Michael White's Blog, page 43

Maria Miller, the media and the modest ministerial talent pool

Miller is damaged goods probably no great loss, but that cannot be said of others who look at the gladiator's ring and think 'perhaps not'

Did the culture secretary, Maria Miller, demean her profession in making that 34-second non-apology to MPs on Thursday after they cut a proposed £45,000 expenses payback to £5,800? She certainly did. But did the former Daily Telegraph editor Tony Gallagher, who ran the original investigation into the minister's mortgage claims, demean his trade by grossly exaggerating in an interview with the Today programme the "chilling effect" of statute-backed press regulation? The rascal certainly did.

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Rebranding Ed Miliband

With the election a year away and the prospect of hours of exposure on TV the Labour leader is bringing in a broadcast guru to change his image. G2 asked a panel of experts how Ed could enhance his appeal

John Crace imagines what interviews for the job of 'Head of the Leader's Broadcasting' might sound like

'His PR team guard him too carefully. We don't really know him'

Car boot sale Britain: Len McCluskey's acute critique of state of the nation

Unite chief's assessment of the coalition, our democracy and the unions deserved to be noted as much as his criticisms of Labour

After listening to Len McCluskey, Britain's most important trade union leader, speak at a Commons press gallery lunch yesterday I opened today's newspapers with some trepidation. Unite's general secretary had declared his didn't want to say "too many controversial things", but proceeded to say several. The former Liverpool docker ( I didn't just work inside an office but on ships, he insisted) was very likeable, thoughtful and smart, a sharp sense of humour too.

It's a dangerous combination, but my fears were exaggerated. McCluskey said what he is quoted as saying, though the event inevitably generated one-sided accounts on the grounds that a union leader criticising his own side Labour is more newsworthy than his critique of David Cameron's coalition. Yet that critique was at least as interesting. It reminded me of the last decent speech we heard at a press gallery lunch John Major's eloquent plea last October for those Etonian Tory ministers to do more for society's "silent have-nots".

Car boot sale Britain: Len McCluskey's acute critique of state of the nation | Michael White

Unite chief's assessment of the coalition, our democracy and the unions deserved to be noted as much as his criticisms of Labour

After listening to Len McCluskey, Britain's most important trade union leader, speak at a Commons press gallery lunch yesterday I opened today's newspapers with some trepidation. Unite's general secretary had declared his didn't want to say "too many controversial things", but proceeded to say several. The former Liverpool docker (I didn't just work inside an office but on ships, he insisted) was very likeable, thoughtful and smart, a sharp sense of humour too.

It's a dangerous combination, but my fears were exaggerated. McCluskey said what he is quoted as saying, though the event inevitably generated one-sided accounts on the grounds that a union leader criticising his own side Labour is more newsworthy than his critique of David Cameron's coalition. Yet that critique was at least as interesting. It reminded me of the last decent speech we heard at a press gallery lunch John Major's eloquent plea last October for those Etonian Tory ministers to do more for society's "silent have-nots".

Politics Weekly podcast: Nick Clegg v Nigel Farage

Anne Perkins, Hugh Muir and Michael White join Tom Clark to discuss the first televised leaders' debate on Britain's membership of the European Union. Plus: Ed Miliband is urged to be bold; and a farewell to Tony Benn

Politicians' sex lives: where to draw the privacy line?

The Nigel Farage allegations and Roy Jenkins revelations suggest in some political cases a little prying may be warranted

Distinguished biographer John Campbell's revelation that a youthful Roy Jenkins had some sort of sexual relationship with Tony Crosland when the future Labour cabinet ministers were war-time students at Oxford finally surfaced on Radio 4's Today programme this morning.

About time too, you may say. Juicy extracts from Campbell's biography have been steaming in the pages of the Daily Mail ("slightly picked up by the Mail", says Campbell as if his agent's lucrative serialisation deal was nothing to do with him) since the weekend. Several papers "picked up'' on them, as well they might.

The George Osborne paradox: for save, read spend

The striking think about this chancellor is that he says one thing then does the opposite

Cynical, but both economically and politically effective in the short term, was the verdict of two clever Keynesian critics of George Osborne's budget I heard speak at a round-table discussion last night. The striking thing about this chancellor, they noted, is that he says one thing and actually does the opposite. It's the Osborne Paradox.

And a good thing too, they emphasised, wearing their Keynesian hats. Why? Because the strong but fragile economic recovery needs more demand. Osborne struggles not to provide it via government spending or borrowing the best way but ideologically repugnant to him. So he is inviting voters to do the job for him by borrowing more and spending more of their savings. Why, the chancellor even hopes to tax the process!

Ed Miliband was on to something with the big six, but nobody will admit it

SSE's energy price pledge proves it is the fate of opposition leaders to see their ideas mocked, then pinched without credit

You wouldn't know it from reading the Ed Miliband-abusing headlines but since the papers were printed, one of Britain's big six energy companies has embraced a version of the price freeze that the same papers and David Cameron abused the Labour leader for after he promised one last autumn.

