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March 08, 2010

Ed Balls asks first-time voters: How did you vote at the last general election?

Picture 2 Ed Balls is fighting the newly-drawn Morley and Outwood constituency at the general election, after his existing Normanton seat was merged with that held by his wife, Yvette Cooper.

Taking the fight to Balls for the Conservatives is Antony Calvert, who wrote about his campaign here last year (you can read more about his campaign on his website).

But as we approach the election proper, Balls has thought it worthwhile to fire off missives to first-time voters (click the image above to enlarge) to introduce himself to the electorate and enclosing a survey to be returned by Freepost in which he asks them about their voting intentions.

But, quite ridiculously, he asks these 18-year-old constituents how they voted at the last two elections!!

Picture 1

Posted at 11:09 AM in Light relief | | Comments (17)

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Labour pours another £11bn of poison into the wells

6a00d83451b31c69e201310f249f28970c-500wi A fortnight ago William Hague compared Labour to a defeated army that poisoned the wells of the country it was retreating from.

15569075 The Independent reports the latest stage of Labour's attempt to handcuff any incoming Tory government to its impossible spending plans:

"Despite the looming squeeze on public spending, ministers are trying to push through several massive computer contracts before ballot day, which is widely expected on 6 May. The "break clauses" in some deals may make them very expensive to cancel, locking in the new government."

The Independent reports that last-ditch spending commitments planned by the Government include:

  • "approving local supplier contracts for the controversial £12.7bn NHS electronic patient records scheme, the largest computer project in the UK, which the Tories would dismantle;
  • signing a £1bn logistics software contract for the Ministry of Defence;
  • speeding up a £600m contract to run new personal pension accounts due to start in 2012;
  • completing an £800m agreement for communications equipment and services at the Serious Organised Crime Agency;
  • starting to print the 30 million forms for the 2011 census, even though the Tories have said they would scale back the £482m project."

MAUDE FRANCIS 2 Francis Maude told the newspaper that "Labour's actions resemble a dying administration making reckless and irresponsible spending commitments to wreck the finances for any incoming government."

The Independent criticises Labour in his leader column:

"With an election looming, although not yet officially called, ministers ought to be pushing through no long-term commercial contracts, and certainly none that an incoming administration would seek to unwind. Labour ministers appear to be exploiting a loophole in our constitution and the Conservatives are justified in being aggrieved."

Posted at 08:55 AM in Scorched earth | | Comments (24)

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No, Lord Mandelson, the unions have you by the balls

That great custodian of the nation's morality, Lord Mandelson, has today warned that Lord Ashcroft has David Cameron "by the balls". Lord Ashcroft accounted for no more than 1% or 2% of Tory funds in the last year. The unions account for more than 60% of Labour funds and that is why, today, Tory Chairman Eric Pickles is determined to turn the heat on Labour today by spotlighting the extent to which the trade union movement has Mandelson, Brown, Darling and the whole of the Labour Party by the balls.

Yesterday the News of the World revealed that the unions are spending more in marginal seats than the Conservatives.

In The Express Leo McKinstry reminds us what the unions have got for their money:

"Over the past 13 years Labour has been engulfed in endless scandals over its financial arrangements, such as the notorious cash-for-honours saga or the dodgy donations affair. Moreover 60 per cent of  Labour’s  funding today comes from the trade union movement, which is completely dominated by the public sector. It is no wonder, therefore, Brown has been so generous to public employees, rewarding them with higher pay, generous conditions, gold-plated pensions, job security and a massive expansion in the number of positions."

