Michael White's Blog, page 52

Politics Weekly podcast: Ed Miliband v the Daily Mail and the Conservative party conference

David Cameron used his speech at the Conservative party conference in Manchester to take aim at Ed Miliband. He said that for his party, profit was not a 'dirty word' and that Labour could not be trusted with the slowly recovering economy.

Joining Tom Clark this week to discuss this are columnists Michael White and Polly Toynbee, as well as our economics editor Larry Elliott.

Also this week: a hatchet job on the late Ralph Miliband by the Daily Mail has sparked a running political row between the paper and the leader of the opposition. Ed Miliband demanded an apology from the Mail which claimed - and then re-stated - that his father, a prominent Marxist scholar, 'hated Britain'.

Plus: what happens when a government shuts down? The United States has been finding out this week as budgetary brinkmanship in Congress leads to a stalemate and a cessation of non-essential government services. Guardian columnist Gary Younge sets out what it means in practice - and what it means for the remainder of Barack Obama's term in office.

Leave your thoughts below.

Tom ClarkPhil MaynardMichael WhiteLarry ElliottPolly ToynbeeGary Younge

Conservative conference diary: Xantaine Campbell does a William Hague

Twelve-year-old girl almost steals the show from David Cameron with speech praising her 'brilliant' free school

• There were none of the traditional fundraiser's dirty jokes to warm up the conference for Dave's Big Speech, nor the traditional singing of The Blue Flag – Land of Hope and Glory – to cheer them homewards after it. Instead four bright young people told their feel-very-good stories of hard work and ambition. The sight of a smoothly self-assured 12-year-old, Xantaine Campbell, saying how much she loves her "brilliant" Birmingham free school must have brought lumps to elderly conference throats. The last tot to do so well was 16-year-old William Hague who lectured Mrs T from the rostrum in 1977. Could Xantaine become our first black female foreign secretary?

• If Cameron missed Jeremy Hunt's conference speech ("have you made it yet?" he tactfully asked) he could be forgiven for missing that of the Welsh secretary, David Jones, which came as the PM was gearing up to make his own. Jones had a rougher time than usual. His rival to be "the Welsh Tory who speaks for Wales", Andrew RT Davies, who is "leader of the Welsh Conservatives", was billed in the conference handbook to speak at a fringe meeting with ministers from Edinburgh and Belfast. A furious row ensued. Result? They both spoke.

• The PM was quite gentle towards the Daily Mail after it duffed up Ed Miliband's dad. Was the paper grateful? Of course not. After Cameron's perfectly reasonable guess at the price of a loaf of bread (they do vary) it took the piss out of his domestic breadmaking habits. Verdict: costly and pretentious Dave.

• The former Telegraph editor Charles Moore (Private Eye's Lord Snooty) has sold an impressive 60,000 copies of his magisterial biography of Margaret Thatcher in Britain, even though at £60 it costs almost half a jobseeker's allowance. In the Iron Lady's spiritual home, the US of A, sales are gathering pace after favourable, heavyweight reviews. But why no review at all in the powerful New York Times? Tory conspiracy theorists suspect that Snoots must have offended the paper's new suit, Mark Thompson, when he ran the BBC. Easily done at the Torygraph.

• Rocket-propelled junior minister Matt Hancock tips his old Bank of England chum, Rachel Reeves, to be Labour leader one day, but is cautious in interviews about his own prospects. It does no good. This week's headlines call him "future leader". Watch out, Theresa!

Good Day: David Cameron. He capped a triumphantly dull conference with a vanilla speech. What's not to like?

Bad Day: William Hague. The foreign land secretary refused to condemn the Mail's attack on Ed Miliband's dad.

Conservative conference 2013ConservativesConservative conferenceDavid CameronWilliam HagueMichael White
theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Cameron's lie of the land: Greek cliffs scaled, roots of despair buried

Manchester speech of PM took a 'steady-as she-goes' path of aspiration, blinkered to the woes of Poundland Britain

David Cameron delivered a good Tony Blair speech in Manchester on Wednesday, upbeat and aspirational, the difficult bits of life mostly glossed over or ignored. What it lacked was Blair's willingness to take on his own party in order to address some urgent problem needing fixing.

