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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The real loser in all of this is the Tory reputation for competence
It has long been argued by myself and others that the key characteristic that voters look to when whey make their choice is their desire for competent government. We might not like what a party is proposing but most of all we want politicians who are ready to take unpopular decisions which are right for the country.
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May of the Living Dead?
That's rather witty, Dr. Foxinsox.
*Well, not me. A persistent cough helped encourage me to a Napoleonic sleep pattern, getting up at half past two to try and get it to calm down.
I do hope you make a full recovery.
Of course it also doesn’t help being led by a pound shop Gordon Brown.
The Tory lead on the economy was more robust when George Osborne CH was at No 11, he’d have destroyed Labour on the economy.
What we have had since is weak and chaotic government. It is noteworthy the last time the Tories lost their reputation for competence was in the post black Wednesday period where we had weak and chaotic government as Major fought his bastards.
It therefore seems to me that what damages the reputation for competence is minority or weak government rather than any particular policy changes. An extended period of such government 92-97 led to a total thrashing. At the moment it is hard to see anything other than a repeat post 2022.
https://www.facebook.com/thepeopleforjeremycorbyn/videos/1866330060299662/
But, I think the problem was not preparing the ground in advance.
Labour 97 portrayed a Govt in waiting level of competence.... very hard to say that they are there yet in 2017!
Do wonder who'll replace May.
Yes.
The policy pissed off the grey vote, but the U-turn fired up the not-grey vote more.
Net negative for the tories.
It was a half-arsed manifesto, combined with a hesitant, half-arsed campaign.
I think it was shortly after the u-turn that the DIY "STRONG AND STABLE, MY ARSE" posters started popping up.
The plotting over leadership looks like a displacement activity to me, like the urge to rearrange the kitchen cupboards when an essay is due.
The junking of the Tory manifesto in favour of most of Ed Milibands shows the complete lack of direction and authority, while the passengers try to wrest control of the wheel from Mrs May.
Has any party recovered its competence while in government rather than opposition?
I've said Osborne's political career is long over, you Brexit it, you fix it.
(*not that I am exactly excusing Theresa May, standing on the touchline at Twickenham shouting to the scrum "Me! Me!! Pass it to me...." when perhaps netball was her game....)
I've explained many times why the civil service couldn't do proper planning for Brexit, and that is down entirely to Vote Leave.
Do you expect Osborne to fix that ?
My understanding is that Cameron forbade planning - as with Scottish referendum...
Are you having a laugh?
EDIT: Having read the rest of the piece I think Mike's wrong. The u-turn (if you can call it that) wasn't great, but that wasn't what the opposition focussed on. It was the policy itself that did the damage.
I really liked Cameron, and I thought his 2015 Conference speech was his finest, setting out a vision for the Party and the country that I would have been very proud to get behind. But in the end, I'm not sure which charge rankles about him the most - his incompetence or his cowardice.
But you carry on, being the great cheerleader for this appaling period of recent history, whilst absolving yourself of all responsibility for the current predicament that democracy has handed to Government.
We need a DeverythingwhichisnotexEU, headed by a co-PM; it's the only way.
The reason for limited planning for Brexit was that there was no Vote Leave manifesto/white paper (unlike during the Indyref)
Plus Vote Leave were promising so many contradictory things, as well as unrealistic things, the civil service couldn't realistically wargame for it.
But Mike's main point is right. The Tories are delivering little successfully at the moment which combined with too much internal conflict is harming how they're seen by the public.
You should have stuck to your guns Geoff - I see the Guardian has Brexiters with one 't' in its main headline this morning and if you don't trust the Grauniad for your spellings, the OED notes: "Just as Brexit itself had developed from Grexit, other words began to appear: Brexiteer, Brexiter, Brexit as a verb."
Geoff 1 - Sunil 0
If you're going to do something like that, you need to do gently and with a lot of preparation, not overnight.
Mrs May and her team forgot the lesson of the 2007 Tory conference.
Pie in the sky promises and vagueness the only way to go.
"I've explained many times why the civil service couldn't do proper planning for Brexit,"
Basically, you're saying they didn't because it was too hard.
Tosh!
There should have been a position paper at least. The line to take on of Article 50, basic positioning, potential allies, main enemies. All that admin stuff - they love that sort of thing.
Cameron ran away, the only position he took was exposing the yellow stripe down his back.
Plus I remember Leavers assuring us Brexit would be easy.
The real fault was not that the civil service didn't contingency plan but that the Government did not set out clearly what the Leave option meant. That was a shocking failure on the part of Cameron and his cabinet.
A major court complex specialising in cybercrime and fraud cases is to be built in the City of London to promote the UK’s financial and legal services post-Brexit.
The scheme – likely to costs tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds – is being backed by the City of London Corporation, HM Courts and Tribunal Services (HMCTS), the Ministry of Justice and senior judges.
The courthouse to be built near Fleet Street will have space for 18 courtrooms. Its primary focus will be on fraud, economic crime and cybercrime, though it will also hear criminal and civil cases currently listed at the City of the London magistrates and county courts.
The investment is intended to bolster the City’s reputation after the UK leaves the EU. It will further concentrate legal expertise in a small area of London around the Royal Courts of Justice, the Old Bailey, the Rolls Building – where most commercial cases are heard – and Inns of Court......
....The project could trigger resentment among court users outside the capital where a succession of HMCTS closure programmes aimed at making significant savings has led to hundreds of historic magistrates, county and crown courts being shut.
Last year, the MoJ announced the closure of 86 crown, county, family and magistrates’ courts across England and Wales. In 2011, a previous economy drive led to 140 courts shutting their doors.
