DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

It is opportunistic. Way to convince the electorate that you're a party that sticks to its principles, Labour. Admittedly it's about an anorak policy and no one really cares but still, ffs.

The way that article presents it, it doesn't sound opportunistic. Essentially it reads like this:

Party 2 has been accused of opportunism after they decided to oppose a bill on Policy A that had been in their own manifesto. A spokesman for Party 2 said "that's not true - we still support Policy A, it's just that the coalition government of Party 1 and Party 3 have decided to make the bill a combination of Policy A and Policy B. We are opposed to Policy B as we think it is unfair and cynically designed to favour Party 1." A spokesman for Party 1 said "What hypocrisy! They supported Policy A and now they don't!". A spokesman for Party 3 said "What hypocrisy! They supported Policy A and now they don't!".

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Admin/BkFill/Default_image_group/2010/7/31/1280608965599/Pakistani-activists-burn--006.jpg

...so Pakistan really isn't a big fan of Cameron at the moment.

This is just astonishingly naive from Cameron, by all means suck up to India, they're important, but I can't think of any way in which this isn't a huge diplomatic clanger.

Aha aha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaa

Tories are up tho'.

The LibDems are the scapegoats, the easy targets and the weathervanes here but I'm pretty sure the Tories would love to win outright and get them out of the way as quickly as possible.

LibDem conference should be fun this year, and that's not something I ever though I'd say. Could blow some of the Blair Iraq Labour conferences out of the water.

Tories have done very little to alienate their support since taking office, and will have reassured Tory voters that this coalition isn't actually going to feature any nasty Lib Dem policies. Labour's poll is up more than the Tories, for what that's worth - not much at the moment tbh. None of this spoils the awesomeness of this massive LD slump, which as Matt says should only need to stay steady until conference season to get some brutal and hilarious in-fighting on the agenda. Countdown to breakaway party back on.

Crossing the floor would be more likely than a breakaway party I'd say... I'd keep an eye on what Charles Kennedy does.

Cable is apparently the senior LibDem that hates the coalition most, he was in Alistair Darling's office the day before the agreement pretty much begging him to convince the Labour party to be less intractable, whereas Darling took the "it's over, the numbers don't add up" line.

Interesting if Cable were to cross the floor, as he's still got some credibility from his post slump predictions. Though his backtracking on a cutting the public sector so quickly has no dout dented that somewhat.

'no doubt'

Word has it that Cable's department is earmarked for the biggest cuts, I suppose if you're all about the free market you shouldn't really need a business secretary.

"Mr Clegg's personal satisfaction rating was eight points, compared to the spectacular 72 points he achieved in the wake of the first televised leaders' debate during the election campaign."

I doubt even Auld Ming never sunk that low

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10834909

Effigy-making skillz not what they once were.

Not a good time to hump Pakistan in the cricket.

You know what could help this situation? Sending the Queen and Prince Philip there on an official visit oh wait...

David Cameron warns public sector cuts will be permanent

Prime minister tells an audience in Birmingham that cuts need to be 'sustainable' and that funding will not be restored once budget deficit is under control

At least Dave's being honest now that the cuts are ideological.

nah he'd still manage to deny any ideology

Is it me or did they keep the COI job cuts very quiet? Read about it saving a 'massive' £2mn in advertising spend a month since June, which sounds enormous until the £600mn a year budget is taken into account. Can't imagine the salaries they won't be paying will save much more than £2mn a month extra.

i knew about the COI cuts a while ago

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/aug/03/lifetime-council-tenancies-contracts-cameron

this govt is probably more right-wing than thatcher's, and less legitimate

Thatcher government took years to get into its programme, this one is starting from a recognisably Thatcherite political landscape and pushing rightwards.

Really do not believe it is possible for me to hate David Cameron any more than I do at this moment. In other news, a close friend today won a tenancy for a housing association flat. She has been waiting on a list for this flat for 10 years and is more entitled to live there than Dave is to live where he does at the moment.