That and any emotional connection with the millions of food bank and Poundland Britons (increasingly middle-class, the Daily Mail tells us) who are having a seriously hard time.

So it was a good enough, steady-as-she-goes speech for Middle Britain, the kind the recession has repeatedly forced the prime minister to make since the bankers' recession of 2010 and the blaming of it all on Labour and the Greeks.

Greeks? Yes, Cameron again trotted out the canard that the British economy was heading over a Greek cliff in mid-2010 and was saved only by Osbornian austerity.

It wasn't true then and isn't true now. In large measure austerity has been self-defeating, forcing up the borrowing that ministers have deplored and, as Osborne had to concede in his more substantial speech on Monday, meaning a squeeze that will have to continue to 2020 at the least.

That is one of the big holes in the Downing Sreet narrative, which the PM set out to the party not-so-faithful in Manchester.

Another is the inability to acknowledge that it was badly regulated markets, labour markets, financial markets, energy markets of the kind "set free" by the conference's patron saint, Margaret Thatcher, which have failed the country so clearly since 2008.

Bankers, their pay and bonus schemes, their dishonest activities and reckless judgment? He did not mention them or their failings once, though he did give welfare scroungers a fresh whacking in the passage following his unexpected praise of social workers, the speech's only surprise. We don't want activists thinking too hard about social work, do we?

The omission was the equivalent of Ed Miliband's much-noted failure to mention Mid-Staffs NHS hospital trust in his Brighton keynote speech eight days ago.

It is safe to say the recession has caused a lot more ill-health than Mid-Staffs (and the story of patients having to quench their thirst with vase water is not true, Dave), but we understand why leaders' inspirational addresses require simplification, omission and amnesia. All story telling requires a good edit.

All the same, the Cameron who hugged hoodies and huskies from 2006 to 2008 has come a long way. No mention of the environment, not much about Europe or the threatened repeal of human rights laws, another painful topic, though there was a generous appeal for Scotland to stay in the union. No mention of low wage, insecure jobs, of rough justice from Atos-style fitness-to-work tests.

No attempt either to explain that Theresa May's one-third reduction in net immigration is probably down to student exclusions and the visa squeeze on high-end IT specialists which so annoys big business.

That might have unsettled Cameron's audience with complexity – and given Nigel Farage a soundbite.

No mention, come to think of it, of Ukip; and only one about the Lib Dems (when Vince Cable's OTT conference attack on the Tories would have justified a fire storm). That implies that Dave is sensibly keeping his coalition options open. No mention of the c-word either.

Instead, most of the jokes and the jibes were directed at Labour, especially that figure of hatred and fun, Ed Balls.

Vladimir Putin's spin machine got a kicking too for that "ignored little island" jibe at the G20 summit. Fair enough. They were good jokes, nicely delivered. But the imperative to blame Labour for our economic problems is less effective with every painful year that passes.

The PM declared that Britain had to become less London-centric, with less of the archetypal capital and home counties complexion. True, but the British hinterland will not feel better loved after this speech.

Miliband's put Labour in a better place when he attacked dysfunctional markets and the need to create more responsive and responsible models of capitalism.

For all his praise of small start-ups (his wife's included), Cameron still sounds like the corporate suit he once briefly was. We all want to push out children to get on in life, he said. At the back of the hall we smiled, remembering the call from Buck House which landed Dave his first job at party HQ.

Unfair, of course. Life is unfair and Tory grandees pretending that all you need to do is work hard and play by the rules is uplifting for many – but insufficiently so for those trapped by forces beyond their control. "Land of opportunity" will not cheer the Neets or the jobless 50-somethings.

My hunch at the end of the conference season is that all three main party leaders did make good-enough speeches: that Clegg differentiated his party from the Tories; that the Miliband speech was the best and funniest; that Cameron's middle-of-the-road, safe, sub-Blairite, speech could work best with those listeners who actually turn out and vote. Provided, that is, they are still in work and feel just a bit better off on 7 May 2015.

