Greensill: Actually, The Treasury Done OK (Eventually)

Reading what is, presumably, only the first batch of Cameron messages we're to be regaled with, I'd say his email approaches to various players within Whitehall were succinct, eminently plausible-sounding, and all-in-all really quite adroit, given the mission he was set on to accomplish.  We'd probably expect nothing less.

In all the covid-chaos of the time when really big bad, panicky decisions were being made on an industrial scale, I'd further say that it was a bloody miracle he didn't get his way.  Not least, when you consider the dodgy vehicles that were being ushered into the 'VIP Lanes', left right and centre.

Let us now launch into pure inference.  It seems such a bloody miracle, one then has to suspect the Treasury had already got Greensill's number in no uncertain terms (eventually, after years of over-indulgence).  If that's right, we may be mightily glad of it.  Would that informed official skepticism always thus prevailed.

As regards Cameron, if this account is even vaguely true then he really has prostituted himself.  (To get one over on Osborne and the Blairs ..?)  Plenty of people aren't remotely surprised, but I rather am.  Getting naive in my old age.  

ND

Polly Toynbee is (Sometimes) Right

... about once a decade, I suppose.  She's an odd mix.  On the one hand she has a dreadful propensity to write up in the ever-gullible Grauniad whatever rubbish she's been told over a congenial lunch one-to-one with someone she's girlishly in awe of.  Her cavalier attitude towards easily-checked facts once spawned a small industry under the banner of Fact-Checking Pollyanna.  

On the other, she is capable of painstaking (if not actually painful) feats of empirical research, e.g. taking on menial jobs for months at a time to find out what's really happening somewhere, in order to write a book with some serious underpinnings.  She's an interesting contradiction; and the psychology of all this is a real puzzle.

Anyhow: she's had one of those once-a-decade moments (as usual, in the Graun). 

Squalid prisons are just the start. The entire justice system is in meltdown ... From the police to legal aid to the courts, savage cuts mean a nightmare is unfolding largely out of public view 

You scarcely need to read the article.  She's right, of course.  My own vantage-point on this is a friend in the CPS, whose stories from the front are frequently quite appalling.  Plus, of course, we all have the reports of our own eyes. 

And we know who's at least partly to blame: yes, the woman who was Home Secretary for six long years.  It's plain that (in her manifest cowardice, by now so transparent she is the laughing stock of Europe) she bowed all too readily to the budget constraints demanded by Osborne, and concluded the only priorities to be maintained were (a) counter-terrorism and (b) various crazy social policies inflicted upon the police.  Both she and Osborne richly deserve to languish in one of our choice prisons, doing some Toynbee-style first-hand research for themselves.

Recall the 2011 riots:  does anyone imagine they could be handled again today?  Even then it was wholly unsatisfactory for the first few days: but at least, on Cameron's insistence, a mighty and unrelenting effort was mounted to run to ground as many of the miscreants as possible over the following months.  Today?  Well, we may find out.  As one of our perceptive BTL commenters wrote in 2011, on that occasion there was no officer-class of motivated malcontents in evidence to coordinate the street-scum: but what if there was?   

Seven years later and it's not just in existence, it has a positive virtual Sandhurst of its own.  We may be grateful its titular leader is the utter plonker he is; that his No.2 holds no popular attraction whatever for the voters at large; and that Diane Abbbottt is a national joke.  That said, imagine her as Home Secretary ...  well, we may find out.

ND

Net Migration falls - The power of Nudge proven at last

Do you remember under the halcyon days of David Cameron, when the Government was obsessed by the concept of this book?

Which basically says, rather than be a pure busy body nanny state and tell people not to eat bad food, you can create incentives via taxes or social signals that overall will change behaviours. It seemed great, less money could be spent, the Government could still play a role a nanny, but in a less authoritarian manner - so perfect for Cameron's continuity New Labour governing style.


We now have a really good example of this, the vote to Leave the EU in large part about the concerns around immigration - check out some of these ONS truth bullets that confirm why people were indeed concerned:


"Last year around one in seven residents were born abroad, and one in 11 had non-British nationality.
Another dataset released on Thursday showed that more than a quarter (28.2%) of births in England and Wales were to women born outside the UK, the highest level on record.






Statisticians said that despite an overall decline in the number of births between 2015 and 2016, births to mothers born overseas increased by 2.1% as foreign-born women make up an increasing share of the female population of childbearing age.




