Not necessarily the evil witches of the north

Surprisingly favourable comment from CityAM, not an organ which usually takes a sensible view on matters Scottish:

The City has well-developed relationships with Westminster’s established powerbrokers, but less experience working with Scottish nationalists. Some might feel concerned that a party with such populist support, which has won hearts and minds in traditionally working class, left wing areas, will now be so prominent in Westminster politics. 

And make no mistake, influential they will be. The SNP was already represented on the Treasury Select Committee and will now be seeking places on the Business, Energy, and Defence Committees among others.

So what exactly can the City expect?

First, the SNP group will not be a destructive force at Westminster, as some commentators have suggested. They may not believe in the institution they’ve been elected to, but under leader Nicola Sturgeon, her deputy Stewart Hosie MP, and Westminster leader Angus Robertson MP, they respect Parliament and will seek to play a constructive role in holding the government to account.

They recognise the need to be responsible and will speak to business to understand the matters of state they now have to scrutinise. The party’s Holyrood track record shows that it is keen to work with business in order to support economic growth, and so doors should be open both ways.

Second, the new caucus of SNP MPs contains some experienced businesspeople like former Deutsche Bank executive Ian Blackford and ex-Standard Lifer Michelle Thomson, while economist George Kerevan, lawyers Joanna Cherry QC and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, and of course former first minister Alex Salmond bring intellectual rigour. They, and others in the party, can be allies for business.

Salmond will inevitably be a major figure, possibly chairing a Select Committee such as Energy, which would meet his own political interests and would also give Scottish energy businesses a voice at Westminster, albeit not in government. But make no mistake. Sturgeon is the SNP leader, so overlook her at your own risk.

    

Quote of the day

Sour grapes (?) from Rawnsley in The Observer:

This government will not be popular for long. In fact, the Tories were not popular on polling day: 63% voted for someone else. The Tories are not liked, even by quite a lot of those who voted for them. Many did so only because they fancied the alternative even less. His fragile majority will be acutely vulnerable to rebellions, ambushes and blackmail by a handful or two of backbenchers. That will get worse when the majority is eroded as byelection losses take their toll. By announcing that he has fought his last general election, he has put a sell-by-date on his premiership.

A vanishing majority, dissipating authority, a lot of cuts to come and expensive promises to keep, a fractured kingdom and an EU referendum that will split the Conservative party asunder. David Cameron should savour his “sweet” victory while he can. History tells us that it will turn sour.

Music of the week

Quote of the day

From The Guardian (here):

... the last post rang out over Whitehall at 3pm to mark the 70th anniversary of VE Day. There they all were, lined up for a final encore. Nick and Ed had little trouble keeping their heads bowed in solemnity. Dave looked to his right and clocked the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon.

But his biggest threat was standing just behind him. Boris Johnson is the one Tory who is not quite so thrilled by Dave’s success as the others. Boris hasn’t come back to Westminster just to run some two-bit government department. Dave looked pensive. Strange as it may seem, it was slowly dawning on him that winning an overall majority might just turn out to have been the easy bit.

   

Why the SNP won

Three less than wise monkeys - all three are pale, male and stale ...


   

It's not all bad ...

... but it's not particularly good.

Worth noting that the Tories are likely to end up with an absolute majority - but a wafer-thin one, with Labour and the SNP together forming a substantial anti-Tory bloc.

Cameron will need to keep his right wing in order, a far from easy task.  And the LibDems reduced to irrelevance, so a period of relative silence from Clegg will be welcome.

But still, a miserable night ...

 

Democracy, more or less ...

Philomena explains it all:

Forecasts

From The Spectator:

Latest seats forecasts

	Con	Lab	SNP	LD	Ukip	Oth
YouGov	272	276	52	24	3	23
Election Forecast	281	266	52	26	1	24
Electoral Calculus	282	275	52	18	1	22
Ladbrokes	279	265	53	26	3	24

Knife-edge!

