Can the Tories black-ball Blair?
October 26th, 2009
Will Hague’s opposition thwart Tone’s EU hopes?
With just one country left to ratify the Lisbon treaty we are getting closer to the moment when the EU will be appointing the first President of the EU council who is likely to become referred to as the President of Europe.
The big question, and there’ quite a bit of betting on this, is who is going to get it? Can Tony Blair, Labour’s star three-times election winner who was ousted to make way for Brown be the right man? There are many who think so and certainly 
But before punters act take a look at from the Observer by Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform highlighted by the Spectator Coffee House blog.
“..Yet it may be the Conservatives who spike Blair’s chances of getting the job. William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, has told the other EU governments that the Conservatives would see support for a Blair presidency as a “hostile act”.
A week ago, Blair was the clear favourite, with the likely support of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, plus several of the smaller countries. But on my travels around Europe last week, I have found that Hague’s comments have made a huge impact…A number of prime ministers are unwilling to take a step that would incur the wrath of an incoming Conservative government. President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel remain supporters of Blair, but are now hesitating over backing a man with so many opponents.
The Conservatives may have achieved their first diplomatic coup in Europe, even before taking office.”
For one of the challenges at the fag end of a parliament is that the perception of what’s going to happen is very much shaped by opinion polls leading to individuals and organisations adjusting their positions accordingly.
Brown’s Labour is seen as the loser and the people to deal with are Cameron’s Tories.
If this indeed is what happens the EU is going to have to a deal with a much more hostile government in London. Why take decisions now that could make the position even worse?
Mike Smithson
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i do hope so
yes!
Sorry to go O/T so soon but if you want a good laugh on a Monday morning have a look at Conhome. A guy called Rory Stewart has been selected for Penrith. He has a good cv and obviously beat the other candidates. Some of the reaction comments are incredible - it reads like a Private Eye spoof.
I happen to like Blair. A man of real charisma who would really help to put Europe on the map. His election would also help the UK’s relationship with the EU.
Cameron should be supporting this move.
I think having Blair as Sun King would help the Tories in the long run - unless the Cameroons are closet Europhiles, in which case it won’t.
I hope so too.
And when the Iraq War Inquiry is finished, and Blair is seen as the co-architect of misery and destruction on a massive scale, I hope that he does indeed become the centre of attraction in Europe. Not in Brussels/Strasbourg but in the Hague.
4. “Cameron should be supporting this move.”
Certainly after participating in that cringeworthy standing ovation in the Commons on Blair’s last day as PM.
3. “Ah yes, but this is the sort of Etonian we want. The sort that once faced down a raging bull elephant armed only with a toothpick.”
But it appears there are also a few posters who are gutted that this “right sort of Etonian” beat Fiona Bruce. Come to think of it, Jan Ravens will be gutted as well.
- “Can the Tories black-ball Blair?”
Yes, they can.
Labour is a dead-duck head of government, and has been for a long time. And I’m afraid that everyone that matters in the world already knows this.
The future is PM Dave. God help us.
10. typo - “dead-duck government”
Tony Blair bears a good chunk of the blame for the parlous state of the British economy. Just saying “Um, well, er, yer know, Gordon was always the good one with the numbers, so I er, just let him get on with it…yer know how it is - anything to keep the neighbours from f-ing and c-ing…”. The idea of letting Blair head an entity which hasn’t signed off its accounts in donkey’s years is scary beyond belief. You will rue it, Europe.
My fear is that the Eurocrats are simply using Blair as a sacrificial lamb, knowing full well how his nomination will be met by the Tories - but using it as a lever. “So Mr. Cameron, Mr. Hague - if we bin Blair, what will you do for us - be good Europeans? No more referendum nonsense?”
I hope the response from Mr. Cameron and Mr. Hague will be “If you bin Mr Blair, you will be sparing Europe the monstrous embarrassment of having its first President resigning in shame as he is hauled off to face charges related to his illegal iraq war - charges which a new British Govt. will be bringing…”
9 - There are some unintentionally funny ones as well, like “I just have a feeling about this guy”.
Yes and No – is the correct answer to the question.
Yes – In that Labour are quite clearly dead from the neck up and any lucid politician from another country can see very clearly that any planning or relationship issues with the UK that have a horizon beyond a very few months require them to think blue instead of red. The ‘market’ for Labour is now heavily sold everywhere.
No – In that there is a strictly defined process for ‘electing’ the EU president and Hague doesn’t get to vote or to veto. The fact that the process is utterly undemocratic and nothing more than a behind-closed-doors stitch up between likeminded lefty chums in Brussels is immaterial. If the Brussels elite wants Blair they’ll get him. Hague is merely using influence. (That all important word when matters European raise their ugly head).
It is hugely telling, is it not, that Hague’s veiled threats and offstage noises carry a lot more weight in Paris and Berlin than any of the shit that pours forth from the official UK spin machines.
This whole Blair thing raises some much more interesting questions for me: Just how much do the other key EU countries need the UK to be on board? Will the Tories have some bargaining chips in future or can the others simply steamroller our Euroskepticism into the dust and not worry about it? Could we pull out of the CAP or not? Could we suspend EU contributions until the accounts pass an audit or not? Do they need us more than we need them? Etc, etc? The politics of the incoming Tory administration’s relations with the EU will be worth buying popcorn for – I shall certainly be sitting back to watch and enjoy.
Of course, (and more likely) they may choose Blair, to stick two fingers up to Cameron.
“Of course, (and more likely) they may choose Blair, to stick two fingers up to Cameron.”
Given the reported cooling towards Blair, it doesn’t seem “more likely” at all.
Do the Cameroons really care? Or is this just “fire and motion” to distract the eurosceptic wing?
12 — if you think our economic woes are down to Blair or Brown (or Thatcher, come to that) you have not understood what happened.
14 “No – In that there is a strictly defined process for ‘electing’ the EU president and Hague doesn’t get to vote or to veto.”
Absolutely. The process they have chosen simply highlights the massive deficit of democracy at the centre of “the European project” (eeeuurrgh!). If there had been an EU-wide poll - where Blair was nomitaed against a Belgian, a Bulgarian, a German, a Pole, an Italian and a Luxembourger for the role of EU President, then maybe with X-Factor style weekly eliminations, the Brits might have got enthused. But why should the Brits ever accept Blair lording it over us? The best recruiting seargent UKIP could ever find. Look out for the profusion of cars bearing their sticker saying “KEEP BLAIR OVER THERE”…
17 I understood that in 1997 we had an economy in fine fettle. And by 2009, it was being f*cked over like a chihuahua humped by a mastiff…
Blair and Brown seem to have been in charge during that time as far as I can see - our am I missing the great Conspiracy Theory du Jour?
Isn’t “President” a bit of a mistranslation?
Surely the correct translation into English would be “Chairman”?
And if the body he would be presiding over/chairing is the Council of the European Union, isn’t it a bit over the top to refer to this as “Europe”?
“Chairman of the Council” doesn’t sound quite as grand as “President of Europe, though, does it?
It might help to cut Blair’s ambition and self-glorification down to size though.
If Tony Blair is foisted upon us, my guess is that it’ll give the Tories much more leeway to be sullenly uncooperative with the EU than would otherwise be the case.
I don’t think Blair becoming the unelected President of a corrupt and anti-democratic organisation is the very worst thing that can happen to the Eurosceptic cause…
This issue is being discussed solely in terms of the British candidate, rather like news reports of an international sport event. To judge whether Blair is in with a shout it would be useful to know who the other players might be. Any ideas?
17 re economy
You are missing that it was a global crisis, and really did start in America.
Brown should be up against the wall for PFI, and Blair for Iraq.
But for the worldwide meltdown: Free the Downing Street Two!
If Blair gets the job, can we get out of Europe before his term ends please? That would be funny.
23.But it could have been lessened if Darling and Brown had taken the right initial steps on Northern Rock.
Why did they block a LLoyds buyout.
Simply to avoid political fallout to themselves.GB at the time had just become PM and he didnt want anything to hang over him.
How wrong he was.
17 “if you think our economic woes are down to Blair or Brown (or Thatcher, come to that) you have not understood what happened.”
At *least* three different things happened:
1) US credit bubble burst
2) McDoom’s credit bubble burst
3) Banks imploded from shenanigans sparked off by the credit bubbles - quite possibly made much worse by McDoom’s slack bank regulatory system (which attracted all the financial gangsters on the planet to London).
Jackie Ashley summarises my views perfectly on the question of whether Tony Blair should be the EU president. To answer our host’s question, if he is chosen, the Europhiles will have a superb political communicator advocating the EU’s cause. The fact that the Tories wish to blackball Tony Blair is one very good reason why he should be selected.
History Boy @22, Wikipedia has quite a good overview.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_European_Council#First_president
As far as Blair goes, I don’t think there’s much history of the EU states picking someone controversial in the teeth of a lot of opposition when they could pick someone safer. Various people were opposed to Blair for various reasons, as well as the Tories not liking him.
This isn’t a prediction that he’ll get it (or that he’d take it), but personally I like the idea of the first EU president being Václav Havel.
27 - He didn’t do much advocating of the cause when he was in No 10, did he? Too scared of Gordon.
29 - Prometheus would be unbound.
17. Sauron was not the sole architect of the woes that have befallen our economy. Wider issues of global financial regulation and the mismatch or risk and reward between the private sector (bankers get rewards) and public sector (taxpayers get the risk) were to blame.
BUT…Gord did play a blinding hand in helping to create the UK’s biggest bubble ever and to ensure we had a dysfunctional regulatory system. So he is a partly to blame.
AND…He is almost wholly to blame for the UK’s quite pathetically crippled ability to respond appropriately. Osborne may have mocked ‘you’ve done it again’ and ‘you didn’t mend the roof’. Many a true word spoken in jest! The UK is out of money. We are unable to respond the way other countries have and the recession has revealed a horrible structural deficit between spending and the ability to pay for that spending. We are in fact the worst placed G8 country by a wide margin. That is the legacy of The Rt.Hon James Gordon Brown to the nation. His alone. We are all poorer because of him.
You can’t blame someone for the weather - but you can call them a twat for not buying an umbrella if they complain about getting wet.
B;air WAS a good communicator, all that smooth spin stuff doesn’t work any more. I suspect Blair is more mistrusted here than the other way round. Only the Americans love him and thats only because of the Iraq war. Not exactly the best cv.
22, HB, I can tell you who else has been backed in the race and we’ve seen quite a bit of money from non-UK sources.
Blair 6/4. Accounts for about 50% of all the money taken by Ladbrokes on this.
Jan-Peter Balkende 4/1. He was the big mover in the market a couple of weeks back. No support in the last few days
Jean-Claude Juncker 5/1. Steadily backed by Mainland European political punters.
May Robinson 8/1. Rush of money for her about ten days ago following speculation in the Irish press. She was 33/1
Wolfgang Schlussel. 8/1. No-one wants to back him, but the comentators always mention him as one of the more likely.
Paavo Lipponen 10/1. Has been backed by a few Finns.
‘Lockerbie: eight other ‘high-level’ suspects’
http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Lockerbie-eight-other-39highlevel39-suspects.5764820.jp
27 Antifrank - Jackie Ashley says that if the British choose to throw Labour out then they should have imposed on them a Labour politician able to counterbalance the new Government. No cognisance of democracy or sovereignty - basically we can’t have a Government that can pursue a policy she doesn’t like.
The choice of President will drive how the office develops - much as the choice of Delours changed the President of the Commission into an activist office driving the Commissions objectives rather than its previous role of managing the bureaucracy. The President of the Council can go either way, towards chairmanship or power. Those who want it to be power, a voice for Europe to deal with US & China on equal terms, want a strong leader who can override national objections.
If of course the choice is for a compromise weaker leader - say the PM of the Netherlands - it doesn’t mean the drive for a single voice is stopped, the Lord High Poo Bah would take on that role, leading foreign affairs and security.
I prefer that the President of the Council be a chairman - we would lose the 6 monthly Presidency where each new President wants a concrete deliverable at end of their term so initiative after initiative is bought forward. A chairman wouldn’t face the “must be concluded in 6 months” agenda and EU development would move to a more consensual approach.
Could the prices on both of the bookies in question simply be a matter of name recognition? Labrokes at least is UK based and nobody in this country had heard of José Manuel Barroso before he became president of the commision, and most people still haven’t, so the punters it deals with might have a bias towards the candidate they have heard most about.
Charles Grant is not a disinterested observer: he is the head of a profoundly Eurosceptical thinktank with a longstanding aversion to Blair’s European sympathies. I’m not saying he’s making his conversations up, but his contacts are likely to be particuarly among the minority of Continental Eurosceptics, who will collectively dislike the idea of a strong EU leader and prefer a quiet technician.
I know Tories are fed up with tim and me going on about the Latvians etc., but this is an area where the withdrawal from the EPP probably had limited the scope of the Tories to influence the debate. Merkel’s decision last month to downgrade links with the Tories in response was the most obvious sign of the impact, but I’d think that the major powers are somewhat torn between not irritating a possible incoming UK regime and not wanting to do any favours for a party that’s just kicked them in the teeth. In the end I suspect they’ll come to their own view on whether they want a strong EU Presidency or whether that would be a nuisance for them too. If they do want it, then TB really is the obvious choice, and Hague’s offensive will be shrugged off as spiteful domestic politics.
23
And yet other countries - notably Australia - did not suffer to anywhere near the magnitude we did.
Brown was part of the cause of the global crisis with his loosening of the rules governing the city and his destructioon of effective oversight as well as his encouragement of the headlong plunge into both personal and public debt.
And of course it was his policies which meant that Britainwas amongst the worst palaced economies to deal with the crisis. So forget jail. He and Blair should be strung up for what they have done to our country.
I don’t really see why the party are trying to block Blair, as far as I’m concerned Blair would be bad, but anyone else would be worse. If he doesn’t win some Eurocrat will win it and try to force federalisation on us. Blair realised that this was futile when he was PM and will see that now.
Still now that Dave’s ‘gorn AWS bigtime, he’ll be backing HH on this.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/25/harriet-harman-eu-women-equality
Edmund and Shadsy - thank you. Suddenly it’s a much more interesting question.
27
And if he is selected the Eurosceptics wil have an open goal to play against by pointing out that a man who helped wreck our country, kill hundreds of thousands of people and whose party has been comprehensively trashed in the public eye, has now been put back into a position to do even more damage by an undemocratic, corrupt and authoritarian organisation hell bent on finishing what he started.
Of course, the Tories may have had a lot more influence in Berlin and Paris if they had not walked out of the EPP.
We’ve got some prices on the High Representative post too;
2/1 Olli Rehn
4/1 David Miliband
4/1 Carl Bildt
14/1 Bar
43
They had no influence before. How can you have less influence than none at all?
Scottish Liberal Democrats Crisis. The referendum.
Scotsman today.
“The party leader said he “did not expect” to find anyone within his party this week who would back Salmond’s referendum schedule. Asked whether he could be forced to resign over the matter, he replied: “I don’t think it will get to that.”
However, allies fleshed out a compromise plan last night, arguing that while the party would vote down the SNP’s referendum plans in the short term, the longer-term case was a different matter. Alastair Carmichael, the leader of the Scottish party’s Westminster group said: “You can never say never.”
