THE SUN IS SETTING ON ED MILIBAND.

MILIBAND: POLLS AND SUN BLUNDER LAST STRAW?

Labour MPs I’ve met in the last week had a real look of despair in their eyes over Ed Miliband’s massive blunder posing with a copy of the Sun. Now comes woeful ratings in the latest opinion polls. 49% of voters want him replaced. Their wish won’t come true, but don’t you begin to have the feeling we’ve been here before? In the run up to the 2010 General Election it was clear that Gordon Brown was a liability. Loyal Labour MPs backed the leader whatever their private thoughts.

Rebel Southport Lib Dem MP John Pugh said of his leader recently “while it might be necessary for the captain to go down with his ship, it is not necessary for the ship to go down with the captain.” It looks like happening to Labour who have historically lacked the ruthlessness to do something about a leader who can’t win.

The Sun blunder really was bad. Miliband had got a lot of credit for standing up to the Murdoch press over phone hacking. Now he’s posing with the rag and preparing to have dinner with the paper’s representative. The Sun will trash Labour anyway in the election campaign. News International are fighting back.

But the most devastating aspect of the affair was the offence to the Hillsborough families. Miliband shouldn’t need advisers over this. Just ask Andy Burnham or any Labour MP within a hundred miles of Liverpool or Sheffield. Anyway his advisers are either all London based myopics or were dazzled by the chance to back the England football team.

Nobody believes Ed Miliband reads the Sun or eats bacon sandwiches. He shouldn’t have stabbed his brother in the back and should now try to be authentic at least.

JUNKER: THE DEMOCRATIC CHOICE.

Because the Sun (or most of our press and broadcasters) didn’t cover it, doesn’t mean that Jean-Claude Junker can’t become E.U President.

MEPs have been determined to bring some democracy to this appointment and made it clear from a long way back that the party with the largest group in the European Parliament should provide the next President of the Commission. So hustings were held in the middle of May with candidates representing the main groupings and broadcast on BBC Parliament. You could have watched it (if the media had done their job and told you about it) and then you could have supported a party on that basis. For instance Martin Shulz, roughly Labour; Guy Verhofstadt, roughly Liberal, Ska Keller, Greens or good old Jean-Claude Junker, Conservative Federalist. They turned out to be the largest group after the elections so he has the right to be chosen as the next President of the Commission.

Now I hear two anguished cries going up. First “we’ve never heard of these people!” Not an excuse, just like I didn’t know the speed limit, the need for insurance cover etc. People have got to take some interest. The British media have got to raise their game over European coverage.

The second cry is “where was the candidate representing David Cameron’s anti federalist Tories in the European Conservatives and Reformist mini group. They didn’t put up a candidate! Brilliant. If you don’t buy a ticket you can’t enter the lottery or block the democratic choice of the people of Europe.

Cameron may still succeed in blocking Juncker. My advise would be accept him and stop being rude about him. After all Cameron is going to need him to help with a package of reforms which the Prime Minister(if still in office) has to sell to the British people to stop them from voting to get out in 2017.

GORDON BROWN TO SAVE UK….AGAIN!

I met Gordon Brown this week for the first time since he was Prime Minister. He is in many ways Britain’s Richard Nixon. Both clever men with a passion for what politics can achieve. Each had a towering achievement. Nixon’s was the breakthrough between the United States and Red China. Brown’s was keeping our cash machines open in October 2008 and leading the world as it reeled from the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But both men’s periods in office ended disastrously partly because they saw enemies around every corner, enemies that had to be crushed.

For the last four years Brown has largely disappeared from front line politics. He has a role with the United Nations but is rarely seen at Westminster. Indeed in a speech this week to Commons correspondents he made a joke of it. He spoke of needing a tour guide and taking the new members induction course. Dangerous stuff, many think he should have left the Commons on ceasing to be Prime Minister as Tony Blair did.

But as one reporter observed, little has changed since Brown’s time in No 10. We still have senior Cabinet Ministers at each others throats and special advisers resigning.

Brown was anxious to point out that he wasn’t seeking to return to the limelight except to be “a foot soldier” in the campaign against Scottish independence.

There has been speculation as to why Brown has, so far, kept a low profile in the debate. Perhaps it was because the Better Together campaign is headed by Alistair Darling who faced the “forces of Hell” when as Brown’s Chancellor he accurately forecast the coming economic meltdown in the summer of 2008.

