Obama is the American Tony Blair

Maybe the arrival of Obama in the UK tonight will distract attention from the media story of Brown's disaster. Notably Obama is keen to meet with Blair and tolerating a meeting with Brown.

Says it all really.

However, my own view is that Obama is the US Blair. He has little to say, this excellent post by mark Wadsworth sums up his position on many things. He is has an everyman appeal and ticks all the right boxes. After George W. Bush he can be the unity candidate for America.

But he is not the leader for tough times, he is a leader for a Clinton era. I can't see his experience and leadership helping the US through the middle of the recession and potential war.

Back home is is well in hock to protectionist unions for example; no real free trade expansion, perhaps even a repeal of Nafta.His other plans such as using Government funds to pick manufacturing winners and such like is straight out of a 1970's socialist playbook.

The only area he has a good view on is predatory lending which is a scourge in both the US and UK and is a nasty development from the past few years of ultra-cheap credit.

Like Blair, some of his words are grandiose and he has the common touch, but like Blair I don;t think he has the convictions to follow-up on to make real change. Blair talked of renewal and making Britain a young country - what did he achieve - huge debts and little real improvement in public services, mass immigration and a huge public sector.

What will Obama do in his 4 years?

Glasgow East now twinned with Eastbourne

Winner of the Eastbourne 1990 quote was Iain Dale on his blog 12.01am.

What an amazing result

An SNP win.
365 majority

This is an unmitigated disaster for Labour which will surely have serious repercussions for the Cabinet and possibly Mr Brown.

It is not possible for a political party, that has a history in Glasgow East of returning Labour MPs for over 60 years , to have such staunch support dissolve without consequences.


Mr Brown has a limpet like ability to cling on, so I would expect Mr Darling to be the fall guy.

Ed Balls should be scapegoated too, but that's unlikely.

As for the SNP this is their 'Obama' moment.
They have the big Mo and will likely decimate Labour at a national election.
Scottish Independence takes a step closer to realisation.

Tactically Labour have themselves to blame for negating the incumbents advantages.
Quite why Labour called a By Election so quickly and so poorly is a mystery [waiting to be answered in a few weeks by MPs published expenses perhaps David Marshall?]

* Call a snap by election. Why? there is the whole summer recess to bury bad news.
Labour took a long time to get going in Crewe, so don't repeat that mistake.
* Calling an election without a candidate? Why? Basic recruitment No1. Don't announce the new person until they confirm in writing.Keep it in the dark, you may need to call back the No2. Shambolic start for Labour and a gift to the other three parties.
*Announce an election over a traditional holiday week. [possibly they wanted a low turnout, but its still a bad idea]
* Announce a work for benefits in one of the most deprived areas of the country, days before voting takes place.
*bashing Margaret Thatcher in leaflets when you know that there are hundreds of pictures of your leader sitting down to tea with her.
*having a meeting with your creditors [the unions] the day after a very public, damaging, credibility destroying humiliation.

We thought that the London elections were badly handled by the PLP. Throwing away their natural advantages in Glasgow East begins to looks less like incompetence and more like panic.

Well the panic will probably get worse. 325 Labour Mps now know that they may soon be unemployed.

Only In Germany . . .

A short, partly nostalgic trip last week to the Ruhrgebiet / Niederrhein, where I spent happy days as a subaltern in the heyday of the Cold War.

The Cold War has gone, but Germany changes little. Only in Germany . . .

. . . would they take the splendid 1930’s Officers’ Mess that was my home, declare it a listed building, and turn it into a conference centre

. . . would municipal allotments be turned over mostly to growing flowers in ornate little patches like this

. . . would an electricity pylon be placed in the grounds of a Wasserschloss

. . . would a little town like Zons (pop. 5,405) have a museum with a world-class collection of Art Nouveau glassware

. . . would the same little town host 8 marching bands and a dozen uniformed civilian ‘hunting’ societies (ahem), parading with swords, axes, rifles and cannon !

. . . and would a riverside dyke be called a Hochwassershutzanlage . . .

Happy days.

ND

Photos © Nick Drew 2008; and, not for the first time, German spelling corrections courtesy of M.Wadsworth

Where is Cameron's Glasgow East ?

Glasgow East is the 25th safest Labour seat with a 13507 {43.66%} according to Constituencies in order of % Majority after the 2005 General Election.
The current polls are still predicting a Labour win but there is talk of a majority of hundreds, not thousands according to The Telegraph

There are 41 similar safe seats before the first Conservative seat appears on the board. That is Kensington and Chelsea with 12148 majority.
Now, to put this in a Conservative perspective, it is as if the Tories were desperately trying to hang on to their safest seat. The average voter in Chelsea is as likely to vote Labour as they are to eat spam fritters. I expect the average voter in Glasgow East is as likely to vote Conservative as it is to holiday in Aspen.