Brent in north-west London was the local authority area with the highest percentage of births to non-UK-born women, at more than three quarters (76.0%)."






So we voted Leave, a big social signal. Here we are 12 months later an indeed EU migration has fallen and emigration has increased. A net fall to a still unsustainable +246,000 a year - still a new Norwich or Blackpool or Milton Keynes every year.


But the 'Nudge' has worked hasn't it - immigration from the EU is falling after we have voted to leave the EU. At last, Cameron and his acolyte Steve Hilton have proof that the ideas they put into practice actually work.

Cameroon, Silver Spoon era.

 

The May Day Parade begins. The Cameroon era ends a little sooner than expected. Only a little sooner as we know David Cameron was going anyway. Probably in 12 months or so time. He hasn't gone as he would have wished. And  he will now be as historically defined by the referendum he called, as Tony Blair is by the Iraq War he began. Not a legacy he would have chosen.

 How do we rate the Cameron era? Good, bad or just..meh!?

The referendum does rather define the weaknesses of his era.  Continuity New Labour was very evident. Cameron was one of the early Tories to realise that it wasn't possible to beat an election winning machine like Blair by opposing his populist policies. It seems obvious now, but not that long ago the Tories answer to Tony Blair's success was to try and attack all his popular measures. When that failed it was to point out the flaws and the contradictions and the cost of all the magic money. But the Tory media was not a patch on the Labour one. So the attacks failed. Worse, they rebounded. The 'Nasty party' was back.

Cameron saw all this and figured, if you can't beat them, join them. To the annoyance of very many in his own party. But he was right. It is only in very recent times that Tony Blair's star has faded. That spin doctoring every sentence in every provincial newspaper has been discredited. for years and years that was what worked. And Cameron wanted to win. So the never actually called, but absolubtely was, New Tory, was born.

Not defeating the dysfunctional Brown government outright was a bad blow. It should have been easy. And without the world economic crash and all those spending promises to out Brown, Brown it would have been. The Tories were well ahead and remained so up until the point that they spoke about making some cuts. Then the gap narrowed. 
And, with hindsight, we know the polling has been off for quite a long time, so don't really know how close it ever was. Untried Posh boy versus Financial Titan?

The coalition was probably Cameron's biggest success. There was instant talk of how long it would last. Six months to a year was considered good. Cameron managed to make it last the term. And in doing so he also destroyed the Liberal Democrats. 
He stopped the financial crash getting any worse for the UK. Steadied a very rocky ship in difficult waters. 

The defeat of Miliband was a s welcome as it was unexpected. So one and a half wins out of two. pretty good for a post war British PM.

Too much sofa cabinet. Too much of  clique. To much party centralisation. Silver Spoon toffs and a lack of any real, real vision other than keep the Trots away from power and make Britain a nicer place.

Too much government.  And too much politics playing. That continuity Blair again. Too much concern with how the media would play an event and not enough about the actual long term consequences of the event. Those '10s of thousands of immigrants' promises. "Cast iron". Even his 'making savage cuts' narrative for the first year, when few were made at all. All those 'Spins' eventually came back to bite. The internet and social media had rendered much of New Labour's manipulative methods obsolete. It was a mistake to persist with them.

And of course the biggest folly of all. Shooting the UKIP fox short term, by promising an EU referendum he didn't want or even need to call. This wasn't a Scottish one that was forced upon him by the destruction of Labour in Scotland handing a very unexpected majority to the SNP, who used their power to demand one. This was a referendum Cameron himself chose to allow.
That decision was made worse with the all too predictable  'Renegotiation with Europe' fiasco before the campaign had even begun. 

On paper, it all looked good. Promise a referendum that killed the Tory dissent and stopped the drift of voters to UKIPt. It put both liberals and labour, who refused to go along with it, on the unpopular side of the popular argument. A New Labour/Tory tactic from the best of their playbooks.
And the Tories were expecting a coalition anyway. No need to ever implement that manifesto promise.

But they won, and so it had to be delivered. 

Going early was the best option. Nothing in Europe was going to get any better in the longer term. probably much worse. The real mistake was firstly trying to renegotiate from a position of weakness instead of strength and secondly identifying himself so strongly as the leader of remain. 
He needn't, indeed, should not have, done either of those things. Plenty of government ministers available for those roles. By taking them on himself, Cameron ensured that if the remain ship went down, he would go down with it.

