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The Economy

Which US Presidential candidate was it who, on being asked why he won, responded: “It’s the economy, stupid”?  That certainly used to be the case in British politics too, at least through the ‘sixties and ‘seventies, most obviously perhaps in 1979, when economic collapse in the UK meant an overwhelming electoral success for Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party.  But I have since then been in two minds as to whether the age old correlation between the performance of the economy and the electoral fortunes of the governing party had in fact been dislocated.  After all, the economy was floundering in 1992, when the Tories were nonetheless re-elected to Government, and our ignominious removal from office in 1997 coincided with one of the strongest economic pictures for decades.

Perhaps that electoral truism is reasserting itself now.  There can be no question that at least part of the financial crisis we are all now facing – a stock exchange in turmoil, a banking system in systemic failure, the housing market in collapse, inflation looking dangerously out of control, a massive trade deficit, unemployment rising, taxes high enough to hurt- is at least to a good degree Mr Brown’s fault.  Record spending and unsupportable borrowing to pay for it; the 10p tax debacle; the Northern Rock shambles; a missed opportunity with the recent housing market package; all of these and so much more are disasters made in Downing Street (both No 10 today, and No 11 for the last 11 years.)

And I must admit that despite my background in the City of London (albeit 18 years ago now), I have only the vaguest idea of what it’s all about, and I challenge all but my sharpest of readers to better me on it.  What is President Bush’s $800 billion for? And why on the day after its record collapse did it make the Stock Exchange do such a dramatic reversal?  (Or was it just what the dealers call a dead cow bounce?) Why did it take them a year to come to some kind of nationalisation of Northern Rock, arguing that competition rules prevented the bank’s takeover by another, when apparently HBOS could be taken over by Lloyds in the twinkling of an eye?  Most of all of this is beyond any of us bar a few very clever financiers, many of whom live right here in Wiltshire.  But whatever it all means, it seems clear to me that Gordon Brown got it all wrong, and that he is paying a due price in the polls for it.

Now of course, I would most certainly not predict that all of this means an easy return to power for we Tories – we have to earn that honour, not just assume that it will fall into our laps.  And whether or not a Tory Government, even led by clever people like David Cameron and George Osborne can somehow turn around the current disaster is hard to predict.  But of this I am sure: the financial agony which increasing numbers of ordinary citizens and families are facing in this country today has to be the direct responsibility of this current government.  They have been profligate and incompetent in equal measure, and no amount of wriggling at this last week’s Labour Party Conference can absolve them of those charges.  It is the economy, stupid, and Gordon Brown will have to pay a heavy price for his mishandling of it.

Armed Services

I never fail to be impressed with how very lucky we are with our armed services nationally; what a magnificent job they do for all of us overseas and at home; how uncomplaining they are no matter what they are asked to do; how poorly we treat them in terms of equipment, pay, housing health and family welfare; but just how coolly professional they are in everything they do.  We here in the County of Wiltshire make a significant contribution to the defence of the Realm, and we should be truly proud of them.

In the last few weeks, I have had discussions with Mike Neville, the Station Commander at RAF Lyneham, whose Hercules fleet are “First in and First Out” of every conflict, and without whom our armed services simply could not operate.  The RAF, of course are due to leave Lyneham in 2012, although I am still hoping for a delay in that, and no-one yet knows what will replace them.  There is a great deal of talk around about centralising all of the army helicopters here, which of course would be very convenient for Salisbury Plain’s Training Areas.  I would welcome the continuing use of Lyneham for military purposes, although I am acutely aware that there might well be greater environmental concerns about helicopters than there are about Hercs!

Lyneham has also been the base to which all of our wars dead are returned, and I pay tribute to the solemn dignity with which the authorities carry out that most difficult of tasks.  The Mayor and Royal British Legion of Wootton Bassett pay tribute to each and every one of the coffins which then pass down their High Street, stopping for a moment’s honour outside the Town Hall.  That little ceremony has caught the imagination of the Nation, and acts as an example to so many others.

Another day I visited the multi-million pound redevelopment at Basil Hill Barracks at Corsham which will secure 2000 defence jobs in the area, and allow improvements in the by then vacated Rudloe and Copenacre sites.  The building work may mean some discomfort for locals – for example because of a number of traffic changes on the A4, but again we should be ready to make small sacrifices in the knowledge that the end result will be of benefit to the whole area, and that at all events we are making our own little contribution to the defence of our land.  Corsham also houses 10 Signals Regiment, whose new CO attended the Chippenham Civic Service with me, and four of whose soldiers I was pleased to welcome to Parliament in July.

IX (Supply) Regiment at Hullavington and the Air Defence Regiment at Colerne complete our service bases in the immediate area, although of course we are very close to Bulford and Tidworth, Larkhill and Warminster.  Half of the British Army is based here in Wiltshire –a contribution of which we should all be proud.

None of us wants war; all of us hate the killing and wounding inherent in it.  But my own Regiment, the Honourable Artillery Company has an important motto: “Arma Pacis Fulcra” – “Arms are the Balance of Peace.”  Our armed services and those of our NATO allies are the guarantors of peace, freedom and democracy.  Without them we would have anarchy and dictatorship, and we should both be proud of them, and ready to give them every possible support and assistance, as well as our heartfelt thanks.