We will see whether Brown the foot soldier can keep from standing on people’s toes in the coming weeks. His suggestion that the Prime Minister should debate with Alex Salmond has not gone down well. The role of the Conservative Party in the “No” campaign is really tricky. Better Together fear that as the prospect of the Tories being the largest party after the 2015 General Election rises, so does support for independence. So David Cameron has the dilemma of wanting to put his Prime Ministerial authority behind keeping the UK united without helping Salmond to claim that Scotland keeps getting governments it doesn’t vote for.

Brown is clearly unimpressed with the Better Together campaign’s tactics so far. He says they need to avoid it becoming a British politicians v Scotland issue. Scottish identity is not at issue, nor is the existence of the Scottish Parliament with more devolution on the way. All that has been granted. What this is about is severing all links with the UK.

Despite the latest polls showing 58% support for “No” against 42% Yes, Brown fears that if we don’t wake up, Scottish independence could still happen.

Gordon Brown was always more sympathetic to Northern devolution than Tony Blair. That enthusiasm has not diminished. He warned this week that there could be more constitutional turmoil, even if Scotland rejects independence, unless English regions are given more power. He regretted that the Coalition had not taken the opportunity to address these issues as well as Scottish independence.

I wonder why that choice was made by David Cameron. It was because the Scots, and the Welsh, get their act together and demand devolution.

That’s what we need to do starting at Downtown’s Northern Revolution conference next month.

AUTUMN LEAVES AND GREEN ECONOMIC SHOOTS

 

 

 

The last leaves are falling from the trees but George Osborne will be pointing to the green shoots on Thursday in his Autumn Statement.

 

If there is going to be a turning point for this awkward coalition government, this should be it. Apart from that sunny day in the Downing Street rose garden when the two posh boys (as I called them at the time) did the coalition deal, we have lived through unremitting economic gloom. Business investment dried up, the banks went into their shell, wages were frozen, interest rates went to zero. Only inflation seemed to go up.

 

Now at last the economic indicators are looking up and the North of England will be hoping for some sensible decisions from George Osborne to help our part of the world. Although places like Liverpool have shown more resilience than in the past, the North has suffered under the ConLibs particularly in the haemorrhaging of public sector jobs and the popular squeeze on benefits.

 

Unemployment has actually been slightly rising this autumn in the North West and the squeeze on living standards continues as the controversy continues over zero hours contracts. Youth and graduate unemployment remains a real problem in the North and the shortage of new houses remains.

 

So why might this be a turning point for the government. Simply because it looks as if the Chancellor will have all the economic indicators pointing in the right direction for the election in 2015. The news on headline growth and the deficit will be good. Economists are forecasting the following growth figures: 2013 1.6%, 2014 2.3%, 2015 2.5%.

 

Its expected George Osborne will revise down unemployment and inflation figures. There may even be expectations of real wage growth. We’ll then have to wait to see if there is aresponse in terms of business investment.

 

The Chancellor is likely to make much of new figures showing a reduction in public borrowing forecasts, perhaps down to £80bn by 2015/16.

 

Sweeteners for the voters will follow the already announced free school meals and marriage tax breaks. Petrol prices are likely to be held down again and personal tax allowances are likely to rise.

 

The headline measure is likely to be the transfer of “the green crap” that the Prime Minister referred to from energy bills to general taxation.

 

So will Labour be blown out of the water by all this. Ed Balls can no longer entertain us with his flat lining gestures in the Commons. Well not entirely, the living wage issue has been well handled by Mr Ed. The real wage gap from peak remains substantial and GDP per capita in 2015 will be way below the last good Labour year of 2008. Then there is the psychological issue that the Tories fear. If people think the economic pressure is off may they feel they can vote Labour again and get away from all that nasty Tory economic rigour?

 

The Lib Dems will remain associated with Budgets and Autumn Statements right up to the election but we will increasingly hear from them the message that they prevented even more vicious cuts from the Tories and lifted millions out of paying tax which, they claim, was not a Conservative priority.

 

After his statement, the Chancellor will pray that the polls will start turning like the economic indicators. Realistically all the Tories can hope for is to be the largest party in 2015. However if the voters want to punish them for three years of misery and forget Gordon Brown’s administration, then they will hand over a repaired economy to Mr Ed.