One of the things I liked most about the Cameron era is him personally. He looked like a prime Minister. spoke like one. Sounded like one. Was reassuring and confident. He looked like the British Minister wherever he was. The number of gaffes he made was minuscule. Considering this was a man who was televised every day at every occasion he ever attended for 10 years, that was pretty impressive.

Especially if you recall the lumpen troll that had come before him. A national embarrassment at any diplomatic event. A man who needed his own wife to hold his hand at a party conference of his own party as he was so incapable of leadership and gravitas.

It doesn't sound like much of an achievement.  

Cameron didn't fall asleep at the G8 with his tie in the soup.
Or tumble down the stairs of Airforce one. 

That's not the angle. 

Cameron looked, sounded and acted like a leader at a time that the country desperately needed a leader. His personal approval ratings were always well above his party. he was a very reassuring presence. 



That should be remembered when his legacy is debated.

Dave v Nigel

This is the big one, sod the Euro's, the big one is Dave versus Nigel going to head to head to be champion of Breamain or Brexit in ITV's big debate.


The thing is, Nigel is a great underdog. The media have written him off long ago, but I recall seeing him debate Nick Clegg a few years ago, poor old Clegg - smashed beyond all hope of recovery.


Mr Cameron has a bit more experience than Clegg and has the nasty side on which to lean. But I don't see him wiping the floor with Nigel - in fact, given expectations will be low, it could be just the tonic the Leave side need as the tedious campaign enters its home stretch.


No surprise this is not being spun as such in the media at the moment, but the Brits love an underdog.

Open Thread: Cameron EU proposal

I really can't see this flying, but I am very biased. It is so rubbish I am amazed even Cameron can back it...

1 - No real EU Brake on migration - unless a big vote for it elsewhere in EU that won't happen.

2 - No real consensus on limiting Eurozone developments that would effect London.

3- Nothing else of major significane, bar more security measures around terrorists.

Is this really it?

yet Leave will still lose....

And so it starts with Salmond at the Fore

Finally, the UK Election hoves into view as the main chapter in the Nation's life for a few weeks.

It is for yourself to decide how welcome this (I am on hols for abroad 2 weeks of it, lucky me!) for your media viewing habits....

Interestingly though this time is that the minor parties are still far up the agenda. This as we know from the last election means a hung parliament is nailed on. With coverage the minor parties have their Oxygen.

Mr Salmond has led the way with his frankly bizarre rants about holding Westminster to ransom. They are less bizarre when you remember how bitter he is to have lost the referendum and with it his job last year. Now is the time for revenge on those pesky English, the bogey men who cost him his job by not being able to vote for him in an Scotland-only referendum.

So now he remains keen to be as obstructive as possible - he is lucky that with such a and tiny vote base on a single issue, his clarity of strategy is easy. Wind up the English, make it hell for Westminster, appear lefty and populist to garner the votes of the '45%.' Simples.

Rather more of a nightmare for Milliband and Cameron. For them too is the Farage outlier, roundly attacked in the press and every slight mistake jumped upon, the role of traditional English underdog beckons for the campaign. The harder the mainstream try, the more oxygen he gets and his vote base firms up. Plus of course, he can become the English anti-Salmond - always important to be a lucky General.

Meanwhile, Cameron produced a non-budget to save excitement for the manifesto, so squandering his last big set-piece and Milliband, well the less said about him the better (literally true, as Labour is so much more popular than its leader...).

The debates finally agreed have an odd structure but this will suit the Government, with so many and such an arcane format they will likely not have the impact of 2010 - so helping the incumbent.

Still though, the Campaign will be bitter and repetitive with so many voices heard and few of reason amongst them.

Opportunity Knocks

The aftermath of the referendum is one of those rare moments on the battlefield when a genuine opportunity presents itself for a decisive, pivotal move.  It falls to Cameron.

And he even looks up for it.  Is there someone, anyone in the whole of the Tory Party (or on its payroll) with the strategic nous to follow through ?

A man can hope ...

ND

Political Attacks on the Big 6: Have A Care

It takes a brave man to defend the unlovely Big 6 energy suppliers these days - or a Telegraph comment-writer mindful of advertising revenues.  We don't see that kind of dosh at C@W, but there's still a case to be stated.