The Silly Season

The Silly Season – that news-less period of Mid-August dreamy summer sunshine (what happened this year? Ed.) – is well and truly over.

The biggest single – and surely one of the most gloriously successful – military operations since the Second World War was completed without a hitch.  It took 5000 British soldiers, countless vehicles, and months of meticulous planning to get the giant generator which will eventually supply electricity to so many people in Helmand Province up to the Kijacki Damn.  The Taliban were misled by a clever, classically British, ruse; 200 enemy were killed without a single British casualty, leaving aside one soldier injured beneath a vehicle he was repairing; and probably the single greatest step towards a final peace in Afghanistan was seemingly effortlessly achieved.

Meanwhile the US Government carried out an almost equally daring operation in nationalising the two huge US mortgage companies, probably at a stroke avoiding meltdown in the Global financial markets, and exposing Gordon Brown’s ill-conceived and hopelessly delivered ‘housing market package’ as a frankly pathetic attempt to save his premiership.  Bear Stearns and now Fanny Mae is how it ought to be done, Mr Brown, compared to the miserable Northern Rock and Stamp Duty Holiday which is all you could come up with.  And anyhow, with the astonishing spectacle of the Chancellor talking down the economy, causing a run on the stock exchange and a plunge in the value of the pound, and a former Home Secretary openly calling for his head, I fear that Mr Brown may need something a little better than that if he is to save his failing Government.

Perhaps he could take some lessons from the USA where the dramatic nomination of that feisty red blooded Senator Palin seems to have gripped the popular imagination, in rather the same way as Boris Johnson did in the London mayoral race.  Perhaps there’s a similar political saviour lurking somewhere on Labour’s backbenches, although none immediately springs to mind!

For me, the silly season is well and truly over too, although I greatly enjoy the comparatively relaxed atmosphere of Constituency work compared to Parliament.  In the last week or two I have visited parish councils in Crudwell, Grittleton, Kington St Michael, Calne Without, Heddington, Hilmarton, Minety, Lyneham, Brokenborough, Sutton Benger and Sherston, and hope to see as many more as I can possibly fit in; I’ve had meetings with Corsham Police and Basil Hill Barracks; held surgeries in all four main towns, had three days in London including attending a rare mid-Recess meeting of the Defra select Committee to discuss food security; attended a hog roast in Devizes Constituency, which included a most enjoyable series of folk songs sung and accompanied on his guitar by my friend and neighbour, Michael Ancram, (whose Column is so much more weighty and learned than mine!); I had drinks with our Euro-candidates, attended the Chippenham Civic Service, spoke to the Rotary Club of the Wiltshire Vale, of which I am pleased to be an Honorary Member, lunched with Wiltshire County Council Cabinet and kept on top of the never ending flow of Constituency emails and letters.

Perhaps not matters of quite such earth-shaking significance as Kijacki, Fanny Mae and Palin; but matters of great importance to me, and I hope to my constituents!

Competence

A good friend of mine who is a Labour MP (and, yes, there are good comradeships across the floor in the Commons) made a telling remark to me the other day in the middle of his general lamentations about the state of his party. He said “The trouble with the Tories is that you’re rather good at running the country, but your PR and presentation is c……; Our problem is that we used to get top marks for spin and PR but we couldn’t run a p…-up in a brewery. But now we’ve lost even that skill.”

Alistair Darling has proved his colleague’s point this weekend by saying that the economic outlook is the worst for 60 years, at least tacitly accepting some of the blame for it, criticising the PM in a Guardian interview and admitting that “the people are p…..off with Labour” There is apparently a terminal spat between Mr Darling and the PM over a housing market package, which reportedly may cost up to £40 billion, and was being described by the Treasury as “all smoke and mirrors, impossible to understand, and highly damaging to the economy.” Not only is it an incompetent shambles; but they have even lost the ability to cover it up and to spin their way out of trouble which Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell were so expert at.

Incompetence in Government was much in my mind at my Wootton Basset and Malmesbury surgeries on Saturday. The woes of almost everyone who came to see me were caused by governmental incompetence – the young South African who cannot return to see his parents until the Immigration Department returns his passport, the young mother in penury because the Child Support Agency are failing to pursue the absent father, the couple brought to their knees with stress because the Child tax Credits people sending them a computer-generated and almost certainly incorrect letter reclaiming an alleged £5000 overpayment.

Nationally we hear of yet more data losses resulting in all of our details being pretty easily accessible by the criminal fraternity, of soldiers in Afghanistan with the wrong equipment, of one senior Metropolitan policemen accusing the Commissioner of racism, of Northern Rock, of overseas criminals released into the community, of farmers’ subsidies unpaid and foot and mouth spores released through broken drains in a Government laboratory, of rank incompetence in every Department of State.

Now Ministers would doubtless argue that those things are really nothing to do with them. How can they be blamed for inefficiencies within their departments, quite possibly at a relatively lowly level? But what has happened to the age-old principle of ‘the buck stops here’ and ministers – most memorably Lord Carrington over the Falklands – accepting full responsibility even if they personally were not involved? And anyhow, surely the success of any human organisation depends to a very real degree on the energy, intelligence, ability of its boss? 

What we need in this country more than anything else is simply good, hard working, sensible, efficient, competent government, and only clear thinking; determined, business-like ministers will produce it. Spin, presentation, ideology and clever policy are no substitute for sheer ability.

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