David CameronConservative conference 2013ConservativesAusterityWelfareBankingConservative conferenceTony BlairNick CleggEd MilibandMichael White
theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Conservative conference diary: what were you doing on D-day?

Ed Miliband's row with the Daily Mail over his father's wartime loyalties has now widened to include Margaret Thatcher

• The story in Manchester is even worse than the bloggers claim in the war between the Daily Mail and "The Man Who Hated Britain", aka Ed Miliband's dad. Yes, Mail proprietor Lord Rothermere did suck up to Hitler while Ralph Miliband was heroically serving aboard a D-day destroyer, and Mail editor Paul Dacre's dad wrote showbiz columns in Fleet Street. But what was Margaret Thatcher doing on D-day? According to Charles Moore's Thatcher biography (he was signing copies at the conference bookshop yesterday), his heroine was determined to get safely into Oxford before her 18th birthday in October 1943. Why? To avoid being called up for military service.

• Volatile Telegraph columnist Peter Oborne praised Nigel Farage on the conference fringe as a "bold outsider who tells truths which the political establishment hates to hear". He bracketed him together with Boris Johnson, George Galloway and the Greens' Caroline Lucas. All four will hate this list.

• A Manchester bar is offering delegates cocktails with names like Blue Baroness and A Portillo Moment. The conference's own swish London Lounge does better. Last night its sponsor Diageo (which fought off Tory pledges on minimum pricing for its products) was handing out a cocktail called The Old Etonian. Another was called The Chillax, a third The Ominshambles. Though the cops are not wearing "Proud to be Pleb" T-shirts this year (Andrew Mitchell's case is sub judice), they can also knock back a large Pleb – stirred but not shaken.

• Tireless human rights grandee Geoffrey Robertson QC is trying to upset the Tories too. Robbo has launched a campaign to win a pardon for society osteopath, Stephen Ward, the designated fall guy in the Profumo sex scandal which toppled Harold Macmillan, our last but one Etonian PM. Ward committed suicide during his 1963 trial for pimping. Sex and public school boys is always good copy. Once photographed with young George Osborne, Natalie Rowe, aka Miss Whiplash, is busy typing up her memoirs for the Mail to serialise.

• Good day Jeremy Hunt. The health secretary's decision to beef up the NHS regulator also made Labour look bad.

• Bad day Boris Johnson. The mayor made a plonker of a speech before his favourite conference audience.

Conservative conference 2013Conservative conferenceEd MilibandDaily MailConservativesMichael White
theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Boris Johnson sleepwalks through Conservative conference speech | Michael White

To call the mayor of London's oration a cut-and-paste job would be to insult scissors and glue

Boris Johnson did David Cameron a favour in Manchester today. The PM's stalker bombed at the Tory conference. The party activists gave the London mayor a standing ovation when he arrived onstage, his carefully coiffured hair more unruly than Ken Dodd's, and another when he finished. But their hearts weren't in it. Nor by the sound of it was Boris's.

What is it about him that makes him both attractive to many voters who hate or ignore politics, including the security staff at the conference centre today, but also allows him to let people down quite casually, as he did today? Not much work or thought seems to have gone into the performance. That is just not good enough for a big set-piece event. It insults the audience.

The fact is that Mayor Johnson is an instinctive politician who goes with his mood and feelings, a sleepwalker whose populist flare and appeal – it does exist outside the M25, albeit in diluted form – could carry him into No 10 if Cameron loses in 2015 and he leaves City Hall (he says he will) to become an MP again.

But sleepwalking carries evident dangers too; he could just walk off a bridge and float down the Thames into a lucrative post-political life. On today's evidence – a speech that lacked content and (more important) energy – that is more likely, though we should never underestimate Boris. He has let down and angered important Tories all his adult life – as he has newspaper editors and proprietors for whom he worked. He usually gets away with it.

