Tag Archives: Alastair Campbell

The Moody’s Blues

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14th February, 2012

The credit ratings agency, Moody’s, has given the UK a negative school report.  I try to quote from the source, so here’s what they say:

Moody’s changes the outlook on the United Kingdom’s Aaa rating to negative

Moody’s Investors Service has today changed the outlook on the United Kingdom’s Aaa government bond rating to negative from stable.

The key drivers of today’s action on the United Kingdom are:

1.) The increased uncertainty regarding the pace of fiscal consolidation in the UK due to materially weaker growth prospects over the next few years, with risks skewed to the downside. Any further abrupt economic or fiscal deterioration would put into question the government’s ability to place the debt burden on a downward trajectory by fiscal year 2015-16.

2.) Although the UK is outside the euro area, the high risk of further shocks (economic, financial, or political) within the currency union are exerting negative pressure on the UK’s Aaa rating given the country’s trade and financial links with the euro area. Overall, Moody’s believes that the considerable uncertainty over the prospects for institutional reform in the euro area and the region’s weak macroeconomic outlook will continue to weigh on already fragile market confidence across Europe.

How do we respond to this?

You can ask who the hell are these credit-rating agencies anyway?   That’s Alastair Campbell’s question (here).  And it’s worth asking.

You can claim that it supports your argument on austerity.  It doesn’t matter which side you’re on.  Labour claim it shows the plan’s not working.  Ed Balls says the brave thing now would be to admit that a change of course is necessary.

And arguing for a change of course is no more than the Tories did the last time this happened, in 2009, when Standard and Poor’s issued a similar warning. “It’s now clear that Britain’s economic reputation is on the line at the next general election, another reason for bringing the date forward and having that election now,” said the then Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne (21 May, 2009).

But George Osborne now argues the contrary – that the Moody’s news is an argument not to change course.  It is a “reality-check” that Britain “must not waver” in dealing with its debts.

To which the question must be asked: what would count as sufficient reason for a change of course?  If the austerity measures bite hard, they will reduce spending power, lower employment, reduce tax take and (no matter how hard we try) increase welfare spend.  Borrowing will therefore get worse.

If the response is then to tighten further, when will it ever stop?  It is a genuine question.

To put it another way: how bad would an economic spiral have to be before a change of course were justified?  As bad as Greece’s?  The answer to their nose dive seems to be: more of the same.  Ouch.

To put it another way: is there ever an economic question to which fiscal tightening is not the answer?  If the answer is no, then let’s not waste time with questions or economic metrics.  Who cares about evidence?

“Did you send me that Valentine’s card?” “Maybe, maybe not.”

To be fair to the Chancellor, Moody’s are keen on fiscal tightening too.  But here is what they say:

WHAT COULD MOVE THE RATING DOWN

The UK’s Aaa rating could potentially be downgraded if Moody’s were to conclude that debt metrics are unlikely to stabilise within the next 3-4 years, with the deficit, the overall debt burden and/or debt-financing costs continuing on a rising trend. This could happen in one of three scenarios, all of which would imply lower economic and/or government financial strength:
(1) a combination of significantly slower economic growth over a multi-year time horizon — perhaps due to persistent private-sector deleveraging and very weak growth in Europe — and reduced political commitment to fiscal consolidation, including discretionary fiscal loosening or a failure to respond to a deteriorating fiscal outlook;
(2) a sharp rise in debt-refinancing costs, possibly associated with an inflation shock or a deterioration in market confidence over a sustained period; or
(3) renewed problems in the banking sector that force a resumption of official support programmes and spill over into the real economy, indirectly causing lower growth and larger budget deficits.

Look at point 1.  Yes, Moody’s doesn’t like the idea of ‘discretionary’ fiscal loosening – for which read, ‘government losing its nerve’.  But before that, they fear ‘significantly slower economic growth… due to persistent private-sector deleveraging”.  For which read, ‘the private sector cutting and running.’

If you’ve ever read my blog, you’ll know which alarm bell bothers me most.  It’s the private sector running, in response to fiscal tightenings achieved and promised, and to the talking-down of expectations.  Who would invest in this climate?

