Five lessons for the coalition from today

Philip Walker

The problem with your point 2 is that 'progressive' has a very strictly defined meaning in the context of tax. It means that the tax rate progresses with income: it's not anything to do with 'fairness' or being nice, and it is everything to do with mathematical monotonicity. It is unfortunate that the word 'progressive' has taken on a broader meaning in political discourse, but the way the IFS was using it today was technical, precise, and not open to negotiation.

TrevorsDen

The coalition needs to do what? Can you say that again?
The fact that you take 5 paragraphs and god knows how many words of gobbledygook to make your point shows how tenuous it is.

Think-tank twists the truth and the media go for the story. 'The Liberty Valance effect'. Thats a lesson for you to learn.

cssmith

The government has concentrated hard on the fiscal sanity message but even ths is not stacking up. The Centre for Social Justice think tank has pointed out that just cutting a deficit without also considering efficiency, value for money and future aims is senseless and may indeed cost more in the future. I have been disappointed by the lack of a clear vision so far.

firefly

Absolutely right. The Coalition is frankly doing a crap job at selling itself and can do much, much better. It needs to have all ministers trained up with good, concise arguments on these points and repeat them, frequently. Ministers on both sides can point to their own policies that support the overall direction of travel, if they want to emphasise party influence at the same time.

Managing the media is a real issue and I think one problem is that most of our press has been engaged in anti-coalition warfare without much balanced thought from either side. Too much hysteria, too much pandering to their core readers. The Coalition is caught, as you say, in a crossfire between the Guardian on one side and the Daily Mail on the other. It needs a strong central narrative that cuts on both sides, and focussing on your five points would be a good start.

On the positive side, now that the novelty of the Coalition has worn off, I've noticed a few more thoughtful articles around recently, on both sides of the media spectrum, so there is hope that a more nuanced message can get through, if the Coalition only has the wit to articulate it properly.

Marbury

"But the right’s definition of it must be different from the left’s. It can’t all be about redistribution."

This shows that criticism of Cameron's makeover of the party as intellectually shallow was essentially correct. It's very hard to fix the political philosophy stuff once in government.

Braveheart

The problem is: you can't have progressive Thatcherism....

The wolf will evntually show through the shhep's clothing... as it has today...

Braveheart

Why are the Tories in "budget denial"?

BTW, I just saw Mark Holburn on Newsnight.

Never seen him before, don't expect to see him again, it was a career ending display.......he's toast...

another coalition minister bites the dust...

AF

Braveheart,
lf you mean Mark Hoban I agree he wasn't that convincing,but to be fair neither was the interviewer Emily Maitlis,she continually asked the same question, he continually gave the same answer,neither had the wit to change tack.

normanc

You're right they need to get the message out of what they're about - let's just hope they are actually about something.

The impression I get from the coalition is that they're just making it up as they go along. There are one or two policy areas that are defined, and have been for a long time - education, welfare reform, the need to cut the deficit (that is not a choice, it's a necessity), but the rest of the policy announcements look like a scene from The Thick of It, made up by some SpAd in a taxi on the way to the press conference.

Directionless is how the coaliton appears. Do they want to cut tax in future? Or share the proceeds of wealth i.e. redistribute? Nationalise more services? Privatise more services? More PFI? Less PFI? Print money? Don't print money? Build more hospitals? Make do with what we have? More powers to EU? Take powers back from EU? etc, etc.

I have no idea where they stand on any of these fundamental left / right issues. I worry that they don't either.

Londonerr

The 'correct' response to Justin Webb could have been:

Of course it's fair. Why were you, Justin not asking Labour ministers about how unfair it would be for the lower classes by continually spending when we were already hitting the deficit buffers.

alexsandr

They should field crap about whether the budget is progressive or not with the simple line. there is not money left, we have to cut the defecit. we are doing in as fair a way as possible.

strapworld

The coalition has had a bad day!!

Goodness me you live in such a closed environment Mr Forsyth. Then you write one thousand words were, perhaps, were thirteen are more appropriate. KEEP ON THIS PATH, DO NOT DEVIATE! DO NOT LISTEN TO FALSE PROPHETS!

Just ask yourself this one simple question Mr Forsyth. Where was this 'ThinkTank' prior to the collapse of the banks here and in the USofA????

So, they are not much cop are they!

NickW

Labour policies have not been progressive; they have been the opposite.
All the parameters which measure poverty and opportunity have gone in the wrong direction under Labour policies. Areas of the country which consistently return Labour dominated councils have entrenched grinding poverty and disadvantage; why is that?
Socialist theory does not translate into practice; this is the point that the coalition needs to ram home.
The data is out there; the facts will speak for themselves if they are allowed to do so.