What happened today? The word was he was to be on his best behaviour. Apart from a sly joke about the ex-French PM, Alain Juppé, now mayor of Bordeaux (London is a bigger French city, Boris quipped) and probably both mayor and PM at one stage, he did behave himself. Cameron was praised as the only statesman in Europe able to reform the EU. George Osborne's conference speech was deemed brilliant, colleagues were name-checked.

Towns and cities which manufacture things for London also got a mention, including Bournemouth, which the mayor says is a major producer of lubricants (nudge, nudge). There were several cheeky chappie jokes like that and an extended passage about Jamie Oliver's strictures about unmotivated, unskilled British kids which he predicted – several times – would land him in trouble again.

There were half-baked references to Crossrail, to Tech City and London's medical research, to its birthrate and prospects – as the capital just not of the UK, but Europe and in many ways the world, he said. There may be a case for that chauvinistic boast and other of his questionable claims, but the mayor didn't make them. He couldn't be bothered.

Johnson is clever enough to wing it, and wing it he did, as he has done all his life, lucky chap. To call the speech a cut-and-paste job would be to insult scissors and glue. Not good enough, even for a mayor with no ambition beyond City Hall. Being funny and eccentrically charming isn't enough if it's not buttressed by some substance. He sounded like a man who got to bed too late.

Have we all just seen Johnson's mercurial career begin its long, slow decline, the bursting of Boris's balloon. Probably not, but a few more performances like that and his lurking rivals for the Tory succession will feel much brighter.

Boris JohnsonConservative conference 2013ConservativesConservative conferenceMichael White
theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

A Ukip-Tory pact? We've been here before

Farage's idea of offering Eurosceptic Tories a free run echoes Referendum party's move in 1997. But it's a recipe for chaos

A savvy economist who listened to Nigel Farage speaking at a Guardian/YouGov conference in Cambridge recently later confided that she knew the former City metal exchange trader's type. "He's a trader, it's all about the deal. It's short-termist, people like that don't look to the bigger picture."

The Ukip leader is making waves at the Tory conference here in Manchester with a typically nimble bit of footwork. He complains that he's been excluded from the main conference hall – and why not, since he heads a rival party? – and is being treated like a "plague carrier" by the Tory hierarchy as he stages his fringe rally nearby.

But Farage has also penned a mischievous article (paywall) for the Times in which he floats the idea of local Tory-Ukip election pacts in 2015, ones in which sympathetic Conservative MPs such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Peter Bone get a free run from Ukip, with Ukip gaining mainstream respectability while also running against the likes of Ken Clarke and trying to manage its own unruly activists (and MEPs like Godfrey Bloom).

What could be simpler from an ex-metal trading MEP's point of view? Except that we've been here before. About the time that Sir Jimmy Goldsmith, billionaire entrepreneur and father of Zac and Jemima, founded the Referendum party in 1994 with a view to challenging pro-EU Tory MPs in what became the 1997 general election which John Major lost so decisively to Tony Blair (with some help from Sir Jim).

Farage had already left the Tory fold by then – he quit in 1992 when Major signed the Maastricht treaty with its clever UK opt-outs – and helped found Ukip in 1993 with Alan Sked, the academic who now denounces Ukip for tolerating racism and much else. But the Referendum party was the dominant player on the Eurosceptic flank in the 90s and might have remained so had Goldsmith not died in July 1997, taking his chequebook with him.

Farage became an MEP – thereby gaining access to the European taxpayer's chequebook – in 1999 and now looks set to beat the Tories into second place in the 2014 EU elections. As he boasts in the Times, the Cameroons now echo Ukip themes in much of what they say – and will repeat in Manchester – about immigration, welfare, education and the importance of marriage. Not to mention the renegotiation and referendum on Europe which No 10 now promises – having once rejected it.

Not bad for a boozy heavy smoker who doesn't really do policy and enjoys an unfashionably good lunch – the saloon bar pundit as action man. Farage's appearance in the Times may also reflect the recent appointment as the paper's comment editor of Tim Montgomerie, the brains behind the powerful grassroots website ConservativeHome: the activist as journalistic advocate. There are always some around.