   

I disagree with Nick

So Clegg thinks that a minority government would be unable to survive until Christmas.  The BBC reports:

The UK could be poised for a second general election by Christmas if either Labour or the Conservatives try to form a minority government after 7 May, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has warned.

He argued that only another "stable and strong" coalition involving his party could save the country from a re-run.

I would suggest that he is under-estimating the difficulty in actually triggering a general election in such circumstances.  According to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, there are only two ways to call a general election outside of the usual five year term.  First, the House of Commons votes by a two-thirds majority for there to be such an election; or, second, the House of Commons passes a motion of no confidence in the Government, and an alternative government cannot be established within two weeks thereafter.

Given the expected parliamentary arithmetic after Thursday, where neither the Conservatives nor Labour have an overall majority, it seems to me that the Conservatives and Labour would actually have to agree that neither of them should continue as a minority government before they could call a general election.  That is of course possible but seems improbable in the short term.

I don't see why a minority government of one colour or another should not limp along indefinitely.

   

Fashion update

See that Ancelotti.  His annual salary may be more than 7.5 million euros but he still wears the same old cardy to every match.

       

Subverting democracy

The New Statesman explains how it may happen:

The Tories declare victory if they have the most seats, regardless of the parliamentary arithmetic. Key supportive newspapers endorse this line and pressure is put on the broadcasters to follow suit. The Tories begin publicly reassembling their coalition with the Lib Dems within hours of the polls closing, despite knowing they have no majority in parliament, in order to cement the image that they remain the legitimate government.

In the run-up to the Queen’s Speech on 27 May – with David Cameron remaining as Prime Minister – the media campaign against the SNP will make the current onslaught look timid. Amid political uncertainty, a falling stock market and the value of  the pound are used to build an atmosphere of national emergency. A handful of right-wing Labour MPs – the likes of Rochdale’s Simon Danczuk, perhaps – are wheeled out on TV to echo the line of illegitimacy, helping to construct a narrative of growing Labour turmoil. Moves to depose Miliband are encouraged. The aim will be straightforward: to make it politically impossible for Labour to form a government even though left-of-centre parties have a parliamentary majority, and to pave the way for new elections against a backdrop of right-wing hysteria.

Not so implausible?

 

Photo of the day

H/t  Heather

Getting it on ...

Music of the week

Latest

Here it is:

According to the Guardian’s latest projection of polls, the Tories are projected to win 276 seats, Labour 267, the SNP 55, the Lib Dems 27, the DUP nine, Ukip three and the Greens are set to retain their one seat.

Both Cameron and Miliband would need the votes of other parties if they are to command the confidence of the House of Commons.

And as things stand, the arithmetic is to the advantage of Miliband.

This is because the sum of the “anti-Tory” bloc – those parties that have said they would vote a Tory government down – currently adds up to 329 seats: a majority. Tallying up all the possible sources of support for a Cameron-led government yields 315 votes.

Probably too close to call ...

 

Cutting off his nose to spite his face?

CityAM reports:

LABOUR leader Ed Miliband unequivocally ruled out a deal with the SNP last night, telling an audience in Leeds that he would rather give up the keys to Downing Street than team up with Nicola Sturgeon after 7 May.

“If it meant we weren’t going to be in government, not doing a coalition, not doing a deal, then so be it,” Miliband said in a live BBC Question Time election special. “I am not going to have a Labour government if it means deals or coalitions with the Scottish National Party.”

Really?  Rather the Tories back in Downing Street?  Or is he just saying it?

 

The ba' is on the slates

Hard to believe, I know, but the latest poll makes dire reading for Labour and the LibDems.  The Spectator sums it up:

Just when Scottish Labour didn’t think it could get any worse, a new poll suggests they are now facing total wipe out next Thursday. According to Ipsos MORI/STV News, the SNP is now up to 54 per cent of the vote share — up two points since their last poll in January. Punching these numbers intoElectoral Calculus suggests the Nats will win all 59 seats and wipe out the other parties. Another prediction website, ScotlandVotes, suggests that this vote share would leave one Liberal Democrat MP after polling day.