But that is not my point today.  My point is this. On their own, the Moody’s Blues tell us nothing at all.

You can ask who the ratings agencies are to go around putting the wind up markets and governments, lecturing us in a brand of English that resorts to phrases like ‘multi-year time horizons’.

You can debate whether bad reports justify holding the course, or switching it.

But you still have to decide how to get out of the doldrums.  You have to decide whether fiscal tightening in the short run can work, or whether it is just so much dangerous leeching.

You still have to decide whether government gets out of the way, or whether government leads the way.

Beware Vince Blaming Greeks

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25th May, 2010



Yesterday, as I cycled through Hyde Park, I saw a heron flying.   Are herons auspicious, or ill omens? 


Yesterday, too, the Coalition announced its £6.2bn of cuts.  Note, said George Osborne, it’s a little more than we said.

Vince Cable

Some concerns:


1) Can you call it £6.2bn if you are also going to say you are “reinvesting” £500m from the same pot?


The answer must be no.


I thought I was being unduly churlish, that there had to be some good and proper reason for the way the figures were being presented.  So I checked the Treasury statement in detail.  But I could see no explanation in the official document for quoting the gross figure instead of the net one, which is of course £5.7bn.


I can only guess at the reason: to suggest that the Coalition is working with care; that it has a heart; that it can make cuts but that it can also divert money where it thinks it should go.  To suggest that the Coalition isn’t JUST about cuts.


Or, more cynically, to distract us from the simple fact of the cuts.  If so, it has worked.  I’m really confused, and forgetting my top-level reactions.


2) Things can get sometimes get better – by themselves.


Growth is up a fraction higher than forecast, at 0.3% instead of 0.2%.


No great celebration there. (But no credit to Labour, either, I notice.)


But what about the state of the deficit, which, according to last week’s figures from the Office for National Statistics, is huge at £156bn, but lower than projected, by a whopping £11bn?  Even recent predictions had it £7bn higher, at £163bn.  So we are £7bn-£11bn better off than the Tories thought we were during the election.  In fact, we are £18bn better off than projected on the raw figures, which include some gains on government-held bank shares.


If £6bn was exactly the right amount of deficit reduction, this has already happened, by itself.


Forgive me for thinking that £6bn is the magic figure only because it was the figure talked about during the election, and that it has no other meaning whatsoever.  It so happens that Heron was the name of the Greek mathematician who first recognised the phenomenon of the “imaginary number”.  This £6bn certainly has an imaginary – or at least, imagined – quality to it.


No one doubts that the deficit will need to be dealt with.  The issue is how hard, how fast.  There is nothing necessary, or exact, about £6bn now.  Unless, that is, you are ideologically wedded to cuts you think you can get away with (because you’ve already sold them).


3) I don’t mind the Tories being ideologically in favour of cuts.


I just wish they’d be a little more up-front about it.  As someone once said, they love making cuts; they do it for sport.  They believe in a small state, rolling back its frontiers so that the private sector can flourish.  They have an either/or philosophy of the relationship between public and private sector, which you can debate.  Personally I think the financial crisis makes a powerful case for fearing the unfettered market.  It makes a text-book case for the need for governments to act, both to calm markets and then to reflate them; to spend when the private sector is too scared.  If the Bank of England’s role is sometimes ‘lender of last resort’, so government’s role, sometimes, is ‘spender of last resort’.  Government, on occasion, is for big boys with nerves of steel.


But George Osborne constantly feels the need to refer to our calamitous Labour debt, the mess he has to clear up.  We can debate what kind of mess we’d be in if the Tories had presided over the banking crisis – their refusal to act would have produced carnage – but that’s not the point.  We can debate whether the cuts are necessary or wise while the recovery is so fragile, and past experience in Japan and in the Great Depression shows the pitfalls of cutting too deep, too early – but that is not the point.  We can debate whether the UK’s debt is really equivalent in nature to that of the so-called ‘PIGS’, but that is not the point. 


The point is that whatever the deficit, the Tories would be cutting.  It’s what they do.  They don’t like big states.  In this respect, the modern Conservatives are entirely unreconstructed.


