Another By-election, another u-turn

… and no doubt they’ll be telling us in future how much better off we are because of the postponment of the planned 2p rise in fuel duty. No doubt, also, we are expected to be grateful that in a few months, petrol will be only 130p/litre and not 132p.

So, when the Conservatives propose cuts in fuel duty at times when fuel prices are high, it’s

“a dishonest gimmick which would mean the Tories would have to hike up taxes somewhere else or would mean a massive hole in the public finances.

“Either George Osborne doesn’t understand the way tax revenues work, or he’s prepared to play fast and loose with the public finances for the sake of a good headline.”

But when Labour postpone increases in fuel duty at time when fuel prices are high, it’s

“the right thing to do to help motorists and to help businesses.”

The ever-consistent Lib Dems, however are pouring scorn on both moves. You remember the Lib Dems: they were suggesting tax cuts a few months ago, and are the same party that wants/doesn’t want (delete deopending on day of week) a referendum on the EU.

Henley: John Howell Sends Clegg Back to the Drawing Board

Headline coverage of by-election results tends to focus on the placings of each party (well, I suppose who came first is pretty important!) So there’s probably a muted sigh of relief at LibDem HQ in Cowley Street this morning, among the general despair, that the media haven’t picked up on exactly what a disastrous outcome the Henley result has been for the Libs.

The headlines are about the fact that, on his first anniversary in office, Brown’s candidate plummeted to fifth place behind the BNP and Greens. (On many BBC bulletins right now, they are leading on the Zimbabwean elections.) The Lib Dems, despite pulling out all the usual stops, scraped only a 1.8% increase in their vote. Lord Rennard, as I noted earlier, ran the usual personal negative Lib Dem campaign which has worked reasonably well for them before - well, pre-2007 anyway. Now it’s back to the drawing board. Thing is, it’s been so long, can anyone at Cowley Street find it?

They Just Don’t Get It

So, Kelvin Mackenzie might step in to be Gordon Brown’s stooge stand against David Davis in the Haltemprice & Howden by-election. I hope Kelvin knows what he is letting himself in for by coming onto the other side of the media/victim fence. I would find it difficult to see Mackenzie, given his tabloid background, not getting personal in the campaign. This by-election was looking to be genuinely about the issue – if Mackenzie loses the plot then he will find himself reaping a whirlwind.

Add to the mix the fact that quite a few people will think that anything Murdoch/Mackenzie is for they are against, then I would say “bring it on”.

Of course, Kelvin has said he will do it if Labour don’t put anyone up themselves.

Thing is, Labour just don’t get it. Labour blogger Luke Akehurst, for example, is getting a good old kicking for suggesting, as indeed Nick Robinson was heard doing last night, that Labour should get a terrorist victim or retired Army or Police type to stand. Rachel from North London has put him firmly in his place as regards the first suggestion, and I can’t think of too many retired police or armed forces officers who would even give the government the time of day, with broken promises on pay rises, overstretched forces (both police and armed) and servicemen still at risk because of poor equipment. This seems to be a more specific form of the Yasmin Alibhai Brown “you are black/muslim/poor therefore you must vote Labour” way of thinking.

Labour – and indeed too many of the Westminster media - do seem to genuinely believe that there must be a grubby tactical motive to Davis’ actions, and that the Tories must have been just looking to give Gordon Brown a bloody nose on Wednesday. With a combination of arrogance and naivety, they sneer with derision the invocation of the principles of Magna Carta and feign deafness when mention is made of setting the boundaries of the State – presumably because the State is good, boundaries suggest constraints and why would one want to constrain Good?

Anyhow, one way or another it looks like there certainly will be a by-election. More interesting is how the last couple of days will affect that other parliamentary by-election in Henley….

Crewe and Nantwich - A Few Random Thoughts

Firstly, of course, well done to Edward Timpson and the team. Looks like Samantha Cameron has some competition.

Credit to the good people of Crewe and Nantwich for their patience and good judgement, including the dozens I phoned up last night, of which only three complained about the phone calls and the dead trees being pushed through their letterboxes.

Needless to say, I am more than happy for Labour members to carry on arguing for the next two years about whether it’s the policies (and if so, whether they can make things better) or Gordon Brown (can they ditch him in time), or whether they’re not left wing enough, centrist enough, or whether they should just accept the inevitable and plan for 2014/18.