Particularly when we read crap like this from Ed Davey, trying to elbow out Milibean from the driver's seat on the bandwagon.

"[people] look at the big suppliers and they see a reflection of the greed that consumed the banks. So this is a 'Fred the Shred' moment for the industry. You deliver an essential public service, so your industry must serve the public"

Where to start ?  Firstly, yes, the ability to buy reliable and safe gas and electricity supplies in the home is essential.  The 'natural monopoly' aspects of this have long since been analysed out to be just the pipes and wires, the costing and pricing of which are heavily regulated and always have been.  The supply and commodity aspects (along with ancillary services such as meter-reading) are not natural monopolies, and have been 'contested' - i.e. subject to competition - in the residential sector in this country since around 1995 (gas) and 1998 (electricity).  The last Labour government finally dropped all price controls around the turn of the century.

They also regulated every other aspect of residential supply very closely, imposing no end of social obligations (such as not disconnecting elderly non-payers).  Indeed, they and their Coalition successors have been layering on ever more social obligations and 'green' surcharges with every passing year, culminating in the 'electricity market reforms' and the Heath-Robinson Energy Bill now inching its disreputable way through Parliament.  Is this 'good' regulation?  No, generally speaking it is not - but it is a far cry from the 'hands-off', light-touch, non-regulation (or at least non-enforcement) that was the Blair / Brown / Balls policy for the banks in the run-up to the 2007 crisis.

Undermining the operation of a proper market in residential supplies still further was the shocking failure to prevent the revival of vertical integration by acquisition, again on Brown's watch.  We've discussed this at huge length in comments here before.  Suffice for now to say that permitting Powergen (latterly E.on) to become the vertically integrated behemoth it became, followed by RWE and most recently EDF**, was a capital error - and I do mean capital: lots of it. 

(The scotties - SSE and Scottish Power - were of course privatised as verticals, and have jealously maintained their integrated structures. I exempt Centrica from all this because they achieved their 75% integration organically, not by acquisition - a very different thing - and it was done defensively, against the declining wholesale market liquidity engendered by the others.)    

No shortage of very pro-active regulation, then, albeit frequently crass.  Actually, rather a shortage of intelligent intervention, which should have been initiated by Ofgem to promote wholesale liquidity.  Their efforts have been protracted and pitifully lame,

The Big 6 must of course play the game under the ever more complex and often self-defeating rules they are faced with: and now to be turned upon by politicians of all parties is pretty rich.  I've no doubt that in many ways they haven't helped their own cause.  But, politicians beware! - because somewhere out on this uneven field of play is a cliff-edge.  Anyone who reads the papers will know that the UK is hoping for hundreds of billions of pounds of investment from these companies (and the National Grid, which raises almost all its revenues from them), to finance the comprehensive programme of power-plant replacement and grid upgrading required (a) to prevent the lights going out and (b) to deliver the monstrous 'decarbonisation' agenda.

It's well worth reading this piece from the Economist, which points out that as a consequence of the impositions and changes foisted upon them the market cap of the European power companies has fallen more than that of the banks (!!)  These are fast becoming companies whose balance sheets just will not support what is desired of them.  "Existential threat" is the phrase used by the Economist, and indeed RWE is arguably in a bed quite close to the door, with Iberdrola (Scottish Power) none to healthy either.  Imagine the reaction if Big 6 were to become Big 5 one fine morning: who'd be investing their billions the day after that ?

Meanwhile, back at the populist soap-box we have Ed Davey stirring things up instead of calming them down.  Ironically, on the same day we also have Cameron spouting this: 

Growth depends not just on Government policy but one wider social attitudes towards commercial success, he said. “We need a bigger and more prosperous private sector to generate wealth and pay for the public services we need. That means we need to support, reward and celebrate enterprise,” he said. “That requires a fundamental culture change in our country. A culture that’s on the side of those who work hard, that values that typically British, entrepreneurial, buccaneering spirit, and that rewards people with the ambition to make things, sell things and create jobs for others up and down the country.”

And that's the perverse political climate of double-think in which the Big 6 must go about their business.  Let's not imagine they won't one day, one way or another, respond quite badly to the kicking they get.