The Lib Dems were opposed to the current SNP plans because they were “biased”, he said. He said the bias included the SNP’s plan to hold a referendum on St Andrew’s Day, and the phrasing of the question they want to ask.
“It should be a straight yes or no question about whether Scotland should remain part of the UK,” he said, adding: “If Alex Salmond wants to come back with an honest question and an unbiased procedure then the party would have to look at that.”
Writing in Scotland on Sunday today, Culture Minister Mike Russell – “With two-thirds of Scots and a majority of Lib Dem voters wanting a referendum, he (Scott] might do well to listen to his party’s grassroots and support the government’s Referendum Bill when it is introduced to parliament next year.”
Murdo Fraser MSP, Scottish Conservative deputy leader, said: “Tavish Scott is against a referendum but he seems to have lost control of his party. He needs to prove he is a leader and start challenging Alex Salmond’s independence agenda.”
Actually of course the Presidency is a distraction - the job that will have real power, its own diplomatic service, front EU intervention and aid, go to the international meetings instead of the President of the Commission is the Lord High Poo Bah - the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.
I imagine France is positioning itself to claim that, possibly in job swap with Germany as was done for the ECB (we’ll take it first then you have it next).
Diod wonder if the other Lord Poo Bah - the First Secretary of State etc. would like the job and there were games within games so that unfortunately Blair didn’t get the Presidency but Britain, in form of the Lord Mandelson of Foy etc. got the one he would really want.
1. I don’t give much credence to the Blair for president stories. Its a fantastic media story and fuels various agendas. But the EU don’t exactly like Britain very much and Iraq is still the albatross around Teflon’s neck.
2. Hague having the power of veto? Don’t be silly - the EU are expecting the Tories to come in and start trying to renegotiate the large parts they aren’t happy with. Why would they listen to us? More likely they’d go ahead to spite us. Not that i think they will - see point 1
42 - Who on the Tory front bench did not join in the standing ovation for Blair after his final QT?
As someone else says up-thread - what is the alternative to Blair? Two or three years into the reign of, say, President Gonzalez, the Tories may well regret their grandstanding, if it comes off.
Hague is a bitter slap head for taking a terrible beating in 2001 by Blair.
Cameron should be smarter and act like Blair did by placing previous opponents like Patton in roles which require experience.
The only position that Europe should be offering Blair should be along with George Bush in the dock at The Hague!
Can the Tories blackball Blair? Probably in effect, they can. To be honest, I’d have thought Labour shouldn’t be too keen on the idea which could see Blair blamed for any unpopular idea eminating out of Brussels while he’s ‘president’, as well as he - and potentially by extension, Labour - having dangerously divided loyalties. The left would be better off looking for a non-UK ally of like mind.
The choice of Blair, though clearly popular in a number of powerful places, would in any case have the key drawback that the UK is a bit semi-detached, neither being within the Eurozone nor having any intention of joining any time soon, and with a live debate about withdrawal.
I don’t know enough about the respective candidates to give any assessment of their chances but would be interested to hear why there don’t seem to be any front-runners from the new eastern members.
51-Wrong president! Think you meant Clinton.
re 50. would you be so insulting about Hague if he had been a black or gay rather than just bald?
44. Mandelson?
51. Peter2 - what did Clinton have to do with Iraq?
@49:
S.O., you seem to be assuming that the Tories basically want what is best for the EU. This seems a rather eccentric belief to hold.
Hague is just retaliating for all the muck Milliband etc have chucked over him and his European allies. Yet again Labour’s smearing has back fired.
48. They will listen precisely because of that threat. Eurosceptic Conservatives were ignored precisely because they could afford to be when they were not acting as a brake on the drive to federalism as their EPP votes helped it all along.
The powerplay call is that the EU needs and probably wants the UK rather more than the other way round. That gives the British government power, should it choose to use it. What’s more, Britain withdrawing would be the biggest shock to the integration process in the 50+ years since it started and would set all sorts of precedents they wouldn’t like.
Events have proved that grumbling at the sidelines makes no impact. Britain either has to sign up in spirit and deed to everything - and so help control the direction - or get serious about derailing the project. Anything else just leads to political impotence.
Not sure if the Tories can achieve a Black-balling of Blair, but they do appear to be making waves in Europe and upsetting Blair’s smooth sailing into the job.
The significance of all this is that the Tories are not only perceived as the Government in waiting at home, but also abroad. With possibly six months to go before an election, that is no mean feat and one that will further undermine Labour’s sphere of influence.
The long awaited but inevitable Nick Griffin Downfall vid.
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=4814
57 - If the Tories do not take the UK out of Europe - and I would bevery surprised if they do - they are going to need all the friends they can get. It’s the only way they are going to get what they want. Because if they do not, it is going to tear them apart.
38 re Brown’s fault
The City’s “big bang” changes came under Mrs Thatcher, not Blair or Brown. BoE regulation of the City was not particularly effective: remember BCCI, Barings, and Johnson Matthey.
The global crisis was caused by …, well, who knows? And that’s the problem. If we are to strengthen regulations, what should be regulated? The only thing people agree on is bonuses; and bonuses, however outrageous in this new age of austerity, are not to blame.
This is not a party political point. Some Conservatives believe there should be less regulation: Boris, for instance. Nor is it electorally important: voters have deserted Labour *because* they have lost their jobs (and savings and income): whether or not they blame Gordon Brown personally is irrelevant.
Wouldn’t it be the case that Blair would be arguing for an increased military presence in, for instance, Afghanistan, whereas most of Europe is reluctant to send more (or any) troops?
BTW, for how long does this appointment run?
This begs two questions.
1.Has Hague ever got a big political decision right in his life.
From supporting Jeffrey Archer for London Mayor to forming a European Group with extremist bigots, who turned out to be Pro Lisbon, he always gets it wrong.
2.Is Cameron distancing himself from Hagues idiocy by his silence.
William Hague spent four years opposing Tony Blair in the House of Commons before the then prime minister ended Hague’s reign as Tory leader with a humiliating drubbing at the polls. It now appears the shadow foreign secretary is sparking up the rivalry again.
Addressing a meeting of 26 EU ambassadors in London last week, Hague argued that to appoint Blair as the first permanent president of the European Council would be a ‘‘mistake’’.
The shadow foreign secretary was keen to point out that, if Blair was appointed, his first few months in the job would be spent giving evidence to the Chilcot enquiry into the 2003 Iraq war. The war, the shadow foreign secretary added, exemplified Blair’s propensity to favour the US over the EU during his ten-year tenure as prime minister.
Hague claimed that it would simply confirm many Briton’s worst fears about the lack of democracy in the EU if, having removed a Labour government, they were then to see Blair installed as the president of Europe.
As one EU diplomat put it, Hague was at pains to point out that backing Blair would be ‘‘seen as a hostile gesture’’ towards the Conservatives.
While Britain’s EU allies were reportedly bemused at the sight of a potential British foreign secretary arguing against a British candidate for Europe’s top job, Downing Street officials were furious. They suggested that the Conservative Party’s recent foreign affairs manoeuvrings were the reason the US government was so unsure about what to expect i f the Tories were elected.
As if to confirm that was the case, Hague also travelled to Washington last week for a meeting with US secretary of state, Hilary Clinton. He reportedly reassured Clinton that the Conservatives’ new coalition partners in Europe were neither neo-Nazi nor anti-Semitic, and that, despite the Conservatives’ Euroscepticism, they would play no less of a role in European affairs.
With the Obama administration’s focus on multilateralism, the US is counting on cooperation from its European allies to deal with issues such as Iran and climate change. With Blair so well-liked on that side of the Atlantic, many US officials believe he would make an ideal EU president.
The Tories will be hoping it’s a bridge they won’t have to cross, but Tory leader David Cameron’s silence on the issue suggests they are not betting against Blair turning over Hague one more time
http://www.sbpost.ie/news/world/eurocrats-bemused-at-hagues-attack-on-blair-45205.html
63, Barings didn’t cause the whole sector to almost collapse. Better regulation would’ve protected the sector, like it did in Australia and Canada.
59 - If the EU really does ned the UK more than we need the EU, why isn’t the Conservative party standing on a platform of pulling out?
NPMP @ 37
Compare and contrast:
Charles Grant is not a disinterested observer: he is the head of a profoundly Eurosceptical thinktank with a longstanding aversion to Blair’s European sympathies.
From Charles Grant’s think tank:
The CER is pro-European but not uncritical. It regards European integration as largely beneficial but recognises that in many respects the Union does not work well. The CER therefore aims to promote new ideas for reforming the European Union.
Charles Grant is a Europhile not a sceptic. I love the new definition of a sceptic as one who questions anything about the great project. He is even arguing that the Czech President should sign off on the Lisbon treaty for gods sake.
http://centreforeuropeanreform.blogspot.com/2009/10/czechs-will-probably-ratify-lisbon.html
The EU is going to have to deal with a Eurosceptic Tory government for - how long? - eight, ten, maybe twelve years. That’s a very pretty long period, and it’s not impossible that it could be even longer.
Also, on balance, Britain is not enamoured of the EU, meaning that anything that Tory government does to annoy the EU is unlikely to be unpopular.
The Tories therefore have both time and public permission in this country to implement a lot of Eurosceptic actions. If they choose to use this power, to flex their muscles, I’m not sure what can practically be done to oppose them.
Britain cannot be threatened and bullied into submission like smaller European countries. We also possess the nuclear option of total withdrawal. That’s unlikely, but if a not-unpopular Tory government brought in a referendum and campaigned for withdrawal, can never be ruled out entirely.
All told, I think Britain has a fairly strong hand at the moment, hence the feverish desperation to rush Lisbon through before a pro-democracy party gets in. The question is whether Dave choose to play that hand.
44 The interesting choice for Lord High Poo Bah would be Chris Patten - a Conservative Europhile. Hard for Cameron to keep the old big beasts on side if he stopped that appointment.
49 SO, David Davies didn’t stand. Not too sure if he was front bench at the time.
63
It wasn’t the Big Bang that caused the trouble it was Browns stupid reorganisation of the regulatory bodies into a tripartite system after he became chancellor. It was thaht which opened up huge gaps in the oversight and allowed so many of these problems to develop. Combined with his dash to debt as a means of paying for unsustainable spending he was overwhelminly repsonsible for the mess we are now in.
But, most importantly, what would happen in the event of the rise of a *real* minority candidate…?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu6ab_0Mizk
35 - Ted, I think you’re being a bit unfair. The EU is looking for candidates for a president. Why shouldn’t it choose the candidate best able to promote its agenda, especially in a member state with a longstanding troubled relationship with it?
62
“It’s the only way they are going to get what they want.”
With the sort of friends they had in the EPP they were never in a million years going to get what they wanted. As a profoundly federalist grouping it was never going to support the demands for repatriation of powers that Cameron is supposedly committed to.
John L @ 63
The City’s “big bang” changes came under Mrs Thatcher, not Blair or Brown. BoE regulation of the City was not particularly effective: remember BCCI, Barings, and Johnson Matthey.
Banks will always fail, and when they do individually, it no more import than the failure of a meat processing factory. What Brown is responsible for is a structural failure in the whole system.
Anyone that argues that the big bang is responsible for the current problems is a clueless numpty. Its the intellectual equivalent of trying to ban marriage to stop divorce.
The big bang brought massive benefits to the financial sector and the wider economy and got useless and clueless idiots of the calibre of Gordon Brown out of the decision chain. It was only when a complete idiot designed a worthless regulatory system that we had a problem. Not only that but he actively undermined his own regulators when it suited him.
It is Labour’s corporatism, chumminess with the big players, combined with their complete lack of understanding of business that is the dangerous system, not a free market with a level playing field.
Brown also made a bad system worse by manipulating interest rates through his fraudulent usage of inflation targets. The biggest trigger for the current crisis was very low interest rates, which led to massive liquidity which swept caution out of the window. Brown is very much guilty here.
OT
nice story of how we live in London with our wonderful police and gang culture.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23760609-police-
told-man-to-walk-two-miles-with-a-loaded-gun.do
A man who found a loaded gun linked to a gangland shooting was told by Scotland Yard to carry it across south London to a police station.
65. Nonsense. Cameron backs Hague entirely on this. How could a Blair presidency possibly be advantageous for an incoming Conservative government? His nationality is irrelevant. As for ‘bemusement’ amongst diplomats, I believe it was more a case, particularly amongst the Spanish and French delegations, of scurrying back home for a drastic rethink.
http://tinyurl.com/yzu4f3t
I don’t think so. I think this is pretty much a done deal. France and Germany want Blair as their President and thats what they will get. Through this appointment they are very much declaring war on the Conservative Party and by proxy the British people who are about to elect a Conservative government. Let battle commence.
66 - Obviously that is the case. But which regulations would the Tories have imposed that Labour did not? What kind of regulation were they calling for when they demanded less of it? How did their 1997, 2001 and 2005 manifestos set out the ways in which they would rein in the growth of corporate and personal debt levels in the UK? Which bank mergers did they oppose? Where were their anguished comments on the growth of house prices? And so on …
This is Labour’s mess, completely and utterly, there is no doubt about that. But the mess was caused because Labour embarked on a spending spree without making any fundamental changes to the balance of the British economy and its reliance on the finance, service and retail sectors. And it is here that the real problem lies. Unlike the Canadians and Australians, with their vast reserves of natual resources, the UK does not have a mixed economy. If the finance sector bombs, as it did a couple of years back, there is nothing else to fall back on. This would have been just as much the case under the Tories. And there is nothing that the Tories are proposing now which looks like things are going to change in the future.
Where the Tories would have left us better placed is in terms of the UK’s ability to mitigate the effects of the recession because the UK government would have spent and borrowed less money. However, given the way Cameron and Osborne responded to the downturn and criticised the government’s decision to pump money into the economy, there is no guarantee that they would have taken any action. But leaving that to one side, the recession would still have happened and it would still have been as deep and as long-lasting, because the economic framework of the country would have been the same.
69 - Europe will look back at what happened under the last Tory government and come to the conclusion that the bark is very much worse than the bite.
80. Camerons government will be much more eurosceptic than Thatchers or Majors ever was.
75 - Banks wil always fail. Really? How often does it happen? And how often do we get a scenario under which a number of banks fail at the same time?
Morning all and on thread, I for one will be delighted if we see William Hague effectively derail the final piece of the so called New Labour project, President Blair.
Indeed for the French and Germans, the thought of a Conservative Government in the UK running a referendum on whether they should effectively withdraw from active participation in the EU until President Blair was removed from office would indeed galvanise the British people.
Blair got his standing ovation in the Commons from Tories because he had been the longest serving Labour PM and the first to win more than one full consecutive term in office. Nothing more. They recognised an able Parliamentarian. I doubt many would invite him or that ghastly woman he is married to, to a dinner party.
Once the Lisbon Treaty is passed we shall see how long Project Federal Europe lasts. The Slovaks have now demanded the same opt out the Czechs have, in relation to potential property claims from 3 million Germans evicted from their property in 1945. I would not be surprised to see the EPP start to fragment as more Christian Democrat parties realise a Federal Europe is not for them. Hague may indeed have the last laugh.