Tarka the Rotter

The Tories ran a poor election - with all the ammo provided by 13 years of New labour misrule the Tory campaign was about as hard-hitting as a wet lettuce. Now, post-election, the wet-lettuce is out again. For God's sake they need to find somebody who can ram home the fact that we are in this mess BECAUSE of New Labour Socialism...anybody else in despair?????????

alexsandr

another point
Justin Webb likes the sound of his own voice too much. He should take more time to listen to the answers instead of interupting. He is as bad as caroline Quinn

Pity there is not a non beeb national broadcaster who could have a serious programme in the morning as an alternative to TODAY

Martyn Rowe

The only political story that 95% of the population would've picked up on this last few days is Samantha Cameron having a baby.

The IFS are just agitating to stop VAT going up.

SUSAN HILL

With Labour and all its media toadies in total denial about the deficit, about borrowing, about over-spending borrowed money and with everyone I know who is still Labour believing it, the coalition HAS TO pump the message home that it is not cutting because it likes to, enjoys dong so, finds it fun, it is cutting at the moment to pay back some of the borrowed money - which is a vast sum, and prevent Britain from going bankrupt, which could well have happened. I never hear any of the Cabinet bang on about just how much has been borrowed, just what the interest on that alone amounts to and - this is where people will really take it on board - how much the debt is costing every single person and family in the country. Make that go home. How much a year do we, you and I, have to pay ? But they'[re mired in internecine squabbles which the press gleefully report. There is a desperate need for them to pull together, train every single coalition MP, never mind Cabinet member, to answer any media question thrown at them crisply and with authority - (New Labour would never ever have let a disaster like the Maitlis interview happen.)
At the moment - and yes, I know it is August and Cameron's on his babymoon - they are shilly shallying and simply not getting the message over. I am beginning to despair

TrevorsDen

'Manage the media'? This is so very old 'New Labour'.

I would like to see the Coalition doing anything but managing the media and being proud of it.

Labours only policy was managing the media.

The point is, was the budget policy right long term in setting out cuts and taxes to rebalance the economy?

I think finding different ways of doing things and reappraising what government does is going to become more apparent during the outcome of the spending review.

But also - we have had 13 years of incompetent wasteful spending - its a bit naive to expect it all to be unwound inside 6 months.

NeilMc

Tarka hit the nail on the head. The same communications 'Experts' have been retained that ran such a disastrous GE campaign.

They plainly don't understand the general public or could care less.

The left hijacked the language of care and concern through PC and cultural marxism. Unfortunately, the 'useful idiots at the BBC, Guardian etc, pedal it as though it is true.

The right talk about re-alignment, but will never achieve it unless they find their own language which refutes the left and creates a genuine narative.

Private Schultz

I agree that more needs to be done to ram home how criminally irresponsible the last government was - I'm hoping that Dave and co are planning hard and saving it for a proper, concerted attack on the new Labour leader and his shadow cabinet.

But I'm surprised that the coalition aren't making much more of the rise in personal allowances to £10,000 - I'm not even sure when it starts to come in and how it will be implemented. Surely a good response to those complaining about accepting a pay freeze or cut (and to rebutt unions who threaten to strike over such issues) would be to explain clearly when and by how much their takehome pay will go up due to the increased allowances.

Also, the coalition should ban the word 'progressive'. It ceased to have any proper meaning when it was bandied about so much during the election campaign, and if anything, it has been used even more since. Find a new way of describing what you're doing and leave 'progressive' to Labour has-beens and their cronies!

NeutralCorner

The Equality Act 2010 does not come into force until 1 October 2010 and even then only in part. No date has been set for this particular section to come into force.

EA 2010, section 1(1) "An authority to which this section applies must, when making decisions of a strategic nature about how to exercise its functions, have due regard to the desirability of exercising them in a way that is designed to reduce the inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage."

EA 2010, section 3 "(3) The authorities to which this section applies are—

(a) a Minister of the Crown;

(b) a government department other than the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service or the Government Communications Head-quarters;

(c).....

Is the media always this content to 'report' information without checking whether or not it is true?

Chuck Unsworth

@ Philip Walker

Exactly so. The gross distortion of meanings has been a speciality of the Left. This is another example. The Right, stupidly, apes the Left and uses such terms believing that they are commonly understood. But if you ask the man on the Clapham Omnibus what he thinks 'progressive' may mean he'll give you a whole series of inaccurate and probably conflicting interpretations. So words mean whatever we choose them to mean, eh?

Let's have some real clarity as to definitions - then we can have a sensible debate.