Bye bye Messrs Murphy and co?

   

Quote of the day

From the usually snarky Marina Hyde in The Guardian (here):

To South Queensferry, with the magnificent Forth bridges as a backdrop, where a small walkabout by Nicola Sturgeon passed off in what seems to be typical style. Builders shouted words of support from scaffolding. Babies were pulled from their pushchairs by their mothers, selfies with the Scottish National party leader abounded and she was presented with presents including a specially gift-wrapped scone and jam, a nice flowery jotter pad, some Scottish tablet and a model of the SNP logo which a boy had built out of Lego. It’s all somewhat … unusual.

...

Unlike the Westminster leaders, Sturgeon has walked endlessly among the voters, tweeted them back and appeared in their photos. It is as if the SNP medium has become the message.

In turn, that message becomes the movement. As the old showbiz saying goes: when you’re hot, you’re hot. If the Scottish Labour leader, Jim Murphy, were to walk along a balance beam in his stockinged feet, it would look like the desperate act of a man wobbling to obliteration. When Sturgeon does it, she’s walking the line, she’s holding her nerve, she’s acing the highwire. When you’re hot, you’re hot.

And yet another London journo has fallen under her spell ...


   

Irony

The Times reports:

David Cameron has told voters that they have “ten days to save the United Kingdom” in his strongest attack so far on the possibility of an Ed Miliband government supported by the Scottish National party.

Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, wants the “best for Scotland and the rest of the UK can go hang”, the prime minister said as he echoed stark warnings issued in the final days before the Scottish referendum seven months ago.

Of course, the one thing that would be certain to endanger the Union would be another Tory victory -leading to continued austerity and a British exit from the EU.

   

Sounds a bit forced

CityAM reports:

DAVID Cameron was in the City yesterday morning, and he bounded on to a stage to announce that he was “pumped up”. He was speaking to an audience of small business owners, trying to convince them that he is on their side – as well as trying to convince the broader electorate that he is passionate about what his party has to offer.

“If I’m getting lively about this, it’s because I feel bloody lively,” he bellowed. Frankly, it was all a bit much for first thing on a Monday morning.

The question was raised as to what our pumped up PM had eaten for breakfast. Porridge, it turned out, not three shredded wheat. (They’ve got him into trouble before when speaking about how many terms he might serve as PM. Not three, anyway).

Not really Cameron, is it?  They always make fools of themselves when trying to be something they're not.

   

Quote of the day

From The Times (here):

The more you hear about them, the harder it is to like them. Quite what the agenda is when HSBC’s bankers are threatening to quit the UK is not immediately obvious: a dislike of an EU referendum, the Labour party, paying their dues?

In this post-financial crisis world it is easy to forget that the bank levies are not being foisted on the likes of HSBC by a mad bunch of Bennite lefties but by a Conservative chancellor trying to repair the deficit. What part of “all in this together” does HSBC not get?

But if they wish to trust their future to the regulators in Hong Kong, supervised - however distantly - by the communist authorities in Beijing, then hell mend them ...

Re-writing history

Remarkably (but perhaps not surprisingly), the BBC manages to produce an entire article on the Gallipoli remembrance event without ever mentioning that it was Winston Churchill's idea.  An idea that he pushed for and which went terribly wrong.

The Guardian acknowledges as much:

The Gallipoli campaign, badly planned and appallingly executed, was conceived by Winston Churchill, the ambitious First Lord of the Admiralty, in early 1915, with the war on the western front in deadlock. 

   

Compare and contrast

Cameron in a cowshed, mobbed by a myriad of supporters:

The same event, seen from a more distant perspective:

Not quite so impressive ...

     

Music of the week

Lyrics here

Quote of the day 2

More from The Guardian:

If everything hinges on Cameron’s popularity and Miliband’s improbability, something is shifting. Cameron grows more distant as Miliband becomes more familiar. Though neither of them radiate competence in the way that Nicola Sturgeon does.