Equally happy I am for Lib Dems to continue deluding themselves that they didn’t do too badly … they really are seriously patting themselves on the back for avoiding the squeeze and achieving a swing from Labour (even though they lost 4% off their vote share).

Note to Labour members: no matter how much you screw your faces up (though it may just be in pain), Hiro Nakamura is a fictional character, you can’t really turn back time to last October and call a General Election after all.

So, can we get on with Henley now please.

The Ubiquitous Crewe and Nantwich Post

So I’m off shortly to work the phones for Crewe and Nantwich. Before then, though, my obligatory pre-post-mortem on the by-election result.

If we Conservatives do win (and it’s still “if” as I’m not one to tempt fate), there will be inevitable talk of the wise men in grey suits (or Labour’s equivalent – is it brown synthetic suits?) filing into Number Ten with offerings of scotch and revolvers.

They are wasting their time. If Brown is suffering from chronic bunker delusion, then so will be those in the senior ranks of the party. As I’ve said before, we Conservatives were here in the mid-Nineties. In fact, Dizzy has demonstrated the point quite graphically (literally). Despite the omens from Newbury to Wirral South, many in the party thought we could turn the tide, Canute-like, with a few popular initiatives, and anyway the polls were understating our support, just like last time.

I had a conversation along similar lines earlier this week with a local Labour councillor. Frankly, Labour could announce a cure for the common cold and it would only be worth a couple of points in the polls.

The “toff” campaign not only underlines how politically inept the party, once of Blair, Campbell and Mandelson, has become, but also how such plainly desperate measures are now being considered. Get rid of Brown if you will, but it is Labour’s entire political mojo that has disappeared – and neither Miliband, Johnson, Straw or any of the others will be able to fix it this side of a spell in opposition.

With any luck, it’ll be a long spell.

Miliband’s Worst Nightmare .. A Conservative Win in Crewe & Nantwich

Of course David Miliband doesn’t want Labour to lose the by-election. He’s loyal to the Leader, as a serious leadership challenger hard-working Minister with his party’s and the country’s interests at heart.

Yet he probably has more reason than most for wanting to see Gwenyth’s daughter keep the seat - for seeing Gordon’s display of deck-chair rearranging yesterday actually helping to scrape a win in C&W. If Labour lose, then the pressure will be on him, either from the hotheads to go for broke, from fellow challengers wanting to flush him out early to do the initial dirty work, or simply a temptation to be seriously (and in an inevitably semi-visible kind of way) preparing for a bid when the time is right. The last thing he wants is to have even more of a spotlight on him right now – after all, in politics how many times do the front-runners at the start of the race actually win? Who wants to be the Heseltine or Portillo – the one who is out in the open for so long that he gives a clear shot for anyone who wishes to take it?

No, any serious challenger will want to see Gordon carry on and lose at the General Election. After all, what future leader wants to be at the helm of the ship just as it’s been left too late to avoid the iceberg? Better to revel in the luxury of opposition, with four years to regroup, lose the baggage and work on your prime-minister-in-waiting image.

And the best thing is, it’s easy to do - he can genuinely put all his efforts into backing Gordon to the hilt during the next two years, assuring the PM that he is behind him at all times, while omitting to mention that it’s because Gordon is acting as his human shield.

Rush Job? Darling Gets His Sums Wrong

Is there a possibility that Alistair Darling may have got his sums wrong?

Bear with me on this.

Increasing the personal allowance by £600 is worth £240 to higher rate taxpayers (marginal rate 40% x £600 = £240). Reducing the higher rate threshold just means that £600 of income is then taxed at an extra 20% (40% - 20%) = £120. Higher rate taxpayers are therefore £120 better off.

The point is that increasing the personal allowance reduces the total of taxable income - which for a higher rate taxpayer is £600 at 40%, not just 20%. Cheers, Alistair!

He should have reduced the 40% threshold by £1,200, not £600.

But hey, I’m just an accountant. Clearly the Chancellor knows better. I mean, he’s in charge of the national treasury.

