Land of hope is Tory. Duh.

He may not move the voters, but Ed Miliband has certainly rattled David Cameron's cage. The PM name checked Labour no fewer than 25 times in his address to the Tory conference yesterday in Manchester. He mentioned Ukip not once and only referred to the Liberal Democrats as an albatross around the Tory neck. So, why has Ed got under Tory skins?

Well, obviously Milband's taking on the energy companies has annoyed the Tories because it is rather popular, as was a fair amount of Labour's new "red" agenda. Hitting property developers and energy monopolies and shifting taxation from small businesses to big ones is hardly striking at the roots of capitalism. This is the kind of policy agenda that some Conservatives used to rather favour - supporting the little man, the small business against powerful vested interests.

One Nation conservatism of the type Harold MacMillan largely invented and Michael Heseltine still advocates today was all about raising the living standards of the many and curbing the privileges of the few. It was about building houses, promoting welfare and extending economic activity to the 'regions'. It wasn't about rejecting Europe, victimising the unemployed and pandering to the prejudices of voters in the South East of England.

You only needed to look at the huge blue banners draped around the conference centre in Manchester to get the message: "Immigration Down. Crime Down. Welfare Down. Taxes Down". Mrs Thatcher would have been proud to discover that her legacy was so secure in the age of "liberal" Conservatism. Behind the emolient face of David Cameron, the Conservatives have defaulted to their true blue roots. This is a party tacking rapidly to the right.

David Cameron, we are told, is now planning to cut housing and possibly other benefits from unemployed people under the age of 25. This is a draconian extension of the welfare cap that has proved so successful for the Conservatives. He has committed his party to an in/out referendum on membership of Europe, a "go home" policy on immigration and a form of hair shirt fiscal conservatism by promising extending public sector cuts to 2020 in order to replace the deficit with a budget surplus. If he is serious, this would involve truly heroic spending reductions, since the Coalition has already failed in its original 2010 pledge to eliminate the deficit by 2015.

Tory Muff and Jeff routine. Caring Cameron feels their pain.

The Tories under David Cameron have become the masters of the conference Mutt and Jeff routine. All week ministerial Muttleys put the boot into big families on welfare, batter burglars, threaten referendums on Europe, kick the Liberal Democrats in the goolies by rejecting their wealth tax. This all goes down well; red meat for the conference carnivores.

Then on the last day, along comes Jeff, in the form of compassionate Dave, who is kind to animals and gays, and is talks movingly,  about his late legless Dad and by implication all disadvantaged souls. Oozing empathy. Patron of the Paralympic games. And it has to be said that David Cameron does it very well. This was a hard-headed Thatcherite speech straight from the 1980s but delivered in a 'caring' way. He really does sound like he believes in the NHS. He teared up when talking about his late son Ivan.  Not many politicians can introduce real emotion into such a stage-managed event as a leader's address without it sounding cynical.

And technically this was a much better speech than last week's modern studies lecture from Ed Miliband. Cameron can hit all the notes - poking fun at Ed's attempt to don the mantle of “one nation” Conservatism. “Labour: the party of one notion: more borrowing”. He got his lists right: “We remember who spent our golden legacy, who sold our gold, who busted our banks, who smothered our businesses, who wracked up our debts, wrecked our economy, ruined our reputation and risked our future”. (It was Labour in case you were wondering).

Mostly, the speech - like that passage - said nothing at all, but Cameron said it with real passion. He even managed to get the Tory gathering to applaud foreign aid which he said had paid for the vaccination of 130,000 children since Sunday alone. “You, the Conservative Party helped do that”, he said, daring them not to clap, “and you should be proud of what you've done.” He avoided all the difficult issues - gay marriage, the referendum on Europe, the challenge from Boris, “the zinger on the zipwire”. And he didn't mention his Coalition partners once. But he did mention Alex Salmond and Abu Hamza, who were name-checked as if they were public enemies one and two. He promised to win the Scottish independence referendum and expel radical Muslim clerics.

This was billed as a blood sweat and tears speech, and he didn't try do disguise the seriousness of the situation five years into the Great Recession.  He told us that Britain was living on borrowed time as a great commercial nation. That all those enterprising upstart countries, who were recipients of aid money only the day before yesterday, are now battering at the gates. He condemned the old world countries as “fat, sclerotic, over-regulated, spending money on unaffordable welfare systems, huge pension bills, unreformed public services”. Did he mean us?