PICKLES ERIC 2009 Mr Pickles' anger is focused on the role of ex-Brown spin doctor Charlie Whelan. Like Alastair Campbell these creatures seem to resign but never quite leave the political stage. They still perform their dark arts from stage left. The Telegraph reports a key section of the Tory Chairman's letter to Peter Mandelson:

“The Labour Party is keeping Britain closed for business through its links with the Unite union. Not only is your party taking millions in cash and support from the union but its political director, Charlie Whelan, is providing advice to the Prime Minister which extends to briefing against the Chancellor on his behalf in the middle of a recession. This intimate relationship is creating a clear conflict of interest between the interests of the Labour party and the interests of the British people. It is evident from your approach to the proposed BA strike that the political interests of senior members of the government are hampering your ability to stand up for the interests of millions of passengers and for British business in the face of Unite’s militancy.”

It astounds me that the BBC is failing to report all of this.

Tim Montgomerie

Posted at 08:45 AM in Trade unions | | Comments (42)

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March 07, 2010

Guess what? The unions are spending more in the marginals than the Conservatives

6a00d83451b31c69e20128765eaa5d970c-800wi This from Ian Kirby, the News of the World's Political Editor (my emphasis):

"A highly confidential operation being run by Britain’s biggest trade union, Unite, is far bigger than the Tories’ own £3m marginal seats campaign. The union is using it’s own massive datatbase of members in a bid to persuade dithering former Labour voters they must get out and vote during the General Election. The swing voters are being called by activists working for the Union...

...The operation is being masterminded by Charlie Whelan, Unite’s Political Director and a close friend of Prime Minister Gordon Brown...

...at the moment Labour have about £8m to spend at the election, half of the Tories’ own General Election Budget. But Unite are likely to spend up to £5m on their own campaign before the General Election starts. The trade unions have sent a staggering £88.5million to the Labour Party HQ in the last eight years. This amounts to 63 per cent of all funding the Labour Party has received since official records of donations began in 2001. They are also providing teams of drivers across the country to transport the elderly to polling stations, they are organizing postal votes, and sending 200 campaign officials to the marginal seats....

...To reinforce the direct calls, letters and leaflets, the Labour Party is also planning poster campaigns that will highlight claims about cuts under a Tory Government. For the past six months, Labour MPs have bombarded government departments such as the Home Office, Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department of Health. They have been asking about the effect of budget cuts on their constituencies. Those answers will be used on posters which will claim the Tories will cut hundreds of front line police jobs, thousands of nurses and teachers. Labour strategists believe the campaign will be particularly effective in the North West, where a far higher proportion of potential labour voters are in public sector jobs."

Perhaps we'll now get a week of stories on the BBC about Labour being in debt to the trade union movement. Or perhaps we won't.

Tim Montgomerie

> Recent ToryDiary: Tory plan to scrap automatic funding of unions could "bankrupt" Labour

Posted at 08:48 AM in Labour tactics and strategy, Trade unions | | Comments (29)

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March 06, 2010

Clegg fears Liberal Democrats will split if he backs minority Tory government

6a00d83451b31c69e20120a7a68c93970b-800wi In his Saturday column Peter Oborne lists three reasons why Nick Clegg is likely to manoeuvre his party into a deal with Labour if there is a hung parliament:

  1. "Clegg has discovered (rather to his personal dismay) that most of his party regard any kind of agreement with the Conservatives with disgust. This feeling is so overwhelming that Clegg fears that a Lib/Tory pact might actually split his party.
  2. Second, Clegg believes LibDem and Tory policies are utterly incompatible. The key 'red line' is the economy. On the one hand, the LibDems are bitterly opposed to cutting spending immediately after the election, fearing that it would imperil Britain's fragile economic recovery.  However, Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne has already said he would slash the out-of-control budget deficit, starting with an emergency budget within weeks of the election.
  3. Third, the LibDems have been seduced by Brown's clever promise of electoral reform. The Prime Minister has long been opposed to proportional representation (because he believes it leads to weak governments), but he has softened his stance in a cynical ploy to cosy up to the LibDems."

