Entries from March 2009 ↓

Back in the real world, Labour had a massive boost last night. Let’s be honest, the last place on earth Labour wanted two local government by-elections was in Jacqui Smith’s constituency of Redditch. And if anything answered the sneering attacks in the press that Jacqui has had to endure it is a 12.5% swing to Labour in her local area.

A Labour gain from the Conservatives in the Central ward of Redditch Borough on a 12.5% swing from last year was probably the best result of the year to date for Labour, although it was almost outdone by the 11.1% swing in next door Headless Cross & Oakenshaw, which reduced the Tories’ majority from 943 to 262 and almost cost them control of the council.

Tories “in dissaray over sooner or later tax promise”. Not a great day for the Conservatives, though it is a day that has been coming for months.

The line that Mr Clarke used on Friday was more interesting than his comments on inheritance tax though. He said on Sky News:

“The government must continue to borrow and the taxpayers’ credit is actually to refinance the banks to tackle toxic assets on their balance sheets. That is all absolutely necessary. You need a general loan guarantee scheme, a simple one, a workable one for businesses of all sizes because the government will take a large part of the risk.”

That isn’t the kind of rhetoric we have been hearing from Mr Osborne.

The 25 years since the Miners Strike Week has replayed a lot of 1984 memories.

1984 was the year I left home. It was the year I became of disciple of Mr Bragg; the year Rob Trent taught me that you have to pay for your shopping before spending your money in record shops. It was the year I moved to London via Southampton and Dorchester. Too many memories to mention here.

Looking back now, I’m reminded how angry I was with the Tories. They were well on the way to creating a fissure in the social landscape of Britain. The Miners Strike was just the audible backdrop to a bigger project.

And today, thinking about those days, I feel a tinge of the old anger again. I see that David Cameron apologised for his mistakes over the economy yesterday. Back in 1984 he would still have been boarding at Eton; cramming for his Oxford entrance exams.

If he was less of a flaky PR man and showed more guts, he should be apologising for his party’s role in wrecking the economy back then. Their dogmatic adherence to monetarism entrenched long term unemployment for a generation. They wrecked communities, the effects of which can arguably be still felt today.