Osborne’s First Press Conference: Giving Away the Right to ‘Cook the Books’
On May 17th the current Chancellor George Osborne gave his first press conference about the economy. He said some interesting points; the main headline was undoubtedly the £6 billion of cuts announced on Monday 24th May or, as the Prime Minister would say, saving £1 out of every 100 the government spends. When the figure of £6 billion is put like this, it sounds much less scary, but the figure also is worrisome because it represents not a drop in the ocean, but rather a grain of sand in the ocean. If the priority of the government is to cut the deficit quickly, saving one percent will not be sufficient enough. Talking about cuts is a tricky thing to do, cut too fast and it may set the country back, cut too slowly and the deficit and debt increase, the golden figure in terms of cutting public spending is still to be found.
Another headline grabber was the
Chancellor giving away his ability to predict forecasts. Osborne
accused the former Chancellors, Brown and Darling of being too
optimistic, being out by £13 billion. Most damaging of all, he
accused the previous government of ‘cooking the books’. Osborne
argues that this will reduce the likelihood and make it more
difficult for him to ‘cook the books’ because the forecasts will
be based on independent analyses given by the newly formed Office for
Budget Responsibility.
The government wants to tackle the deficit quickly, but the metaphors used by them about the previous Labour government are ridiculous. The worst one bandied around is that Labour had a ‘scorched earth’ policy, this metaphor conjures up the image not only of Labour wilfully printing money, but burning wheelbarrows of it at a time without a care in the world, making sure that the incoming government would have an extremely hard time clearing up.
It’s good to see the government getting on with reducing this deficit, £6billion is a very small amount, but the real test for this coalition and of this supposed honeymoon will be June 22 2010, the day we learn how much real change Britain has left in the piggybank.
(picture courtesy of Ewan McIntosh @Flickr)
Winning twelve seats in the European Parliament at the 2009 elections, coming second only to the Conservatives in England, was a breakthrough for the party. Naturally, after that boost, UKIP wants to be taken seriously as an electoral force, and a viable alternative to the status quo on all political issues, not just through the anti-European Union stance for which the party is best known.
This aspiration is reasonable enough. Many parties have started out as pressure groups, standing in elections to make a point, to bring a particular issue into the political spotlight. The Green movement in Europe, the Northern League in Italy and the Bloc Québécois in Canada have all successfully morphed from single issue campaign groups into parties with a comprehensive manifesto and a desire not just to influence government, but to be part of it. UKIP has clearly decided these are the examples it must follow.
The problem is that once UKIP has made that choice and resolved to become a party campaigning on all issues, it has to see it through, and start taking itself seriously on that basis. The paperwork is there; the party’s manifesto contains pledges on seventeen different policy areas, from the NHS to pensions to transport. And whatever you think of the policies themselves (you can read a summary of the manifesto here - http://www.ukip.org/content/ukip-policies/1567-ukip-manifesto), most of the bases are covered.
But politicians and activists within UKIP just aren’t communicating this new identity effectively. In this election season, the party is coming across as a ranting, raving, aggressively anti-European group, still obsessed with a single issue. We’ve already seen Nigel Farage’s bizarre tirade against the European Council President, Herman van Rompuy, in February. However outraged he is that an unelected politician is so influential in Europe, Farage’s outburst seemed unprofessional, hysterical, and against the politeness which UKIP identifies as “part of Britishness” in its own publications (http://www.ukip.org/media/pdf/Britishness.pdf).
Now Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who replaced Farage as leader of UKIP in December, has given on the BBC’s Campaign Show. Lord Pearson was completely unwilling to discuss much of his own party’s manifesto, such as their policy on crime, because he wanted to focus only on Europe, which is UKIP’s safer ground. When he was pressed on the manifesto, Lord Pearson implied that he hadn’t developed most of the policies himself, and though he did claim to have read the manifesto in full, his unwillingness to defend it made for a less than convincing party leader.
UKIP must stop playing games with the electorate. It is the party’s right to choose whether to be a protest group or an alternative government. But if they pretend to be something they’re not, UKIP politicians can expect voters to leave them out in the cold.
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