Well this is the problem, because in the same breath as condemning sclerotic, “old world” countries like ours, he couldn't resist suggesting that Britain was also booming under the Conservatives. A million new private sector jobs have been created in the last 2 years, he said. Though he didn't say how many of these were full time. The PM said that the rate of new business start ups in Britain was faster than ever before in history, though he didn't say how many of these small businesses are those part timers opting to become self-employed for tax reasons. We make more cars than in the 70s, he said, though the firms are foreign owned. and we are “number one in the world for offshore wind”. Somehow these sunny uplands didn't quite hang together.

Of course, all politicians try to have it both ways – it's what they do. But there is more than a danger that this will backfire on Cameron. He knows that the economic policy isn't working; and we know that the economic policy isn't working. And he knows that we know. Take borrowing. It's going up under the Tories as fast as under Labour, in large part because of the failure of growth policies. Those millions of new business start ups aren't delivering real jobs. They are delivering frothy, here-today-gone-tomorrow jobs at the disposable end of the labour market. These aren't the kind of businesses that are going to take on the Chinese or the South Koreans. And they aren't the kind of jobs that are going to restore Britain as a great manufacturing nation.

Austerity isn't enough. This isn't the 1980s. Governments can't just curb employment rights, cut taxes and public spending and expect business to do the rest – unless you want a poundland Britain sinking into post-industrial mediocrity. 21^st Century governments are condemned to be interventionist – just as they have been in those upstart nations. Does anyone seriously believe that the Chinese state banks sit back and leave it all to the market?  Is that how they built 25,000kms of motorway, an entire high speed rail network and the five longest bridges in the world all in the last four years?

I'm not suggesting we concrete over Britain, but growth doesn't happen by itself any more. If we are to exploit Britain's – Scotland's – renewable energy potential, government needs to get behind green energy. And someone needs to tell the Chancellor, George Osborne, who seems more interested in backing shale gas and nuclear power stations that are too expensive to build.   The Conservatives need to realise that Europe isn't going to go away, and that the EU remains the destination for half of Britain's exports. The abortive EADS/BAE Systems defence deal shows that you can't do business at this level without government being heavily involvedl. 

    Margaret Thatcher's vision of a Britain of self-employed Essex tradesmen, owning their homes and getting ahead, is as much a part of folk history as the Winter of Discontent and union barons. Truth is, most of them are in negative equity and struggling to afford their next white van. Cameron commiserated with 33 year old “strivers” who can't afford their first house house, but he insisted that the Tories were still the party of the aspirant middle class - the “Aspiration Nation” as he put it, in a sound-bite that sounded like it came from “The Thick Of It”.  Cameron risks being a prisoner of the past, a Little Britain Thatcherite who is a clever speaker, but without a lot to say.   

Will Scotland rise up against 'English' Tory rule?

On the night of the 1992 general election a prominent journalist I know laid in nine bottles of champagne - one for each of the nine Scottish Conservative MPs - to be opened in celebration as each lost their seat.  As the night wore on, the bottles remained unopened and the party went decidedly flat.  To everyone’s shock and dismay, the Tories not only won the 1992 general election, they actually gained two seats in Scotland.  It was the last time the Tories won an election - until now. 

  The 1992 result led to a largely spontaneous out pouring of anti-Conservative feeling on the streets of Scotland.  The return of Tory rule, following Margaret Thathcer, two devastating recessions and the poll tax, was a profound shock to social democratic Scotland. The celebrated trades union leader, Bill Spiers, who died recently at the early age of 57, led the formation of the Scottish anti-Conservative front “Scotland United” along with Labour MPs like George Galloway and John McAllion prominent cultural Scots like Pat Kane of Hue and Cry and Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue.  Even SNP politicians, like Mike Russell, who had boycotted the cross party Scottish Constitutional Convention only four years previously, joined Scotland United demonstrations which culminated in a 25,000 strong rally in Edinburgh at the European summit in December 1992. 