The trouble with Farage's cosy scenario is that it is a recipe for chaos on the political right. Labour went through similar destructive phases in the 1950s – a decade of opposition – and again in the late 70s as the Callaghan government fell before the Thatcherite onslaught. The "circular firing squad" kept shooting until Neil Kinnock got a grip and restored order in the mid-80s, but it took a decade to win power again under Blair, Brown and Mandelson.

New Labour was greatly helped in the process by the sight of the Tories forming their own circular firing squad over Europe after the overthrow of Thatcher (over Europe) and the humiliation of Major over his taking sterling into the European exchange rate mechanism (ERM) in 1990 – weeks before Thatcher fell – only to be forced out on Black/White Wednesday in September 1992.

The Goldsmith party also offered election truces to Eurosceptic favourites who shared its desire for a referendum – do you want to be part of a federal Europe (the f-word was the bogey word of the period) or for the UK to revert to a trading relationship with the EU, was its drift – and fielded candidates in 546 seats. On polling day it won 810,000 votes, 3% of the total.

Experts later said it cost the Tories four or five more seats, including David Mellor, whom Goldsmith gleefully upended in Putney. My own hunch then – and now – was that its impact was wider and did Major more harm. Either way it was an omnishambles, followed by two elections (2001 and 2005) and two more Tory leaders – Hague and IDS – chosen as good Eurosceptics who would fail to impress the country. Only Michael Howard (2003-5) restored some order and bequeathed the party to his protege, David Cameron.

It is not a happy story. In 2010 the Tories failed to win a majority as Labour plunged and was forced into coalition – probably the best they can hope for in 2015, in part thanks to the impact Nigel Farage promises to have on their cohesion. The standing ovation given to the irony-free Margaret Thatcher tribute video at the start of conference on Sunday – here's Simon Hoggart's take – suggests the problem is far wider than Europe, but Europe remains a potent symbol for the party's elderly nostalgic in-activists.

On Radio 4's Today programme George Osborne, the party's election strategist, was keen to slap down any talk of pacts. He had a frontrow seat for the Major ominshambles and must know that there is a limit to appeasement of those who don't want to be appeased. "There will be no deals" and the only Tory candidates will be those who are just that, he said. We hold the centre ground of politics, the chancellor added.

That's the right answer, even if it's not quite true and some cabinet colleagues, Owen Paterson for instance, are happy to talk pacts with Ukip. On current polling Ukip takes about 13% of the vote, the Tories around 31% – 44% between them – while Labour is on 40%-ish. When Tory voters are forced to choose between Dave and Ed Miliband in 2015 – the EU elections next year are a vehicle for protest vote – I imagine most will bite the bullet and vote Tory. If Cameron can muster 38% he is in business again, says YouGov's Peter Kellner. But if Ukip can hang on to 10% – even without winning any seats – it can deliver power to Miliband on around 35% (a figure that sustained Blair in 2005).

There are a lot of ifs in that. But Cameron's referendum promise for 2017 has gone as far as he should to appease Farage. It is time for him to put flakey Ukip in its place, more politely than hitherto (no more fruitcake talk), but firmly. Miliband has to decide whether to promise a referendum too: a hard call, which I do not envy.

"No" is my present instinct. The election should be about economic management, in which Europe does not greatly matter, whatever the Euro-bores say in the pub. But Cameron and Osborne have placed their party in an awkward spot, dependent on two people whose interests are not theirs: Farage on one hand and the newly-re-elected chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel. She can make the "renegotiation" work. Or not.

UK Independence party (Ukip)ConservativesConservative conferenceConservative conference 2013Michael White
theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Conservative conference diary: 50,000 protesters and Ukip rally ad omitted

Protesters overshadow the Tory conference in Manchester while the Ukip rally misses a mention

• Nick Clegg was on the ski slopes in Switzerland and "forgot he was meant to be acting PM" while David Cameron was away and the Libya crisis broke in 2011, according to In It Together, Matthew D'Ancona's new insider account of the coalition. Meanwhile, snooty Foreign Office officials loved tempting William Hague to say "Benghazi" because his Yorkshire vowel sounds made it "Benghaaaaazi." Miaow.