As for the Americans, it will do no harm for them to realise that the British PM will be a friend not a lapdog as the 2 Labour PMS have been over the past 12 years. Just a pity we couldnt see Hague commit to repealing the loathesome extradition treaty Blair signed.
80, unlike the way they trembled with fear when Blair and Brown rolled onto their backs, spread their legs and giggled, “Give it to me, Fritzy”?
79 What ifs are hard but I doubt that a Conservative Chancellor would have stayed in office for a decade, been as close to Alan Greenspan and bought as many US inclined advisors into the Treasury & BoE. Doubtful that the deficit would have been growing year on year since 2001 - we went into 90’s recession with no deficit and Debt at less than 30% and after years of uninterrupted growth should have been even better placed this time.
There would have been other problems of course and we don’t know how the NHS & education reforms thrown out then re-instated in slightly changed form would have played out, whether NHS would have been starved of cash or used funding better in a reformed capacity.
81 - In what ways? If Lisbon is ratified, the only threat that the UK will have is the one to withdraw. And if withdrawal is in our best interests, my guess is that it will be a part of the next Tory manifesto. We shall see.
Morning all!
One of the arguments put forward in favour of President Tony is that Europe needs a heavyweight figure to stand up to the Russians and stop them turning off the gas supply. Well let’s take a look at Blair’s record as a negotiator, this is the man who meekly signed away most of our EU rebate in exchange for a worthless promise to review the CAP in a few years. He was also slavishly subservient to Bush when he could have put a much higher price on British support for Iraq.
Yes I’m sure Putin is quaking in his boots at the prospect of facing him!!!
It was the creation of the FSA that ultimatley led to financial meltdown in the UK.
The were not politically independant and seemed to relish posturing and conflict with the BofE.
Lord Adair was the final straw that broke the back of the organisation.
Roll on its abolition.
Ohh look at the immigration conspiracy.
Guess what.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23760648-how-i-became-the-story-and-why-the-right-is-wrong.do
62 Southam: “they are going to need all the friends they can get. It’s the only way they are going to get what they want”
You keep making this point, but it is extremely naive. International relations, and power struggles within the EU, simply don’t work like that. You don’t need best friends, you need levers, and you need to know how to use them.
Blair had lots of friends in Europe (until Iraq, of course). What did he get for it? Zilch.
Maggie had lots of enemies. What did she get? A socking great budget rebate.
82
SO
Of course banks always fail. In multiples at times of stress.
In my lifetime:
the secondary banking crisis of the early 1970s - lots of banks went under.
“A sudden downturn in housing market prices coupled with hikes in interest rates and the jump in Oil prices caused by the 1973 Yom Kippur war left these smaller institutions holding many loans secured by property with lower value than than the loans. The Bank of England bailed out around thirty of these smaller banks, and intervened to assist some thirty others”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_banking_crisis_of_1973%E2%80%931975
Any semi competent Governor of the BOE would know that. King is of course not even semi competent.
89-Tim
Read the story properly as i did 5 mins ago.
He does not repudiate the fact that policy was changed.
All he says is that No 10 were keen to distance themselves from it.
85 - I think the Tories are on very solid ground when they state the deficit would not have grown as much under their watch. although as you say this would have had implications in other areas such as the NHS and education. But the deficit did not make the banks go bust or cause the length of this recession - the nature of the British economy did that. And I can’t see how its trajectory changed after 1997. Indeed, the Tories spent the first 10 years of the Labour governmet claiming that the longest economic boom in British history started under them - which it did, of course.
93, under the Tories, debt was declining. Brown’s debt forecasts have been wrong for years, even in boom times.
87. Yes it would be strange to appoint a serial quisling to ’stand up’ to dictators.
Perhaps the Europeans have misunderstood an apparent eagerness to use overwhelming force against feeble enemies as a general tendency to belligerence.
887 Blair as negotiator in chief.
Not just CAP reform: when has Blair ever negotiated successfully? The Middle East? Iraq?
79
It was not a case of lack of regulation per se. More one of reorganising the system of oversight in such a way that what regulation there was could not be properly enforced because each organisation thought it was not theirs but someone elses responsibility. In many cases they were right in the first part - it wasn’t their responsibility - but wrong in the second - no one else was responsible either.
97 Richard T - Quite so. And of course the Conservatives DID point this out in advance, in Peter Lilley’s speeches in the Commons when Brown’s disastrous tripartite regulation system was introduced.
91 - So the last time it happend was over 30 years ago and the banks you are referring to were nowhere near the size of the ones affected this time around, neither were they set up in the same way. And look what happened to the global economy after 1973.
@80:
Which would be a very great miscalculation. Remember that the Major government was pro-European integration. No wonder it failed to stand up to the EU.
92 That’s what I thought it said too
100. I don’t think it is yet fully understood how pro-EU Major himself was, and how things might have panned out were it not for the efforts of eurosceptic ministers in the early 1990s.
This makes the Conservatives in general and Hague in particular look small. “What’s new” you might ask but come the election all these little reminders of Tories past will mount up and in sufficient quantity could provoke an almighty retch.
As a non Tory the more Hague is on TV the more I like it.
20 If the position in question is that of “président” french = “chairman” English the treaty should say chairman in the English version. All the EU languages are official languages, so the french doesn’t prevail over any other.
My French dictionary says: 1 président Noun, masculine (a) president of a state, chair(person), chairman of a committee
It’s not as if the EU doesn’t waste enough of our money on translation services. If président is mistranslated as president is it a cockup, or is it a conspiracy to create an exploitable ambiguity?
101-Plato
At lease someone else is reading it the same as me.
Tim will stop at nothing to try and spin his way out of a situation
97 and 98 - And all you can point to are speeches from Peter Lilley about this. How did they propose to tackle the problems he identified? What did they set out in their 2001 and 2005 manifestos? Where were the criticisms of the bank mergers, the rising house prices the ever-growing levels of corporate and personal debt?
The bottom line is that like Labour the Tories bought into a British economy based on finance, retail and services. It is that economy that has caused the recession. That is clearly a Labour failure because Labour could have done something about it, but I do think it is a bit rich to say that it would have been different under the Tories as it was the Tories that established this economy in the first place during the 1980s.
102 - What tools does the UK have in its favour if Lisbon is ratified?
105 - In other words, your spin is different to Tim’s spin.
If the treaty is ratified, and the tories instead do a rapatriation of powers bill, i can see this leading to the break up of the EU because if britain gets what it wants which it surely will, then other countries are going to demand similar exemptions. This rapatriation bill might well become the stealth abolition of the EU!
89 That article smacks rather more of Jack Straw still being on manoeuvres to me….
Jack Straw good. Downing Street bad.
Southam
But the basic difference is that the Tories policy of paying down debt was based on reality rather than one off asset sales or pension pot theft.
Remember the sale of the 3G licenses that raised 3 times what the govt were expecting.
Brown then announced how great the govt was as debt was reducing.
But structural debt was acually rising and trouble was being stored up for the future.
The Tories i feel may have done this somewhat differently.
107 Er - our not insignificant financial contributions?
We can start by withholding these payments until the accounts are properly signed off by an independent auditor.
106
Er The Tories weren’t in power. Labour were. The Tories did what they were supposed to do, they pointed out how dangerous Browns plans were and why. The idea that you should try and blame them for something that was wholely the fault of the Labour government is frankly bizzare.
It was not ‘the economy’ that casued the recession, it was Brown’s mishandling of it. There was nothing wrong per se with the economy except that it was too oen to abuse and manipulation by a Chancellor and Prime Minister who were willing to plunge the country into debt as a measn to a political end.
100. “I don’t think it is yet fully understood how pro-EU Major himself was, and how things might have panned out were it not for the efforts of eurosceptic ministers in the early 1990s.”
I could never quite work out if Major was *so* pro-EU.
I felt that his b*stards polarised the argument so much that he was desperate *not* to be compared with the Labour line of attack that his government was marginalised/the economy would go pop/no one would send them Christmas cards anymore.
I think Labour won what they wanted using Major as a pawn.
It was certainly a febrile time.
110. Jack Straw can surely be relied on to tell it straight, can’t he?
106 - And how can you seriously construct an argument that is entirely based on a 12 year counter-factual? Who knows what a Tory government would have done in response to the myriad economic and budget considerations throughout this period?
And it has about as much resonance as when the Tories themselves tried to place the blame on Blair because Labour had also been enthusiastic supporters of joining the ERM in 1990.
99
So
You appear to totally misunderstand the reality of banking failures.
Individual banks fail when they get it disastrously wrong on their own?: see Barings and BCCI.
Multiple bank failures occur when conditions are ripe: see the link I provided above: easy credit, property boom and then a bust.
Notice anything familiar.?
I am no banker but only a cretin who fail to recognise that in times of economic stress after a long boom is when multiple bank failures happen. They are rare events: about every 30 years. In the US: 1907 and 1*2* were classics. then regulations were tightened and we had stability until the early 1980s when the US S&Ps went under en masse due to lax lending and easy credit.
These are all at the level of O level banking history and any semi competent banking regulator should have been aware of them.
If I can quote them off the top of my head, any senior banker should be fully aware of the risks..
Obviously they were not.
117
doh
In the US: 1907 and 1929 were classics.
I see that the so called socialists and Labourites are out in force this morning.
They praise the EU knowing full well that the government of NuLabour which they support, has finally driven this country to bankrupcy and to impotence in world afairs.
These people think that the EU will be their saviour, and a glorious period in handouts will ensue. In reality it will be their jailor as even more undemocratic decisions are taken over their heads.
89. The right ‘hyperventilating at the drop of a chipati’ made me grin.
On reading the original article I imagine the Tories on here went into spasms?
113 - Where have I said it was the Tories’ fault? It was Labour’s fault, for the reasons I have previously explained.
My argument is with the notion that this recession would not have happened or would have been much less severe if the Tories were in power. The recession was not caused by how much the government had spent, it was caused by the way in whcih the British economy is structured and its reliance on the finance, retail and service sectors. Other countries, which are now out of recession, have far more mixed economies, but we have not had one like that for decades. This is something that, even now, none of the parties are focusing on and it wil cause more trouble further down the line.
106 Southam - That is ridiculous. Brown messed up banking regulation; the Conservatives quite correctly opposed the messing-up in well-argued speeches at the time. What more could they do? They weren’t in power.
And yes, there were criticisms of the house-price bubble, and the excessive credit (Michael Howard, 2005, for example).
Your wider point is also incorrect. There is nothing wrong with an economy strong in financial service (which of course isn’t just banking; it includes insurance, shipbroking, futures trading, etc etc). Indeed, let’s hope we soon get back to a strong financial services sector, as it the UK’s best chance of economic recovery in the shortish term (five years, say).
But it needs to be properly supervised (as it was, pre-Brown), and not ham-strung by counter-productive, pettifogging regulation of the sort Labour specialises in and which is favoured by the EU.
The EU angle is important: our German friends are hoping to use regulation, via the EU, to subvert London’s advantage over Frankfurt. This is a major danger to the prospects for the UK economy.
106 “OK I did it but you would have done the same in my position” = “it happened on my watch but it might have happened on yours” = EPIC FAIL as a line of agument.
106 “OK I did it but you would have done the same in my position” = “it happened on my watch but it might have happened on yours” = EPIC FAIL as a line of argument.
117 - So it’s all Mervyn King’s fault. I see. Thus, everyone else realised it was coming and took the correct action … or not as the case may be.
112 - Withholding our cash would be tantamount to pulling out. You can do it once, but you can’t do it again. That is not a lever, it is a sledgehammer.
125 - Oh dear…what a childish response.
Southam
Do you really think that the govt although having made the BofE independant,were not putting pressure on them behind the scenes.
Please dont make me laugh.
56-Actually quite a lot, but Clinton should be in the dock for his illegal war in Yugoslavia.
126 - “tantamount to pulling out”
No it wouldn’t, but it does provide leverage.
122 Revisionist Crap in Extremis. The Tories were after less regulation. I wonder if Lilley was so on the money, why did they sack him so soon?
The good people of Europe rejected a President of Europe in referenda on the constitution so the Eurocrats want to create it anyway now they have persuaded one another to force through the non-consitution of Lisbon without it encountering a similar fate.
And now they are amazed that the Tories are working the system as they have for so many years.
The UK government in incompetence is still simply swallowing and gold plating EU decisions as usual while the future government is pulling levers like the French and Germans do. Zut Alors. Where will this all end?
127 - What a pointless response
37.”Merkel’s decision last month to downgrade links with the Tories in response was the most obvious sign of the impact, but I’d think that the major powers are somewhat torn between not irritating a possible incoming UK regime and not wanting to do any favours for a party that’s just kicked them in the teeth.”
NickP, will Merkel downgrade relations with an incoming Conservative government?
More importantly, will the British public downgrade relations with an EU body and the Labour party should Blair be elected as its President?
I would have thought the pitfalls of him in that position would be more damaging to the Labour party right now?
130 - It provides leverage until you do withhold payment. Then you lose the leverage.
131 Colin: Why is it ‘revisionist crap’, as you so eloquently put it? The words are there in Hansard. I suggest you go and read them. No revisionism needed.
“chipati”
It’s chapati, you racist.
Alliance minister ‘not a puppet’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/8325188.stm
Madasafish @ 117.
Thank you for translating my response into English. I just meant that failure happens, should be expected and is not a big problem unless it is a sector wide crash like the one we just experienced.
Also any regulatory system that is designed to stop anything going wrong (rather than just big things going wrong) will be a bad system. It will
1) Be incredibly labour intensive, meaning that there is more opportunity for error.
2) It will stop lots of positive things happening, just in case.
Further to 136: To save you the trouble (it’s been posted on PB.com before):
“The Bill will hive off debt management to a new quango under the Treasury. We know that funding policy is an intrinsic part of monetary policy, and the Bill will leave the Bank as a one-club golfer without even a putter left in the bag. How will the Treasury, the Bank and the new board co-operate to handle monetary policy? If they need to get together, why is it necessary to separate them in the first place?
With the removal of banking control to the Financial Services Authority–the “super-SIB”–it is difficult to see how and whether the Bank remains, as it surely must, responsible for ensuring the liquidity of the banking system and preventing systemic collapse.
What happens if the needs of the banking system conflict with those of the inflationary target? That has happened in the past in the United States, and it could conceivably be happening in Japan. I understand that there is a suggestion that a committee is to be established to work between the Bank, the FSA and the Treasury to try to cope with that sort of problem. If that is necessary, why is it necessary to hive off powers in the first place? ”
Hansard 11/11/1997 para.732
128 I thought the BoE were only made ‘independent’ re interest rates?
They subsequently shared oversight of banking regulation with two other bodies - no one was in charge from what I can see.
It reminds me of the phrase “Everyone thought someone was doing it, someone thought someone else was doing it, no one realised that no one was doing it until anyone asked.”
112 - a very good idea. Who could possibly object to Britain refusing to refuse to cough up until the accounts are signed off?
139 Serf “Also any regulatory system that is designed to stop anything going wrong (rather than just big things going wrong) will be a bad system. It will
1) Be incredibly labour intensive, meaning that there is more opportunity for error.
2) It will stop lots of positive things happening, just in case.”
Baby P and the explosion of children being taken into care.
