Ed Miliband

Labour’s 2015 General Election Manifesto Starts With A Lie, And Then Gets Worse

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Labour Party General Election Manifesto 2015 - Budget Responsibility Lock - Debt and Deficit Confusion

 

Much has been made of the fact that the Labour Party’s 2015 general election manifesto begins with a so-called “Budget Responsibility Lock” to fully fund all spending commitments and reduce the deficit every year – locks and ‘triple locks’ currently being all the rage in British politics.

But Labour’s manifesto also begins with a blatant lie, and nobody seems to have called them out on it. So here it is, straight from the preamble to Ed Miliband’s pitch to the voters:

We will get national debt falling and a surplus on the current budget as soon as possible in the next parliament. This manifesto sets out that we will not compromise on this commitment.

No, this manifesto does nothing of the kind. In place of honesty, Labour’s manifesto actually tries to hoodwink the British people by conflating the current budget and eliminating the current budget deficit with the overall budget and eliminating the overall budget deficit.

Eliminating the current deficit is simply not the same as getting rid of the deficit altogether and restoring a budget surplus. The current deficit refers only to the gap between tax receipts and day-to-day government spending (i.e. excluding capital expenditure). Therefore, it is quite possible to run a current budget surplus while still running an overall budget deficit. And why does this matter? Because you can’t begin to pay down the national debt so long as there is any kind of budget deficit!

To deploy one of those awful but ubiquitous credit card analogies:

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The Reaction To Labour’s Immigration Mug Is More Than A Storm In A Teacup

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

Labour 2015 General Election Mug Control Immigration - Immigration Policy

 

To mark the official start of the 2015 general election short campaign, the Labour Party celebrated by offering their supporters a commemorative coffee mug with Adolf Hitler’s face adorning one side, and quotes from Mein Kampf on the other. Or so one might be forgiven for thinking, judging by the pant-wettingly hysterical reaction of some left-wingers to Labour’s latest piece of campaign merchandise.

In reality, what happened was that the Labour Party released some campaign trinkets based on their “five pledges” outlining what they would do in government. The offensive mugs make reference to the fourth of these pledges:

CONTROLS ON IMMIGRATION: People who come here won’t be able to claim benefits for at least two years, and we will introduce fair rules making it illegal for employers to undercut wages by exploiting workers.

Cue hysteria and frantic disassociation from the “campaign essential” merchandise from the unthinking wing of the Labour Party, and its odd-couple ambassadors, Chuka Umunna and Dianne Abbott MP:

Diane Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and a former Labour leadership hopeful, tweeted a picture of the mug on Sunday afternoon with the words: “This shameful mug is an embarrassment. But the real problem is that immigration controls are one of our five pledges at all.”

Her tweet prompted a barrage of criticism against Labour on Twitter, with the Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert writing: “Wow. The stories are true. Labour have actually produced a campaign mug championing ‘Controls on immigration’.”

Owen Jones also felt the need to get in on the action, though one cannot disagree with his wider point that the Labour Party (and the others) would be better offering some hope, or a positive vision backed up by tangible policies:

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Forget David Cameron’s Successor – Who Will Replace Ed Miliband?

Samuel Hooper8 Comments

David Cameron Breakfast Cereal Terms Are Like Shredded Wheat 2

 

And so, with a confusing breakfast cereal metaphor, David Cameron announced in an interview with the BBC’s James Landale that he would not seek to run for a third term as Prime Minister should he cling on to the post at the 2015 general election.

From James Landale’s own analysis:

David Cameron’s admission that he will not serve a third term in Downing Street will provoke a flurry of speculation. What was he hoping to achieve? What message was he trying to send?

First things first. I asked him a question and he answered it. It was not something that a helpful Downing Street official had suggested I might ask with a heavy hint that I might get an interesting answer. It was just one of many speculative questions that political journalists like me ask in the hope that just occasionally they might get an answer. And this time it did.

Second, Mr Cameron’s overt aim was to get across the message that he would serve a full second term. He wants to quash speculation that he might stand down early in 2017 after a referendum on the UK’s EU membership.

But by emphasising that he would do another five years, he inevitably has to address what he would do after that. And his answer was clear. Terms in Downing Street, he said, are like Shredded Wheat: “two are wonderful, three might just be too many.”

