IDS

[wilts rover]

I'm kicking myself for not seeing this scenario coming. Last year, Osborne published a Budget that had totally unrealisable cuts planned up to 2020. He did it because he thought he would never have to implement them. He was not expecting a majority. He did it to hit Labour with the Profligate stick and he was hoping for, at best, another LD coalition. After which, the cuts could be quietly ditched.

I'd forgotten all that in the run up to the Budget. He's had to ram this PIP issue through to try to make his plan for deficit reduction add up. And now it's collapsing. And Osborne is a busted flush. His own side is now openly kicking against the insanity of the fiscal plans. But his entire credibility is predicated on seeing them through.

I had always got Osborne down as one of the great political manoeuvrers. But I suspect he's run off the edge of the cliff this time. I think he will not survive the summer as Chancellor.

Either we vote to leave the EU. In which case, he's into political oblivion. Or we don't, and he is knifed in a re-shuffle.

Blimey Billy has your account been hacked - or the ghost of Mad Mick addled your brain?

For years you have been saying that the Tory Party have an ideological opposition to the Welfare State and all it stands for, the richest supporting the poorest through taxes, and wish to do away with it. Thus to keep taxes low and the rich, richer. This is a viewpoint I concur with 100%.

Now you are saying that the first opportunity they had to implement this policy whilst in government - they didn't really believe it!!! They are really nice and cuddly and have fooled us all with the pretendy austerity measures!!! Yeah right.

Osborne belives it all right, as do Cameron and Duncan Smith. If there weren't a referendum on the EU coming up he would have been right behind these cuts - its only the opportunity to stick one into Cameron and Osborne to be seen as a 'nice' man and thus persuade us to listen to and vote his way in June - that he has gone. Not that he could stay after June.

OK, the PIP cuts may not have been as severe last week if his economic plans had produced the results he has been saying they would for 6 years, but now they too are being seen for the economic madness that people (including you) have said they were. But they would have been there. The Tories aim to break up the Welfare State so that people will have the services they can pay for. They wish to take us back to a time when Britain was Great with low taxes. The 18th Century.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Wilts

You're misreading me. I'm not talking about the ideological drive. Osborne (and he's the driver here - Cameron is just the Front of House face) does have a general ideological leaning towards smaller state. No question of that.

But it's entirely secondary to his position as a political animal. Neither he nor Cameron are out and out ideologues. They are primarily and ruthlessly in the business of power. There's not a policy or a stance that they won't pick up, run with and drop if it gives them a political advantage. Osborne was quite brilliant in effectively running a Keynesian stimulus for 18 months before the last Election, precisely at the time that Labour had given up making the case. f**king genius. Genuine political genius.

The two of them actually remind me of Harold Wilson. Holding together a fractious party. Being prepared to tack one way then another. Tacticians rather than ideological strategists.

The PIP shambles fits in totally with that. Osborne, brilliantly, won the Election by convincing enough idiots that Austerity was the way forward and that Labour couldn't be trusted. He upped the ante to ridiculous levels with his aim of getting Govt spending down to 35% by 2020. But he never expected to be able to implement that because no-one expected them to be so successful last May.

I don't doubt that he would like to see spending at those levels. As would his party. It's in their blood. But equally, the Party realises that there is a massive potential electoral price to pay for being so harsh, once the Electorate sees what it means in reality.  So they've blinked on this one.

It's like I say about Corbyn. Politics is the art of the possible. The Tories want to destroy the Welfare State. But that is a generation-long job, not a 2 Parliament job. For Osborne, it was always about making sure that he was the standard bearer for the second half of the job from 2020 onwards. And he DID win the 2015 Election, no question. But to do so, he's painted himself into a corner of having to rush the job. And allowing IDS to play this role in bringing him down. And yes, I'm sure that IDS has other agendas. But playing the role that he has done only works if there is a grain of believable truth in the act. I do actually believe that he is sincere in believing that he is the champion of those in welfare. Of course he is not resigning BECAUSE of that belief. He resigned to terminally wound Osborne, whom he detests. But it helps him to play the role.

From a neutral standpoint, if people's lives weren't affected, it's a thoroughly absorbing thing to watch.

[Yargo]

I'll just leave this here: http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-europe-cbi-idUKKCN0WN0IK

Of course the CBI have been asked before,only 10% thought Britain shouldnt join the Euro
https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/1764/Attitudes-Towards-EMU-Survey-of-CBI-Members.aspx

[BillyStubbsTears]

That's a very particular way of interpreting those numbers Yargo.

Me, I look at them and see 69% saying that we should not be committing at all, or at least until we see, a decade or so later, how things are going.

In any case, the survey was pointless. The pros and cons of the Euro are about its effects on macroeconomics. There is no reason why a business leader should be any more clues up about the subtleties of macroeconomic theory than me and thee. That was demonstrated conclusively in the response of many business leaders to the whole Austerity debate.

Different issue when we are talking about a report by experts on the topic of the effect on business of access to the single market.