The 24th safest Tory seat is Runnymede and Weybridge. I choose the 24th as it is where I used to live and the figures are near enough. Runnymede and Weybridge majority 12349 {28.37%}.
This is ABC 1 territory. The highest social status and many of the highest earners in the country.
Smack in the middle of the stockbroker commuter belt. Average price of a modest 3 bedroom home £300,000. Good schools, transport links to 4 international airports, 30 minute train to Waterloo, multi-multi multi - million pound homes, championship golf couses and low crime. The prosperous blue heartland.

Imagine holding somewhere like that with a majority of 13500 and coming away with 800.
And then being pleased because it was a win.
No. It would be a catastrophe that would undeniably cost the leader their job.

Labour may well do much better than that. In the current economic and political climate some allowances need to be made.

7000+ very credible
5000+ good
3000+ weak but spin able
1000+ disturbing in the extreme
1+ the hollowest of victories

The fact that talk of a win as somehow good and a step towards regaining the initiative shows even more clearly than Crewe exactly how far Labour's stock has fallen. It should be nothing less than a very comfortable win.

Whatever the result I confidently predict the phrase Eastbourne in 1990 to be a recurring theme.

Bank -rupt?

Heroic shorting of HBOS by its own underwrites seems to have saved the face of its terrible rights issue. Only 8.3% of shareholders wanted to take up the rights.

My reactions to this:

- How come the Board is not asked to make any sacrifices for this wreckage?

- The banks will kill each other (RBS was shorted so much for proxy purposes its shares fell by 25%) for money - so not much change there.

-With the £4 billion to cover potential losses, HBOS should escape a Northern Wreck scenario. Just don't plan on buying in now and getting any capital growth of dividend payouts until the recession is over in a couple of years.

- The rights issue model for banks is now closed. Any other companies in big trouble from now on have very limited options to get hold of new money. No wonder Mervyn King is trying to get the BOE to be able to borrow secretly.

Signs of Stagflation ?

Shop prices in the furniture and flooring sector increased 2.3 per cent month on month in June.
Not a big rise to be sure, with CPI at 4% but this is the Furniture sector. The retail sector facing the biggest slowdown due to the slowdown in the housing market.Mortgage approvals slumped from 58,000 in April to 42,000 in May, a 64 per cent decrease year-on-year. House sales are down 40 per cent year on year.

The problem is furniture, flooring and DIY should be bucking the inflation trend as they slash prices to stimulate sales. They can't because of rising costs, from wage inflation in the Far East, the rising cost of raw materials and freight costs, which are closely linked to the steeply rising price of oil.

Overall retail prices are staying down quite well, but as we reported before many retailers are selling last years summer stock. The summer sales have some genuine bargains in them.
But once the autumn stock arrives in around 4 weeks time, then retail price inflation overall may begin to rise.

If a retail slowdown occurs then the home economy begins to sink.
I'm with CU on interest rates. Food, Oil and Power costs are creating inflation.
Consumers have to pay those bills, they can't be avoided. That takes disposable income out of the economy. Cutting rates will put some of the money being taken out back into peoples pockets.

Balance the books.

It took almost all day, but I thought long and not too hard and came up with a way to balance government spending with government borrowing.
Not only that, but it actually engages people in the democratic process. not only that, it makes money!

Ok, here's the deal.
Every Saturday night Ant and Dec front a mixture of Britain's got talent, Big Brother, Dragon's Den and X factor.
A panel of judges from political parties, business, trade union, media + a few regular people from the real world get to vote on.. sectors of spending.

There's a big lit up board that shows tax receipts / spending /money returned to taxpayers in a bar chart form. Departments present a short film of why they deserve funding. A film of cancer care centers, a shot of an ambulance, a child in an incubator, a woman with a new hip.
[tears in the audience].
Then the counter argument Poly Clinics/ MRSA/ a one size fits all pay deal regardless of income/ Cleanliness/ projected health costs/ trans gender operations/cosmetic surgery/ administrators as a % of the NHS staff budget.. and so on.
The judges debate and Simon Cowell and Paxman and the Dragons pull bits apart and then the studio audience and you the viewer at home, get to vote the spending through.Or not.

"Tonight Aircraft Carriers at £4 billion. But that's without planes isn't it?
Erm yes.
And without sailors?
Erm yes.
And without small support ships and larger docks?
erm..
so give us your real ready to roll price Ministry of defence?
Erm £25 Billion.
Ohh they didn't like that did they Ant? No Dec, they didn't. Well let's ask the audience..They want the money spent on helicopters and housing for soldiers and increased combat pay..

Well you get the idea. Council leaders on £100,000, Health and Safety,new town halls, MP's expenses, Quangos, Green Taxes, speed cameras, diversity courses, the Eu, the Potato board, union modernisation, the arts council, the BBC, Airline fuel exemption etc... all must pass the Room 101 test.
If theyfail and go in, then that's it. No more state spending.

And when the public tires of the format.. do it on ice!