Tim Montgomerie

> The Liberal Democrats set out their four demands for keeping a minority government in power

Posted at 10:12 AM in Liberal Democrats | | Comments (44)

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"Not true," Mr Brown, Defence chiefs accuse the PM of starving the armed forces of funds

2.45pm: This graph (hat tip to Burning our Money) gets closest to the truth about Labour's record on defence spending (click on the image to enlarge it):

Defence - bromund For the reasons pointed out by BoM, because defence costs have risen faster than inflation the second graph is most relevant. At a time of two wars Labour has cut the buying power of our armed forces.

***

Gordon-brown-pork-piesYesterday Gordon Brown told the Iraq inquiry that he gave the military all they needed. Liam Fox hit back, accusing the Prime Minister of being "evasive" and pointing to contradictory statements issued by others.

Today, Mr Brown gets both barrels from retired military chiefs in The Times and Telegraph.

“He’s dissembling, he’s being disingenuous. It’s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed. There may have been a 1.5 per cent increase in the defence budget but the MoD was starved of funds.” - Admiral Lord Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff up to the start of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, quoted in The Times

"To say Gordon Brown has given the military all they asked for is simply not true. He cannot get away with saying I gave them everything they asked for, that is simply disingenuous." - Lord Guthrie in The Telegraph

“The real truth is the Armed Forces are underfunded.” - Major General Patrick Cordingley, quoted in The Telegraph

Speaking on Radio 4 at 8.15am this morning, General Sir Richard Dannatt backed his former colleagues in the armed forces. The whole of the armed forces had been robbed to provide the basics for combat operations, he told listeners.

In its leader column The Telegraph makes the obvious conclusion:

"What they do know is that there are soldiers who would not have been killed had they been better equipped and whether that was the Treasury’s fault or the MoD’s is neither here nor there. The Government must be held to account; and Mr Brown has been at its heart for 13 years."

Tim Montgomerie

Posted at 08:25 AM in Dirty Tricks Labour, Gordon Brown, Labour failure | | Comments (30)

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March 05, 2010

Gordon Brown accused of evading the real questions at Chilcot and contradicting Geoff Hoon and others on defence spending

Gordon Brown spent most of today giving evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry.

Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox was following him closely and has just released the following statement suggesting that there are significant contradictions between his claims and those of others Cabinet ministers, senior civil servants and army officers:

“Gordon Brown was a member of the inner circle, but true to form he didn’t want to take any responsibility for decisions which had negative consequences. He admitted that planning for the war was deficient, but with typical weasel words he tried to pin the blame on everyone else, above all the Americans. The Prime Minister put on a typically evasive performance, answering the questions he wanted to hear, rather than the questions which were put to him.

“There are still contradictions between what Gordon Brown said about defence spending, and what Geoff Hoon, Lord Walker, Lord Guthrie and Sir Kevin Tebbit have said. There have been consistent allegations that the 1998 SDR was underfunded, which were not addressed. There have been consistent allegations that, as Chancellor, Gordon Brown was so unsympathetic to the Armed Forces that he denied them what they needed for what the Government asked of them. Something does not add up here.”

Jonathan Isaby

Posted at 04:58 PM in Gordon Brown | | Comments (25)

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March 04, 2010

Tories turn up heat on Lord Paul's appointment to the Privy Council

Picture 4 Lord Paul is a Labour peer, non-domiciled for tax purposes, who was inexplicably appointed a Privy Councillor last year. He has also donated tens of thousands of pounds to the Labour Party and to Gordon Brown's leadership campaign (Iain Dale posted a list of eight Labour big money donors who are reportedly non-dom earlier in the week).

Greg Hands, the Conservative MP for Hammersmith and Fulham, has now submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Ministry of Justice requesting sight of documents and information relating to:

  • the appointment of Lord Paul to the Privy Council in July last year;
  • the number of times he has attended Privy Council meetings; and
  • his swearing in into the Privy Council and the current investigation into his alleged misuse of parliamentary expenses.

