Tory tactics

Don't be fooled: the coalition government's request for departments to draw up plans for 40% cuts is more than just a softening-up exercise to prepare us for the eventual settlement. It is part of a wider scaremongering PR strategy designed to create a narrative that blames Labour profligacy for a massive economic collapse.

To be clear, we are not Greece, and Labour overspending on public services did not destroy the economy. Any rational analysis will conclude that accusations of Labour fiscal mismanagement are a distraction from the glaring truth - this was an economic collapse caused by the Thatcherite settlement of light-touch regulation in the financial sector.

We desperately needed a government prepared to address this, but through an electoral mishap we have been given the opposite.

Labour needs to shoulder blame for continuing the laissez-faire economic approach set out by the Tories in the 1980s. But the coalition is working very hard to blame the deficit on Labour spending, and in doing so they are trying to call into question the entire philosophy of tax and spend.

In supporting this Tory narrative, the Lib Dems are undoing all of Charles Kennedy's hard work in positioning his party to the left of New Labour. Let's hope it doesn't take Liberals too long to realize that Nick Clegg is compromising far too much for power.

They have chosen as their leader their very own Tony Blair - except without the electoral popularity.

Vote for Christmas!

The coalition government is to write to public sector workers asking for ways to save public money. Here's a suggestion to get us started: Why not write a handful of letters to their elected representatives in the trade unions, instead of six million letters to each individual member?

The government is borrowing a tactic from public sector managers. Consulting directly with staff can be justified as a means to really engage with workers - it just so happens to exclude the trade unions, who are nominated by public sector staff to represent them in discussions.

Why do some people find the concept of collective bargaining so difficult to understand? In law, and in parliamentary democracy, we have no difficulty in understanding the idea that people can nominate another to speak on their behalf. When it comes to industrial relations, however, public sector managers – and now the government – reserve the right to speak to whoever is convenient.

And consulting staff directly will be very convenient indeed for the coalition government. It will allow them to pick and choose anecdotal examples to justify their strategy of cuts, using different views scattered across the workforce to validate a massive programme of cuts and redundancies. It is very similar to the strategy they are already using in welfare, where they are using the complaints of working families about unfairness in the benefit system to justify cutting their entitlements.

They will try to avoid consulting the unions about cuts because they know they will get a response they don’t want to hear: Why don’t you address the deficit with a greater emphasis on taxation, and why are you gambling with the economy and our members’ lives by cutting so quickly and deeply?

I suspect this is what the majority of public sector workers will really think. So if it is genuinely interested in consultation, the government can save itself a lot of time - and money.

New politics

So the big headline from the Tory "emergency budget" is that VAT is to rise, and it's time for the Lib Dems to look very sheepish indeed. They campaigned against a Tory VAT rise, and now they are facilitating it.

As anticipated, it appears savings will be made almost entirely through public spending cuts. This is in spite of Osborne's very rare admission during the budget speech that this crisis was created in the banking sector.

Conservatives don't know any better. But many Lib Dems will be asking how a budget can be called fair when poor people who are dependent on public services appear to be paying for a crisis caused by irresponsibility in the banking sector.

Nick Clegg promised us a new politics. I suspect many of his supporters will now be wishing for a return to the old.