  So, could history repeat itself?  In a matter of months, Scotland could, if the opinion polls are accurate, wake up to find itself back under Conservative rule from Westminster for the first time in thirteen years, and with an increased number of Scottish Conservative MPs.  Will it be 1992 all over again?  Could the shock of Tory rule be the spark that re-ignites the constitutional debate in Scotland and prepares the ground for another referendum, this time on independence?  Will Pat Kane come out of semi-retirement and form “Scotland Re-United “on a bill with a Deacon Blue tribute band? 

   Probably not.  Things are very different today, and popular music has moved on. We also have a Scottish parliament with wide ranging powers over domestic affairs, which the Conservatives no longer oppose.   But what we are likely to witness if David Cameron wins in May 2010 is the original “nightmare scenario” envisaged thirty years ago by critics of devolution like the Labour MP Tam Dalyell, author of the West Lothian Question, who argued that  devolution was “ a motorway to independence with no U turns and no exits”.  It was precisely this combination  of a Nationalist government in Edinburgh and a Conservative one in London which opponents  of home rule believed would ultimately tear the union apart.  More recently, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable, has echoed this warning telling the Libdem conference last month that that he expects “conflict and possible secession” after a Tory victory.  Could David Cameron become the last prime minister of the United Kingdom as we know it?

   Certainly, a Tory government in Westminster is an important element in Alex Salmond’s game plan for winning independence.  David Cameron isn’t Margaret Thatcher, and  he has effectively apologised  for the impact of her economic policies on Scotland. He has promised to rule Scotland “with respect”.  But he is also committed to very deep cuts in public spending.  Since a disproportionate number of Scots are employed by the public sector, the proposed cuts of 10% in departmental budgets - on top of the SNP government’s own 2% efficiency savings - could  lead to tens of thousands of lost Scottish jobs.  The SNP will present this as another London-inspired economic holocaust equivalent to the Thatcherite industrial recessions of the 1980s.  Only this time The Proclaimers will be singing: “Schools no more, nurses no more, care homes no more...”  

    The nationalists hope that a Scottish reaction against the Cameron Tories in Westminster will secure them victory in the 2011 Scottish elections, and make the case for a referendum unanswerable.  Has not Lord Forsyth, the former Tory Scottish Secretary,  himself called for a referendum on independence?  Have the Cameron Conservatives not promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty on the EU constitution.  How then, say the SNP, can could an incoming Tory government refuse a referendum on independence  after two SNP election victories in Scotland?   Journalists north and south of the border are already honing their superlatives in anticipation.  It could be a great story: the final unravelling of the United Kingdom constitution after three hundred years, destroyed by a collision between the unstoppable force of English conservatism and with the immovable object of Scottish Nationalism.  

   It’s a plausible enough scenario, but it is all perhaps just a little too neat. History doesn’t repeat itself as literally as that. Indeed, the danger for the nationalists, and for Scottish Labour as they brace themselves for the new Tory age,  is that they end up fighting the battles of the past, and fail to appreciate that Scotland has changed in the last twenty years.  For many Scots, Thatcher and her poll tax are now ancient history.  Scotland is a different country, and in many ways a small-c conservative one - at least in that it is now predominantly middle class, home owning and apparently rather conventional in its attitudes to things like multiculturalism and gay right. Curiously, the Scottish Tories have singularly failed to capitalise on this to any significant extent, and have actually been losing ground in recent polls on Scottish voting intentions. There has been no Cameron bounce - which is why the Scottish Sun did not join it’s UK parent last week in throwing its support behind the Tories. 

    Yet, the Tories remain the only party in Scotland to have won a majority of votes and a majority of seats in a general election - that was in 1955, when people still talked of Glasgow as the Second City of the British Empire.  Protestant Unionism was a powerful force in post-war Scotland, and even as late as 1979, when Margaret Thatcher was elected, the Conservatives had 22 Scottish MPs and dominated politics in both Glasgow and Labour councils.   It was of course “That Bloody Woman”, as she was called on the doorsteps in the 1987 general election, and her poll tax, which drove the final nails into the coffin of Scottish Conservatism.  The two great industrial recessions in the 1980s, from which communities in West Central Scotland have yet to recover, plus the hugely unpopular community charge, have been seared onto Scottish political folk memory.  “Tory” became a four letter word and many dismissed them as

“the English Party”, for their opposition to devolution.   The Conservatives gained two seats in 1992, against the trend, but  they were wiped out in the 1997 general election - as the “Scotland United” generation wreaked its vengeance.  There remains only one Tory MP in Scotland, and if it hadn’t been for the Scottish Parliament and PR, they might have disappeared altogether. . 