The temper tantrums are beginning. No one, Labour or Tory, seems to be able to accept that people in Scotland will vote for the party they want to represent them, and they continue to portray democracy in action as an actual threat to democracy. Tories and Lib Dems are preparing to challenge a Labour-SNP alliance as unconstitutional. That will be chaos. By claiming such a state of affairs to be illegitimate they are pushing Scotland to vote yes in any future referendum.

This Tory panic, though, is real. The two parties are broken. The re-emergence of Major reminds us that it is 23 years since the Conservatives got a majority and they may never do again. We will see a terrible scurrying about behind closed doors after this election, further locking out the voters. And the man who was prime minister just because he could be will have to show some passion beyond disdain for democracy. By then, though, it may be too late to activate the reluctant Cameron, who now appears little more than a political spambot.

No, I don't know what is a spambot, but I doubt if it is a compliment ...
 
 

Quote of the day

The Guardian is complaining about Cameron's self-imposed isolation from real people:

A couple of days ago it was thought that a Google Streetview camera had managed to capture a historic image of the PM having an unstaged encounter with a voter, but it turned out to be just the Loch Ness monster.

Of all the unedifying sights I’ve seen so far this campaign, the sorriest has to be Cameron’s entourage forming a protective huddle round him on a busy platform at Bedford station on Wednesday morning, while the prime minister’s eyes darted nervously about, wondering where his late-running train was.

   

Yorkshire calypso (or something)

h/t Paul

Must be love

The British political press appears obsessed with a woman who is not actually standing for election to the British parliament.  Here, for example, are the headlines on four separate articles in today's Guardian:

Nicola Sturgeon challenged on spending plans as SNP backs Labour on tax

SNP's Nicola Sturgeon admits she is a Borgen fan

Nicola Sturgeon is in majestic form on the campaign trail in Edinburgh

Sturgeon facemasks can't hide flaws in Tories' Scottish policy

Even the cartoonists are  getting in on the act:

Steve Bell on the Scottish National party – cartoon

    

Keeping you up to date

From The Times (here behind paywall):

Nicola Sturgeon was on the Andrew Marr sofa yesterday, again. She hates Westminster so much that she rarely leaves it these days. But she is very much the television guest du jour. There she was, chirpy in red with the highest (red) heels I have ever seen on a politician, on a charm offensive.

“The SNP in the House of Commons after the election will not be any kind of destructive force,” she said. “We want to be constructive.”

Somewhere in the studio, David Cameron was watching, getting angrier by the sentence: this woman was soooo infuriating. She was implacable. She was chirpy. And she was Scottish! They lost the referendum. She should get over it.

Andrew was now asking, nicely, if Ed Miliband was a puppet and she the puppeteer.“It’s about grown-up, constructive politics,” said Nicola, almost sweetly (well, I do see her as a boiled sweet).

Andrew was asking her if she liked to “shake things up”.

“That is not my approach,” said the woman who has thrown the entire election into a tiswas.

   

Belling the cat

The possibilities are opening up.  The Sunday Times resorts to fanciful conjecture:

David Cameron, if he has 272 seats or thereabouts, could say on the morning after the election that the Scottish people have spoken, that he has heard what they say, and that the Queen’s speech will accordingly contain a proposal to bring forward a bill for Scottish independence, subject once again to a referendum.

Assuming the currency issue can be resolved beforehand — perhaps by Scottish representation within the Bank of England — and Scotland is allowed to keep sterling, who is to say that the next referendum might not yield a yes?

Labour could never countenance this. The Conservatives could. And the SNP, not short on low cunning, must surely know it. Perhaps this is what lay behind Nicola Sturgeon’s alleged remark to the French ambassador that she would prefer to deal with a Cameron government rather than a Miliband one.

Fantasy politics?  Perhaps.  But surely not outwith the bounds of possibility ...