140 .. and more:
“The coverage of the FSA will be huge: its objectives will be many, and potentially in conflict with one another. The range of its activities will be so diverse that no one person in it will understand them all. Its structure will be as complex as those of the organisations that it replaces, if not more so. Practitioner involvement is likely to diminish, and costs are likely to escalate as salaries are equalised upwards.”
Events have proven the Conservative position to have been 100% right. Brown, therefore, bears a huge amount of responsibility for the UK banking crisis.
139 - I agree. The problem is that we did have a sector wide crash.
136,140 Any fool can pull a selective quote out of Hansard on any subject. All you need is to have time on your hands and the inclination to prove a point. You could even make Brown look good if you wanted to.
It’s hardly impressive.
Especially so, when you conveniently forget the rest of 20 years Tory rhetoric on the need for less regulation.
Perhaps the Tories sacked Peter Lilley for making this speech? Less than one year in post does not scream success.
142 And since we’re a net contributor, I wonder how long the EU could function with the UK putting its wallet away?
It would certainly help our cashflow right now
Andy D @ 142
Who could possibly object to Britain refusing to refuse to cough up until the accounts are signed off?
The high priests of the EU Cult and their fanatical supporters in our own fair land.
Among those who are sentient beings however, probably nobody.
Plato @ 143, thank you
Another very tragic example of the wrong approach to regulation.
Andy D @142: “Who could possibly object to Britain refusing to refuse to cough up until the accounts are signed off?”
If the explanation of the issue on Wikipedia is correct, anyone who understood the issue would object to that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Auditors
From the article:
“
Since 1994 the Court has been required to provide a “Declaration of Assurance”, essentially a certificate that an entire annual budget can be accounted for. This has proved to be a problem, as even relatively minor omissions require the Court to refuse a declaration of assurance for the entire budget, even if almost all of the budget is considered reliable.
This has led to media reports of the EU accounts being “riddled with fraud”, where issues are based on errors in paperwork even though the underlying spending was legal…
Terry Wynn MEP who served on the Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control has also backed these calls stating that it is impossible for the Commission to achieve these standards. By comparison, the Auditor General for the United Kingdom stated that there were 500 separate accounts for the UK and “in the last year, I qualified 13 of the 500. If I had to operate the EU system, then, because I qualify 13 accounts, I might have to qualify the whole British central government expenditure”.
“
148
hold back payments is what the french would do if they were in our position
144 - He does, of course. But nothing in what you have quotd indicates that it wuld have been any different under the Tories. That does not mean I am blaming them or saying it is not Labour’s fault. It is because like Labour, the Tories bought into the trajectory of the UK economy and its dependence on the sectors I keep mentioning. Having oversight structured in a different way does not mean that the sae problem would not have occurred. I might have more sympathy withthat view if the Tories had been consistently warning against all the things that caused the banking crash, but they were not. And nor were most other people.
I repeat, where thinsg would have been different is in the UK’s ability to respond to the crash. The crash itself would still have happened.
JARHEAD - Day Twenty
Timeline : Monday 26th April 2010 0725am
Location : Auchentennach Castle Highlands Scotland
Dramatis Personae : The Rt Hon David Cameron.
……………………………………………
It should have been a restful thirty six hours before a two day visit to Scotland that would take in Tory targets in Perth, Edinburgh, Ayr and the Borders and then preparation for the second debate. It should have been.
The overnight polling was as bad as the weekend offerings and as David Cameron nibbled on some toast he mused on how only last Thursday evening at 9.26pm the whole campaign had been blown wide open. And it was all down to Mrs Polly Wiltenham, housewife of Bedford. David looked over the polling briefing sheet :
ICM .. Con 37% .. Labour 28% .. LibDem 26%
YouGov .. Con 36% .. Labour 28% .. Lib Dem 27%
Angus Reid .. Con 35% .. Labour 30% .. Lib Dem 25%
Populus .. Con 34% .. Labour 29% .. LibDem 25%
The private polling showed much the same and he was advised that polling in the marginals especially in northern England was even worse.. David tossed the briefing paper to the floor and picked up the copied front papers of the national papers. Bloody hell, Those headlines, could it get worse :
Sun : Gotcha Dave - Tories Sinking As Cameron Falters
Mirror : Liar Liar Pants On Fire
Daily Mail : The Bedford Housewife And That Question
Telegraph : Hung Parliament Looms - New Poll
Daily Express : Princess Di Speaks From Beyond
Last Thursday evening had started so well. He had been well prepared for the first two hour debate and was justifiably confident of a strong performance that would solidify those 12 point leads in the polls. His two minute introduction speech had gone well with the audience, Pickles had done brilliantly with the focus groups on that. Cameron had to agree that the Prime Minister had come over well in that first segment but it was Nick Clegg who had stolen the early laurels with a combination of clear well structured sound bites and some sharp edged humour that had at one point had the audience reeling with laughter.
For much of the first eighty minutes of the debate each of the three leaders had their moments and the time seemed to move quickly as the cut and thrust of the evening had each of the contenders tested thoroughly by Moderator Dimblebey and also Paxman, Boulton and Kay Burley. But it was the public questioning that started to crack open the debate. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised at that - Thatcher had been caught out with that ‘Belgrano’ question and if she could be rattled then anyone could. And then it happened …. the slight figure of a forty two year old mother of three stood up, waited for the long boom microphone and skewered David completely :
“Mr Cameron .. You have talked much about honesty. Will you now be honest with us. Have you snorted illegal class A drugs. Yes or No ??”
Studio 1 at BBC Television Center fell utterly silent. Dimblebey shuffled a few papers and then tried to shut down the question. Mrs Wiltenham stood up and demanded that there should be no censorship of her question. After all the lies from Labour she wanted a straight answer from Mr Cameron.
The audience had become restless and Dimblebey’s attempt to help Cameron had back-fired badly. David Cameron had quickly assessed the situation. He had said he would answer the question and quickly broke into his oft used pre prepared answer about public figures having a private life and youthful indescretions weren’t relevant twenty five years later. It had worked so often before. But the mood here was different. The non answer had gone down badly. There was booing and calls of “answer” and “liar” rang out.
Cameron tried again but sympathy for his position was low. He began sweating badly and his discomfort was palpable. The rest of the debate was a blur. He had given indifferent answers and his final two minute address was met by muted applause and a highly audable shout of “Shame on you Cameron”.
Cameron had been warned that the debates were an unnecessary risk and that he should have adopted Blair’s 1997 tactic of prevarication and obtuse delays to avoid the risk of damaging his large poll lead.
Bloody hell it was a mess. The debate polls were awful, the focus groups worse and the media onslaught had been merciless. He had a few days left and the next debate on Thursday to turn the situation round. He hadn’t come this far to stumble at the final fence. David was ready for the fight of his political life. Bring in on !!
Eric Pickles rapped on the bedroom door :
“Five minutes David” …. Eric was ready for the fight ahead but the smell of wonderful pastry filled the corridors of this wonderful castle and Eric’s mind wandered to the pair of large wicker baskets filled with pies, their old hosts most excellent gift, that would be travelling with them down the A9 to Perth.
Who ate all the pies they cried two days later. Who indeed. Eric smiled.
What I don’t want to see if Blair is blocked - is Milliband as EU Fotreign Miniuster
Colin the Dachshund @ 146
It’s hardly impressive.
Especially so, when you conveniently forget the rest of 20 years Tory rhetoric on the need for less regulation.
I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave earlier @139. Sometimes less really is more.
148 - “hold back payments is what the french would do if they were in our position”
What is our position and how is it different to that of the French?
121. “My argument is with the notion that this recession would not have happened or would have been much less severe if the Tories were in power. The recession was not caused by how much the government had spent, it was caused by the way in whcih the British economy is structured and its reliance on the finance, retail and service sectors. Other countries, which are now out of recession, have far more mixed economies, but we have not had one like that for decades. This is something that, even now, none of the parties are focusing on and it wil cause more trouble further down the line.”
I agree with this in principal but think things would have been better with a Tory government for several reasons.
1. The Tories may not have bungled the regulation of the banks, Peter Lilley understood the risk, so it is at least possible that the Tories would have done a better job.
2. The Tories by nature are less inclined to hose money over the public sector, with Tories in power the nation’s finances would hopefully have been in a better starting position when the bubble popped.
3. There is no Tory who shows the hubris that Gordon “no more boom and bust” Brown does. The Tories because of events such as BCCI, Black Wednesday and so on may have been more risk averse. I believe that Brown’s character flaws have directly contributed to the mess we are in.
4. The Tories wanted Lloyds to buy Northern Rock, if that had been occurred and prevented the bank run then confidence in the UK may have remained higher and GDP may have held up a little.
You are correct that our dependence on a financial sector means that we are particularly exposed to financial crises, but Brown and his policies have directly contributed to the scale of the effects of that global crisis within the UK, and to the crisis in general due to London’s eminent position in global finance.
146 Colin - Thank you for calling me ‘any fool’. However, it is not a ’selective quotation’, but a longish excerpt. Go and read the whole lot if you think I’ve misrepresented it:
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1997/nov/11/bank-of-england-bill
The wider point - which lefties never seem to understand is that ‘less regulation’ is not synonymous with ‘worse regulation’. Labour have conclusively demonstrated in many different fields that more regulation can be counter-productive. You need better regulation which concentrates on the important issues, and doesn’t bog us down in idiotic box-ticking - of which the FSA (as anyone who has any contact with the City will know) is a prime example.
146. “Especially so, when you conveniently forget the rest of 20 years Tory rhetoric on the need for less regulation.”
It’s not the amount of regulation that matters, it’s whether it works or not. We have a lot of regulation in the UK, it plainly did not work.
150 That’s not much of an argument for the man in the street though
It reminds me of MP’s expenses and it being ‘impractical’ to process real receipts for everything - unlike HMRC requires.
150 - thank you for that link. I am willing to admit that I didn’t know all of that.
And neither does 99% of the rest of the country. If Dave mentioned “…we will also be suspending payments to the EU pending their accounts being audited in accordance with [whatever the rules are]…” during a list of Ways To Save Britain Money, that’ll be instantly popular, and no amount of wriggling around on technicalities would detract from that.
153 Jack W “but it was Nick Clegg who had stolen the early laurels with a combination of clear well structured sound bites and some sharp edged humour”
You do like your little jokes, Mr W!
156
we are substantial net contributors to the EU and have had a “treaty” foisted on us without a referendum. The main drivers of the treaty know they would have lost, but pushed on regardless over the heads on the UK electorate and are now trying to tell us too late you can’t do anything about it.
161 - “that’ll be instantly popular, and no amount of wriggling around on technicalities would detract from that”
Do you count that fact that it would be complete codswallop that would never actually happen as a “technicality”?
162 Richard N.
Ah you’ve clearly forgotten the meaning of JARHEAD ?!?
163 - The question was how this was any different for France.
164
Neil
Well when benefits are being cut and taxes raised to pay off the National Debt, the Party which explains that if it stops paying the EC £billions - and therefore can stop some cuts- will become rather popular.
106 SO no the difference is that the Tories developed a banking and financial market which became the envy of the world because it was suitably though lightly regulated. Gordon Brown and
Tony Blair were dazzled by wealthy men (and still are as is Mandy Chief Money Tart in the Government) and removed ALL the effective regulation by stripping the BOE of its powers of control of the banks without imposing restrictions through another source.
Had the Tory restirctions remained then the credit expansion of the first decade of Labour power would have been more restrained and we would not now be facing the catastrophic financial mess the country does because of Brown’s total incompetence.
Gordon Brown had never been responsible for as much as a school tuck shop yet was given control of the 4th largest economy in the world and he did a Viv Nicolson. From 1999 when he abandoned Ken Clarke’s economic policies he spent and spent and spent. Worse still through PFI he signed IOUs and IOUs and IOUs and never mind the £175 billion overdraft, what about the tens of billions not yet on the government balance sheet!
Nigel Lawson overinflated the economy by pushing for unsustainable growth in the 1980s. We learned that mistake and hence John Major handed over a growing economy in which pension funds were hugely in surplus.
Gordon Brown and Tony Blair (who knew sod all about economics except how well his wife could spend money)ignored the lesson from the Lawson years and now we have a pension industry in meltdown and the fourth largest economy in the world is rapidly heading out of the top 10.
Let Labour boast about that legacy on the streets next spring in the GE campaign. For the damage Labour has caused to the economy and the wealth of millions of us not among the super-rich like Roger it should be damned to hell forever.
166
Neil
France are a net EC beneficiary.
Simples.
158. “You need better regulation which concentrates on the important issues, and doesn’t bog us down in idiotic box-ticking - of which the FSA (as anyone who has any contact with the City will know) is a prime example.”
In many cases the prescriptive approach to regulation, endless procedures and forms, directly inhibits people taking individual responsibility and developing a sense of judgement that serves them well when the unexpected happens.
There’s a humorous idea that the best possible road safety device would be a ruddy great spike poking out of the steering wheel of all vehicles. Everybody would drive carefully if a deadly spike was inches from their chest. We could do with a financial services equivalent of the spike.
164 It doesn’t matter - same as the argument that if we weren’t in the EU that suddenly their citizens wouldn’t buy things from us.
It’s a silly argument but it’s worked for quite a while to scare people. At least saying ‘nope - no more money until the books are signed-off’ sounds completely sensible to 99% of ears.
And there is also nothing to stop Cameron from subsequently picking any issue he liked to use as a ‘reason’ to pay when it suited him.
The wonders of a pretendy excuse.
167 - “the Party which explains that if it stops paying the EC £billions - and therefore can stop some cuts- will become rather popular”
That will be a party that lies though. You happy with lying?
158 Richard you are no fool. But you get close when you start arguing for a policy of “better regulation”. This is totally and utterly meaningless in itself. Vacuous stuff. Everyone agrees we need good or better regulation.
The Tories were arguing 97-08 that better regulation equaled less regulation. We know from the US that would not have helped. They were certainly not arguing for an EU model, which offered some protection to the likes of Santander.
Labour’s model was in the middle.
166
the french gain financially from the EU and are key supporters of integration so they will they are diametrically opposed to the position most UK voters hold.
172 It’s called negotiating from a position of strength.
171 - “How Cameron can lie to the public and maybe get away with it”, by Plato. But it’s a bit rubbish though, isnt it? Because of how transparent it is.
126 The US failed for many years to pay its subs to the UN. Nobody proposed taking their Security Council seat way from them.
Indded, they used it as leverage to get its share of overheads down:
“In 1999 the U.S. Congress agreed to pay nearly $1 billion of back dues, but only on the condition that the UN decrease the U.S. share of the administrative budget from 25 to 22 percent and its share of the peacekeeping budget from 31 to 25 percent.”
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761564986_3/United_Nations.html
It seems France can pick and choose which bits of the “European Project” it wants to adhere to, but will skweem and skweem and skweem until its sick if anyone doesn’t play by its rules. Well, tough…
“The Tories were after less regulation.”
Indeed. Less, but better. The idea that the creation of a 2000+ employee body meant that there wasn’t much regulation is ridiculous.