    The Conservatives still live under the shadow of the 1980s, which remains an obstacle to their electoral recovery. .   But while middle Scotland remains largely immune to the appeal of Conservatism, that doesn’t mean that Scots are going to take instantly to the streets in outrage at David Cameron entering Number Ten, though they may look to the Scottish parliament to define Scottish values more accurately and defend Scottish public services. The passion isn’t there any more.  The great achievement of the Scottish parliament over the last decade has been to defuse the Scottish grievance culture. We no longer automatically blame London for everything that goes wrong, and recent polls suggest many Scots actually support cuts in public spending. 

   The “Scotland Reunited scenario also assumes that David Cameron will follow the neo-thatcherite script, which is not certain by any means. The Tory leader does not want to go down in history as prime minister who presided over the break up of Britain.  He will do everything in his power to avoid an early confrontation with the Scottish government, and it is not inconceivable that Cameron might even accept a referendum on independence - though only if he is reasonably confident of winning it. He has been careful not to rule it out.  Tory commentators, like Fraser Nelson of the Spectator, say  a referendum would be a way of rebutting the claim that the Tories have “no mandate to rule” in Scotland by reaffirming support for the Union. 

    But with or without a referendum on independence, Cameron’s best bet for saving the union would be to adapt it to changed circumstances.  Had there been any sign of an imminent Tory revival in Scotland, he might have been able to tough out the inevitable confrontation with the nationalists.  But the signal failure of the Scottish Conservatives to thrive electorally  - their best hope for the general election is five or six seats - rules this out.   It would look too much like an ‘English’ party imposing a diktat over Scotland.  A better option would be to seek a deal with Alex Salmond - a historic compromise between Nationalism and Unionism.  That may seem outlandish, but remember, Alex Salmond is only in Bute House because the Scottish Tories were prepared to back him as First Minister after the 2007.

  After the 2007 Scottish election, the Tories struck a ‘devil’s bargain’ with the SNP, supporting Salmond in power in exchange for influence.  Annabel Goldie, the Scottish Tory leader, claimed a series of policy concessions, including more police on the beat and a cut in business rates.  On the whole it has worked; it gave the them something to talk about, and the Scottish Tories no longer face electoral oblivion.   A new deal on the UK might similarly give the Conservative government in Westminster a ‘stake’ in Scottish politics and lay the basis for recovery. All David Cameron needs to do is adopt some of the recommendations of the Calman Commission, which the Scottish Conservatives endorsed, and give the Scottish parliament greater tax raising powers. This could kill two birds with one stone:  diverting attention from the ongoing spending cuts while scrapping the Barnett Formula, which many English Tory MPs believe gives Scotland an unfair advantage in public spending.  

   There is nothing that says the Union would end just because Scotland raised its own taxes. For their part, the SNP might well be in the mood for a compromise, especially since support for independence shows little sign of increasing following the recession which showed the Scottish economy to be dangerously exposed to banking crises. The SNP has recently been talking increasingly in terms of a new “Social Union”,  new relationship in which Scotland retains the Queen as head of state, shares the network of UK embassies abroad, retains the pound as the Scottish currency, and upholds the values of common UK institutions like the integrated National Health Service.

     It could be argued that the SNP has given up on independence, in the old secessionist sense.  Perhaps one day we might even see Alex Salmond and David Cameron meeting at Buckingham Palace to unveil to the Queen their blueprint for a new improved federal United Kingdom.  Now that really would be a culture shock.

    

David Cameron's speech: a triumph of ZZZZZZ

  I'd love to give you a complete and comprehensive blow by blow account of David Cameron's Manchester speech - but I started to doze off in the middle of it, and I can't be sure I got it all.  It's the first time I've ever drifted off in the middle of a leader's confrerence speech, espcially in an election year.  Either I'm getting too old, or David Cameron has taken his foot off the gas.

   I sense the latter.  Looking around there were a lot of Tories who looked like they were flirting with the land of nod.  It was a very downbeat speech, almost somnolent at times.  The only reall standers - where Cameron got off his couch and gave it laldy - were for Afghanistan and poverty.    His inequality sound bite was a good one.  It really nailed Labour's failure to deliver the social justice that is supposed to be its mission statement.  For once he looked the camera in the eye and showed that he is capable of passion.

