"But voters tend not to like opportunists"

They like Tony Blair though, don't they.

Melanie your overdoing this so much. Nothing much changed with regards to the Conservative EU policy today (No euro, No EU constitution). One of your main points with regards to public spending is based on a leak. Wait for Oliver's speech before you cast judgement. The Conservatives support the war but aren't to keen on being wildly misled beforehand, are you?

Perhaps you should get into politics yourself Melanie, you could start the Death Before Electability party.

Let's nail this canard once and for all.

In 2006 Gordon Brown will be spending the same % GDP on Education and Health as John Major at the peak of his administration. Labour has invested a lower proportion of GDP in public infrastructure than any administration since 1945.

Contrary to popular prejudice, Margaret Thatcher was nowhere as savage in her cuts to public spending as eith Denis Healey or Gordon Brown. Had Brown not curtailed public spending quite so savagely in 1997-1999 the increae would look much more modest; the fact is that if you look at departmental underspend, you can see the PFI procedure has slowed down public investment because of long-winded procurement and that looking at monies announced is nowhere near the same as looking at monies spent.

You may think the public services are on a roll Melanie, but I very much doubt a front-line nurse in Tooting or anywhere else has noticed; and I doubt GPs have noticed many of whom will suffer a pay cut with the new contract the government is modifying significantly after it was negotiated.

Do you believe all propaganda from the Government ? Gordon Brown is an archetypal apparatchik of the kind that kept Soviet Russia leading the world economically until someone smashe the grammophone.

"Labour has invested a lower proportion of GDP in public infrastructure..."

Let's nail this canard too.

Money poured into "public infrastructure" - i.e. public sector wages and pensions, one way or another - does not count as investment.

Investment is something you do when you expect a return, and don't expect to lose your money. Governments don't do it. (1) They don't expect a return (2) They do expect to lose the money (3) It isn't their money anyway.

The correct word is "spending"

No Andrew Duffin you are completely wrong.

The Gross Fixed Capital Formation section of the National Income Accounts include investment in public infrastructure. It is one of the reasons small businesses collapse is because their bookkeeping is so poor and they cannot distinguish between Current Expenditure and Capital Expenditure.

Most people do not confuse building a hospital with the cost of employing staff; nor do they include multi-year projects in a single year because it is a Project.

Infrastructure is not current spending in any accounting system; it is the provision of buildings, roads, hospitals, schools etc which is on Capital Account and if you look at Gordon Brown's so-alled Golden Rule he does NOT borrow for current spending but he CAN borrow for infrastructure investment.

It is time Andrew Duffin you stopped using Soviet-style accounting and looked at the more modern forms used in advanced capitalist economies.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tax/story/0,9061,602347,00.html

Labour's plans to increase spending on public services such as education and health will only restore investment to levels seen in the John Major years, an influential think-tank says today as the chancellor prepares to set out his policy priorities in next week's pre-Budget report.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies charts the 25-year slide in public investment, from 8.9% of GDP in 1975 to 1.7% by 2000,

Even if PFI capital expenditure is counted as public spending, the public investment rates seen over the years 1997 to 2000 remain lower than at any time since the second world war,"

http://specials.ft.com/budget2002/FT3ME1JK50D.html

net public investment is also forecast to rise from 1.8 per cent of gross domestic product in 2003-04 to 2 per cent in 2005-06.

Free Democrat is quite right about Europe. I helped Michael Howard prepare the European manifesto and he has just repeated his position in almost identical words.
The spending issue is different. I would make three points: A. Oliver Letwin has not actually made his speech yet,and so we don't know what he is going to say. The briefing and rumours are rather confused. B. Any Melanie-style public service reform plan will, in the short run cost money not save it. So short-term tax and spend proposals will need to reflect that reality. proposing to spend more money on a failed system would be a betrayal of right wing principle but I doubt this is what they have in mind because C. Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin actually are, surprise-surprise, right wing and do believe in a low tax economy. They have been believing in it and advocating it for many years, before either you or I realised that they were quite right.
I think accusations of betrayal are best preserved for specific and clear acts otherwise nobody can do anything.

Quite right on Europe. The substantive policy is essentially the same - all that has changed is the voters it is trying to attract. Whereas before the policy was sold in such a way as to be solely aimed at preventing any votes going to the UKIP, ("this is our policy, [but if you want to think that we secretly want to leave the EU then you can]"), Howard has realised that this is not going to win general elections. For a start every swing voter convinced to vote Conservative is worth twice those who are lost to the UKIP, and secondly far more seats will be won by attracting swing voters than will be lost due to UKIP voters. Core vote strategies (Labour 1983, Cons 2001) don't have a chance of winning elections, they are merely a holding strategy when a party is in fear of total meltdown.

It is a sign of confidence in the strength of his position that he even seems to feel he can pick a fight with the arch Eurosceptics - his comments backing Maastrict could be seen in that light.

The irony is that all this makes it easier for him to attack Labour on Europe - their standard response of "we all know the Tories' secret agenda is to leave the EU completely" is effectively neutered.

Melanie, you almost sound surprised about this. Michael Howard has always been a poll watcher, especially from his days as Home secretary. Lets not forget, Tony Blair cut his teeth at high level politics facing Michael Howard as shadow home secretary; and perhaps it was no coincidence that it was at about that time that Tony Blair suddenly decided that politics was all about abandon your principles in order to get elected, and catching as many headlines as you possibly can.

