Mr Darling to produce such a rabbit on Wednesday will no doubt have been sorely disappointed.
For one, he does not have the room for manoeuvre needed in order to procure a last-minute crowd-pleaser, and in any case, he is not that sort of character.
Mr Darling’s low-key, calm authority is one of the few political assets Labour still possesses in this otherwise dire situation. He was surely right not to try to play the showman.
The nearest thing to a surprise in the Budget was the car scrappage scheme to give people an incentive to buy new motors and so help the car industry out of the doldrums.
No doubt it will encourage some to trade in their old bangers for shiny new models, thought the main obstacle to this remains the reluctance of the banks to provide credit.
Elsewhere, the £500m to kick-start stalled housing projects will be a welcome boost to the construction industry at a time when the market has gone flat, although there have been signs that it is reviving of its own accord.
Much of Wednesday’s package though – for instance raising statutory redundancy pay by £30 a week – seemed like pretty small potatoes in view of the extent of the crisis.
Much attention inevitably focused on the decision to introduce a 50p top rate of tax from next April, but I cannot believe this is the defining issue which many Conservative commentators have made it out to be.
The recent row over MPs’ expenses and the backlash against bankers’ bonuses seem to me to be indicative of a new mood in the country that is now ready to see the rich pay more.
The 50p top rate will affect just 1pc of the population, the great majority of whom are based in London and the South, while the amount of money raised - £3.3bn over the next three years – is hardly going to repay the national debt.
Freezing the top rate of tax at 40p doubtless helped win over the “aspirational” middle classes to Labour in 1997. But times change, and even policies as iconic as this one ultimately have to change with them.
The tax pledge was a direct response to the fact that Labour’s old tax-and-spend reputation had lost it the 1992 general election. But the 2010 election will be decided on very different issues.
What will almost certainly lose Labour that election is not its taxation policies but the dire state of the public finances, with borrowing levels for the next five years set to be £175bn, £173bn, £140bn, £118bn and £97bn.
As Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers Alliance put it: “This Budget commit taxpayers to a terrifying amount of debt that will burden ordinary families for decades to come.”
Labour can blame the global economy all they like. I suspect the response of voters will be: “It happened on your watch.”
Could it all still come right for Mr Brown and Labour? Could this Budget yet be the springboard for election victory in the unlikely event that Mr Darling is proved right in his forecasts and growth picks up again from the end of the year?
Well, if you had asked me that question a couple of months ago, I would have said yes – on the basis that it is “the economy, stupid” that usually determines election outcomes.
But then came the damaging row over Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s expenses and the truly appalling “smeargate” scandal involving former No 10 spin doctor Damian McBride.
As a result, this government has now begun to take on the same air of decay and moral degeneracy that characterised John Major’s Tories in the run-up to 1997.
To my mind, it is now inconceivable that the public will vote for another five years of this, even if the green shoots of recovery do start to appear by the time we go to the polls next spring.
When Mr Brown became Prime Minister, his admirers – of whom I was one – hoped he would restore trust in politics by ending the spin culture that will forever be associated with the Blair years.
But those who argued that Mr Brown was no different from his predecessor in this regard have been proved right, and the sense of optimism that surrounded the start of his premiership has long since faded.
It will take much more than this grimmest of Budgets to restore that sense of hope.
It is a measure of how much the recession has changed the nature of political debate in Britain that this year’s Budget headlines focused on the kind of issues which once left most people bemused.
Thirty years ago, the Budget was all about the price of booze, fags and petrol. More recently, the main interest has lain in whether rates of personal taxation were going up or down.
This year, though, people seem to care more about the public sector borrowing requirement and the ratio of debt to GDP than whether they will be a couple of hundred pounds a year better or worse off.
Is it down to our increasing economic literacy as a nation? Or simply a reflection of the astronomical sums of money being thrown around as Chancellor Alistair Darling tries to rescue the stricken economy?
The days when Gordon Brown as Chancellor concluded his Budget speeches with a rabbit-out-of-the-hat designed to send Labour backbenchers into paeans of ecstasy already seem very far away.
Those naïve enough to be looking to Mr Darling to produce such a rabbit on Wednesday will no doubt have been sorely disappointed.
For one, he does not have the room for manoeuvre needed in order to procure a last-minute crowd-pleaser, and in any case, he is not that sort of character.
Mr Darling’s low-key, calm authority is one of the few political assets Labour still possesses in this otherwise dire situation. He was surely right not to try to play the showman.
The nearest thing to a surprise in the Budget was the car scrappage scheme to give people an incentive to buy new motors and so help the car industry out of the doldrums.
No doubt it will encourage some to trade in their old bangers for shiny new models, thought the main obstacle to this remains the reluctance of the banks to provide credit.
Elsewhere, the £500m to kick-start stalled housing projects will be a welcome boost to the construction industry at a time when the market has gone flat, although there have been signs that it is reviving of its own accord.
Much of Wednesday’s package though – for instance raising statutory redundancy pay by £30 a week – seemed like pretty small potatoes in view of the extent of the crisis.
Much attention inevitably focused on the decision to introduce a 50p top rate of tax from next April, but I cannot believe this is the defining issue which many Conservative commentators have made it out to be.
The recent row over MPs’ expenses and the backlash against bankers’ bonuses seem to me to be indicative of a new mood in the country that is now ready to see the rich pay more.
The 50p top rate will affect just 1pc of the population, the great majority of whom are based in London and the South, while the amount of money raised - £3.3bn over the next three years – is hardly going to repay the national debt.
Freezing the top rate of tax at 40p doubtless helped win over the “aspirational” middle classes to Labour in 1997. But times change, and even policies as iconic as this one ultimately have to change with them.
The tax pledge was a direct response to the fact that Labour’s old tax-and-spend reputation had lost it the 1992 general election. But the 2010 election will be decided on very different issues.
What will almost certainly lose Labour that election is not its taxation policies but the dire state of the public finances, with borrowing levels for the next five years set to be £175bn, £173bn, £140bn, £118bn and £97bn.
As Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers Alliance put it: “This Budget commit taxpayers to a terrifying amount of debt that will burden ordinary families for decades to come.”
Labour can blame the global economy all they like. I suspect the response of voters will be: “It happened on your watch.”
Could it all still come right for Mr Brown and Labour? Could this Budget yet be the springboard for election victory in the unlikely event that Mr Darling is proved right in his forecasts and growth picks up again from the end of the year?
Well, if you had asked me that question a couple of months ago, I would have said yes – on the basis that it is “the economy, stupid” that usually determines election outcomes.
But then came the damaging row over Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s expenses and the truly appalling “smeargate” scandal involving former No 10 spin doctor Damian McBride.
As a result, this government has now begun to take on the same air of decay and moral degeneracy that characterised John Major’s Tories in the run-up to 1997.
To my mind, it is now inconceivable that the public will vote for another five years of this, even if the green shoots of recovery do start to appear by the time we go to the polls next spring.
When Mr Brown became Prime Minister, his admirers – of whom I was one – hoped he would restore trust in politics by ending the spin culture that will forever be associated with the Blair years.
But those who argued that Mr Brown was no different from his predecessor in this regard have been proved right, and the sense of optimism that surrounded the start of his premiership has long since faded.
It will take much more than this grimmest of Budgets to restore that sense of hope.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)