The Rolls Building, which opened on the edge of the City in 2011, cost £300m and contains 31 courtrooms. The cost of the new complex is to be revealed early next year when a feasibility scheme is published.
The government is determined to protect London’s status as a leading international legal and financial centre after Brexit. About 44,000 jobs in the Square Mile, more than 9% of the City’s workforce, are in legal services.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/oct/09/new-court-complex-planned-bolster-city-london-after-brexit
(I support the principles behind it, just that it was so poorly presented, and the u turn didn't help)
PS I hate the term dementia tax. Paying for your own care is not a tax - precisely the opposite - the alternative depends upon tax.
Leave needed to create as big a consensus as possible to get Brexit through. They did this, but the inherent contradictions are hurting the negotiations, and hence the country. It's therefore hilarious to see leavers thrashing about trying to blame Cameron for their own mess.
For someone projecting herself as the Iron Lady Mark II, she must have known Mrs Thatcher wouldn't have dodged the debate.
Ironically the terrorist attacks didn't help her against Corbyn, as it brought to the fore the cut in the number of police.
I quite accept that Vote Leave were promising very different things - but you can do basic preparation for all of them - and indeed setting out where they are contradictory is one of the first things that should be made clear!
This was done in 1975 but Cameron decided he didn't want it;
"162.In 1975, Whitehall prepared for a possible UK exit from the ‘Common Market’ with a “fairly intensive” programme of Cabinet Office led contingency planning.220 The contingency planning focused on the length of time required for withdrawal to be negotiated, the financial consequences of leaving and issues such as subsidy payments to farmers, tariffs and future trading arrangements with Europe.221
163.However, unlike in 1975, the Government’s official position during the 2016 EU referendum was that there would be no contingency planning, the only exception being planning within the Treasury to anticipate the likely impact of a Leave vote on the UK’s financial stability.222"
Particularly since at the time Cameron was promising to stay as PM.
A friend at the Treasury told me months after the vote they were still finding new pieces of legislation and associated problems to fix. All of that should have started well before - particularly given how time pressed the negotiation is.
Hammond's excuse was that they were worried the contingency planning would leak- that this would be seen as partisan during the referendum and/or would somehow find its way into the hands of the EU.
That's a completely ridiculous reason in my view.
https://www.civilserviceworld.com/articles/news/lack-whitehall-brexit-planning-not-oversight-says-foreign-secretary-philip-hammond
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmpubadm/496/49608.htm
They blame the people who warned them, and voted against them.
They are hapless victims...
SAD!
I'm going to nick those for the inevitable day when Mrs May is toppled.
The groundwork point is the most important. Surprising people is fine if you're giving them sweeties. If you're diving headfirst into an emotive policy area full of financial implications you have to prepare the ground, otherwise it's as risky as pursuing a Carthaginian towards a lake.
Thank you for the information.
I've always suspected the real reason was that preparing for Leave would give it extra credence and could undermine Operation Fear.
There was no Leave scenario the civil service could realistically plan for, and the Brexiteers know it, they just need a scapegoat for their fuckup.
I think he worked well in partnership with David Cameron, and William Hague (whose influence is underrated) up until 2016, because they compensated for his political weaknesses and took the edge off him.
But, his brand of strategy had started to look rather tired by 2016, which was much more suited to the early 00s than now, and he simply made too many enemies.
Exhibit A: Bernard Jenkins.
Nice Trasimine reference, or however it is spelled.
But both campaigns were atrocious. It was rather sad.
They aren't very convinced by Labour either at the moment. But the level of apparent unity and firmness of purpose will give a competence edge which is usually a Tory asset.
The problem, as I saw it, with the manifesto was that it was just that. And, apparently ill-thought through.
You don't need fancy buildings to hear fraud cases in.
Complacency, even when you seem to have a large advantage, is always bloody silly. At best it doesn't help, at worst it turns a seemingly certain victory to defeat (more like Cannae than Trasimene).
OGH may have thought Dementia Tax was a "winner", but some of us on PB spotted within minutes of its announcement that this would be a total disaster.
The global economic upswing we’re seeing would have given him a lot of fiscal headroom around about now.
We’d be living in a very different present.
Unfair or not, so many Conservatives have no idea how large swathes of people, mainly in large cities, despise them. I don't feel that way at all but a little humility from time to time would do them a massive favour.
Re the thread header, if the egotists were to concentrate on governing rather than posturing they might make a better job of it.
The latest OBR revision of its last seven years of productivity figures have wiped a lot of the leeway out at a stroke:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/10/05/hammonds-budget-cupboard-almost-bare-treasury-document-reveals/
There's no way New Labour would have taken this risk.
In the end all she has achieved is ensuring nothing is done on social care in this parliament.
How could he? How could he, a half-hearted Eurosceptic, be expected to reconcile the drastic split in leavers' views that even this leavecentric government cannot close?
Just wargame what you're saying for a moment. Say Cameron has tried that: the first thing Farage et al would have said is : "he's kicking it into the long grass." The conversations from fanatical leavers on here after the GE in 2015 about the timing of the referendum were hilarious.
*Any* agreement that Cameron had managed to get - in the unlikely event he got any - would have been immediately disowned by uninvolved leavers, or by Labour, amidst claims of trying to 'rig' the result. After all, there was a referendum to win.
No, any mess coming out of Brexit will be firmly nailed to leavers' doors, not Cameron's. But I hope there is no mess.
What should have been there was a commitment to come up with a policy within a year, after consultation, and the general principles that would guide that policy. Then, it could have been rolled out as before. Once it'd been in operation for 3-4 years at the next election, the potential to scare voters would have been much reduced.