Clarke and Osborne are working well

tom

Clarke lands punches in a way Cameron and Osbourne do not. The albatross of the economic crisis needs to be hung around Browns neck - which hasn't happened so far.

If people can pay the mortgage and have a job they feel ok. The debt issue is abstract. There's a kind of phony war atmosphere. Clarke - with his example of Greece made in real.

General Zod

Timms:

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2007/10/09/grendel-beowulf.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2007/10/more_terrifying_notquitereal_b.php&usg=__-IHPnZsNYfkU228dI9tYY9lKni8=&h=319&w=450&sz=27&hl=en&start=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=_ULf-ME2z2gt5M:&tbnh=90&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgrendel%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26tbs%3Disch:1

Timms is plain odd.

Darling comes across as a human being and I have a sneaking admiration for his fending off of Brown and Balls. He's wrong on most things of course.

Goldie

DC should bite the bullet. He should announce that Ken Clarke will be his Chancellor for the first 2 years and that Osborne will be Business Secretary (or perhaps Home Secretary, whatever).

Sometimes you've gotta roll the hard six.

stephen

I hope Dave and the Tory High Command will learn the lesson here. Ken can talk to the ordinary voter. Boy George's approach[viz FT piece] rendolent of PPE tutorials in an Oxford Don's drawing room is not going to win the attention or votes of ordinary people. Dave please play Ken for all he's worth!

toco

What also needs to be made abundantly clear is a vote for Labour is a vote for Unite and Charlie Whelan who now control the Labour Government through funding(60%+) some of which comes directly out of the pockets of the general public through union sponsorship by this self same discredited and corrupt Government.This is far,far worse than the 1% contributed by Ashcroft.Ps-Sarah Brown was spotted having lunch at Locatelli's(one of London's most expensive restaurants) with the disgraced Lord Paul earlier today-so much for egality!

Senor Frizby

One interesting thing Clarke highlighted on the daily Politics is that Gordon Brown is taking us down a road that the Greeks are now realising leads to economic disaster.

The Tories must beat these Labour inept-types!

Nick

Too late to replace Osborne with Clarke. What should happen though is:

Osborne - plays to his "strengths" as the slightly grim but determined bank manager who is going to sort out the UK's economic mess. He looks like he doesn't court popularity - which will be good as "tough decisions" (ie cuts) have to be made.

Ken Clarke - avuncular and popular. He should lead the attack on Brown's appalling legacy but also promote the Tory's economic growth proposals. As Business Secretary this is his immediate remit anyway. He should talk about a couple of tough years ahead but lower taxes and some targetted investment and a return to confidence and the benefits of a weaker pound will lead to much stronger growth in years to come.

TGF UKIP

Wrong David Blackburn! You really should pay more attention to your boss. As he has quite rightly made clear arguing the toss on the deficit is playing on Brown's own chosen ground. The messsage must be the DEBT, it's enormity and it's poisoning of everything.

Voters understand debt, deficit they haven't a clue about which is why Brown and his mates at the BBC go endlessly on about halving the deficit which to Joe Public means halving the debt.

As for Clarke he's just as useless as the rest of them as he demonstrated on Today this morning with Byrne when he allowed the whole typically slanted Naughtie session to pass without moving from their chosen deficit ground and their endless mantra of halving the deficit.

The hopeless Tories have a massively destructive nuclear weapon which they never use which is the 1.4 TRILLION pounds debt is forecast to reach in 2014 which equates to a massive £56,000 per household.

If the positions were reversed could you imagine Brown, Mandelson the entire Labour party and the BBC not chanting that in unsion at every opportunity.

People understand debt, most people have debt, deficits they don't have a fucking clue about which is what Gordon instinctively comprehends and the Clique don't.

The DT had the best illustration months back:

A million seconds is 12 days

A billion seconds is 31 years

A trillion seconds is 31,668 YEARS

Richard

More of the Tory horse frieghtening.
Scare stories to make people think the world is about to end unless everyone votes for them....it's shameful.

We are not in the same position as Greece and never will be. We have our own currency which fluctuates on the free markets.
We are not limited in our revenue sources either. Tourism is not the mainstay of our economy.
Hate them or not the financial traders are making shed loads of cash which is coming into the exchequer. Exports are set to soar with the low pound. Unemployment is far lower than expected and home repossesions are lower. Busineses are not going to wall as they were predicted. Windfall taxes from the banks reducing the borrowing requirement.
Inflation has not gone through the roof.
Funny how when the pound looses 1 cent on the dollar it's described as a plunge yet today it went up 1.5 cents and it was described as clawing it's way back...odd isn't it.
Osborne is not liked by the electorate thats true but then Ken Clarke isn't either. He won't last long however, first EU crisis and he will be out for good this time.

GDT

I've always liked Ken Clark. I think alot of people in UK like Ken Clark. He needs to get alot more air time.

echo34

Richard,

you seem to be very good at informing us how bad the tories' campaign is going but never a word about labours'.

Can we have your views on labours' campaign please?

Nicholas

Richard - complete Labour fantasyland. You really are wasting your time peddling that crap here. You should be on one of the Labour blogs reinforcing their delusions of grandeur.

"Game changer" eh? Laughable. The country hates Brown, hates Labour and can't wait to see the back of you all. Your personal Labour party loyalties and anti-Tory fixation doesn't translate into reality you know.