   But the rest of it?  Well, you tell me. There was stuff about the NHS - he repeated that it sums up his political philosophy "in three letters".   There was a lot about good old-fashioned competitive education, though wisely he avoided the Troops to Teachers initiative of Staff Sergeant Michael Gove. There was a lot about entrepreneurs being the people who will rebuild the economy.  All very well.  But how can small businesses get off the ground if the big monopoly banks, fattened on public funds, refuse to lend the capital necessary to get new businesses started?  There was no coherent economic philosophy here.

   We got alot about debt, of course, but not about the people who got us into the debt crisis - the banks with thier excessive leverage and predatory lending to home owners.  There was nothing on housing - unless I missed it -  and culture seems to begin and end with the world cup bid in 2018.  You don't expect poetry  a from a political leader, but he could have given us a bit of vision surely.  The sunny uplands, which was his peroration, didn't convince.  It wasn't clear to me where these uplands are.  He talked of everyone setting up a business, which is as unlikely as it would be undesirable,; about choice in schools and hospital .  But his view from the summit appears to be a bit like an M&S vision of consumer choice, like Samantha's dress.

   The main policy theme was big government being the cause all our problems - and big government is bad when it is intrusive and takes away our liberties. He promised to scrap ID cards and end the surveillance state.  But all politicians want to slim down the bureaucracies - it is a political cliche. Like the 'bonfire of the quangos' which fortunately Cameron didn't offer.  And really, it is ludicrous to blame the financial crisis on big government - it was the big banks wot done it.  Intriguingly, he hardly mentioned the free market - perhaps because we don't have one any more - only socialism for the City.

  
     Will it convince the nation?  Well, there was nothing too objectionalble.  It wasn't militarist or triumphalist.  He sounds like a decent guy with a decent wife who has decent ane  reasonable views.  He is much more agreeable than mad Gordon Brown, so maybe he has done enough.  Just wake me when he wins, will you.

Come off it Michael. You make a poor Gradgrind.

  Michael Gove has had a personality transplant.  Where is the clever,  eloquent guy with the sideburns who used to appear with Germain Greer and co on Newsnight Review?  Suddenly, he's been transfomed into an old school Tory.  You could almost smell the mothballs during the shadow education secretary's speech to conference..  'Young people today...discipline..school uniforms...tests...discipline...more tests...three Rs...that's it." Come back Gradgrind all is forgiven.

   Exams need to get tougher.  No more politically correct nonsense in the curriculum.  Citizen Gove will insist that all schools teach a "proper narrative of British history" and not this relativist nonsense about other cultures.  There will be a new network of technical schools in urban areas to teach vocational subjects - yes, a return to the secondary modern!

  He even came up with a "Troops to Teachers" programme that would fast track members of the military into the classroom so that young people can be taught, well, more discipline. It sounded a bit like something out of Monty Python.  "Alright you horrible litttle men.  Let's be having you. By the right. Amo, Amas, Amat...Jenkins! fifty pressups on the floor now!"

   Terminator Gove is going to close all the failing schools in England and Wales (fortunately none of this nonsense will apply in Scotland) within a hundred days and replace the head teachers with, well, who know about discipline.  Perhaps soldiers demobbed from Afghanistan will be sent on a search and destroy mission to the inner city comprehensives.   They will root out trendy Taliban teachers and install peace-keeping forces until new governors can be found from the local community.

  Tories have a point about failing schools, there is no doubt about that.  They even have a point about discipline being essential for a creative teaching environment. You can't possibly learn anything in a class which is noisy, fractious, rude and obstructive.  Young people from poor backgrounds are being left in sink schools.  But most of what is being proposed, in terms of replacing the leadership of failing schools,  is either already under way or has already been tried by Labour in England.  The multiplicity of opted out schools, basic skills programmes, testing for reading ability etc..  Labour has had a core curriculum and tried to concentrate on reading, writing and arithmetic.

   The Tories really want to get schools to opt out of local authority control and become effectively self-financing autonomous units like in some schools in Sweden. Maybe they should try it.  But what Michael Gove was talking about was a return to Whacko teaching, lines of desks and rote learning.  It really won't do.  He knows a lot better than that.