SSE's promise to keep or reduce its retail prices to 7 million customers until 2016 comes with a price tag that includes 500 voluntary redundancies and may be a pre-emptive strike ahead of a critical view of the way Britain's energy cartel does its lucrative business. But even its decision to split its retail and wholesale divisions in the interests of transparency smacks of the Miliband agenda.

The George Osborne paradox: for save, read spend | Michael White

The striking think about this chancellor is that he says one thing then does the opposite

Cynical, but both economically and politically effective in the short term, was the verdict of two clever Keynesian critics of George Osborne's budget I heard speak at a round-table discussion last night. The striking thing about this chancellor, they noted, is that he says one thing and actually does the opposite. It's the Osborne Paradox.

And a good thing too, they emphasised, wearing their Keynesian hats. Why? Because the strong but fragile economic recovery needs more demand. Osborne struggles not to provide it via government spending or borrowing – the best way but ideologically repugnant to him. So he is inviting voters to do the job for him by borrowing more and spending more of their savings. Why, the chancellor even hopes to tax the process!

A version of the "I'm spending my children's inheritance" T-shirt it may help the elusive feelgood factor that may get his friend, Dave, reelected in 14 months' time.

Meanwhile, he caps benefit spending (except on the state pension), so that 94% of the pain comes from cuts only 6% from extra taxes. Yet he's still forced to borrow almost twice what he said he would by now – £108bn this year – so he blames Labour. Cunning or what?

In effect here is a chancellor who says: "The cure for debt is not more debt" – as Osborne did in last year's budget – and,as he did this week: "This is a budget for savers."

At the same time he also produces flagship budget policies that have increased private housing debt via the 2013 Help to Buy scheme and – so the small print says in the Treasury's red book – help to reduce the level of savings via the 2014 reform of pensions.

Don't get cross with me yet. Like all budgets this one contains good ideas and bad ones. Greater freedom for better-off savers to manage their own tax-deductible pension pots will be a boon for many in an era when annuity rates – the guaranteed income a lump sum buys – are poor. But there are risks attached and, as with banking busts, the potential gains (that cruise, new car) are privatised, the risks (elderly poverty thanks to that dud railway stock) socialised: we all pay to pick up any pieces.

The rascal talks about saving but what he wants us wrinklies to do is access our money and SPEND!

But let's be positive. Anything that helps the productive economy to employ people and sell goods that we – and foreign customers – want to buy is always a good idea. Osborne had some.

Even his tweak of carbon prices in the face of wider economic realities isn't wholly regressive. It's also good to raise tax thresholds for both 20% and 40% payers, though it's mean and economically self-defeating to pay for it by squeezing the poorest even harder as the silly man promises to do if he can get away with it.

By breakfast time today the pension downside was leading BBC budget bulletins – in contrast to passing references in otherwise bullish overnight newspaper coverage in the mostly Tory press. Generation Y will feel aggrieved – again – that the boomers are getting help – again – at their expense. But as I never tire of saying to the non-voting young (I did so to a student audience only yesterday) old people vote at twice the rate of 18 to 24 "kidiots". Politicians notice.

Some pundits claim today that Osborne's "silver deal" measures are designed to head off Ukip defections among nostalgic oldies. Since Ukip strikes me as an only slightly more attractive old age option than cancer, it didn't occur to me as I listened to the budget in the Commons press gallery. I'll take their word for it.

Last night's weighty Keynesian pundits – speaking anonymously at a thinktank to encourage frankness all round – are also greatly concerned about growing inequality in Britain, the US and most advanced economies in an age where good middle income jobs (yours and mine) are being squeezed by globalisation and computer power, just as blue collar jobs were squeezed by automation.

It leaves an unaccountable and often greedy elite to plunder rewards they do not deserve. The budget did nothing to address that and the Sun's verdict today (a beer, bingo and tax cuts budget for Sun readers) serves only to remind its shrewder readers that the paper is owned by a tax-averse, foreign oligarchy, the Murdochoviches.

How best to stop and reverse this trend? The assembled punditry – including thoughtful City types, not all are greedy – did come up with an answer or two. But first the Osborne Paradox. One of my pundits, let's call him Pundit A, argues that the Help to Buy scheme, as tweaked, will help further boost the recovery in the non-south-east regions, where house prices are still affordable and there is no London-style property bubble.

New homes boost not just construction, but retail (all those things to buy) and wider optimism. It's an old British remedy, but it works, said Pundit A, who also argues – more controversially – that the British economy has done better in terms of GDP per head if you start your graph in 1991. Yes, it all depends on "frothy" industries like financial services, Hollywood movies and media, even computer games, but we seem to be good at them – it's our comparative advantage, as the economists put it.

Pundit B doubted that, and shares Bank of England chief Mark Carney's fears of an asset bubble, which will stall the economy again. Osborne's own mini-thinktank, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) thinks the reviving economy will hit familiar limits to growth – low skills and productivity, poor infrastructure – and dent growth soon enough.

