New dog, old tricks?

By David Higgerson on Oct 24, 10 08:28 PM

Politicians hate the phrase 'They're all the same.' There's a good reason for that - it's not true. But there's also a good reason why so many people think it's true - because so often it appears that way.

Take one of New Labour's favourite tricks - re-announcing spending commitments as 'new' news two or three times. Barely a month would pass without a big spending announcement which, when journalists probed a bit, was little more than a topping up of a previous announcement.

In hindsight, perhaps we should be grateful to Labour for such recycling announcements - just imagine the size of the deficit if each new announcement had been new money.

But that doesn't change the fact that when such funding announcements were rumbled for what they really were, both the Lib Dems and Tories would rightly bounce around the TV studios denouncing Labour for its dubious spinning.

Along came the coalition with the promises of honesty, transparency and a new way of working. And on the double-counting front, it appears they've kept to their word ... until now.

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg was full of the joys of spring when he announced that he had secured a pupil premium to top up the funding of schools in deprived areas ahead of the spending review. It was billed as triumph for a key Lib Dem policy in the face of cuts everywhere else. Clegg had, if we believed his people, wrung extra money from the treasury.

That was 10 days ago. Today, it turned out that the money wasn't new money at all, but redistribution from within the existing schools budget. The result will be that schools in more affluent areas will get less funding.

I can still see the argument for doing it - but why not be honest in the first place? Was Clegg doing a New Labour and saying what he thought the public would want to hear, or was he being misled by the coalition.

Education secretary and Tory milk monitor Michael Gove today confirmed as much. He describes the money as ' an additional £2.5bn that we've made available for the poorest students.' That's different to new money.

In June, David Cameron said the money would come from other departments. To me, it's understandable that policies can change over a summer in which every budget was scrutinised, but for Clegg to be so bold about 'new money' only to be slapped down by the education secretary a week later is very different.

Either he was misled, or we've been misled. Either way, the old saying that they're all the same rings rather true tonight thanks to Mr Clegg.