Indeed, I know someone who works for the FSA, and is currently involved in steering Northern Rock. His impression of the organisation is one which placed a huge emphasis on box ticking and ignored the much smaller side of the office which was raising concerns about stability. It’s illustrative that it is only in the last year that the FSA has placed the priority of dealing with a bank that does not have an adequate customer helpine below that of dealing with capital requirements.
172
yes
because it is playing the game by European rules.
Andy D @161: It would indeed be popular to say it, assuming a bunch of trusted organizations like the CBI didn’t come out and said, “Hang on a minute…”.
The problem would be when it was actually implemented, with Dave having said he was going to stop paying money to the EU unless something happened that was very hard to for the EU to actually do, and impossible to do quickly. If he actually did it, there would presumably be a very confusing situation where British organizations expecting to get money from the EU found it stopped, and people expecting other member states to do something they’d agreed to in previous negotiations with Britain suddenly started finding the other member states arbitrarily reneging on their commitments. (Remember when France said “Sod the EU rules, we’re not taking your BSE-ridden beef? It would be like that, except hundreds of times more, and over all kinds of issues and not just locally politically sensitive ones.)
This is why this sort of thing works much better as something threatened in opposition than something actually done in government; Or even better, something you don’t actually threaten to do, but you just set a vaguely threatening tone to make people who like the idea think you might do it. Which appears to be Dave’s current strategy.
176 Neil, why did you make up a “quote” and append my name to it
Theresa May on Radio 4 has just seemingly committed the Tories to retaining the Equality Bill if its on the statute by the Election.
Brilliant, Jack.
I particularly liked - “Daily Express : Princess Di Speaks From Beyond”. How apt an indictment of once great newspaper.
173 Colin - The Santander example is an interesting one. Although the Spanish economy as a whole is of course in a very bad way, their banking regulators do seem to have been better at keeping an eye on the big picture as regards their banks’ balance sheets. That was the element missing in the UK, and also in the US (which, contrary to popular belief, also has a very bureaucratic approach to regulation).
Judging by the anti European comments on this UKIP, sorry Tory blog,I think we are in for a bit of fun over the next few months, which could very well rebound in Tory faces.
And, never underestimate TB, he has a habit of getting what he wants, as a former leader of yours has learned to his cost.
169 - No, in budgetary terms they’re not.
179 - The British public may not be quite so happy with it.
181 - You dont think it was a fair summary of your post? I do.
153. JackW.
Dream on Jack! Did you sit up all night writing your wishes?
OMG! The lengths people will go to discredit Dave. When does your next book of nursery rhymes come out?
#39, by Nick Palmer MP October 26th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Nick, you seem to have no problem with Virendra Sharma and his Indian-SS support. Drop the Latvian-line or call for Mr Sharma’s expulsion from the PLP. [And you put your sock-puppet - Farmer Tupac - to better use!]
#79, by Southam Observer October 26th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Unlike the Canadians and Australians, with their vast reserves of natual resources, the UK does not have a mixed economy.
Tip: don’t use terms you don’t understand.
On-topic: Andy D (#21) hit the nail-on-the-head. Cammers will be around long after Sarkozy and Merkel retire (by which time Silvio will be bed-sharing with David Mills in an Italian prison). If the Lisbon Treaty is ratified that will be it for the next decade. Blair - as committee chairman - will be powerless to do anything about it.
JackW’s JARHEAD = The Spirit of Christmas Never to Be…
182 Just goading Labour into passing it…
183 PtP. I’m favouring a re-appearance of your alter ego on election day next week !!
187 weathercock. My dear cock I fear your sense of the absurd has gone AWOL. Remember what JARHEAD means old thing and lighten up a little !!
@182:
The bill will be largely toothless without the vast implementation bureaucracy Hattie envisages, and presumably will never exist under a Tory government.
Fixing a partially-implemented equalities bill will be a good launch platform for the Bill of Rights.
186 You didn’t need to create a quote to comment on it
@191:
The part about you murdering tourists and selling for meat: that bit’s still true, right?
189 MM. Humbug !!
Sky News presenter just ripped apart a banker, utterly vintage.
194 Martin C. Scotland welcomes tourists and all their shillings !!
191. JackW.
In all innocence I had no idea what JARHEAD meant, and indeed took no notice of it.
The word is foreign to me, and must have been coined before I joined the ranks of PB.
I’ll lighten up NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.
186
can’t see why not.
I think the UK electorate would feel a lot more comfortable if it had a government which could play and win by European rules.
195
I enjoy Jack’s Jarhead series tremendously, although I can understand why the Tory herd are less than enthusiastic.
One thing that I fail to understand though Jack: in what sense can we consider “Perth” [&NP] to be a “Tory target”?
Seriously: if they are wasting their time and money targetting Perth (and/or Angus) then they will get zero sympathy from me when they fail to win “sitters” like Renfrewshire East, Edinburgh South, Edinburgh South West, Stirling and Argyll&Bute.
Silly, silly, silly billies.
Richard N quotes Peter Lilley in 1997 on Brown’s tripartite system.
The irony is that he warns of regulators taking their eye off the ball as the system is established. After the collapse of Northern Rock the new Chairman of the FSA admitted that at the time of the collapse the organisation still had not established a staff which could deal effectively with such events.
In other words it still had not been established properly nine years after Lilley warned:
The process of setting up the FSA may cause regulators to take their eye off the ball, while spivs and crooks have a field day. We shall observe closely what is going on in the development of the proposed legislation.
We could play spot-the-spiv.
You do wonder how much time the spivs spent in making the system unresponsive.
Do we need an elected prosecutor. Yes we do, not a Labour placeman from the PC wing of the party.
JackW- Nick Clegg and Vince Cable could be the next Morecome and Wise ?
Interesting post from Monty
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2009/10/the-most-powerful-conservatism-in-the-world.html
“There are times when the Cameron project appears inadequate. Whether it is public spending restraint, immigration control or the repatriation of powers from Brussels there is not enough gunpowder in the policy arsenal. But there are other times when I’m not so much impressed by the ambition of Team Cameron but completely bowled over.
Political scientists talk of realigning elections when what comes to power is not so much a familiar party but a new coalition. In realigning elections politics isn’t changed for four or five years but for a whole generation.
I want to explain why - if things go well - the Conservatives can re-establish themselves as the natural party of government. In a year’s time David Cameron could be the most important centre right leader in the world - not just leading Britain but defining the future of conservatism around the world.”
Nothing like setting the bar high
201 Stuart. The SNP candidate went missing whilst castle bagging in the Highlands !!
…. and Eric Picles smelt an opportunity !!
198 weathercock. Well done.
203 URW. Ah yes Vince and those short fat hairy legs
Eric of course lived in Harpenden.
204 Last para reads like Sion Simon. Conclusion: Loonies abound in all parties.
Wow, I knew Warren Buffett was a money-making genius but this profile is STUNNING
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8317072.stm
Osborne on Sky in a few mins giving his bash-cash-bonus speech.
Jack W fact or fiction?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/sweeney-todd-fact-or-fiction-521470.html
180 - I have to go do some work now, but just wanted to say thanks for the thought-provoking replies, Edmund.
“Nothing like setting the bar high ”
That way Tim can say that the Centrist ONe Nation way has failed, not being real Conservatism (150 years of it notwithstanding….) and therefore we need to go down the IDS right route.
208 re Osborne on Sky
It might be interesting if he says something more than he hates bonuses because they did not cause the crisis any more than the UK housing bubble did.
Housing bubbles might be bad, and might have taken out reckless lenders but did not bring down the world economy.
203, no, Cable isn’t Wise.
I just can’t see why the EU would want T B Liar as their President. He’ll be seen as too close to America, the EU was anti-Iraq War. Blair has too much baggage and would create millions eurosceptics in the other EU member states.
Disaster I say.
212. I thought GO’s point is bonuses should be in share option format ?
214 I forgot to say, so we don’t get the chance to elect our EU President? Democratic? No way.
215 - An odd one that.
The taxpayers stake in the banks should be diluted?
@201:
I enjoy them too, Stuart. I do like a good fantasty novel by a really twister author.
Ozzie’s speech - OUCH.
217 - In return for cash, Tim. I dont think people will have a problem with that. Do you?
219 - He is on sober form.
218, psst!
Aspiring fantasy author here. Verging on sending off my first submission. Book contains:
A librarian called Pengel
An octogenerian cannibal
Incestuous rape
Giant mole/rat creatures
What more could you want?
[Except for it to be published and available from all good booksellers at a reasonable price, obviously].
219 more info svp
223 A big list of Gordon’s Great Plans - and what they’ve actually delivered - big zilch list.
@211:
Interesting you should mention IDS, given how deeply Iain’s CSJ agenda has gotten its claws into the Cameron Project.
201 Stuart my dear friend forget 1979 at your peril!
Jack I had no idea what Jarhead means either and still don’t.
192 There will be no money to implement the bill, so I think that that is largely correct.
223 - He basically ripped apart the Govt’s multiplicity of schemes, none of which have helped very many people.
@222:
One of these days I’m going to write the gothic fantasy/horror series I know I have lurking inside my brain stem.
217. Lol - so naive !
These bonuses relative to the total capital would be a tiny % dilution.
However as shareholders we would all be pleased that there was a massive incentive for these bankers to get the share price up up and away so we could make a profit on the deal when we sell.
209 Goupillon. Terrible goings on in the “Street of Shame” - Shirley Shum Mishtayk !!
Daily Express : Barber Makes A Killing As Fleet Street Property Prices Soar !!
“Seriously: if they are wasting their time and money targetting Perth (and/or Angus) then they will get zero sympathy from me when they fail to win “sitters” like Renfrewshire East, Edinburgh South, Edinburgh South West, Stirling and Argyll&Bute.”
Stuart, the SNP doth protest too much methinks. Watching the SNP GE grid, and the way that the goodies and soor plums are being handed out right now, seems that they are not totally confident about these two seats or their incumbents holding on. I presume that you are referring to Pete Wishart in Perth and North Perthshire?
We are starting to get a theme developing about the Tories wasting their time and money targeting these two seats in particular right now.
Either Wishart and Weir are fully embedded in those seats with a resurgent Conservative party hoping to overthrow the current Labour government, or they are not? And I think that we have to admit that this upcoming GE certainly does indicate a danger point for such incumbents, especially with an electorate that might be tempted to find their inner Tory again. I am hearing very conflicting reports about Weir’s performance and popularity too.
229, best of luck with it
an EU model, which offered some protection to the likes of Santander.
Labour’s model was in the middle.
by Colin the Dachshund October 26th, 2009 at 10:22 am
The reason Santander is better off is because it had its fingers burnt some years earlier when the daughter of the boss managed to almost sink an investment bank, so they went back to their original policy of traditional banking.
This was reinforced by the Spain - not the EU - wisely banning banks from silly fantasy finance instruments.
Some Spanish banks are still empty shells as the mortgage market has really hit them.
The point is that the right decisions were made and there was a system which made them possible.
The issue in the UK was that the system did not encourage such action. Unlike the central bank in Spain the BoE no longer had a direct and commanding role in supervising the national credit market and levels and the FSA were not competent to do so - indeed there seems some doubt about exactly who was the responsible leg in that system.
The FSA skill lay in making life difficult for small investors under the guise of stopping money laundering.
In the UK I wonder if the FSA even knew what a CDO was. Perhaps they thought it was a bar of chocolate?
232. re Perth - my relatives in the town say that the huge chimney incinerator that had planning approved by the SNP council (in alledgedly dubious circumstances) is a massive issue at the moment.
230 - Tiny?
Osborne seems to think the equivalent cas will get business going again.
All small stuff I’m afraid, but as he keeps saying,
“We’re all in this together”
Osborne Family bonus?
A Million Quid.
218 Martin C. “… fantasty novel ..”
Have a pie !!
226 Easterross. JARHEAD - Jack’s Alternate Reality Headonistic Election Analysis Determinator.
Oh good soundbite - debt bill will become the government’s biggest area of expenditure.
Is this true?
238 - Potentially with a lot of caveats.
236. Lloyds market cap currently £26,293 Million
So if they paid out a massive £100M in bonuses this year that would be by my dodgy maths 0.4% dilution.
Not much if they can raise the value of our shareholding by 5% pa.
@237:
JackW — proudly serving the best Long Pig in Scotchlandshire since 1902.
@238:
Yes. By 2015, debt repayment will be larger than the defence, health and education budgets.
238 - If he plans to halve health spending it might be.
242 That is shocking - and great poster material.
212.”212. I thought GO’s point is bonuses should be in share option format ?”
That is the way I picked it up, give the bonuses in shares rather than cash at the moment, win win option for Osborne IMHO.
@243:
You take the point, I presume. That in a few years, debt repayments are going to be RIDICULOUSLY F*CKING HUGE?
235.They have just given the go ahead for the pylons project as well, or so the BBC ‘understands’. Obviously don’t think they will see off the Yellow Peril there this time around.
226. easterross
Most of us have spent the past 30 years trying to forget the 1970s:
http://www.firstscene.co.nz/tmp/HIPPY-2.jpg
http://phillips.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/15hippiewoman.jpg
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40967000/jpg/_40967127_discontent203.jpg
153 Good stuff Jackw.
However I think Cameron will stick to Philip Goulds , The Unfinished Revolution game plan part 2.
Therefore as much as Sky News bleat,Cameron will avoid a series of debates at all costs, putting the blame elsewhere.
Who can blame him, in his position why take the risk.
246 - Bigger than the health budget?
Scottish Tories should beware of the double false negative reverse backwards bluff.
Sometimes the advice you recieve from your opponents is actually more valuable than the advice that you recieve from your friends. Other times it is not. You decide.
I think Hague has handled this badly. He has sold it as an anti-Blair thing which has the heady whiff of sour grapes from a man who took a hiding from the ex-PM in 2001.
If Hague’s point is that the EU President should be a fairly low key position filled by ex-finance ministers from Estonia rather than people with significant global profile, then he should say that - it’s a respectable enough argument. But he doesn’t make that point and instead seems to have been running this bizarre argument on the continent that Blair is a somewhat Eurosceptic Atlanticist who supported the Iraq War. But that lacks any credibility as the description perfectly matches with Mr Hague himself! This is well enough known abroad and is likely to do Hague damage before he’s even through the door of the Foreign Office.
235.Harry, hearing the same thing too.
@250:
Well, no. Because an incoming Conservative government will not allow that to happen. If we continued to Gordon’s disastrous path, it’s a possibility.
37, Nick: “I know Tories are fed up with tim and me going on about the Latvians etc., “
My personal issue of the Latvian Legion crap that Labour (and the Guardian) have been spouting is that they are deliberately peddling an apparently Putin-derived smear on Latvia in order to try to gain some petty partisan advantage. I do note that since the ambassador in Vilnius was called in to explain the British Government’s stance, the Latvian $$ comments have markedly diminished.
They’ve tried to claim that support for the Latvian Legion Day is directly equivalent to support for the $$ and the H-l-caust. Any vaguely independent reading of the actual scenario exposes that as a smear.
The Latvian Government website contains a long page covering the details: http://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/latvia/history/legion/
I invite Southam Observer to have a read. Nick might do well to point it out to our Foreign Secretary, who appears to have been totally ignorant.