Labour have had 13 years in power with nothing to show for it apart from a bit of dodgy window dressing, tons of champagne socialist corruption and the unintended and largely negative consequences of badly conceived social engineering and 3,000+ bad laws. You can slag off the Tories as much as you like but they are not responsible for the mess the country is in and which your rose-tinted glasses won't let you see.

I realise you think you are doing sterling work here pumping your party, but in reality you are trying to promote a corpse, a dead parrot, yesterday's party for yesterday's problems. A rotten East German edifice led by a gang of corrupt and deranged self-servers.

General Zod

"We are not in the same position as Greece and never will be." Really? Our deficit is on the same level and our total debt level is higher.

"We have our own currency which fluctuates on the free markets." In one direction at the moment - 'A weak currency arises from a weak economy which in turn is the result of a weak Government' - Gordon Brown, of course.

"We are not limited in our revenue sources either. Tourism is not the mainstay of our economy." Irrelevant.

"Hate them or not the financial traders are making shed loads of cash which is coming into the exchequer." So, let's blame the bankers and traders and then attempt to claim credit for tax revenues from their trades. (if Brown were to get back in and impose his Tobin tax those trades would happen offshore)

"Exports are set to soar with the low pound.“ 'A weak currency arises from a weak economy which in turn is the result of a weak Government'

"Unemployment is far lower than expected and home repossesions are lower." Rubbish. The employment figures are cooked.

"BusinesSes are not going to wall as they were predicted." As who predicted? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/7019565/UK-business-failures-poised-to-rise-this-year-Begbies-Traynor-warns.html

"Windfall taxes from the banks reducing the borrowing requirement." Small (£1.5bn) receipt from the bonus tax, you mean. Effect statistically insignificant, but a number that can be used to impress the financially illiterate who lose comprehension of figures above 100k.

"Inflation has not gone through the roof." You mean after all teh crap about deflation? The February rate was 3.5%, compared with 2.9% in January. Inflation is increasing fast.

"Funny how when the pound lo_ses 1 cent on the dollar it's described as a plunge yet today it went up 1.5 cents and it was described as clawing it's way back...odd isn't it." What? Show me a single story that describes a 1 cent fall as a "plunge".

"Osborne is not liked by the electorate thats true but then Ken Clarke isn't either. He won't last long however, first EU crisis and he will be out for good this time" This is incoherent drivel.

Fergus Pickering

Richard, young man there are two words 'loose' and 'lose'. They are different words and they don't mean the same thing. Would you like to write this down?

General Zod

Oh, and Richard, let's not ignore Liam Byrne's hilarious climbdown:

last week - "no tax rises in Labour's next term"

this week - "tax is up to the Chancellor".

Did you bring him his latte this morning?

JONNY

David and Ken - a dream ticket that would push the Tories way up into the mid 40s.

Of course it won't happen.

General Zod

CH is in arthritis mode again.

PayDirt

We now know financial meltdowns are possible. More bust and boom anyone? It will happen again, all manner of things can trigger it (pandemic where thousands of life-insured people die, insurance companies then cannot meet their obligations, etc etc). Is anyone taking up the idea of Limited Purpose Banking? See http://people.bu.edu/Kotlikoff/newweb/LimitedPurposeBanking1-27-09.pdf.
Sounds like an idea Ken Clarke could explain to the nation, though of course it would severely restrict the machinations of spivs in the City of London. How hypocritical are those who say the banking system MUST go on, just because it brings in UK tax. See you at the next banking Armageddon.

Dorothy Wilson

"Exports are set to soar with the low pound." How? America is also hoping to export its way out of trouble. So is Germany? But someone has to be on the receiving end of that, ie the importers.

Simon Stephenson

Richard

You're back, I see. Have you been ill?

It's just that on this thread,

http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5838918/browns-latest-confidence-trick.thtml

you asked a long series of questions, which Nicholas and I, and others too, devoted some considerable time and effort to answering. We're all concerned that you may have been indisposed, since you've shown no reaction to these attempts to improve your understanding, which were made at your own request.

It's against our better nature to compare you with the odious Andy G, from the Telegraph site, whose purpose of contributiing to reasoned discussion is to annoy, torment or insult grown-ups, in the knowledge that he's too distant to be made to stand in the corner, where he would have been sent in times gone by.

So we look forward to your interested participation in our discussions, with the impressive demonstrations of your qualities as a human foghorn being kept to other, more appropriate, sites.

Leftycretin

Richard is cool. He speaks for me.

2trueblue

Excellent to see Clarke back on form. there were a few interviews where he paused too often allowing the opposition to continually interrupt. When on form he is unbeatable and has such a wealth of knowledge and experience that is unmatchable on either side of the despatch box. A good combination as he can add gravitas to a space that over 13yrs there has been a vacuum.

Simon Stephenson

I know better than to assume the agreement of others, so in my 10.46am post please read I or my, as appropriate, where I have inadvertently written "we" or "our".

Thanks.

Gabriella Coscia

Make Mr Clarke who is experienced as Chancellor of the Exchequer because he has credibility to avoid the UK's credit rating being cut and can regrow the economy and deal with the structural deficit, and make Mr Osbourne Home Secretary it is a senior role and one he would be more suited too.