This is all very interesting, and certainly we should keep an eye on what might happen in the year 2020 and beyond. There is already plenty of good analysis off the back of David Cameron’s off-the-cuff revelation, from the Spectator here, the Times of London here and here, the Guardian here, and Conservative Home here.

But of far more interest than who will be jockeying for position to replace David Cameron (a largely uninspiring field of Theresa May, George Osborne and the unthinkable Boris Johnson) is the more pressing question: who will replace Ed Miliband if Labour lose the election on 7 May?

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Labour’s NHS Attack Ad Exemplifies Our Rotten, Uninspiring Politics

Samuel Hooper12 Comments

General Election 2015 Labour Party Campaign Attack Ad NHS Public Spending

 

Today we saw the publication of the Labour Party’s first election poster of the 2015 campaign, and it is a nasty, negative little piece of work.

Designed to appear like an X-ray image, the poster shows a broken arm, and the warning “Next Time, They’ll Cut To The Bone. The NHS Can’t Afford The Tory Cuts Plan”.

There’s no point wasting space pointing out that this is not a very promising start from a party that promised to wage a relentlessly upbeat, positive election campaign – that point has already been well made. And it’s a fair point, but perhaps not the most important one.

What is really depressing about this Labour attack ad – and all of the negative campaigning we will soon see from the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and UKIP too – is the lack of vision, of imagination, of anything resembling a positive outlook for Britain’s future.

Ed Miliband is fervently hoping that he can squeak across the finish line and into Number 10 Downing Street on the back of the British public’s fear that our precious public services will be cut back or degraded under five more years of Tory rule. Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats hope to stave off electoral annihilation by likewise preying on the fear of a Tory majority, and by promising that returning a sufficient number of LibDem MPs to Westminster will help to soften the edges of a future coalition as they did in 2010.

Meanwhile, UKIP, for all their anti-establishment fervour and sometime happy warrior image, will be busy preying on fears and resentments about immigration and injustices inflicted upon helpless Britain from Brussels. And David Cameron and the Conservative Party will desperately hope that their own negative campaign ads, designed to make the British public fear the uncertainty and economic chaos that a profligate Labour administration would bring about, will convince us to allow them another term in government.

The common thread? All of the campaigning between now and May 7 will be negative.

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With The 2015 Budget, It’s Finally Time For Labour To Put Up Or Shut Up

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

George Osborne Ed Balls Budget 2015

 

David Cameron’s Conservative Party may only be pretending to care about small government, strutting around in the borrowed robes of fiscal responsibility. But in their feeble reaction to George Osborne’s 2015 budget, the Labour Party – much like the proverbial emperor – have been caught wearing no ideological clothes, and possessing no real principles at all.

We have now experienced nearly five years of coalition government, a Conservative and Liberal Democrat joint venture, and throughout that time the Labour Party has squealed and bitterly protested every single action taken by the government to restore Britain to any kind of good fiscal balance.

One might therefore reasonably expect the Labour Party to be ready with a compelling, explainable and measurable alternative raft of policies to fix Britain as the 2015 general election rapidly approaches. But not only does it seem that Ed Miliband’s Labour Party have no alternative vision for Britain beyond carping about Tory meanness, neither are they willing to commit to reversing any of the coalition government’s spending plans, including those announced in yesterday’s Budget.

The Telegraph reports that Ed Balls will not commit to undoing a single Tory spending measure should Ed Miliband win the keys to 10 Downing Street on 7 May:

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, admitted that Labour would not reverse George Osborne’s Budget measures, including the flagship measures on savings and Help to Buy.

Speaking in response to yesterday’s Budget, he said “nothing had changed” because the Chancellor had produced an “quite empty” Budget, meaning Labour “wouldn’t need to reverse any of it” if the party was successful at the general election.

“There’s nothing … I need to reverse. What I will reverse are deeper spending cuts in the next three years than the last five.”

Pushed as to whether he would retain Mr Osborne’s widely welcomed plans to spare millions of savers tax and to provide new “Help to Buy Isas” – savings accounts for first time buyers which would be topped up with government cash – Mr Balls told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he would, adding: “I think the Help to Buy Isa is an interesting idea. We’re not going to abolish it.”

This leaves two rather burning questions: why would anyone in their right mind vote for Labour now that Ed Balls has admitted that he would copy all of George Osborne’s ideas? And isn’t it about time the Labour Party apologised to Conservative and right-wing voters for having said such horrible things about the Evil Tories when they secretly agreed with David Cameron and George Osborne the whole time?

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