I think Southam Observer is right sadly, the tories would have loved the boom years as much as Labour did. Their bizarre policy of appointing Kirsty allsop is evedience that they would not have done much about stupidly high house prices for example. we woudl have ended up in a similar position I daresay.
However we can’t refight old elections. Who, now, will be the best party to reduce our debt, get the economy back on a sound footing, learn the lessons of the past and avoid future debt or asset bubbles? Osborne’s proposal to set up a debt management office or whatever he’s called it, plus the tories evident seriousness in tackling the deficit, makes the answer to that one clear for me.
I think a re-elected profligate Labour government would properly ruin this country.
Sorry this is not related point.
Now that the BBC messed up the Griffin QT interview, it is time for English Nationalists to approach them and bring the WLQ and English Devolution debates to them. Surely the BBC will could reconnect with English people by debating an English Parliament as it does not revolve around the race politics of the BNP.
Before tim goes merrily on his way up a totally blind alley. I feel it only fair to point out that Osborne was looking at a scenario with a sovereign downgrade and the impact that that would have in terms of long term interest rates. He said that debt interest could under that scenario become the largest item of government expenditure. Back under your stone tim.
Stuart Dickson @248
Most of us have spent the past 30 years trying to forget the 1970s
If you can remember it, then I take it you didn’t inhale?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8325350.stm
FTSE bosses pay rise
Blair as EU commissioner! HA! Hes being trying to socially engineer us for years, Europe would be orgasmic for him, just think forced conscription of migrants from Asia and Africa just so Europe can be in his vision of a european race and culture that is monotonous and harmonious!
If he succeeds…..its pope next.;)
251.Stuart, sometimes the advice you receive from your opponents is actually more valuable than the advice that you receive from your friends. Other times it is not. You decide.
206 Colin, you seem to be throwing an awful lot of insults around for someone who has yet to win a single argument.
254 - So the answer to the question
Oh good soundbite - debt bill will become the government’s biggest area of expenditure.
Is this true?
Is no.
Its not true
236:
how will Osborne’s family gain a million quid? Assuming you are talking to yourself about IHT yet again, surely the maximum benefit can be calculated as 40% of the difference between the old and new IHT thresholds - which IIRC are £320K and £1M (although labour plan some half-c0ck scheme themselves to narrow this gap)
This works out as £272K.
Where is your alleged million coming from?
262 - See 257
262 Oh NO! You mentioned IHT!
263.
If his wife was still alive then the treasury gets £0k
UNITE balloting 14,000 BA cabin crew on industrial Action.
Is it the 1970’s again?
255 If by some miracle, Labour were to win the next election, or win enough seats in a hung Parliament to put together a government with the Lib Dems, then we would face a real financial crisis. I just couldn’t see foreign lenders being prepared to buy gilts except at inordinately high interest rates.
Like the poster upthread, sometimes I get very unhappy about the Conservative Party under its current leadership, and at other times, I’m enormously impressed by them. But, I think that a Conservative victory next time is the only way to get people to keep lending to us.
Having read the thread I conclude that the appointment of Blair would be really bad for Labour. It will tie them to everything European when the country just isn’t signed up to the same agenda.
However, I think it would be bad for Britain and Europe and since I am a patriot and someone who would rather seen a realignment than a full pull out, I don’t want him to get it.
Suspect Hague thinks the same - so he is already acting in the country’s interest rather than the party’s.
How refreshing.
How unlike Labour.
257 - I know, it was fiction.
What if a meteor hits.
BA Cabin crew are having a strike ballot.
252 Sir Norfolk “this bizarre argument on the continent that Blair is a somewhat Eurosceptic Atlanticist who supported the Iraq War. But that lacks any credibility as the description perfectly matches with Mr Hague himself!”
It’s not a bizarre argument at all. It is one that is likely to be very persuasive with his target audience, and which (if the reports are true), has indeed been taken seriously. And as for the second point - yes, maybe; but Hague isn’t in the running to be EU ‘President’.
54 Mike no but I thought it was acceptable to be derogratory about baldness and latterly on this site eye problems.
However does that only refer to the present party in power.
263 At the risk of totally derailing this thread, I assume that he’s assuming that each parent and parent-in-law will leave them £1m.
270 - It was an exploration of the dangers of allowing something to happen that has a reasonable likelihood of transpiring.
BA crew and the Posties both going for the suicide option then. These things normally come in 3s - who else is up for a futile destructive self-defeating strike?
If only it was Labour-supporting internet trolls…
236 A Million Quid
We can see what you are doing, tim: trying to make it look like a lot of money by Inappropriate Use Of Initial Caps. He has 3 brothers so that is 250k each, and who, honestly, gets out of bed for 250k these days? You sound like the blokes on Antiques Roadshow telling a posh rich woman that what she hoped was a Turner worth half a million has an insurance value of gasp Five Thousand Pounds shock and hoping she is going to faint at the thought of so much money.
what is your own IHT position incidentally? any exemptions you feel you should tell us abou?
269 I’m ambivalent about Blair getting the Presidency - he would know the British public, and hopefully be sympathetic rather than hostile towards our interests.
He has two massive albatrosses around his neck with Iraq/poodling with Bush Jnr.
He certainly has a lot of haters from the anti-war team/Old Labourites. And it would pee Gordon off something rotten.
Oh the dilemma!
272 - I love Hague.
He’s been in NI over the weekend seemingly guaranteeing that the UUP will have no MPs.
What a genius.
274
But they could have left him £728K anyway after IHT.
Sorry i will leave it, seems to have annoyed some!
276. You don’t think Brother Crow wants to miss out on the last disco in hell ?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/rail-unions-warn-of-strike-action-over-sacking-fears-1807837.html
278 - The only interests Blair was ever sympathetic towards were Blair’s.
255.”I think a re-elected profligate Labour government would properly ruin this country.”
Isn’t that another reason why the government would prefer not to have a budget before the next GE? Going to be tricky balancing the electoral needs of the Labour party against the reaction of the markets at such a perilous point before an election?
Also going to make it harder to attack the Conservatives if they are too feart to show their own hand with regard their direction of economic travel? Cannot portray the Tories as the bogeyman if their own plans are not equally thought out and honest?
263 Did you not get the memo? IHT is dead. Long live DMT - the Dead Millionaires Tax!
It’s nice to see that LabourList are getting at the real issues in their tweeting
“”Britain is in the deepest recession since the sencond world war.”…You wouldn’t know it from osborne’s suit.”
Ladbrokes got 95% take-up on their cash call offer.
280 - Thats right, the Osborne family Bonus is 4 times £272k
£1,088,000.
283 - “Cannot portray the Tories as the bogeyman if their own plans are not equally thought out and honest?”
Never stopped them in the past.
278 The biggest draw back with Blair is that everything is always about him. He is very selfish.
And in the end, it shows.Despite the most fortuitous circumstances for over a decade, most many commentators from all sides think he ‘underachieved’, to put it mildly.
I think the people who voted for him, repeatedly, have difficulty reconciling themselves to that.
232. Presumably even if the Nats think they will win those two seats they would rather they didn’t face a big challenge in them so they could release resources to attack other targets.
Personally it seems to me that if the Scots Tories have any hope of a medium-term revival they need to win back both Perth and Angus - getting reestablished as the party of rural Scotland must be an essential task. They’ve made progress in the south of Scotland, but that isn’t enough.
285, that’s a killer line. I’ve heard Cameron has some expensive shoes. It could spell disaster for him at the election.
287 Fortunately - they are still alive and hopefully all in good health.
276 Jonc
I would imagine it would be firemen against changes in shift patterns.
Because they like to keep their second jobs.
Whilst being the only public servants allowed to sleep officaly whilst at work.
tim doing an ‘Yvette’ today I see.
294, tim’s performing an act upon Ed Balls?
291. How do they compare with Brown’s private dentist bill ?
285 - if Osborne’s suit is evidence that he is not feeling the effects of the recession, just what does Mandelson’s £20,000 watch say about him?
293 I was going to suggest firemen but they usually get a good sympathy vote and we can’t do without them.
Now if it was staff at RSB…
287 It’s amazing; not only do you have in-depth knowledge of the financial affairs of the Osborne and Cameron families, you even know when their parents are going to die.
287. By the way tim, I hope you’ve sent conformation of your £50 bet between us to PtP.
I have.
299 tim = The Grim Reaper
296 How do they compare with Brown’s private dentist bill ?
Favourably.
Much better value for money.
291. What’s bloody stupid is that I’d expect our party leaders to support British tailors. It makes sense for Cameron, Brown and I dare say Clegg to wear fine tailored suits from Saville Row, it’s one of the things that we are very good at. Providing they pay for the suits out of their own pocket I can not see why there should be any fuss about it.
291. I’m very concerned about the cufflinks myself.
299 - Even more amazingly, he still thinks we (or anyone out there) cares.
247. Christina, If true I agree with you , no reason why this should be above ground other than to save power companies some cash. Surprised that SNP would agree with this considering the amount of public concern over it.
300 He has, Weathercock.
248. Stuart, was that you in the first picture.
273 It’s not Mike you need worry about, Dez.
Any more of the slaphead stuff and you’ll be hearing from my Soilicitors [Mssrs Kray and Kray (deceased)]
303 - Don’t forget the childrens straw boater manufacturers that Osborne is also a big supporter of.
“We’re all in this together”
306. What about the Perth City Centre mega-chimney ?
Seems like the SNP council are for , the SNP MP against…
http://www.perthshireadvertiser.co.uk/perthshire-news/local-news-perthshire/perthshire/2009/10/23/incinerator-would-be-nightmare-for-perth-73103-24994242/
310. Let’s not forget the 200 families that Osborne snr’s business keeps going either.
Labour = the party that hates success and revels in failure.
310 with Gordon buying his suits from Gieves & Hawkes at £3,500+ a pop and Mandelson’s watch which cost about the average annual salary it’s perhaps better not to make too much of Osborne’s atire.
312. They’ll certainly enjoy revelling in failure for the next decade or so….
Osborne wants to limit bankers cash bonuses now I see.
AWS, limits on banker’s bonuses, ringfencing the NHS
I’ll vote for actual socialism rather than pretend versions if that is where the consensus lies.
310. “We’re all in this together”
Tim how rich are you?
What if… it had been John Tyndall on Question Time instead of Nick Griffin?
Will there be a question on this week’s QT about last week’s QT?
————————-
61. Why are most of the Downfall spoofs based on the same clip? Can’t people be more imaginative?
313 - Patek Phillipe watches are imported aren’t they? So that starving Swiss familes looked after.
289 Sallyc thats a fair assesment the second paragraph.
James Burdett @ 285
“”Britain is in the deepest recession since the sencond world war.”…You wouldn’t know it from osborne’s suit.”
They obviously think we should all stop spending any money. I can see that helping us out of recession.
They do have a point though. Perhaps if George would just turn up in sack cloth and ashes, it would really push the seriousness of the recession home.
315 - I don’t see what is wrong with limiting cash bonuses in these circumstances. It isn’t the end of the earth.
311. TGOH, another union benefit for us.
313. How much do you think Mandelson spends on haircuts and styling?
Not worth asking the same question about Brown I would have thought…
318. Was this watch bought in the Uk - and if not was import duty paid ?
Easterross James I = murdered
James II = blown up by his favourite cannon
James III = killed in battle at Sauchieburn, his son and heir being one of the rebels
James IV = killed in battle at Flodden, by his sister-in-law Katherine of Aragon’s army while his brother-in-law Henry VIII was in France
James V = died in bed a week after being beaten by his uncle’s army at the Battle of Solway Moss leaving week old Mary
James VI and I = died in his bed.
That reminds me of my favourite general knowledge fact about Scottish monarchy: the average age of accession of kings 1400 to 1600 was 6.
seanT ON topic, I am in a dulcet mood this evening. I have just realised that the keen young heroine of my next Tom Knox novel (The Severed Men), is going to be almost-raped by a deviant orang utan in the Soviet-era primate laboratory in Sukhumi, Abkhazia, on or around chapter 15.
That reminds me - a few years ago I had a dream in which Paul Merton was raped by a goat. What does this mean? Am I in danger of turning into a novelist?
310 It is the duty of the wealthy man,
to give employment to the artisan.
321 When businesses are struggling for cashflow - seems sensible - for the short term.
321 it is petty, vindictive and populist. It is unlikely to make the slightest difference to how banks are run.
283 Christina since you have been so busy with kids holidays etc to phone I have emailed in case I forget to tell you the news.
290 Runnymede take my word for it the party is working on it.
“you even know when their parents are going to die.”
That’s because he’s going to kill them. It’s the only answer.
317 - Tyndall minders would have worn different coloured suits.
323 - Osborne is planning a bonus of £1,088,000 for his family while parrotting “We’re all in this together”, there’s a difference
279 Well, there are four not particularly high profile Unionists who object to the link with the Conservatives. But, overall, the link is likely to be pretty popular among Unionist voters.
303. Don’t forget the straw boaters…do you write the script for the pathetic sharks?
326. Keynes certainly thought so.
281.Oh what a tangled web we weave, all this strike action and a skint Labour government reliant on the very same Unions for funding with a GE imminent.
290.RM, what is being missed in all of this, is the much more forward looking planning that is going into the Scottish Conservative operation right now. Yes, there are obvious targets at this GE that have to be fought rigorously, and these two seats are on that list. With a resurgent Conservative party hoping to oust an unpopular Labour government, Perth and Angus are very doable.
But they are also targeting other seats with the aim of putting themselves into the position of making sure they are very good marginal targets next time.
Lots of seats like this in other parts of the UK that are now being considered and worked hard after being ignored for so long. We are finally getting our act together.
306.MalcolmG, I have come across some real anger about this pylon project, its going to be a real eyesore on the landscape. I am all for utilising our natural resources to the best of our abilities, and Scotland has got a great deal to offer with that regard. But we have to do it right for the longer term, and a little extra expense now to protect that would be a great legacy for the future too.
332 - Isn’t the one UUP MP against it?
268 The only way Labour will win the next election depends on two things.
1 They target ethnic minority voters in marginal constituencies call Tories ‘English racist bigots’
2 Allow all EU and non EU citizens full voting rights.
Then we will have permanent Labour government.
308. malcolmG - “Stuart, was that you in the first picture.”
Wee, it certainly wasn’t me in the 2nd one!
Actually, here’s me in my prime:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/128/332330477_07a5f4d97e.jpg?v=0
331 Maybe the parents will leave everything to the RSPCA, or other relatives. Maybe they won’t die during the Conservatives’ term in office. Maybe they’ve structured their affairs so their estates won’t face inheritance tax. Have you considered that?
329.Easterross, was planning to phone you tonight if that was okay? The holidays are over, so its finally stopped raining, typical.
332. Sean does that include the Labour MP for North Down?
337 - Didn’t work for Ken Livingstone.
Look. We’ve seen that the dead millionaires tax is popular. So popular that Labour copied it. Can we move on?
336 Indeed she is, although she has always been strongly anti-Conservative. I think it unlikely she would hold her seat if she were to run again as an independent.
The Conservatives/UUP’s best chance of a gain, however, is South Antrim.
338.Talking about ramping up your assets on political betting site.
Did anyone hear Dennis McGabble on the Westimster Hour last night? If not, its worth a listen to. It was just one long smeeeeeeeeeeeeeear. He even mentioned Bullingdon…..