• Was the Tory conference the biggest political event in Manchester yesterday? Nope. Fifty thousand "Save Our NHS" protesters who marched past the conference fence were right to claim they far-outnumbered party faithful (average age 68), as they also did on the 8.10 train from Euston. After complaints that the BBC was not covering the #NHS29/9 demo political reporter, Norman Smith, was stopped from filming it by G4S. Conspiracy!

• Football's on-the-mend bad boy, Joey Barton, now of QPR, will join Alastair Campbell at Alcoholics Anonymous's conference breakfast fringe today. Labour's Mr Spin had a word with Harry Redknapp to get Joey a morning off training.

• Diet watch: Nick Clegg and David Cameron have lost weight, Ed Miliband ("the new Kinnock" in Tory-speak) remains lean. But only porky Michael Gove has invested £2,500 on an Austrian fat farm this summer, one favoured by Fergie and Liz Hurley, to lose two stone via sheep's yoghurt, colonic irrigation and blood-letting. Blood-letting? Isn't that his day job?

• The ad for Monday's big Ukip rally in Manchester has been omitted from the conference guide, though Ukip's cheque was cashed. "Running scared," says Ukip impresario Nigel Farage, who predicts he'll soon have more members than Dave. The guide does include a fringe session called "Porn, Perverts and Predators: who in their right minds opposes internet regulation?" Tut, tut. That's no way to talk about your Liberal Democrat colleagues.

• Good day Margaret Thatcher. The party's irony-free video tribute to her legacy won the former PM a standing ovation. Dead, but far from forgotten.

• Bad day Chairman Grant Shapps was turned down by Sky's Dermot Murnaghan for an interview. MP's such as John Redwood, Peter Lilley, Peter Bone and even Jennie Bone were preferred.

Conservative conference 2013Conservative conferenceConservativesConservativeHomeProtestManchesterUK Independence party (Ukip)Nick CleggDavid CameronMichael GoveAlastair CampbellEd MilibandMichael White
theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Politics Weekly podcast: Labour party conference 2013

Ed Miliband promised to stand up for consumers against the big six energy companies with a pledge to freeze gas and electricity prices for the 20 months following the next election. Labour says the move would save the average household £120 and forms a major part of the party's vow to help with what it calls a "cost of living crisis".

In a speech delivered without notes, Miliband also pledged to support voting rights for 16- and 17-year-olds and build 200,000 new homes.

Joining Hugh Muir this week to discuss it all are the Guardian's columnist Michael White; the Observer's economics editor Heather Stewart and the editor of Labour List Mark Ferguson.

Also this week: we pick through the revelations in Damian McBride's book on his time at the heart of Gordon Brown's communications team.

And we look ahead to David Cameron's challenge at his party's conference in Manchester next week.

Please leave your thoughts below.

Hugh MuirMichael WhitePhil MaynardHeather StewartMark Ferguson

Labour conference diary: Ed's reshuffle headache

The Labour leader keeps putting off restructuring the shadow cabinet – but he has to shake the tree soon

Thursday's • standing ovation for Andy Burnham makes life more complicated for Miliband strategists who think their health spokesman ought to be moved to a portfolio where he can make fewer waves. Swap him with Yvette Cooper? But busy Burnham's ideas on health and social care are popular, as Ed acknowledged, equivocally. So probably not.

• Ed hates reshuffles and keeps putting one off. But he must shake the tree soon. Current gossip fingers welfare spokesman Liam Byrne, who can't shake off his "I'm afraid that there is no money" note, which fell into the hands of David "Plenty of Money" Laws instead of Liam's pal, Phil "the Undertaker" Hammond.

Good day Harriet Harman. She always makes a funny and rousing speech to wind up the conference, but never gets the credit.

Bad day Billy Hayes. The posties' chief won conference support to renationalise the Royal Mail. But top Miliband sources immediately gave it the thumbs-down.

Labour conference 2013Andy BurnhamEd MilibandLabour conferenceLabourMichael White
theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds