"I'm a hate-figure for certain Tories," he says. "That's just the way it is. But as long as they read my blog, I don't care."
"Brown's in a deep hole, things are incredibly bleak for him and Cameron's going to win the general election."
"Denis MacShane has suddenly let loose
his inner John Redwood and embraced
tax and spending cuts."
Yes, a mistake was made with the abolition of the 10p tax band, but the worst of the 10p row was how it obscured the fact that Brown had lowered income tax from 22 to 20 per cent in his last budget. Can that tax-cutting Brown please re-emerge?Probably because there are few examples in living memory (with the possible exception of Australia and New Zealand). But then comes the MacShane piece de resistance...My friends on the Left will insist that the correct Labour response is to raise taxes and break away from what they call neo-liberal economic policies. But when the state Hoovers up nearly two thirds of a trillion pounds from national income, describing such economics as neo-liberal is to mock language.
When trade unions and the Fabians invented what became the 20th-century Labour Party, no working man or woman paid any tax. It was easy to call for higher taxes because only the Tory-voting bourgeoisie paid them. Now working people are faced with massive deductions from their pay. There is some compensation for those on low incomes with young children, but a third of the voters in the London mayoral elections were single or childless people. The tired references to "hard-working families" upset all the voters who live by themselves, do not have children at home and are denied tax credits.
Can the Left be tax-cutters? Why not?
And how can tax cuts be funded? By cutting spending.Hallelujah! A sentence which few Conservatives are yet prepared to utter (present company excepted). Let's just repeat that again, for the benefit of my good friend Danny Finkelstein.
Take Labour-run Bolton Council. It decided on a zero council tax rise this year and was rewarded, rightly so, at the ballot box. When Mrs Thatcher imposed rate capping and told town halls to curb spending, a new generation of Labour council leaders rolled up their sleeves and worked within cost-cutting rules. Unlike their tax-greedy comrades of the Left in London councils, the municipal socialists of Leeds and Manchester, of Birmingham and Salford created a new style of local government by making less money go farther and finding innovative partnerships with the private sector to begin the renaissance of the great cities of England.I do not know of a single minister who privately does not despair at the waste of money on pointless projects, publications, or legions of press officers that add no value. The taxpayer has given more than £1 billion of aid to India, even though that great country has more billionaires and millionaires than Britain and runs its own well-financed development aid programme. I was baffled as Europe minister to be told I had to waste 90 minutes being quizzed by a consultant when the kindly but shrewd tea ladies in King Charles Street knew what needed to be done. How much was paid to the consultant? What happened to his report? No one in Whitehall knows or cares. When I suggested using easyJet to cut flying costs in Europe, fellow ministers and senior officials looked at me as if I had left a nasty mess on their doorstep.
Can I be the only MP outraged that town clerks - even dressed up with fancy titles such as chief executive - can now get paid £200,000?plus for running rubbish collection services in small towns?
So welcome Denis MacShane. Welcome to the ranks of the Thatcherites. Welcome to that small band who recognise that public spending can be cut. Welcome to that happy group of people who believe in the Laffer Curve.All trade union leaders have had to impose spending cuts as income levels of unions ebb and flow. What makes sense to them should make sense to a secretary of state. The notion that cost-cutting is something the Right does is nonsense. The great firms of Britain, such as Marks and Spencer, BP, Corus and BA, have had their fortunes turned round by ruthless pruning of costs, thus forcing managers to think differently as they are told to cut budgets if they want to save their jobs. And in doing so they not only keep their jobs but find the companies they run are walking tall again.
A government should be no different.
Andrew Franklin, Profile's Managing Director, said: ‘”Alan Clark meets ‘Yes Minister’ . Few politicians can write and there are still fewer I would want to have dinner with, let alone publish, but this book is exceptional. Chris Mullin absolutely can write. He’s funny, honest and, rare for a politician, self-deprecating. Who else would admit to receiving an invitation scrawled with the words, “this is a very low priority. I suggest we pass it to Chris Mullin”? Whether he’s describing life at the Court of John Prescott, the countdown to the Iraq war or his battle with Number 10 over leylandii hedges his book is pure pleasure from beginning to end”.
Chris Mullin says: “I have wasted no time on feuds and vendettas. I cannot claim to have led a life as colourful as Alan Clark or to have been as well connected as Alastair Campbell. My only claim is to have provided a snapshot of political life in the first part of the twenty-first century. Not just who said what to whom, but what it felt like to be there.”
Like hundreds of thousands of others I have spent miuch of the day with Radio 2 on in the background, listening to the All Time Abba Chart. I don't know what the compilers of this chart were on when they put it together, but to put The Winner Takes it All at only number seven was a travesty!
a) to get a direct debit from your own bank account like any normal person
b) to bill the taxpayer
Am liking the Finnish Eurovision entry. Nothing like a bit of Heavy Metal to get the thing going. The songs so far have been awful. The UK entry was truly excrebale. It was ten years ago tonight that I actually attended the Eurovision Song Contest when it was held in Birmingham. I was sitting next to Stephen Twigg, who nearly exploded when the Israeli transsexual singer, Dana International (pic), won. Hilarious.