This made me so angry yesterday. Presumably they can't do this without forcing people to leave council houses AND it'll be harder for them to move into the private sector because they're cutting housing benefits at the same time.

The prime minister admitted that "not everyone will support this and there will be quite a big argument". Speaking in Birmingham, he said: "There is a question mark about whether, in future, we should be asking when you are given a council home, is it for a fixed period? Because maybe in five or 10 years you will be doing a different job and be better paid and you won't need that home, you will be able to go into the private sector."

If it's such a great idea then why are you anticipating such opposition? If you were in a significantly better job then why would you stay in a council house anyway? This idea that making life even shitter for those at the bottom in some way magically enhances social mobility is nonsense.

Thatcher government took years to get into its programme

A minister said this a couple of days ago. Basically saying we're not making Thatcher's mistake, we'll do as much as we can, as fast as possible because who knows what's going to happen next year. Gotta admire Cameron's determination to get a new bit of policy out there every day no matter what.

It must be getting to a point now where some LDs are going to break ranks. Surely?

They're going faster because a) some of them do view it as economic necessity, b) its now a commonly accepted viewpoint that Blair did too little in office and Cameron wants to go down as a "radical" and c) they're not long how long being in power will last and are going crazy.

All the shit banks we propped up during the bailout are now reporting profits. BONUS TIME!

The comments below http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/aug/03/lifetime-council-tenancies-contracts-cameron are filled with cheap shots against poor people and a false consciousness around the mechanics of council and housing association tenancy. The most disgusting I saw was the man who claimed to be retiring to Spain to die there and avoid inheritance tax while discussing scroungers.

one interesting side effect of this is it would presumably kill right to buy.

I can see this kind of thing reversed in a few years tho', and this goes specifically in regards to sustaining the 25% decrease in departmental spending beyond this parliament, especially as more people get poorer...a lot of this is August talk.

Of course I am assuming Labour would want to reverse, which might be an assumption too far. xp

Labour will talk about reversing a lot of things and then conveniently forget about it after the next election.

I'm trying to think of positive aspects to this - it might help housing resources to be allocated more fairly (ie fewer big families in small houses while single people have bigger ones). Wouldn't be an issue if they built more council houses. It might make it easier for people to move to take jobs elsewhere.

Mostly this comes down to the threshold of "genuine need" - and I bet it'll be pretty low - and the lack of affordable private rented accommodation. It's likely to prevent people for going for modest increases in income for fear of losing their council house.

Also, lol.

Matt, councils are RUTHLESS about under-occupying and constantly shuffle older people to new, smaller homes after the kids take off - in many cases they go to a sheltered scheme. If not, there are incentives to get people to move, not threat of loss of their homes. Single Londoners who are homeless are not even allocated 1BR flats - they can only bid on studios and bedsits. I've seen the system and it is already calibrated to favour people born in a particular borough over new arrivals, so Mail bigots can take a flyer. BTW how is August talk more shite than Tory talk the rest of the year? I would prefer that those at the bottom of the heap were not made to feel insecure with every day's newspaper.

I am perfectly capable of seeing things from the perspective of someone who isn't me. Hence: of course assured shorthold tenancies are wonderful for the property-owning classes who rent out their spare flats! Rents for rooms are four times their level 20 years ago and it's great to take the state's money to house benefits claimants or waiting list people and then complain that they're the scroungers and council rents are too reasonable - petit-bourgeois assholes will go along with what we want, because in acting as their betters, we give them permission to hate on the poor as much as we hate on the lower middle classless. With the bonus requirement that the schmucks that move into your place pay local taxes based on its value to the state, so you don't have to! #1988 #letsdothetimewarpagain

Okay the Guardian article was misleading re: your first para.

I've seen the system and it is already calibrated to favour people born in a particular borough over new arrivals, so Mail bigots can take a flyer.

Am I right that the Mail-type "Somali family in £2m home" stories are from councils with basically no British poor people, but that still get asylum-seekers and thus have no council flats to put them in? That was what I assumed.

