Frank Field wants public spending cut now and suggests Conservatives will win next election
It's worth taking a couple minutes to read this article which Birkenhead MP Frank Field has written for the Spectator.
Two most interesting points in a detailed piece of economic analysis are his assertion that public spending must be cut and his suggestion that the Conservatives now seem likely to be the next government.
It never ceases to amaze me that Mr Field gets away with saying these things, when other parliamentary colleagues would not have the nerve or would find pressure brought to bear on them for veering from the party line.
That the second point has almost become accepted wisdom by many is besides the point, you will get many Labour politicians openly admitting they are about to lose the next general election.
Here's an extract from the article:
The government appears to hope that it will gain enough cover by repeating ad nauseam that it is Keynesian common sense to borrow during the downturn and pay back when the economy is on a more even keel. Whether it really believes this is anyone's guess. But its bluff might be called, and here will be a test not only for the current administration, but also for the opposition, whose consistent poll lead suggests it may form the next government.
...The government not only has a moral duty now to cut public expenditure, but may be forced to do so by its inability to borrow on the scale necessary.
...Again, it's worth going for a cash ceiling on all public expenditure programmes. The drive must then be to ensure that falling real budgets result in increased output. This goal will not be easy to achieve and it will require a serious budget devolution so that entrepreneurial skills that are within the public system operate to full effect. But there will be no escaping the need to take out whole programmes if there is any prospect of bringing expenditure down merely towards tax revenue levels in a time-span necessary to continue attracting scarce credit.
The annual ã180-190 billion gap will take some filling. Trident's replacement comes in at between ã15-ã20 million. ID cards still have a ã5 billion price tag. Freezing the health budget in cash terms could save something like ã7.5 billion a year. Postponing the school leaving age and ceasing to overreach ourselves in sending 50 per cent of pupils to university, many of whom never complete their first year, would only bring in modest sums.
I raise these programmes as examples of the kinds of cuts that will be required to bring the national accounts towards balance. I am not suggesting that this is the programme, or that this list is adequate. But the threat to the country's solvency is now so serious that both opposition and government need to use next week's Budget on what needs to be done this year to begin rebuilding the country's solvency.
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David Bartlett
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Well, apart from Frank Field stating the obvious about a Conservative win in the next General Election, we now have veteran Labour supporters deciding that enough is enough. Let's face it. Gordon Brown blew his chances by delaying it twelve months ago. Now, the economy gets worse every day, the jobless numbers are going to hit 3M, our PSBR is going to go through the roof - estimates are now 150 billion - read it and weep. Trust Labour? Get real.
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A veteran Labour former MP has quit the party, complaining that the leadership had "betrayed" the principles that inspired her to join.
Alice Mahon, MP for Halifax between 1987 and 2005, said she also felt "absolutely scandalised" by the Damian McBride affair.
Mahon, 71, a left-winger who was a vocal critic of Tony Blair and the Iraq War, has now written to Halifax Constituency Labour Party tendering her resignation.
She had been a member for more than half a century.
In her letter, she said: "This has been a difficult decision to take as I feel I was almost born into the Labour Party.
"However, I can no longer be a member of a party that at the leadership level has betrayed many of the values and principles that inspired me as a teenager to join."
Ms Mahon, who regularly rebelled against New Labour policies during her time as an MP, said she was "shocked and absolutely scandalised" by the Government's smear scandal.
She said that recent developments had finally convinced her to quit the party.
"I've reached the end of the road with the Labour Party. I've lost faith in the Government and the direction they are taking us in.
"I did hope, as did many party members, that we would get a change of direction if we got a new leadership. Unfortunately I could not have been more wrong."
Me neither David, if I was the leader he would be on the carpet, but there you are, I am not and he is not.
As to Alice Mahon, I bet the Labour candidates in Halifax and Calder Valley - her friends I imagine, will be gutted that the Tories can now run leaflet after leaflet saying that Alice no longer supports Labour so why should the rest of the population.
Fair play if she wanted to resign, but why did she have to go public with it? Missing the limelight perhaps? It makes my blood boil.
Do these people really think we would be better off with a Tory Government? Is that what they want? Does Frank Field think that the Tories would be good for Birkenhead? Tony Blair once said it was not a choice between the Labour Party we wanted and the one we had got, but between the Labour Party and the Tories. Grrrrr