To be fair, the rhetoric is not buried.  On Radio 4 yesterday, my friend Jim Naughtie allowed (or encouraged) Osborne to rattle on, and it soon became clear that he believes in “a smaller state and a bigger society” and “it’s about the state doing things it’s good at doing and not doing things it’s not good at doing and in the end this is about all of us taking greater responsibility for our lives and the society that we live in.”


Or, in other words, “yes there’s a stinker of a deficit, but ‘in the end’ this is about our ideology.”


I have to say I respect his honesty on this.  When he’s not up-front it’s because he can’t resist taking a pop at Labour and “the biggest deficit in Europe”.  Or it’s because he innocently conflates the problem of the deficit with the ideology behind his solution.  It’s not because he’s covering his real beliefs.


What’s really disappointing is that, I’m afraid, I think the LibDems are lying.


4) UnconVinced


Vince Cable appeared on Newsnight last night and claimed, like Nick Clegg on Sunday, that he had changed his mind on the need for cuts now.  During the election, he had many reasons (five, in fact) why the Tories were wrong to advocate cuts in 2010.  But now he’s changed his mind.


Fair enough.  But why?  Because he had to compromise as part of the coalition deal?  No.  Because of the crisis in Greece and the anxieties over “sovereign risk”.  The anxiety in the markets has spread across southern Europe, and could travel north to our door.


Greece.  That’s what made Vince think we needed exactly £6.2bn (or is it £5.7bn?) of cuts.


I don’t mind the argument.  I just don’t believe it is the reason.  Until now I didn’t subscribe to Nick Robinson’s line about Vince “not looking comfortable” in the coalition.  But seeing his body-language and listening to his voice on Newsnight, I changed my mind.  I think he’s lying. 


It pains me to say it.  It is not very generous of me to think it, let alone write it.  And I have no evidence beyond a reading of body language.   But if and when it comes online, look for yourself. 


Nor can I explain, if I am right, why he lied.  I wouldn’t mind (what I take to be) the real argument – that compromise with the Conservatives was necessary to win power, and this was one of the casualties.  I don’t know why he didn’t feel able to say that.  What am I missing?*


5) I’ll tell you one thing I’m missing: the New Politics.


I thought that one of the benefits of hung parliament and coalition was supposed to be more transparency, more compromise, less mudslinging, more decency in politics.  I thought that was what the LibDems stood for.  I thought the Coalition was going to deliver us historic reform – and surely that must start with the rhetoric.


Alas, we’re not seeing much New Politics so far.  George Osborne and Dave Cameron (see today’s defence of the Queen’s Speech) cannot open their mouths without talking about the dire legacy they have inherited.  At one point, Osborne even justified his cuts package as a way of “avoiding Labour’s job tax in 2011”!  Nick Clegg complained on Andrew Marr’s programme on Sunday that now that they’ve “seen the books” the Labour mess is much worse than he feared.  No mention that the figures are £7bn better than expected.  Or is that £11bn?  Or £18bn?


Let’s be honest, there will be no sudden end to Westminster mudslinging and yah-boo politics.   Did anyone seriously expect that to be a by-product of a hung parliament?  (Actually some people did, and that’s why I’ve been arguing with them about it on these pages and elsewhere.)  I know I had no illusions.


But I really, really didn’t expect to find myself feeling that the most statesmanlike of LibDems, Vince Cable, had lied on television in the very first days of the Coalition government.


I rather think my heron was inauspicious, and that none of this augurs well.


 

STOP PRESS

for a surprisingly similar (and much better written) article, see http://www.anthonypainter.co.uk/2010/05/25/the-haunting-of-vince-cable/ 

Once you’ve read Mr Painter, you’ll never read me again.  Even I won’t read me again.  Shame, I was just getting warmed up.