Hands' letter to the Ministry of Justice sets out his concerns about Lord Paul's appointment to the Privy Council:

"It has been previously suggested that the appointment of Lord Paul to the Privy Council may have been related to his bankrolling of the Prime Minister’s leadership campaign and close friendship with Gordon Brown. Lord Paul has himself previously claimed that he would give ‘as much as I can afford’ to help Labour re-election campaign fund.

"Lord Paul does not attend Cabinet, nor has he ever attended Cabinet and the highest position he has achieved in public life was being one of 18 deputy speakers of the Lords. There is no current precedent for someone so junior to be made a Privy Councillor in this way. The only similar comparison in terms of that office is Lord Ampthill who was made a Privy Councillor in 1995. Yet he had been Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords for two years, and had been a Deputy Speaker continually since 1983 (i.e. significant length of service).

"The Government has previously stated that he was appointed because he was the first deputy speaker of the Lords from an ethnic minority. However, Keith Vaz was appointed to the Privy Council in 2006, seven years after he was made Britain’s first Asian minister."

Jonathan Isaby

Posted at 01:09 PM in Politicised charities and appointments | | Comments (40)

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Unite's Derek Simpson told Tory union emissary to "get lost"

Picture 2 Last September, Richard Balfe, the one-time Labour MEP who joined the Conservatives in 2002 wrote here about the "very constructive dialogue" which some in the trade union movement are having with the Conservatives. Balfe liaises with the unions on behalf of David Cameron.

However, in this week's New Statesman, the joint general secretary of Unite, Derek Simpson (pictured), reveals that he told Mr Balfe to "get lost" when he sought a dialogue:

“I come from the old school. I don't think there is any advantage in talking to the Tories at all. You are just going to get whatever they are going to give you. Quite frankly, it's just waffle. Fortunately, since I'm in my final year [he steps down as leader in December], I won't have to be in that situation. Which is why I told Richard Balfe to get lost."

"The idea that they have changed is completely wrong. Lord Ashcroft - he's basically bought the party and is waiting for power. The cabinet wouldn't be able to resist whatever Ashcroft wants. They are already mouthing off about what they are going to do about the unions. I just wouldn't talk to them, personally. Waste of time."

How very constructive.

Later in the interview he gives his backing to Ed Miliband as the next Labour leader.

Jonathan Isaby

Posted at 08:36 AM in Labour leadership race, Lurching Left, Trade unions | | Comments (24)

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March 03, 2010

Former Labour leader Michael Foot has died

BBC report.

Screen shot 2010-03-03 at 12.57.14

"Mr Cameron paid tribute to former Labour leader Michael Foot, who died today, saying he was “a brilliant speaker”, “very intelligent and witty” and “gave very powerful speeches”." (PoliticsHome).

TRIBUTE FROM JACK STRAW

TRIBUTE FROM GORDON BROWN

MARGARET THATCHER:

"Thatcher on Foot: "I was very sorry to hear the news. He was a great parliamentarian and a man of his principles."

DAVID CAMERON'S FULL TRIBUTE:

“My first thoughts are for those he leaves behind, the friends and the family. He was a remarkable man and in many ways, almost the last link to a more heroic age in politics. You think of him in the 1930’s fighting fascism and Hitler alongside Winston Churchill and the great giants of that age. I also very much admired his great defence of our parliamentary democracy and the House of Commons which he absolutely loved, obviously we come from very different political persuasions but also his idealism, there was never any doubt that he was in politics because he loved his country, he believed in public service, he wanted to make it a better place. I think he’ll be remembered as a great speaker, a fantastic orator, a beautiful writer. A very passionate man who was part of this more heroic age of politics where we were fighting fascism and the rise of fascism in Europe and he was on the right side of that argument and wrote such a brilliant book. Obviously he knew both victory and defeat and obviously people will remember the defeat as Labour leader, but above all he was an idealist, someone who was in politics for the right reasons and someone who wrote and spoke beautifully.”

Posted at 01:00 PM | | Comments (73)

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