Howard taught Blair everything he knows. But now Blair has finally learnt that the Howard approach can only get you so far, and has decided to go with what he believes on a few issues. So perhaps it's now time for Howard to learn a few things off Mr Blair.

Take Michael Howard's attitude over the WMD issue. The polls were showing great interest in this subject a few weeks ago, so Mr Howard joined in the fun and viciously attacked Tony Blair for not having found the weapons. But then a poll came out last Sunday showing that everyone was fed up of talking about WMD, so we witnessed the ridiculous sight of Howard, having called for Blair to resign over the 45 minute claim just days before, not even bothering to mention this at PMQs.

Now, don't get me wrong - I was quite pleased that he didn't bring up this issue again. But it's hardly consistent to call for the PM to resign and then not repeat this demand at his very first opportunity to question him.

And now we see the same attitude towards social issues, Europe, and taxation. I'm sure if a poll were to now come out and totally contradict any of the statements he's made over the last few weeks, Mr Howard would duly change his position to meet the demand.

PS. Is that the real Daniel Finklestein? I thought he was out campaigning in Kensington & Chelsea, handing out leaflets saying: 'Why are those WMDs Blair told us about? - vote Tory!'

Of course, I meant: 'Where are those WMDs"!

That wouldn't be the Daniel Finkelstein who used to a prominent SDP-er, would it? Oh of course it would. Britain's version of the well-trodden path from "leftist" to neocon.

Is DF up for the Kensington candidacy or has his fellow, er, Conservative Malcolm Rifkind got it sewn up?

Time for you all to pay your share!

Lili

Guns, Butter And the Deficit

http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/021604.html

". . . America is an empire without an imperial culture. Foreign affairs is seen as the most dispensable part of the budget. President Bush's $87 billion request for Iraq had little support among most Americans. Even military spending, protected because it is a series of jobs programs, has always been easy to pare down. The commitments that make up America's world role are tolerated as long as the economy is growing and the budget is large enough to accommodate everything. But if there were a choice between guns and butter, there's little doubt what Americans would choose. . . ."

. . .An open, globalized world needs a leader. And the United States can easily afford its world role thanks to a $10 trillion national economy. In fact, as a percentage of GDP, America's nonmilitary overseas expenditures are now low. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, foreign aid was almost 2 percent of GDP. Today it is 0.2 percent. Even military spending remains moderate by cold-war standards. Today it is about 4.5 percent of GDP. During the Eisenhower presidency it once veered toward 9 percent.

". . ."I've never seen an administration spend money like this... The money's flying out the door. I can barely keep up with it... They give money away on phone calls. No documents. No budget. It's the worst I've ever seen..."

The real problem is that America cannot afford this orgy as it approaches the retirement of the baby-boom generation. When he was Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill asked two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland to estimate what changes it would take to actually be able to pay for the government's commitments, including Social Security and Medicare. Their answer: either increase income taxes by 69 percent, increase payroll taxes by 95 percent or cut Social Security and Medicare by 56 percent. No wonder O'Neill was skeptical about tax cuts. . .

". . . At some point denial will stop working, the markets will react, interest rates will rise and the budget will be under severe pressure. Then Congress will begin searching for cuts, and spending on foreign affairs, even military spending, will get the ax. And America's grand new engagement in the world will turn out to be short-lived indeed. . . "

Full article:

http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/021604.html

"...a Chancellor who has somehow magicked up a roaring economy to boot?"

Actually, he inherited a roaring economy and has been increasing the burden of regulation and taxes. Transport costs have risen, while the cost of putting a roof over your head has rocketed. Most of the job-creation of the last few years has been in the public sector, while the private sector faces higher costs combined with a $1.89 pound.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1148397,00.html

The pattern is now established. Pensioners, who own their homes, cash in and move out. Even poor pensioners can do well if they bought their council houses. The high bourgeoisie follow suit when their children reach school age. There aren't just huge imbalances in class within London and between the South-East and the rest of the country, but matching imbalances in the nature of sexual and family relationships. Looked at in the round London is a foreign country, independent of the rest of Britain.

Bridget Jones was a better guide to the fragmentation of Britain in the 1990s than tooth-sucking pundits on the broadsheets. She confided to her diary that she found 'smug marrieds' had no right to be smug. She had just seen her friend Magda who 'was really hacked off because sick of having given up career to look after two children all day who don't speak English language yet. When Jeremy gets home exhausted at 8, she is exhausted too but he just sits in front of the telly and won't even load dishwasher, in hideous nineteenth-century gender-role throwback (apart from telly and dishwasher).'

Bridget's was the authentic voice of a capital in which marriage was becoming a peculiar institution. Married couples make up only 39 per cent of its adult population: the national average is 50 per cent. The case of inner London, where the young poor and rich mingle but don't meet, is more extreme. Eleven of the 13 districts in Britain with the lowest proportions of married couple households are within its boundaries. The flight of the elderly is as striking. Despite the ageing of the British population, some London boroughs have only 9 per cent of residents aged 65 or over, against 30 per cent in Christchurch on Dorset's Costa Geriatrica. When conservatives complain about the undoubted liberal bias of the BBC, they assume some kind of socialist plot when it is geography not ideology driving attitudes. A young middle-class BBC type in London is unlikely to meet anyone socially who is, say, against abortion or pro-war. Because they don't confront opposing ideas, they can't put themselves into the minds of people outside their consensus and ask questions from another point of view.