   

Where we are

The Guardian seeks to make sense of the current opinion polls:

Based on current projections, the most important numbers to follow are on the one hand the combined Labour-SNP bloc, and on the other the Tory-Lib Dem bloc. These calculations matter as they will most probably determine which of David Cameron or Ed Miliband forms the next government.

Labour is currently projected to win 271 seats and the SNP 54. This adds up to 325, enough to win a confidence vote in the Commons, and there could be an “anti-Tory” outright majority once the votes of Plaid Cymru (three), the SDLP (three) and the Greens (one) are also included.

The Conservatives are projected to win 270 seats and the Lib Dems 29. Even once possible support from Ukip (four seats) and the DUP (nine) is co-opted into the mix, the current government coalition would fall well short of a majority.

But these are based on poll snapshots.  Things might change over the next three weeks ...

What a wonderful world!

Just to take your mind off politics, you could read about dolphins on the Scottish West Coast:

The west coast of Scotland has scored a wildlife tourism coup with the news that it is fast becoming a hotspot for common dolphins.

Marine researchers at the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust have reported a rise in numbers, with their encounter rate more than doubling over the past 12 years.

or about a plague of voles in Germany:

Battle lines are being drawn across Germany to combat a horde of invaders — small but hungry voles that threaten to wreak economic chaos.

Farmers in central and northern Germany are appealing for financial help from the government to fight the furry multitude, which, after a mild winter, is already eating its way through newly planted sugar beet crop.

“Vole years”, as they are known, appear to be growing ever more common, with epidemics in 2004, 2007 and 2012. The 2007 invasion is thought to have cost the country €140 million.

or about American doggy potheads:

The cannabis industry, driven by the easing of drug laws across the US, is turning its sights on a new group of potential users — ill and elderly dogs.

The “pet-pot” market is new but shows promise, its pioneers say. Products already available include “Treat-ibles” — canine snacks infused with CBD, or cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive compound derived from the cannabis family.

Auntie Dolores Kitchen, the company behind Treat-ibles, suggests that CBD could be used on dogs to suppress nausea, induce appetite and to manage pain and mood disorders.

Music of the week

Panic attacks?

Perhaps surprisingly, The Times (behind paywall) is wondering if the Tories are on the wrong track:

... the Conservatives seem to have gone out of their way to reinforce their two most serious image problems. First, they found themselves forced into defending the super-rich by Labour’s promise to scrap non-dom status. Then, to divert attention from that, they went into “nasty party” mode, with Michael Fallon’s personal attack on Ed Miliband. It was a perfect example of what Mr Crosby calls the “dead cat” strategy — changing the subject by throwing something so shocking on to the table that people can talk of nothing else — but for many Tories the decomposing corpse just stank. “It reinforced everything people hate about us,” says one ministerial aide. “The message is ‘we sorted out the economy but we’re still bastards’. That really matters when so many people on the doorstep continue to question our motives.”

...

More traditional Conservatives worry that the chancellor is also undermining his party’s greatest strength — the perception that the Tories can be trusted to run the economy — with unfunded spending pledges. In recent days, he has announced an additional £8 billion for the NHS, as well as rail fare freezes costing £1.8 billion and a volunteering scheme that could cost £1 billion to the public sector — on top of the tax cuts already announced by Mr Cameron.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people ...

Wot? No Nicola?

Cooking and drinking

Nice to see Floyd on France, back once again on BBC2.  You can catch the other episodes on the BBC i-player (or on you-tube):

A pedant writes ...

The Guardian reports:

Hillary Clinton announced on Sunday that she was running for president of the United States, promising to be a champion of middle-class Americans if she made it to the White House as the country’s first female commander in chief.

“Everyday Americans need a champion, and I’m going to be that champion,” the former secretary of state and first lady said in a video posted to her website, as she warned “the deck is still stacked in favour of those at the top” despite an economic recovery.

Speaking to camera at the end of a three-minute clip featuring personal stories from Americans of different ages, ethnicities and sexualities, Clinton pledged to ensure people could “get ahead and stay ahead” rather than “just get by”.

"Get ahead and stay ahead" of what?  "Those at the top"?  Seems unlikely.  And is it logically possible for everyone to get ahead?  As Mr Spock might point out, if everyone gets ahead, then no-one gets ahead, in that ceteris paribus they all remain in the same relative place.

Just a thought ...

For GoT fans

Quote of the day

Armando Ianucci in The Independent (here):

Scots are cock of the electoral walk at the moment. Is Nicola Sturgeon’s popularity this election’s version of the Cleggmania that turned us all into fainting hysterics for a day in 2010? Whatever the phenomenon, Britain has become a land of Sturgeonettes, pining for the ability to be able to vote for her.

No one seems to have explained that even Scottish voters can’t vote for her: she’s not standing for a Westminster seat. But it’s a nice dream and one that encapsulates the topsy-turvy world British politics has entered. The leader of a party whose prime purpose is to break up the Union seems the one politician who most offers a conciliatory message of how partnership can work in politics. She’s become a strangely unifying force.

Remarkable ...

Perhaps a slight exaggeration?

 

Last night's debate

The Times, perhaps surprisingly, has the beloved Nicola as a winner.

Alex Massie:

Ms Sturgeon was one of the biggest winners. She made her points clearly and effectively, drawing a contrast between the SNP’s vision and those of the Conservatives and Labour. Voters encountering her for the first time were, I suspect, impressed.

...

Where David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Mr Clegg were forced to acknowledge fiscal reality, Ms Sturgeon backed “modest spending increases” while claiming that the SNP’s approach would reduce the national debt as a share of GDP. But as she will not be tasked with making these numbers add up, this wishful thinking mattered little by the end of an evening in which she had achieved all she wanted.

Magnus Linklater:

Nicola Sturgeon, meanwhile, was relishing the opportunity to take on the big players. She has developed a way of suggesting, with a little smile and a shake of the head, that “boys will be boys”, but she herself knew better. She actually used the phrase “old boys’ network” to imply that this was a Westminster carve-up and only the leavening of an SNP presence would keep them in order. “Labour and the Tories are hand in glove in imposing austerity,” she pronounced.

Amazingly, towards the end, she seemed to be holding the ring between prime minister and leader of the opposition. Here was the SNP as the voice of moderation — moderate on immigration, Europe, the economy. She ticked off Nigel Farage like a hospital matron who has found something nasty in the ward, and threw a grin of disbelief which the cameras caught perfectly when he talked of scrapping the Barnett formula. Whether it meant “No, actually, that’s our job” was not clear, she just wanted him to know she had got his number.

This was not the demeanour of a woman representing a minority party.

   

Quote of the day

What's the score with Rangers?  Douglas Fraser tells us:

Thirty days ago, the nominated adviser for the holding company, Rangers International Football Club (RIFC), resigned. Trading on the stock exchange was suspended. The company was given 30 days to find a new one.

To recap further, a nominated adviser, or nomad, is required by the London Stock Exchange to carry out first-line regulation of a company that's listed on the Alternative Investments Market (AIM) - the junior trading platform for shares in smaller, younger companies and higher risk investors.

The nomad has to make sure that the company's governance is in line with stock market rules. The nomad's reputation depends on it.

So if the regulated company's governance is a burach, there's blood all over the boardroom walls, complaints are piling in, the auditor quits, accountants warn that there's significant risk that the company may not be able to continue as a going concern, and it's doubtful that the football team can win promotion to a higher-earning league... and so it goes on... then any sane nomad would be wise to take his camel and stay well clear.

And that's precisely what's happened.

Music of the week

May she get well soon.

Over-egging the pudding

 
Panic?  What panic?  Sterling went from $1.483 at 1201 am yesterday down to about $1.475 at about 10 am, but subsequently recovered to $1.483 by midnight.  At the time of writing, it is at $1.479.

Meanwhile the FTSE 100 ended the day up by 0.5%.  It is up a further 7 points this morning.

Is the prospect of a Labour-SNP alliance so terrifying for The Times?

   

Round the twist

Nigel is losing it:

Big cuts in immigration will allow the nation to return to a time when children played football in the streets, Nigel Farage said yesterday as he unveiled the party’s first billboard of the election campaign.

Nothing to do with the presence of motor vehicles, then?

 

Now there's a surprise

Shock!  Horror!  The boss class are Tories:

More than 100 company leaders have declared support for a Conservative-led government in a letter published in the Daily Telegraph.

I suppose they will next tell us that the working classes are likely to support Labour.

 

A conspiracy theorist writes ...

So it was the fault of the co-pilot?  The BBC website reports:

The co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps, named as Andreas Lubitz, appeared to want to "destroy the plane", officials said.

Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin, citing information from the "black box" voice recorder, said the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit.

He intentionally started a descent while the pilot was locked out.

There is something disturbing about the way the authorities rush to blame human beings for aeroplane crashes, conveniently letting the airlines and the aeroplane manufacturers off the hook.  In this case, I have no grounds to dispute the initial findings but I am minded to suspend judgment until the investigations are concluded.

Stating the bleeding obvious

Thus spake the bold Alex:

The SNP would block a minority Conservative government by voting down its Queen's Speech if it holds the post-election balance of power, its former leader Alex Salmond has said.

Mr Salmond said the move could bring down the government if Labour joined in, with David Cameron "locked out".

The Conservatives accused him of "trying to sabotage the democratic will of the British people".

In what sense would the exercise of an anti-Conservative majority in the Commons constitute “sabotage [of] the democratic will of the British people”?  If the people fail to elect a Tory government which can command a majority of the Commons, then it is entirely legitimate - and amply well-precedented - within the bounds of the UK’s first-past-the-post system for whoever can command such a majority to take power.

Music of the week

Quote of the day

From The Guardian  on Mr Tony (here):

Somewhere along the line, your personal manifesto quietly slips from “Education, Education, Education” into “Grease the wheels of dictatorships, grease the wheels of dictatorships, grease the wheels of dictatorships”. I understand it, I do. It could happen to any of us! So I wasn’t all that surprised when Blair said in a speech last weekend that, though democracy in the Middle East was important, it wasn’t any more important than efficacy, or “effective government taking effective decisions”. Indeed, if you’re trying to run a country unencumbered by the views and beliefs of the entire population of that country, as many of Tony’s new business partners are, democracy really could be a bit of a spanner in the works. Blair’s speech was given in Egypt, where he praised the highly effective work of his new pal President al-Sisi, with whom he’s been having some kind of unspecified relationship. Meanwhile, Amnesty International has reported a surge in harrowing incidents of torture and deaths in police custody since President al-Sisi came to power. 

My glass is half empty

There you go:

The FTSE 100 has soared through the 7,000 barrier for the first time in its history, with investors buoyed by the prospect of continuing low interest rates and growing hopes that a solution may finally be found to Greece’s financial crisis.

From here, the only way is down.

Unravelling?

It usually takes more than a day or two for the pundits to discover the feet of clay underlying a budget.  But this week’s Osbornian effort seems to be falling apart rather more quickly.

As the OBR and the IFS have pointed out, there is a huge black hole in the form of £12 billion worth of welfare cuts.  Mr Osborne can’t or won’t explain which bits of welfare spending are to be targeted, even though the options appear to be extremely limited:

According to the Department for Work and Pensions’ latest annual accounts, the UK’s total welfare bill this year will come out at around £167.5bn. However, well over half of this of this – £93bn – is pensions and pension credit, and the chancellor has pledged that his additional £12bn of cuts won’t come from pensioners.This leaves Osborne with the task of shaving £12bn off the remaining benefit bill of £74bn, the equivalent of cutting one pound in every six in just a two-year period.

Then there is the crazy Help to Buy ISA whereby the government will subsidise housing demand, pushing house prices upwards and ultimately benefiting no-one.  Meanwhile the desperate need to increase housing supply is utterly neglected.

