David Hughes

In his Downing Street statement this morning Gordon Brown said that one of the values he had learned during his upbringing in his “ordinary middle class home” was “telling the truth”. He did not learn it terribly well. His period as Chancellor was notorious for his manipulation of statistics – double counting and treble counting became routine. Since becoming Prime Minister, he has found it harder to get away with such slippery behaviour. Last month he was forced to issue a humiliating public apology for misleading the Chilcot Inquiry with his false claim (and he must have known it was false) that he had increased spending on the armed forces every year he was in the Treasury. And only last week he was rebuked by Sir Michael Scholar of the UK Statistics Authority for playing fast and loose with immigration figures. The PM used two sets of “not comparable” figure… Read More

Not for the first time, Rachel Sylvester has unearthed an intriguing nugget in her column this morning. She reveals that in the run-up to last year’s pre-Budget report, Alistair Darling and Lord Mandelson both argued that it would be better to deal with the deficit through an increase in VAT than a rise in national insurance. They argued, wisely, that an NI hike would be depicted by the Tories as a “tax on jobs” but they were overruled by Gordon Brown who in turn was backed by Ed Balls (or maybe it was the other way round). It is interesting, then, that Balls has subsequently stuck his neck out and categorically ruled out an increase in VAT if Labour is re-elected, something neither the PM nor the Chancellor have been stupid enough to do. Balls obviously sees VAT as one of his precious dividing lines with the Tories. Thi… Read More

Here’s a curious weekend item from the BBC’s media correspondent Torin Douglas about claims that the Conservatives are cosying up to Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. The issue, writes Douglas, has been brought into ” sharp focus by Ofcom’s long-awaited Pay TV report, which has ordered BSkyB to cut its charges for Sky Sports” – though the piece appeared on Saturday, four days after the Ofcom report was published. Towards the top of the article, Douglas writes this:  “Accusations – hotly denied by the Tories – have been made that Conservative media policy is in effect being written by Rupert Murdoch and his son James – the chairman of BSkyB, chief executive of the Sun’s owners News International, and not a fan of Ofcom. Labour claimed there’d been a deal on media policy after the Sun newspaper switched its allegiance to the Conservatives.” And just in case we the penny… Read More

What bright spark in the Downing Street bunker decided that Wayne Rooney’s ankle ligament was an appropriate metaphor for the UK economy? And not just a run-of-the-mill quickie of a metaphor but a long and elaborate one – this is Gordon Brown today:  “I know everyone will be hoping he’s fit for the World Cup but after an injury you need support to recover, you need support to get back to match fitness, you need support to get back your full strength and then go on to lift the World Cup. So with the economy – we’re not back to full fitness, we need to maintain support. If we try and jump off the treatment table as if nothing had happened we’ll do more damage to the economy – and frankly that means we risk a double-dip recession. I think that’s a risk we can’t afford to take.” Phew. A… Read More

Call me old-fashioned but should the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition in the run-up to an election (or at any other time for that matter) say that people are “gagging for change”? As we all know only too well, Dave has had the advantage of one of the finest educations money can buy. Is it too much to expect that somewhere along the way he may have acquired a vocabulary that would allow him to make a trenchant political point without reaching into the demotic depths? Choosing the Financial Times, of all organs, as the vehicle on which to give his street cred an outing is even more puzzling. Does he think this kind of rubbish is going to impress anyone in the City? The last time an Opposition leader tried to get down and dirty with the kids was Neil Kinnock at the Sheffield Rally on the eve… Read More

What do this country, Israel and New Zealand have in common? That’s right, you’ve guessed – we are the only three countries on the planet without written constitutions. I’m obliged to the FT’s Sue Cameron for this fascinating snippet and the even more intriguing fact that we are about to get just such a constitution by the back door. She reveals that the possibility of a hung Parliament has prompted Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, to produce a manual that can guide politicians through the constitutional minefield that would be created by an indecisive general election result. That’s appearing this week but will be followed after the election by a fuller, 10-chapter “cabinet manual” which effectively codifies the constitution. It’s long overdue. Cameron points out that the absence of a written constitution “makes it easier for political leaders to play fast and loose with the rules”, for example… Read More

Ed Miliband's manifesto has gone down 'like a cup of cold sick' (Photo: Getty)

This is turning into the most gripping slo-mo car crash in politics. The election is expected to be called next Tuesday – that’s right, just six days from now – and Ed Miliband’s efforts to produce a manifesto look as though they are hurtling into a ditch. The Financial Times has done a superb analysis of the position and if I were Gordon Brown I’d be  rattled. Miliband’s bragging to The Guardian last week about producing the most radical Labour manifesto ever has gone  down with the colleagues like a cup of cold sick. You can see why. Free school meals for all pupils, votes at 16, a cap on bank interest… Read More

Something called the Young Foundation – anyone heard of it? – has sent me details of a new project called First Political Memory. The idea is that people write an account of just that.You can quickly see where they are coming from with their round-up of the kind of memories they’ve had so far – “a school visit to Auschwitz, the Berlin Wall coming down,  Thatcher taking away milk at school” ( you can refresh your own memory about that last episode here). It’s an interesting juxtaposition – two epoch-defining global events, the Holocaust and the collapse of communism, sitting alongside the kind of government cost-cutting that is going to become all too familiar over the next four or five years, regardless of who wins the election. Amazing how it still rankles with so many people nearly 40 years on.

Rather more interesting are the memories of a couple of… Read More

OK, so what did we expect? A Labour Chancellor putting country before party when a general election is just six weeks away?  Be serious. That’s only happened once – when Roy Jenkins did the honourable thing in 1970 and Labour paid the price at the polls – and Alistair Darling is no Jenkins. There is a school of thought that Darling has had a good innings at the Treasury, that he’s decent man who has the guts to resist his next door neighbour’s more outrageous demands. He showed today that he’s happy to get down and dirty with the best of them There was virtually no economics in this package that we didn’t already know about. It was pure politics. The bits that were new were shamelessly politically motivated – nailing wealthy home owners with an increase in stamp duty on £1million-plus homes, for example. Then there was anti-Ashcroft… Read More

I see from this morning’s Times that the former Labour leader Lord Kinnock is now “custodian of the party’s heritage”. When did that happen? Never saw the job advertised. I suppose the honorific title is his by dint of becoming Labour’s oldest surviving ex-leader following the death of Michael Foot. He also happens to be the right man for the job. Kinnock is one of the few senior Labour figures left who retains any real integrity. Much derided when party leader for his loquacity, his ill-discipline and especially his failure to win the 1992 general election, he was neverthless the man who made New Labour possible. Kinnock did  the heavy lifting, particularly by taking on and hammering the hard Left, a battle he was by no means certain of winning.  It was to make Tony Blair’s job of modernising the party that much easier. He therefore deserves to be… Read More