What surprised my pundits is that they – and Labour – had misjudged the extent to which the private sector has created up to 1.7m jobs in the recession, more than lost in the public sector or outsourced. What troubles them is how so many are unattractive low-wage jobs, a point the chancellor does not make.

The private sector sets the pace in lowering pay and conditions – lowering productivity too by employing more people, but less capital. The public sector is forced to follow. Even the new supermarket price wars (which ministers say will ease the cost of living) mean fewer jobs, lower wages and prices for suppliers.

It is all part of the trend which saw the Guardian's Oxfam report this week that five oligarch dynasties now own more of Britain than the poorest 20%.

What to do? Being brainy, the pundits were puzzled why so many voters fall for the Osborne austerity story, echoed by most of Fleet St and the City. The incipient 2010-11 recovery, smothered by coalition austerity, might have been sustained better with fewer cuts. "Spend in a recession, cut in a boom," said Keynes.

Both Osborne and – before 2007 – Gordon Brown got that wrong. But voters, forced to cut back on their own spending in a recession, make the understandable error of thinking government must do the same instead of sustaining demand in tough times. That's why Osborne's sums have proved so wrong and he has had to borrow more – and this week encourage the oldies to spend, spend, spend. Even the new combined Isas have a bias towards cash, not investment in productive goods and services.

What is the pundits' remedy? By all means bear down on the undeserved self-rewarding habits of corporate leaders who steal from their shareholders, customers and staff; the tools are there, but not the political will. But also focus on the other end of the problem by raising bad wages. I used to favour Thatcher's assault on the unions, but I was wrong, they are part of the rebalancing process, admitted Pundit B.

What a healthy economy needs is a higher living wage in both public and private sectors. Even Thatcher's Children Tories – Cameron and Osborne, Boris Johnson too – are coming round to that uneasy conclusion. It will help win that election, as my pundits gloomily suspect they may.

George OsborneBudgetBudget 2014PensionsOlder peopleMichael White
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George Osborne's budget support offer turns into right royal dig at Ed Miliband

Chancellor, who read history at Oxford, uses tale of King John and Magna Carta signing to mock Labour leader

Nice one, chancellor. In offering budget support for celebrations to mark 800 years since the signing of the Magna Carta, the former Oxford history student could not resist a passing prod at Ed Miliband, who only read philosophy, politics and economics.

"King John's humbling, centuries ago seems unimaginably distant. A weak leader (pause) who had risen to the top (pause) after betraying his brother (pause) compelled by a gang of unruly barons to sign on the dotted line," said George Osborne, before concluding that today's generation should learn the lessons of 1215. After a joke-drought budget, coalition MPs laughed gratefully. But is the quip true?

Not about Ed Miliband's relationship with the much-humbled barons of the modern TUC, but about King John, who has usually had a bad press since his death from dysentry the following year after signing the document. In 1066 and All That, the forerunner of Horrible Histories, he was definitely a Bad Thing.

John was the fifth and youngest son of the great Plantagenet monarch Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine - Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn in the 1968 Hollywood movie -. All his older brothers either died young or rebelled against dad. John became Henry's favourite and was appointed Lord of Ireland in 1177 at the age of 10.

In the days before the laws of primogeniture gave the whole swag to the eldest son, Henry's plan had been to share out his vast domain – England, Ireland and western France from the Channel to the Pyrenees. Had John's big brothers not died there would have been none for "John Lackland" as the tabloid equivalents of the time called him.

John's brother Richard was fighting dad (again) over John's share and winning (John switched sides) when Henry died in 1189. Richard spent most of his 10-year reign being lion-hearted on a crusade and got held for ransom on the way home. This was when John did his Ed bit by being treacherous towards big brother, bigging himself up as ruler-in-waiting. Richard forgave him – "a child with evil counsellors", though he was 27.

As king (1199-1216), John was a good administrator of justice but was too keen on taxes– another Labour tendency, Tories would say. He gradually lost most of his French domains to Phillip II, so that the Channel Islands are all that the Queen retains of her Duchy of Normandy. John spent a fortune trying to get them back and upset his barons and the pope. The barons forced him to sign on the dotted line at Runnymede.

Like the average Osborne budget, Magna Carta was mainly a charter for the rich, the 1% not the 99%.

But habeas corpus and other details evolved into key English liberties, just as a baronial council evolved into parliament. Civil War lawyers in the 1640s and Whig historians of the 19th century built it up – the story of how the people prevailed over the King and the Old Etonians.

The story isn't over yet, it never is. Even in 1215 neither side stuck to their Magna bargain and were soon fighting again. That might ring a bell for Miliband too, though Osborne has his problems with Barons Clegg and Cable.

Budget 2014BudgetGeorge OsborneMonarchyEd MilibandUniversity of OxfordChannel IslandsMichael White
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