ND
__________________________
** remind me - was EDF's vertical integration in the UK achieved by acquiring British Energy ?   Oh yes indeed.  And was EDF advised by Gordon Brown's brother ?  Well, now you mention it ...

Cameron: Eden: Suez

History corner:  a patrician Etonian Prime Minister essays a Middle East adventure against a dictator.  The PM fails to make sure of sufficient support, and has the rug pulled out from under him.

We all know what happened to Eden.

Interesting to watch Miliband and Alexander making merciless partisan capital out of last night's debacle.  Well, they've had a miserable summer.  (Almost made Hammond look statesmanlike by comparison on Newsnight, which is quite an achievement.)  Gloves off now on the domestic front, for sure.

Miliband needs to be careful.  These are fraught times, and Grown-Up's games are being played.  If anyone ever wondered what the UK does in Cyprus, they may find out shortly, Commons vote or no Commons vote.  Cyprus is 95% of what the US wants from the UK. Israel may have a little message for Miliband too, in due course. 

Now - who is going to play Macmillan to Cameron's Eden ?  Someone flamboyant, unscrupulous, ambitious ...  whoever could that be ?

ND

Mr Gorbachov, tear down this wall

"Labour said that to solve the countries problems we need more government. Don't they see.. big government has got the country in this mess." Its a long time since we have heard that. David Cameron seems to have decided all that middle ground, who can spend the most in the best way, style of politics is over.
Only a few months ago the Tories were committed to match Labour's spending plans only with a Tory touch. Now, at last, a real message that the faithful can take heart from.
Some media commentators have already decided that DC's speech was more miss than hit, what with a heartfelt bit about his son's death, a thank you to the wife, and policy lite soundbite such as

" There is a steep climb ahead. But I tell you this. The view from the summit will be worth it."

Looking down the main media it gets a flat six out of ten. But ,like his other speeches of late, there is a fair amount of slow burn in there. The ideal and the vision is laid out clearly. I think this speech will hit its target a lot more squarely than Labour's last week. And the resonance will last longer. Gordon delivered a much stronger, if pointless, policy speech. Everything from and end to I.D cards to curing cancer. It was a good, workmanlike speech from a poor orator, if a little dull after his early crowd pleaser. There were few jokes in Gordon's speech and none in Cameron's reflecting the need for a serious face for serious times. But Cameron, while saying less, said a lot more.
He made a powerful attack on Labour's poverty record. He had praise for the NHS, praise for the troops, praise for community. The party cheered. The Tory party! If nothing else Dave Cameron has moved the party on and modernised it. He even went on about tax cuts for the poorest and they cheered. This really is New Tory.

For C@W there wasn't anything on the banks, the bailouts , the BOE or how to reform and regulate the system. The debt -business lending - job creation. Nothing on Europe either. But then, as demonstrated, that is now the job of the chancellor in waiting. We will have to watch closely.

For the real hardworkingfloating voters and the centre right, who it appears Mr Cameron now wants to target, and who have heard nothing of interest to them for years there was the big state bash. Not talks of feeble efficiency savings but a real message. The message is - end to the big state. End to pettiness - End to lawlessness - End to evermore laws , evermore regulation - evermore interference...

"We will have to tear down Labour's big government bureaucracy.
Ripping up its time wasting, money draining, responsibility sapping nonsense."

For middle Britain that's probably enough.

Green shoots; in your dreams Obama

Obama says he sees the green shoots of recovery. it is nothing of the sort, what we are seeing now is the levelling out of the crash phase of the recession.

Now if there were green shoots, it would be into a strong bounce. The stock market is in a nice rally, that is about it. Rallies have a habit of petering out this decade in the US stock market.

As for everything else, the case-shiller index is still looking bad, company credit is bad. The only thing recovering are the banks and they have been bailed out with more money than it took to beat Hitler and Tojo.

Why talk about Obama? Well he is a model for our own Cameron. Obama's Presidency is unlikely to go down as a great success as people tire of the depression. Instead he will slowly lose credibility; partly by constantly saying things are getting better when reality says they are not.

I hope our own Tories have learned the two key lessons here:

1) (Unlike Major and Lamont) Don't spy green shoots that don't exist, it grates on the electorate
2) Don't push Brown out now, let him deal with the coming year of fall and stagnation.

To this end, the UK electoral cycle is more in favour of Cameron than the US is for Obama. Unless Guido gets his way of course....