[MachoMadness]

Latest polls (for what they're worth) show Corbyn narrowly ahead of the bacon-botherer, whereas the Tories are only narrowly ahead of Labour. Margins are getting finer, folks: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/osborne-s-ratings-plunge-after-budget-and-corbyn-is-more-popular-than-pm-a3210916.html

[Filo]

After all the lip service by IDS about an unfair budget, he then voted for it!

[BillyStubbsTears]

MM

By this time in the previous electoral cycle, Labour had been ahead in the polls for 4 months. That meant nothing when the Election came around 4 years later.

As regards Corbyn's ratings relative to Cameron, that is utterly irrelevant. Cameron won't be his opponent in 2020. So Cameron's unpopularity doesn't mean anything. 

[Lipsy]

This might help Labour surge into the lead (or it might go down. *ahem*):

[MachoMadness]

BST, I'm well aware that there is a long way to go to 2020, and Cameron won't be the opposition. However, it does show that maybe Corbyn isn't quite as unelectable as some might think. He's eminently more electable than Osborne ever will be ever again, which means the most likely candidate to face him, Brexit depending, is probably Boris. Who himself has been mauled in the press recently.

[BobG]

Not sure I can believe that MM.  I wish I could. But the power of the press and even the Tory party hasn't been unleashed on Corbyn yet. And it won't be for a while yet. Don't forget the Labour Party did exactly the same thing with IDS when he was leader of the Conservatives. Corbyn is meat and drink for the Tory Party. They desparately want him to stay in the job. Because then he will be easy to toast in 2 and 3 years time.  Any half way decent middle of the road Labour leader would be much harder to crisp up.

Corbyn, sad to say, is simply not the man. We can see that now. Where is the opposition in all this Tory infighting? Nuff said. He's a busted flush already and the Tories will do everything they can to make sure he stays as Leader. Just watch for the relative paucity of attacks on him in the press.

BobG

[Glyn_Wigley]

Has anybody heard about Boris trying to defend his previous blustering in front of the Treasury Select Committee this week? It's hilarious.

It's either been ignored by the (mostly Exit) press, or whitewashed as a Boris triumph, as in the Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3505738/Boris-Johnson-auditions-No-10-two-hour-grilling-senior-MPs-Brexit-implications-City-London.html

It's sad that in this country we only start getting a more balanced report from overseas ie Russia Today!:

https://www.rt.com/uk/336933-boris-johnson-eu-regulations/

There's a partial as-it-happens report here as well:

http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2016/03/23/boris-johnson-grilled-on-eu-referendum-as-it-happens

However, if you want to make your own mind up, here's the full recording:

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/treasury-committee/news-parliament-2015/eu-referendum-evidence-15-

[Lipsy]

Was that the one where he suggested that thanks to the EU, 8-year-olds and under were banned from blowing up balloons and there was an EU directive preventing us from re-using teabags?

Either way, I believe that he was told to stop scare-mongering/be factually accurate with his statements. Really cannot stand the plank.

[wilts rover]

The story in the Guardian was headlined 'All very interesting Boris, except none of it is true is it?

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/23/very-interesting-boris-johnson-brexit-treasury-select-committee

[BillyStubbsTears]

Reminds me of that shock story that Teresa May presented to the Tory Conference a few years back, on how the Human Rights Act had prevented us from deporting a Peruvian man whose visa had expired, because he had a pet cat. In true Littlejohn style she said, exasperatedly "And I'm not making this up!"

Trouble was, she was...

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/oct/04/theresa-may-wrong-cat-deportation

As Paul Krugman frequently says, the truth tends to have a left-wing bias.

[Glyn_Wigley]

Reminds me of that shock story that Teresa May presented to the Tory Conference a few years back, on how the Human Rights Act had prevented us from deporting a Peruvian man whose visa had expired, because he had a pet cat. In true Littlejohn style she said, exasperatedly "And I'm not making this up!"

Trouble was, she was...

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/oct/04/theresa-may-wrong-cat-deportation

As Paul Krugman frequently says, the truth tends to have a left-wing bias.

And she'd nicked that from a Nigel Farage speech - he even said 'And I'm not making this up!' too! - where he'd got loads of the facts wrong as well!

[BillyStubbsTears]

On the subject of the Doyens of the Right repenting of their life's work...


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3520932/PETER-HITCHENS-Privatisation-Free-trade-Shares-great-ruined-Britain.html#ixzz44qqaZQDR

Apologies for the Daily Mail link...I feel slightly soiled, but it's worth a read, just too see someone who was ideologically committed to the Neo-Liberal, anti-statist drive that has dominated for the past two generations, now saying that it has been a f**king disaster.

[BobG]

Y'know what Billy? I've just sat here, for a couple of minutes in fact, trying to will myself into clicking that link. I failed.

BobG

[MachoMadness]

Y'know what Billy? I've just sat here, for a couple of minutes in fact, trying to will myself into clicking that link. I failed.

BobG

Funny you should say that. I had the same problem!

Even giving them 0.000001p in ad revenue or whatever it is for 1 click ultimately isn't worth it.