338. Looks like your sporran has slipped inside your trunks.
344. Perhaps she’d consider running as a Labour candidate? If she wanted to drop to third or even fourth….
340 You have to admire the sheer cussedness of the Scottish weather!
“Now - when shall I rain? Let’s see…when are the holidays? Tell you what - I can’t be arsed to check - I’ll just rain most days instead. That should do the trick…”
346.Indeed I did, and I noticed that the presenter was struggling not to laugh as she let him have his full comedy slot. Very quick to cut off others who responded though.
But for me, the Milissa Kite segment was the most entertaining. Missed her intro, we were actually laughing and wondering wondering who the hell she was, and then all was revealed.
347. AndrewG - “Looks like your sporran has slipped inside your trunks.”
Actually, that’s one of the woolie kilt hose my great auntie knitted for me. Speedoes always look better when properly filled.
Apologies if anyone has posted this already, a very interesting article on Conhome about the future of the Tory party. It reinforces my belief that the reason that Labour are failing to land any blows on the Conservatives is that they are attacking what they want us to be, not what we are.
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2009/10/the-most-powerful-conservatism-in-the-world.html
Osbornes figures on Bankers Bonuses (£20Bn) being laughed at on Sky.
344 - Looks to me like the Tories have insured that the UUP is finished in Westminster.
And according to the Irish News the Alliance are thinking of supporting Hermon if she stands as an independent.
The genius of William Hague strikes again.
349.MM, another great indicator of rain outside the central belt, the Glasgow fair fortnight.
353 Really, I’m watching Sky right now?
“Allow all EU and non EU citizens full voting rights.”
All EU and non-EU citizens vote Labour?
354 I have an infallible rain forecasting tool.
Black suede shoes - I put them on, it rains
344. I wonder what is going to happen in Fermanagh & S Tyrone this time around, re an agreed unionist candidate?
353 “Osbornes figures on Bankers Bonuses (£20Bn) being laughed at on Sky.”
Why - are SKY presenters paid THAT much they can afford to sneer at the little people who work in banking?
342 Livingstone is a fool, but suppose Labour ever have a Black or or other ethnic or EU citizen as their leader they will have a good chance. There is a German citizen who a Labour MP and a very good one for that matter in Birmingham Edgebaston.
Brown and his team have totally failed to lay a glove on Cameron, in fact they learnt that Smithson rule the hard way! So they have decided to strategically go after Hague and Osborne instead, and with Osborne its very personal for Brown and Balls. They will attack and and undermine both Hague and Osborne continually until the next GE instead. Anything that tries to paint a picture splits between Cameron and his two key members in the Shadow Cabinet.
So don’t fall for it on here or anywhere else.
Listening to Milissa Kite whittering on about how Cameron would be concerned about letting George go head to head with Darling in a TV debate as Brown would like was hilarious. Yeah love, exceptionally politically astute Osborne would be shaking in his boots about that one after he has consistently got right up Brown and Ball’s nose for the last 5 years. If he had the guts to make that speech to Conference a few weeks ago, a TV debate wouldn’t faze him. But its all immaterial anyway, this is just another diversion tactic by Brown and his team after dithering for so long, and its aimed at making sure that Brown doesn’t get anywhere near such a debate.
Hence the obsession with Hague and the Conservative grouping in Europe. The Guardian are also doing their level best to obsess about this as well.
344- I met David Trimble and his wife at conference. I can’t repeat what he said, but he seemed very confident about the situation there for U C U N F.
Also, the guy is an absolute legend.
353 Prior to the Euros, there were widespread predictions that the UUP/Conservatives would be slaughtered; in fact, they held their MEP quite comfortably.
If Hermon runs as an independent in North Down (with or without Alliance backing) she’ll be running as a left winger in the Northern Ireland constituency that most resembles an English Conservative seat.
Surely Osborne was joking, or made a mistake.
The Conservatives believe up to £20 billion would be made available to boost credit for cash-strapped firms and individuals as a result of the policy.
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/economy-and-finance/osborne-targets-bankers-bonuses-$1336736.htm
356 I can’t see many wanting to vote Tory - 10% of them at best might.
360 - So you are saying that if David Lammy or Dianne Abbott was leading Labour they would win?
Helicopter crashes: 14 US soldiers and civilians die in Afghanistan
- Fourteen US soldiers and civilians have died in two helicopter crashes in America’s deadliest day in Afghanistan for four years
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6437713/Helicopter-crashes-14-US-soldiers-and-civilians-die-in-Afghanistan.html
serf at 68: Most people do define “Eurosceptical” as “sceptical about the European Union” - very few people would say they were sceptical about the landmass itself. Whatever the website says, in practice the organisation is largely critical. For example, it doesn’t give a hearing to those of us who, like my Conservative opponent, favour joining the Euro if business organisations advise it would be helpful. She’s quite right about that in my opinion, but you won’t find the CER saying so.
363 - Fancy a bet that the UUP get no MPs?
364 Tim. RBS alone is paying out £4 Billion in bonuses this year so that figure isn’t unrealistic.
339 - of course not, doesn’t fit the picture timbot is trying to portray
Re Mandeslons watch, did he pay for it or was it a gift from someone?
20k watches and 10k tv’s - imagine if Tory mp’s had them, tim would be…. very excited……
BTW - 1,673 votes on the previous thread’s poll on Clash “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Gordon.
Good effort, the Lurker Army!
[Spookily predictive lyrics, too - considering it was written 28 years ago. So now we know - the PM's future really is for the Chancellor to decide!
"Darling, you gotta let me know
Should I stay or should I go?" ]
369 I’ll decide once I know who’s standing where.
363 - All this is true but the point remains that the situation is endangering UUP representation at Westminster level. It will be a serious blow if they are reduced to zero seats. But, not for the first time, they could be taking an electoral hit in order to help normalise politics in Northern Ireland. Tim is just being Tim by trying to make out it has anything to do with Hague messing up. Best to ingore Tim when he’s in these moods.
366 They could attract a lot of ethnic minorities to vote for them in the same way as Scots will vote Labour because it has a Scottish leader. The ethnics quite rightly want to elect their man or woman, and so too will EU citizens.
370 - Don’t be silly
363. Sean Fear - “widespread predictions that the UUP/Conservatives would be slaughtered; in fact, they held their MEP quite comfortably.”
Err… largely because of TUV transfers.
Sean, this UUP/Tory merger hit the buffers before it had even pulled out of the station.
Time to go and feed a cat!! Its now positioned in front of the screen just so I get the point.
Re BBC Westminster Hour, Asking “FlyAKite” to comment on the Conservative party is akin to asking the worst tipster to tell us the next winner of the Grand National.
Kite has got so many things wrong in her speculations about the party that she can only have been selected for interview as part of some AWS strategy by the BBC.
373 - Fair enough.
I didn’t realise that Hagues genius in Europe had spread to NI.
Another entertaining story for us to follow.
376 What do you mean don’t be silly?
375 - The big problem being that they are both utterly useless. I suspect that if Labour chooses a BME leader simply because they are BME it would be a total disaster for them.
372 MM. Talking of the “luker army” I’m throwing open JARHEAD for nominations for a dramatis personae to appear in an enthralling episode to come …. I’m unable to confirm whether they come to a meaty end or not !!
Name names people !!
372, lol, groan, lol
377 - “Err… largely because of TUV transfers.”
On an increased share of the 1st preference vote since 2004.
Tim when is the Labour party giving the people of NI the chance to vote for them?
RBS £4bn bonus..
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rbs-executives-set-for-record-pound4bn-bonus-bonanza-1804867.html
377 Northern Ireland’s Euro elections are conducted under STV, so it’s not suprising (and indeed, it’s encouraging) that they were able to pick up transfers from TUV.
381 - Your post claiming that RBS are paying out £4 Billion in bonuses this year was very silly.
Opposition analysis: what does tim’s one-man vendetta against the next Foreign Secretary tell us about current Labour thinking?
390
that there isn’t any
390 - That they aren’t doing any.
390 - That Tim is lonely.
387 - I think you need to read what you posted.
I’m a bit surprised that no-one has mentioned the strength of Hague’s language - “a hostile act”.
How many times has anyone heard any UK politician use such words?
Usually the progression runs “have doubts”, “not helpful”, “should think again”, “will oppose”, “will oppose most strongly”.
“Hostile act” is DEFCON 4 - the final warning before hostilities commence and intimates that any retaliatory action taken will not be limited solely to the matter under discussion.
Hague would not have dared used such a phrase without the total backing of DC et al.
383.Alex Salmond in a braveheart role, kilt swishing and sword held aloft? A special edition featuring the yellow peril in the form of Sir Robert Smith and Lord Thurso as the incumbent land gentry protecting their turrets and driveways?
390 - Hague has always been my favourite inept senior Tory
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pictures/image/0,8543,-10904223232,00.html
and he’s playing a blinder in Europe.
382 James
Most Labour voters these days are totally committed to multiculturalism so I think they would like a BME to be leader. The left love diversity and a BME or EU citizen would suit Labour perfectly. The Tories will then follow suit. Remember AWS didn’t stop Labour winning in 1997.
396 ChristinaD. Sadly I already have Salmond earmarked for inclusion …. and btw also Nick Palmer, SeanT and Mike Smithson !!
390 - That he is already being treated as the Foreign Secretary in respect to decisions which will effect relations with a Conservative Government. All Labour can do is smear, and no one is listening to their pathetic attempts.
390.Martin, the Labour strategy is simple.
Hague and Europe. Osborne and IHT.
398 - How many average voters notice AWS in 1997? Secondly I think you should stop confusing Labour’s voters with their cretinously idiotic senior activists.
401.Oops, forgot link.
390.Martin, the Labour strategy is simple.
Hague and Europe. Osborne and IHT.
397 - And how many photos of Tony and Gordo backing some interesting characters can we find……
Starter for 10, on his hols with his mate Silvio,
http://liammacuaid.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/blair-berlusconi.jpg
361 ChristinaD. Quite right - saw the Q&A session after Osborne’s speech to-day, he was completely on top of his brief. No wonder Labour try so hard to denigrate him, he would destroy Darling in a debate. Tim’s pathetic slurs on here are ridiculous as ever. Unfortunately I missed his speech, can I get to it on UTube or elsewhere? Would appreciate anyone pointing me in the right direction.
OK, question to the banker types out there - if a bank has £4 billion in assets (say, cash in its vaults) - how much is it permitted to lend against that under current banking regulations? I’m assuming there is still some multiplier and the answer isn’t “er…£4 billion!”
401 then add
3. Target ethnic minority voters in marginal constituencies call Tories ‘English racist bigots’
$ Allow all EU and non EU citizens full voting rights then target these groups calling the Tories ‘little Englanders’.
Then we will have another Labour government.
383.
dramatis personae = The Sage of Sussex?
405 - No one can work out where his figure of £20 Billion in bank bonuses has come from.
Perhaps you can tell us.
383 How about Michael Fabricant’s wig, in an unfortunate “coming together” with Andrew Rosindell’s Staffordshire Bull-Terrier “Buster”…
Someone should ask George Osborne if he remembers what happened to Enron. There are very good reasons why employee bonuses should not be made entirely in company stock.
409 he never said that - he said increasing the capital base by increasing shareholder capital through retention of bonuses as new shares would enable an additional £20bn of lending, quite different. Most bankers can work that out.
408 SD. Perhaps a cameo.
BTW your middle name isn’t Tavish or other T starting name !!
Most clinically inopportune !!
390 - why, oh why, do the Tories on here get so wound up by Tim - and now, of all times?
Here’s how best to handle his tedious spoiling antics: just imagine his wretched, desperate misery on General Election night, at about 4am when Dave’s majority nudges a hundred. Go on, imagine it. Really picture his unhappiness. Savour his dismay.
I have a feeling some of our left-wing friends on here (Roger, Jonathan for instance - good eggs both) will be quite stoical, accepting people have wanted a change and that it’s part of the game. But tim will SEETHE. Prime Minister Dave. Foreign Secretary Hague. The Tories in for a decade. How the rage, bittered and bewildered, will spew forth. How entertaining it promises to be.
Enjoy that thought.
397 Tim. You poor man - Hague’s brains and competence start where yours leave off - somewhere a little above zero or am I flattering you?
410 MM. A strong contender.
374 I think it’s unlikely that the Singing Nun will retain South Antrim for the DUP. The swing to the DUP was among the lowest in Northern Ireland in 2005. In socio-economic terms, it’s becoming increasingly, a middle class suburb of Belfast, with fair-sized votes for nationalist parties, and Alliance, some of whom may be tempted to vote tactically for the UUP.
411 - He isn’t saying that they should be entirely in stock or perpetually in that form. He is saying for this year there should be a cash cap and any justified bonus above that cash cap should be stock.
412
So it was tim’s statement that was very silly. How apt.
402 A lot did, and many women voted Labour because of it. AWS worked for Labour, and a BME or EU citizen as Labour leader could help them to a fourth term. Labour called the Tories ‘little Englanders’ for years, where were Tories then - in the wilderness.
The multi-culti experiment has not failed Labour, it’s worked wonders for them and will do again and again.
tim@394, to be fair to LTL, the headline on that article is a complete disgrace - not hard to see how someone could be misled. The headline talks about a “bonus bonanza”, but the article is really about what they’re paying out in “bonuses and salaries”, and they don’t say how many people that covers, so there’s no way the reader can get any useful information out of that number at all.
Moral being:
1) When you hear a big number like that, divide it by the number of people in the country and think if it sounds realistic. 4000 million, in a country of less than 80 million = 500 pounds per head for bonuses at one bank - WTF…
2) Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.
3) Don’t believe anything you read in newspaper headlines.
412 Ted, tim and the understanding of big numbers are uneasy bed-fellows…which is why he must be someone at the heart of the New Labour Project!!
414- very true!
“The Tories in for a decade. ” Although Tim himself has called this “the dawn of a Tory millenium”. I’m not entirely sure he meant to call it that but it still counts.
Nick Palmer is lying. As he has been pointed out before, the idea that Charles Grant, well known head of a well-known pro-European think tank, is some kind of eurosceptic is mendacious to the point of irrationality.
It’s like coming on here and claiming an orange is an apple. Bizarre.
Then Nick says this:
Charles Grant and his thinktank have “a longstanding aversion to Blair’s European sympathies.”
Nick, have you not noticed this article is written by Grant under the headline: “Is Blair the right man to be president. Yes.”
Grant concludes: “Blair would improve the global credibility of the EU.”
So Nick Palmer MP for Broxtowe is trying to claim, as a eurosceptic a well known europhile who leads a well known europhile thinktank, and he is quoting an article by that man as proof of a Blair-should-not-be-president agenda - when the same article is all about how Blair would be a good president.
FFS Nick, we’re used to your fibs but this is specially inept.
It’s a good job you are gonna lose your seat: you will have time to recover your moderately-sized wits.
420 I doubt if AWS “worked” for Labour in Luton South.
413. Jack W
“M.” I’m afraid.
424 Ah, a suboptimal assertion in Nick’s case there then
dramatis personae = The Sage of Sunderland?
353 - I was watching Sky news as well. not sure what tim saw.