The Ken Livingstone Memoirs: Publish And Be Damned Awkward

So it’s memoir season for the Blairites, which on the face of it shouldn’t unduly bother Ken Livingstone, but his own departure will still be fresh in the mind and publishers’ advances must seem somewhat more enticing when the ink is only just dry on the P45 and the mortgage is still to be paid.

So here’s an interesting question: when will Red Ken publish his own record of the ups and downs of life on the left in the last thirty years? Let’s look at some of his options:

He could publish this year. It’s not as if he hasn’t a little time on his hands, and what better way to spend the summer? For a little while, the chapters on the Blair years, of smashing the New Labour machine before running for a second term with its backing, will still have some relevancy. That is, while Gordon is still keeping the seat in the Number 10 study warm for David Cameron. Perhaps more relevant will be the usefulness of an autobiography in the context of whatever job offer(s) Ken might be mulling over – or fishing for – later this year.

However, any publication near the Labour party conference in September may be less than helpful for the party – the party which Ken, so far, has not appeared to want to hurt. Publication around that time would remind everyone of that Black Thursday in May and draw attention away from Gordon’s umpteenth fightback (though that might be doing GB a favour), and help, perhaps unwittingly or otherwise, to stir the political pot. Publication after September, then, might be less problematic, and in good time for some parliamentary selections.

Option two would be publication after this year, but before the General Election. The relevance of the recent history will be decaying at a rapid rate, but it will be coming out after Boris’ expected honeymoon period, when Ken might hope to remind people how good things were under his own, errrm, benevolent reign. However, as James Forsyth notes, the City Hall audit may uncover some inconvenient facts during this time. However, leave it too close to May 2010 and not only would it again be unhelpful to Labour’s election campaign, but possibly too late to have any impact on his chances for selection for a cosy parliamentary seat (assuming there will still be any Labour safe seats)*.

Clearly if he waits until after 2010, then it will be a true political anorak’s almanac. He can forget serialisation rights. It will be the memoirs of a political giant of the Left, a la Tony Benn. In which case, he might as well wait ten years, though that’s an awfully long time to be filling your time looking forward to your next session sitting gloomily in the London Assembly’s public gallery, hoping that some future Labour Mayoral candidate might remember to offer you a job.

* Ah, which constituency to woo – Bethnal Green & Bow perhaps?

Vow to Fight

Sometimes one might find an MP, particularly in a marginal seat, “vowing to fight” (it’s always a vow isn’t it?) something his or her own government or Prime Minister is doing. If done properly, it is usually tolerated by their colleagues, who will sympathise with the MP’s position and tend to see it as for the greater good of the party - keeping that constituency in the fold.

Not so often do we see the reverse - a Prime Minister vowing to fight something his own underlings are doing. Then again, it is just keeping the tradition going - after all, his seat in number 10 is hardly safe.

Of course, in truth he is fighting something that he did (at least with Tony) some years back when they created the half-baked mess that is the current constitutional set-up of the United Kingdom. At this rate we could well end up with a fully federated UK … would that be so much worse than where we are at the moment?

Oh What a Night

It’s 1968 all over again … so I’m told - not that I was around to remember 1968.

I do remember the mid nineties, though. The delusion that it was all mid-term blues, that every minor ministerial announcement might help to turn the tide. That losing hundred of council seats was a temporary blip and the opinion polls were telling it wrong again. Alas, the dark days for the party were the precursor to the drubbing we got in 1997.

Note to Labour activists – this is where you are. The tide has turned, and there’s nothing you can do about it except brace yourself and work to keep the next Conservative parliamentary majority to a minimum. Of course, as a good Tory I hope Labour carry on as we did and crash and burn in 2009/10.

So we have taken councils like Harlow - not a bad barometer, Bury – a good foothold in Greater Manchester, Southampton - where yours truly spent the odd student night out (OK, so no political significance there), and Maidstone, which has been NOC for donkey’s years, and was something of a near miss for us last year, and not just because of my efforts.

The Lib Dems have consolidate their position … as the anti-party. They used to be anti-Conservative, now they are anti-Labour. Swapping their ex-Conservative councils for Town Halls gained from Labour. Is there anyone who genuinely votes for the Lib Dems, rather than against the incumbent party?

The inevitable General Election projections give the Conservatives a majority approaching 140, but of course these are local elections and some Labour support will return to the fold when it comes to the crunch, but things are looking good.