New Labour: lost CDs, lost reputation
Posted on Wednesday 21 November, 2007
Filed Under New Labour
Taken in isolation, the CDgate affair should not inflict much damage on New Labour. At worst, it should entail no more than a few days of embarrassing headlines and the discrete rolling of heads at HM Revenue & Customs.
No more would then be said, and the whole incident would be forgotten quickly enough as the nation enters fully into the permanent alcoholic stupor that dominates the Christmas and New Year period for the majority of the population. Shit happens, right? Can I get you a top up?
But coming so soon after the October election stumble, the shambles over foreign worker statistics and the Northern Rock bail-out, CDgate isn’t being taken in isolation. George Osborne’s ‘just get a grip and deliver a basic level of competence’ jibe hit damagingly home. Why should that be?
One reason is that New Labour has, since its inception, prided itself on its managerial abilities, especially on economic questions. Vote for the party of the Platonic form of half-way capable middle management made flesh; we don’t cock things up.
So it was that for more then a decade, nobody was reduced to singing in the bathtub or snorting coke in the Treasury as sterling suffered humiliation at the hands of the financial markets.
As chancellor, Brown presided over uninterrupted growth averaging 2.8% between 1998 and 2006, with none of the wild gyrations witnessed under the Tories from 1979 to 1997.
But the success has been built on weak foundations, including huge recourse to public and private debt, over-reliance on the City, and stagnation in manufacturing that has created a trade deficit of record proportions.
If the housing market hits the buffers – and that is a very real possibility, even on the most optimistic prognoses – the perception of perpetual economic competence will be destroyed. As John Major soon discovered, once the perception changes, so do the opinion poll standings.
By the end of the first quarter of 2008, last month’s decision to bottle a contest might just be looking like a singularly bad call.
<<Go back
Comments
9 Responses to “New Labour: lost CDs, lost reputation”
I thought it was interesting that the reporter on the Channel 4 news this evening said that the National Audit Office had told the Revenue that it only wanted the names of the children and the amount they were receiving, they did not want all the highly sensitive personal data. Unfortunately, due to the contract which the Revenue has with its data management firm, they could not filter out all the other information. Ha, bloody ha. Aren’t these privatizated contracts causing a lot of trouble!
Listening to the Radio 4 midnight news last night (the combined wonders of Long Wave and Winter), I couldn’t help thinking – again and again – that this would mark the point of no return for Brown’s government, and wondered how long it would take before Cameron – ! – would move into Downing Street. On the other hand, this is probably just a ridiculous thought brought on by the fact that around 15 minutes of news on one item is over the top, and just means this relatively minor slip-up – compared to what else New Labour have done in recent years – is being overplayed on an otherwise slow news day?
Maybe the public are just getting rather worried about what Gordon Brown meant when he promised ‘a new kind of politics’?
On the evidence of what we’ve seen over the past few months I’d rather have the old kind, thanks.
Some of what Dave says here about the economy’s weak foundations is expanded on very well in the book, Fantasy Island, by the Guardian journalists Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/may/14/politics.ukeconomy for an intro to the book.
Another recommendation for Fantasy Island here.
Maybe I was wrong to assume it was my mum who lost my The Very Best of Dire Straits CD…
(And maybe even blaming Daniel Randall for losing my Nathan Barley DVD. This goes all the way to the top)
I don’t buy all of Dave’s analysis, but yes, there is a grain of truth in it.
Some questions:
Don’t understand what the issue with debt, public or private. As Keynes said, in the long run we are all dead. The issue is whether the debt is affordable in the short term and in the medium term whether the debt pays for economic growth that keeps the first condition true. So far it essentially has.
On housing – we need to build a lot more, though when even lefties are leading campaigns to “protect rural England” (all too often used many on the right to mean keep the riff raff and the immigrants out), don’t under-estimate the politicial difficulties with that.
Trade deficit: in what sense is this a real problem today?
But the worrisome thing is the politics. people don’t like Cameron much, but they may be beginning to dislike Brown more.
Then all of those here who say “new Labour are just like the Tories” will see just how wrong they are. Labour is all that stands between millions of people and a government which, like the last tory one, celebrates mass unmeployment “as a price worth paying” and says of homelessness and mortgage repossessions “yes it worked”.
Am I the only person who’s concerned that there might be some kids at risk?
How much longer are the totally discredited NuLabour going to raise the spectre of Thatcherism? Wasn’t the Mag herself one of the first people invited to No 10 by Gordy? One of the military top brass aid the other day that the government had broken the covenant with the forces, well, hell, I think they’ve broken the covenant with the entire population.