* Mr Painter’s answer to “what I’m missing” is, essentially, that Vince Cable believes the cuts might send us into a downward spiral.  He is haunted by this fear.  Interesting.   For my part, it is hard to get worked up by the relative small beer of £6bn.  On the other hand, the language of cuts – “designed to send shockwaves” – and of course the signposting of massive austerity measures down the line could have the effect of terrifying the private sector – would you invest in an economy which is having all the demand sucked out of it?  how are you going to sell anything to people with no money in their pockets? – and triggering the double-dip.  That is a real and sobering risk, and it is the principal reason I signed up to help the Labour Party during the election.   If this goes belly-up, the hopes of a generation will be lost.  And it will haunt us all, not just Vince Cable.



Our Country’s Good

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23rd May, 2010


If I have tribal loyalties, they are to Portsmouth Football Club and the Labour Party.   It is a sad fact that nowadays, these loyalties coalesce around losers.


Hey ho.   I’ve already said it feels more right that Pompey are down and out; the same may well be true of Labour.  I should put up and shut up and enjoy the liberties of my teams’ demotions.


Naturally, I am intensely interested in who the next bosses of Pompey and Labour might be.  Pompey, excitingly, might be managed by the legend that is David James.  He’s put himself forward in the last couple of days, in the light of Avram Grant’s departure.  Less thrillingly, perhaps, Diane Abbott has put her hat into the ring for Labour, while Neil Kinnock has endorsed Ed Miliband.  Interesting times.


But not everyone shares my fascination.  I’m aware that, in other business, there’s a coalition love-in going on, and all eyes are upon it.


The love-in is so sweet that I am nervous of gainsaying it.   But I have this feeling that There’s Something Going On with the new government.  I can’t quite put my finger on it.   But here are some of the things that are bothering me.


1) The fact that I feel nervous gainsaying the coalition

  

These are times of New Politics, of open-mindedness and compromise.  It’s just not cricket to be cynical about it.  It’s historic.  There’s some reform in there too.  Who doesn’t want reform?  Who doesn’t want a good old clean up with a nice new broom?


It would be just mean-spirited of anyone to knock these noble efforts.


Hmm.  If Alastair Campbell were on their team, I’d be feeling well and truly ‘spun’ into a corner for the mean and nasty.  The only dignified way out of this corner, it seems, is to smile, raise a glass and ‘wish the coalition well’.  Launch her like a good ship; say a prayer for all who sail in her; cross fingers against rough seas ahead.


But hang on a minute.   If this were a Conservative government, I wouldn’t be ‘wishing it well’.  I’d be wishing it gone.  I can’t really imagine a majority LibDem outfit, but insofar as I can, I’d want that gone too. 


I wouldn’t want either party.  So why is a fusion of the two any different?  The truth is it isn’t. 


What we are supposed to be applauding, then, must be their open-heartedness in having sat down and hammered out a deal.   Which leads me to my next worry.


2.a) Our Country’s Good


This is the idea that the coalition came together for the good of the country.  The LibDems and Tories keep telling us they got into bed with each other “in the national interest”.


I’m not going to criticise a politician for wanting power.  Any politician will say he’s doing something in the national interest even if he’s doing it in his own self-interest.  Because he believes his hand on the tiller of power is not just in his interest, but ours.  Except in extremis, we can’t expect politicians to differentiate between self-interest and national interest.


But it does amaze me that the phrase ‘in the national interest’ has been repeated so much without inducing laughter.  Nobody thinks it’s funny.  Why?  Maybe it’s a nagging doubt about…


2.b) The Electoral Mandate


This is the notion that goes “the people wanted this”.  This argument says Labour lost, but the Tories didn’t win.  Therefore the electorate is sending a message to the political class: collaborate, bury your differences, sort yerselves out.  The electorate is effectively banging the politicians’ heads together.


Add to this the power vacuum – the weakness of the Tories on their own, without a majority – and it is, surely, only right, proper and decent of the coalition partners to bury any Old Politics hatchets and come together, for the good of the nation.


What bothers me about this, is the electorate didn’t vote for a coalition.   As my mate Andy says, “I didn’t see Hung Parliament anywhere on the ballot slip.  Must have missed that one.”


Voters vote for an MP.  One they like personally.  Or one whose party politics they prefer.  Or they vote tactically.  Mostly, they want their party to win.  What they don’tvote for is no party to win.  What the voters in the 258 constituencies which returned Labour MPs did notvote for is a Tory/LibDem coalition.