Mind you he is about an honest observer as Gordo.
420 - I hardly think anyone would have been swayed one way or another by AWS. Frankly if you think that was what won for Labour in 1997 you are deluded.
424. I wonder whether Nick was really passing on his own thoughts earlier, rather than simply parroting whatever smear had been hastily concocted in the bunker.
I really hope it is the former, even if those thoughts were utter tripe.
429- Tim twist the truth to support his own view point! Never…
Has anyone seen Mr Eagles posting since his stag-night?
In the words of the great Malcolm Tucker: “tim, you’re an omni-shambles.”
O/T Labour led the way with AWS in the 1990’s, ten years later the Tories followed suit. Soon Labour will come up BME/EU citizen only shortlists and the Tories will follow again.
So Labour invents, and the Tories implement!!!!
397 - as far as the EU is concerned, he could do no worse than the airheads who gave us Lisbon and denied us a referendum on it.
Of course in the warped logic of Labour supporters (and Europhiles) denying us a referendum (or making countries vote until the result matches the one written several years ago and files away in an EU vault) is a “geat day for democracy”.
433, surely he has been occupied in the action of getting married?
433 - He probably has to trek back to his abode after being deposited on Anglesey handcuffed semi-naked in a Tesco trolley or whatever passes for high-jinx these days.
436. I doubt Beowulf would have agreed
437 He’s getting hitched on Halloween.
436- knowledge is ignorance, freedom is slavery and all that.
435. That’s Zionist conspirators for you. No imagination.
@434:
Sorry, that should be “tim, you’re a f*cking omnishambles.”
433.No, where was heading for this wild weekend?
417 - I wish I had your confidence.
436 The warped logic of Labour and their supporters is now the political norm. The disease has spread to the Lib Dems and now the Tories.
English Nationalism here we come.
440, could be in police custody. Or attending a multitude of seminars.
412 - An extra £20 Billion in lending implies what levels of Share bonuses to senior retail bankers?
447 So long as he wasn’t caught with a dockside hooker
Does Obama also not like Gordy?
Join the millions in that little club.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jameskirkup/100014768/does-barack-obama-just-not-like-gordon-brown/
449, oh noes! What if he mistakenly approached a cross-dressing cage fighter…. ?!
449 -
449 - No Dockside Hookers, though my friends are utter gits. And I’ll tell you all what happened, but I have an appointment with my barber. Whilst, drunk, my friends dyed my hair pink.
449. It’d probably be a canalside hooker in Manchester. Which I’d assume is like a dockside hooker, but narrow and dirty.
431. But it’s not even a smear.
Compare and contrast. Charles Grant:
“Is Tony Blair the right man to be president of Europe?
Yes. His presence would improve the global credibility of the EU… Blair’s leadership could galvanise the union to focus on this outward-looking agenda. He would bring some stardust to an organisation in great need of dynamism and a fresh start.
“Another point in Blair’s favour is that he made a valuable contribution to the EU during his 10 years in office. In 1998, he had the idea of giving the EU a role in defence policy and that has subsequently led to the deployment of two dozen missions of peacekeepers.. He championed the cause of EU enlargement and, as the Central and East Europeans know, did a lot to ensure that they joined in 2004 and 2007.
“During the British presidency in 2005, Blair pushed climate change and energy security to the top of the EU’s agenda. He is Britain’s most pro-European prime minister since Edward Heath.
“A President Blair could also help the EU to cope with a Conservative Britain. His presence in Brussels would provoke some Eurosceptics, but if a government led by David Cameron tried to unpick parts of the Lisbon treaty or opt out of some institutions, Blair would be an eloquent defender of the EU on radio and television. He would explain to the British people why Eurosceptic policies could damage Britain’s interests.”
Now read Nick Palmer’s thoughts on the very same man writing the very same article:
“Charles Grant is not a disinterested observer: he is the head of a profoundly Eurosceptical thinktank with a longstanding aversion to Blair’s European sympathies. I’m not saying he’s making his conversations up, but his contacts are likely to be particuarly among the minority of Continental Eurosceptics, who will collectively dislike the idea of a strong EU leader and prefer a quiet technician.”
Nick Palmer has gone beyond the normal sad little lies we expect from him, to a kind of pathological dissembling, like a child caught stealing an apple, found with the apple in his hand, who denies the apple exists, or that he even knows what “apple” means.
453 - Oh deary me.
453 Eyebrows still intact?
457 - One eyebrow is slightly pinkish.
424 SeanT. I have never been an admirer of NPMP, glad to see so many people see him for the stooge he has always been. An interesting book - How many times will he contribute to this site after he loses his seat in the first six months of a new government?
450 - Hang on, whats this from that link
“Meanwhile, we know that the White House is busily flirting with the Tories. William Hague got the full welcome from Hillary Clinton last week, and we understand that talks are already underway about a David Cameron trip to the White House.”
Errm, subtly different than what certain posters were trying to claim is it not?
Also from the link
“The PM has made very clear that he wants the President to attend. Indeed, last week he was practically pleading.”
Practically pleading….. and this idiot represents our country
455. Nick Palmer was also heard to comment, “There are no American tanks in Baghdad”.
453, the hair… on your head?
D. Milliband avoids answering the question on R4 WATO Marth “Have you discussed these positions (Europe) with him?. A pity that Martha does not ask it again.
453 - sorry but, Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool
Remember revenge is a dish best served cold
What has happened to Fraser Nelson? When and why did he go shocking?
I blame Melanie.
462 - Yes the hair on my head.
And dyeing my hair pink, wasn’t the worst thing they did to me.
But my barber beckons, I couldn’t possibly get married with pink hair, could I?
453.TSE’s - Brilliant!!
Be glad you are getting married in rural Scotland, they still tar and feather you in their own special way!
Its often planned for weeks, with all measure of nasties stockpiled at some secret location. And the groom is usually the only poor sod that doesn’t have an inkling of when they will strike, he just knows its coming. You are then stuck in a land rover and driven around the village, often tied up outside a local hostelry in nothing more than your undies while you are toasted inside.
459 - Of course Nick has contributed far, far more to the site than posters like you. Long may he continue posting. You, I suspect, we could do without.
466, depends whether you call your wife “darling” “or Mistress”. Which one of you is wearing the dress at the wedding?
466 - the hair is not the worst of it?
oh do tell………………
The last stag night I went on the groom got so drunk so early that it was all over, and we were home in time for Match of the Day, at 10.30.
rubbish
469 MD. Ah one of those sorts of wedding. Was Peter the Punter comprehensively involved ??
Is Rangers F.C. about to join RBS, the Labour Party and The Scotsman on the growing list of Scottish Unionist institutions in crisis?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/r/rangers/8324603.stm
O/T I heard this last Friday that a lot of people can’t be helpers on school trips now as you need to be CRB checked to go.
so, mums with years of contact with that school can no longer pitch in and help out.
472, d’you mean with Mr. Eagles’ forthcoming matrimonal event?
Morris Dancer is unmarried.
470 - I awoke early morning sundayish, to find myself sellotaped to a (female) blow up doll, covered in whipped cream.
The suprise of it caused me to fall out of bed, and bang my head. I felt some runny stuff coming out of my head, it looked reddish, and i thought it was blood. (Turns out to be pink hair dye)
I called the hotel receptionist, who sent a first aider to my room.
The poor first aider, didn’t know what to say, I think she laughed, when she realised it was hair dye.
And can I say in the past, I’ve broken my ankle, my foot, my hand, dislocated my arm. But nothing hurts as much as when you try taking of sellotape, and it pulls the hairs out of your legs.
455- while he did break his word when he didn’t vote for a referendum on the constitution, I don’t think there is any need to get personal
468. But Neil, you can hardly defend Palmer’s blatant and ridiculous lies, as I have spelled them out at 455. Can you?
476
I’ll bet there are lots of photos….
476 - At least you don’t have to go through it again!
476 Well at least you still have both eyebrows.
A friend of mine had one shaved off - his intended was REALLY ANGRY
I see Immigrationgate not gone away
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1222998/Labour-open-borders-storm-Demands-inquiry-claims-migrants-let-Tories-accused-racism.html
“Ministers face calls for an inquiry into claims that their open-door immigration policy was designed to make Britain more multicultural and allow Labour to portray the Tories as racists.”
“Labour strategists went on to attack Tory leaders William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard as out of touch when they raised questions about immigration policy.”
I cannot wait to see you crash and burn Labour.
Is it on the beeb yet?
467. A friend of mine went to a stag do a few years ago. At the end of the night they shaved him completely from head to foot, stripped him naked (apart from lipstick kiss marks) and chained him to a lamppost outside the restaurant where the ‘hen party’ was happening (apparently the bride was quite stuck up and not-fun, and had told the best man she didn’t want a wild stag party happening).
Mr Eagles - are you back in the office - with pink hair????
473 Stuart
Obviously not a Rangers fan or not a fan of football (I’m sick of it - it just draws people into their own world)
Do you support Celtic or Partick Thistle if a footy fan?
Neil 468. Sadly, you are confusing quantity and quality - go back and read NPMP’s contributions, in the context in which they are made - the latest descibed by SeanT is a typical example. My contributions are totally unimportant and just reflect frustration and anger at the hypocrisy of his.His are important, because they tell us so much about him and his party.
A friend of mine who proudly sported a monobrow once got hammered amongst an unsporting group of friends. He woke up the next morning with both eyebrows gone, but the middle bit left, as a sort of Hitler brow. I don’t think he appreciated the avant-garde fashion statement.
484 - Yes.
473.Ooh, that is a new one, if its not doing well, its termed as Scottish Unionist? What happened to Salmond’s arc of prosperity? Can we expect to see the nation football team re classed as the Scottish Unionist team as well, they are also tanking right now?
The SNP better hope that Rangers FC gets a new owner soon, wouldn’t do to see that one go under while they are in charge.
482 - Is it on the beeb yet?
Don’t be ridicules, floater….it’s not ‘news’ worthy.!
488 Oh dear - I assume you haven’t seen your intended yet….
474.Not new, been helping for years on school trips etc, and been CRB checked for that period.
473 Stuart I think you will find mroe Scots support eithre Rangers or Celtic than support the SNP.
Given that RBS “owns” 10 of the Scottish Premier league’s 12 clubs it is hardly surprising if they are having to tighten their belts.
Reading the threads from the weekend.
Is it me, or is PB attracting some right whackjobs?
492, and they let you hang around young children, even though you’re a Conservative? Shocking.
In other news, is anybody else considering answering intrusive census questions in an amusing way?
Maybe, as we had Jedi for the religion, we could start a new sexuality: gnomesexual (one who participates in carnal acts with garden gnomes).
491 - She’s seen me. So long as I turn up on Saturday with black hair, the wedding is still on.
473 Stuart Celtic could hardly be classed as owing allegience to the Unionist cause. It flies the flag of a foreign country i.e. Ireland and a great many of its fans vote SNP.
However I suspect if the Loyal Orange Order does mobilise its members to oppose the SNP you will not do nearly as well at the GE as you might hope.
494 - Well it always had tim it just now has a couple who are worse.
495 - Well if you have carnal acts with these Gnomes. UAF might start protesting outside your house
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6716658.ece
494.Says the man with pink hair.
With all the hype over the BNP last week, we were going to attract some of the chaff.
499, also, may rename it ‘gnomosexual’. Spread the word through the internet!
494- yes, more so than usual
495- accountants could say that they practice double entry in the bedroom… (by which I mean book keeping)
485. francis
The only sport I am even vaguely interested in watching on tv is cycling (Tour de France etc, not track cycling).
I used to participate in a lot of sport, however the most I do now is cycle to work.
My dad is a big Rangers fan. He was brought up in Govan in the 30s and 40s.
497
do the SNP now advocate throwing a bit of sectarianism into Scottish politics ?
495.Morris, I was the school’s pet Tory.
495- Yodasexual?
501 In that case I suffer from gnomophobia
504.
No trolling thank you.
re 503. Good on you Stuart. I still cycle everyday and my favourite sporting event is the Tour de France.
505 ChristinaD. “….I was the school’s pet Tory.”
So that’s where you got “well handled” …. during biology lessons ??
468. Nick has certainly contributed greatly to this site.
But I do think the almost fawning admiration he gets from some posters is inappropriate. It seems to reflect some kind of oddly deferential attitude, along the lines of ‘we are not worthy to have an august Member of Parliament post among us’. And it probably leads to his posts getting less critical scrutiny than they otherwise might.
504. My understanding of Scottish politics (yes yes Stuart) is that the SNP have thrived by cleverly raising themselves above the notorious divisions within Scottish society - Highlander v Lowlander, Glasgow v Edinburgh, east v west, left versus right, and, of course, most pernicious of all: Catholic v Protestant.
If they fall on the “wrong” side - or indeed “any” side of that last divide - it would surely be damaging to them, by alienating so many others. They would no longer be a “National” party.
464 Nick Palmer was also heard to comment, “There are no American tanks in Baghdad
You know as well as I do how much he hates investigations into anything which happens in Baghdad.
515.Seant, a good list, but one the SNP have been steadily ticking off over the last couple of years. Hence my doubt about their big push at the next GE.
511 Mike S. ” …. I still cycle everyday ”
Mike, seen here delivering “focus leaflets” in the recent Bedford mayoralty contest :
http://onemansblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/funny_bike.jpg
Defection in a Con/Lib Dem marginal
John Buckley, the former Leader of the Labour group on Worcestershire Count Council has joined the Liberal Democrats after 40 years in the Labour Party!
John was welcomed to the Liberal Democrats by West Worcestershire Liberal Democrat candidate Richard Burt and County Councillor Beverley Nielsen (a former Conservative A-List candidate who joined Richard’s team earlier this year).
482, 490
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23760648-how-i-became-the-story-and-why-the-right-is-wrong.do
A non-story.
But I am sure those pinko rotters at the BBC would have ignored it anyway.
520 - You can see the splashes as he furiously rows back.
Neil please remember Nick Palmer says he feels free to insult anyone who uses a psuedonym.
That must include you, I suppose.
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2007/10/08/so-hows-browns-fight-back-going/#comment-525175
Ahem. I was mistaken, and SeanT is quite right on this occasion. I’ve googled Charles Grant and picked up other comments which don’t fit the image I was painting (e.g. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jun/23/thankgoodnessfortheagreeme ). I confused the CER wiuth Open Europe. Sorry!
495 - most definately new here.
Plato 484
A friend of mine had one shaved off - his intended was REALLY ANGRY
I didn’t know we were friends
And yes my intended was not best pleased either.
522, 3 - A few points (not many though
) for admitting the error.
NEW THREAD
Andrew Neather may try to spin this into a non-story about immigration now, but it is too late. He committed the arch sin of Nulabour and told the truth.
Once the words are out they cannot be brought back.
I bet he wished he could, but no chance. He has provided a stake to put through Labour’s heart and he knows it. With his testimony some of the oddities of policy twists, the timing and the direction, make much more sense.
520 - funnily enough everyone I know who has seen this story is spitting bullets and this is the 3rd day its been in the DM and has also been in other papers and several blogs.
Compare and contrast to the tory “row” over Europe as portrayed by the beeb, apparantly on the basis that there was once a spilt over Europe and they would quite like to report another one.