Not saying August talk is more or less shite than rest of the year, but my remark was more related to a sustainable decrease in departmental spending. You can only cut so much for so long before things start going wrong and there is a counter-reaction (as this is a reaction to years of sustainable spending in certain areas like the NHS), and again, talk of "governing for the long term" like this when you have a coalition and pushing through cuts when Scotland and Wales have their own assemblies seems fanciful, so it sounds like the easiest time of the year to be just saying things/shooting ideas in newspapers, when part of their function is to make a section of the population fearful and insecure for their futures anyway. xp

You get a load of stuff out there in August to look like a government of action before it gets torn apart in Parliament/in the media/in the Lords when everyone's back.

The dark side of the silly season! I get it BTW.

Purpose-built council flats tend to top out at 4BR and there are larger properties that have been in council ownership since they were compulsorily purchased from slumlords in the post-war years, for peanuts. Social housing is not meant to make capitalist-style profts, merely to pay for itself, and most properties have been paid for by their tenants many times over, never mind by the historic taxpayer. It is only because waiting lists in most London boroughs run from 15-20,000 people that large refugee families have to be placed in megamegahousingbenefit single family homes in boroughs like Ealing where housing prices for same have jumped exponentially since the days of negative equity. And the same rich fuckers/Mail readers don't say a word when *their* BTL mortgages are being subsidiszed in this manner by taxpayers, many of whom live in council flats or partial-ownership schemes and hate the idea of £2K a week going to a private landlord for completely different and much sounder reasons.

And the same rich fuckers/Mail readers don't say a word when *their* BTL mortgages are being subsidiszed in this manner by taxpayers, many of whom live in council flats or partial-ownership schemes and hate the idea of £2K a week going to a private landlord for completely different and much sounder reasons.

this really grinds my gears. build some more social housing vs keep paying inflated rents to private landlords [via housing benefit] -- seems kind of an easy choice to me.

have labour made any noise about reversing all/any of these recent revolting policies? they seem almost silent so far. the sheer speed and *glee* of these tory bastards in rushing all this through is horrifying and incredibly depressing

It really fucks me off when the overpriced flats full of overcrowded families paying market rents for their stay on the council waiting list happen to be ex-council properties owned by RTB tenants who've either sold to developers or retired to Spain to be Riviera racists.

Suzy I think your point would probably still stand without the strawman building.

Labour can't actually commit to anything without a leader though. The contender who seems to be doing the best at raking the Tories is Ed Balls, but then again Michael Gove has been giving him a lot of ammunition.

Interesting that Mays letter. I wonder if she leaked it herself.

this govt is probably more right-wing than thatcher's

The amazing thing being that so many people seemed to think Cameron wasn't a "right-winger", I've felt like shaking people and saying "Are you blind, deaf, stupid?!?!?"

Matt, I don't think the side-scold was necessary: I was merely building hypocrites, not scarecrows.

Speaking of hypocrites, it's my old nemesis Tessa May. *eyeball roll*

I can kinda see where a rolling check to make sure council housing stock is allocated according to need on an ongoing makes sense, tbh?

Working in a council rental scheme fwiw.

on an ongoing *basis*

First in a long time that there isn't/doesn't feel like a 'silly season'.

We had a psychic octopus in the news a matter of weeks ago!

We needed something from the back pages to cheer us all up.

Ooooh cracks emerging

Grant Shapps is a tool, BTW.

Known that for years.

In other news, Tory donor gets the personal touch:

Prime Minister and Witney MP David Cameron will write to the family of Alexander Codrington after the aristocrat’s son was found dead in woodland, it emerged last night.

The 16-year-old, whose father is baronet Sir Christopher Codrington, is thought to have killed himself shortly before dawn on Friday near the West Oxfordshire village of Fordwells after an hour-long conversation with police on a mobile phone.

It was reported that the teenager and Stowe School pupil had just split up from his girlfriend.

Mr Cameron lives just six miles from the Codringtons’ family home in Fordwells.

A spokesman for 10 Downing Street said: “The Prime Minister is very saddened to hear this tragic news and will be writing to the family.”