The truth is that the coalition is about a bunch of guys teaming up to win on the numbers game.  And there’s nothing much wrong with that.  Simple majorities, in the end, are the best way to crack on.  But there’s nothing God-given, or holier-than-thou, or New Politics, or historic about it.


3) The New Gospel

 

Credit: Andrew Parsons

The Historic Agreement (click to read)

 Speaking of God, is it just me, or is The Coalition Agreement reaching biblical status?


“Even if you’ve read 100 party manifestos, you’ve never read a document like this one,” Nick Clegg told an audience of civil servants at the Treasury on Thursday.


Not only is it the best thing since sliced bread, it is better than two other loaves of bread joined together.   “Not one party’s ideas, not even just two parties’ ideas, but a joint programme for government based on shared ambitions and shared goals.   Compromises have, of course, been made on both sides, but those compromises have strengthened, not weakened, the final result.”


Strewth.  This is a nine-day cherry-picking job.  Pretty well done, actually, with some welcome excisions from the Tory manifesto and the thornier issues kicked into the long-grass of commission land.


But insofar as it is a brave new document, it is (by definition) one that we did not vote for.  It’s a new programme for government which has not been endorsed by victory at an election.


Which is why I’m so anxious about


4) The “strong and stable” argument


By which I mean the repeated calls for “strong and stable government”, the rigging of the constitution with the 55% rule and the disingenuous call for a fixed-term parliament.   I’ve covered some of this elsewhere, so I won’t repeat myself.   But here we have a newly-concocted plan for government presented as a sacred text by a coalition which thinks its marriage has been blessed in heaven.


With all this goodwill from above, it’s surprising that they also feel the need to rig earthly rules.  It’s pretty revolting.  There are several ways in which this rankles.  Not least in their own world-view: on the coalition partners’ own narrative, the people gave no one a clear majority.  Or, to put it another way, the people did not want a “strong and stable government”.


Best plan, then, is to try to arrange it so that the people don’t get to vote again for a long, long time.  Wow.  Is five years long enough, guys?



Oh dear, I’m so firmly in cynics’ corner, I’ll never get out.  I haven’t even started on


5) Clegg’s Political Reform, the biggest and the best since 1832….


…. from a man who commands 57 seats in parliament.


No denying it.  I’m a sore, sour loser.  I’d better turn my attention back to Pompey and Labour.   Like our friends in government, I should turn adversity into creative opportunity.  Here goes. 


There’s a song we sang in Fratton Park when we were promoted to the Premiership in 2003.  With just a couple of tweaks, it becomes a song for the Losers’ Coalition.  It is, I know you will agree, historic and noble and just what the people wanted.  I have created it in the national interest.  Knock it at your peril.


(to the tune of Knees Up Mother Brown)


Now we’ve been demoted

This is our new song

We are Portsmouth

We are Labour

Back where we belong.






The real election story

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29th April, 2010


Alastair Campbell argues in his blog post today that the real story of the election so far, untold by the media, is that after months of leading the polls, Cameron’s support is only the same as Michael Howard’s was five years ago.


How did it happen?


The reason for Cameron’s decline is that his support was bolstered by voter disaffection, which inevitably harms the long-term incumbents more than their rivals. But this was never solid pro-Tory support, merely folk wanting change.


42% of respondents to a Populus Poll for the Times on April 12 – before the first debate – said “it seems like ‘time for a change’ FROM Labour, but I am not sure it seems ‘time for a change’  TO the Conservatives.”   The nation has not actually swallowed Tory values.


Clegg is now the focus for that big chunk of disaffected electorate.  The tragedy is that the nation hasn’t swallowed LibDem values either – they don’t really know what their policies are.  Even the pundits had to re-read the LibDem manifesto after the first debate to remind themselves what the LibDems stood for.


So the real election story is not just that Cameron has squandered his lead.  It is that if Labour doesn’t pull something out of the bag, we run the real risk of ending up with Tory values the nation doesn’t actually share, or LibDem values the nation doesn’t really understand.