More amusingly, in a development reminiscent of the pasty tax, the Chancellor’s proposed tax break for orchestras has had to be swiftly amended to include brass bands.

How soon before we start using the term omni-shambles?

Bring on the girls

Ann Treneman of The Times gets her teeth into the blessed Nicola (behind paywall):

I have always seen Nicola Sturgeon as a boiled sweet, so hard that bits of her chip off if she runs into something. But these days she is on a mission to soften. Industrial amounts of Downy fabric softener have been used and the result is rather impressive. Gone is the helmet hairdo, so effective that the army has asked for permission to deploy it in war zones. In TV make-up, there is a spray-on foundation that they call “airbrush”. Nicola Sturgeon yesterday had that airbrushed glow.

Is that the worst Ms Treneman can do?


   

Quote of the day

From a Guardian editorial on the chairman of the Conservative Party (here):

Mr Shapps is an operator. It’s what he is good at. He knew his double life was under the spotlight. He knew what was at stake when he was asked about it. Time and again he signally failed to tell the truth until he was forced to do so by the evidence. To protest against his conduct and character is not in any way, as he shamelessly alleged on Monday, to be anti-business. It is simply to be pro-truth. The truth is that Mr Shapps is a chancer in a job where credibility ought to matter, and once did. The truth is also that David Cameron has made two mistakes with Mr Shapps. The first was to appoint him chairman. The second is not to fire him. 

   

Budget mysteries

The Treasury Permanent Secretary is getting his knickers in a twist.  The BBC website reports:

The top civil servant at the Treasury has warned staff he will not "hesitate to call in the police" if anyone leaks details from the Budget.

Sir Nicholas Macpherson has sent an email to officials reminding them he takes rules banning any pre-briefing of next week's Budget "very seriously".

As senior politicians and their political advisers have been leaking pre-briefing budget details for years (as will be apparent in tomorrow’s newspapers), it would seem rather pointless to crack the whip over their civil service underlings.

 

Music of the week

Warriors for the dispossessed?

The Guardian reports:

The Conservatives will only win the general election if they can show the electorate that they are the “warriors for the dispossessed”, Michael Gove has said.

In a sign that Downing Street is concerned by poll findings, which consistently show the party is still a tainted brand, Gove said Tories need to show voters what is in their hearts before they can hope to engage their heads.

Speaking at the launch of the Good Right group, the Tory chief whip said: “Only if we remind people of our commitment to social justice, demonstrate our belief in equality of opportunity and affirm that we are warriors for the dispossessed will we be able to win arguments, and elections, and then be in a position genuinely to help the vulnerable and the voiceless. People need to know what’s in our hearts before they are prepared to consider our arguments in their heads.”

Sure, and Jeremy Clarkson is a caring sensitive soul who abhors publicity ...

   

Small change

Laughable:

Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley has been fined £7,500 for breaching Scottish Football Association rules on dual ownership because of his influence on the affairs of Rangers.

According to Wikipedia, Mr Ashley is down to his last £1.5 billion.

   

Nice work if you can get it

The Times reports (paywall):

Rona Fairhead, the chairwoman of the BBC Trust, was urged to give up working for HSBC yesterday after it emerged that she was paid more than £10,000 a day by the beleaguered bank.

MPs claimed that Ms Fairhead’s earnings from HSBC, whose Geneva branch has been accused of facilitating tax evasion, raised questions about her priorities because it dwarfs the £110,000 she receives for working three days a week overseeing the BBC.

Ms Fairhead was paid £513,000 last year by HSBC for about 50 days work, including £334,000 as the non-executive chairman of HSBC North America, £160,000 as the non-executive director of HSBC Holdings and £19,000 in expenses and other benefits.

The businesswoman, 53, who also earns £130,000 for working up to 25 days a year from PepsiCo, has insisted that her BBC work is her “first priority”.

Why?  Because she's worth it - probably ...