16 June, 2010
I’m pleased to say that, pretty much, my prediction was wrong, and the press and broadcast media did not embarrass themselves by misrepresenting the OBR report. No shock horror headlines.
The front pages were varied, covering the imminent Bloody Sunday report and the BP debacle, alongside Nick Clegg’s ugly assault on public sector pensions.
The Daily Mail succumbed to a front page diatribe, screaming about the OBR’s “devastating analysis” but by and large, nobody was fooled by the spin. Indeed, some commentators were saying that the OBR’s figures were “too rosy”, which I think means they didn’t discredit Labour in the way that some had hoped.
None of which stopped George Osborne shaking his fists and saying, “never again will a government be allowed to fiddle the figures.”
Comments like that, in the teeth of the evidence, are going to seriously undermine Osborne’s credibility. They’re also old, old, old politics. There is still room for Labour to answer the public’s call for more decency in the way Westminster goes about its business.
Which is why we need a new Labour leader now, not in September.
Speaking of which, there was much 
complaint online about Newsnight’s poor production values, and Paxman’s chairmanship of the Labour leaders’ debate. Ed Balls was surprisingly winning. Andy Burnham was cruelly described online as looking like a Thunderbird puppet (Troy!). Diane is Diane, and if you like her, you’ll still like her after that performance – but if you don’t, you’ll be feeling unmoved. Ed M looked like somebody’s younger brother, and I know how that feels. David Miliband is the next leader, that is very clear. At one point he spoke, quite effortlessly, on behalf of the whole panel. He’s just got it.
The prospect of months of further hustings fills me with dread; there is no need for prolonged introspection. Look how fast the Coalition moved to get itself into No 10. With a new leader, Labour can move fast too. In these crucial months, while Labour wonders who said what to whom in Cabinet, and the candidates mess about on swings, the Coalition is getting away with murder.
The OBR report didn’t do it, but there IS a new report out which damns the Government. But it damns the new Government, not the old one. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) was forecasting unemployment of 2.65m this year. In the light of the Coalition’s emphasis on public sector cuts, they have revised their figure upwards to 2.95m.
Between friends, let’s call it 3m. Unemployed. This year.
It begins.
Agreed that the need for a new leader is increasingly pressing (I mean, has Harman actually turned invisible?).
Still, the party can’t be seen to have a “coronation” as they were accused of last time. I should imagine that the spin doctors wish the field had been wider and less samey. It needs to look like a proper ding-dong!
Still, it’s a crying shame that Alan Johnson didn’t stand. He’d wipe the floor with Eton/Westminster lot.
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Quite agree – the coronation was most unhelpful. But an election can be quick and still be meaningful. A month would do it, surely. I suspect this was all muddled up with GB’s last hurrah, his final bid to get Clegg to come over to the light side, and probably made sense in the middle of that madness; now it is just a liability.