I have an article up at Progress online (AKA Web HQ of the Neo-Blairite Zombie army of doom – right deviationist branch) called "Once more, With Taxes".

This is a response to the publication of "White Flag Labour" by Compass, (AKA The North London society for serious frowns and regular conferences) which itself is a critique of the publication of "In the Black Labour" by Policy Network (AKA The International Brigade of the Third Way).

Ah, opposition. Where no-marks like me can build reputations through devoting themselves to creating an endless flow of tendentious babble.

The below is the text of an article I've submitted to the Fabians, for publication in an e-book based on their Conference last week "The Economic Alternative"., at which I was one of the best, most impressive and brilliant speakers*  It's here mostly for my future reference.

Enjoy.
 

*I have recently been criticised for a surfeit of self-deprecation. I am endeavouring to reform.

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I stayed up last night to watch the State of the Union address. It was strange, for me, because it was like listening to the President of the United States channel the spirit of my boss (For those that don't know, I work for a Manufacturing expert and Labour peer). I'm not going to go on about my day job, but what struck me in the State of the Union was the confidence Obama had in asserting the role the state could play in driving private sector growth, even in a time of long term deficit pressures. Whatever you think of industrial policy, or Obama, or state support for R&D, clean energy, and manufacturing, the enthusiasm was infectious and palpable.

This morning I woke up in a Britain where little or none of that is happening. The Chancellor talked about the march of the makers last year, but look at the way the Local Enterprise Partnerships and Regional Growth Funds have been so tied up in their structures they've barely made a loan. Green Investment Bank? Schools building? There has been progress on some things, like Technology Innovation Centres, but too often government support for business has been small, slow and simply overwhelmed by the impact of decisions elsewhere -from VAT to Eurozone to low lending rates. To take just one example, The Chancellor first talked of Credit easing at Tory conference. but I don't think the National Loan guarantee scheme has made any difference yet. We're just always a little late, a little slow, a little small.

So naturally, we get bad news. A cuts programme before growth was established, and a hefty tax increase for working families at a time of inflation and wage freezes leaves low domestic demand, while overseas markets don't offer the export boom we'd hoped for. The government strategy wasn't going to work, and is going to mean growth that is late and low.

Now, growth will return, in the end, because businesses will adapt, and demand will recover and new opportunities will be created. It's just that in the meantime we'll have wasted life chances, seen people stuck on the dole, productive capacity lost.

That's the bad news.

But the bad news is that the problems the next Labour government will face just got harder, not easier.

Perhaps some partisans might be tempted a smile and an "I told you so" at the difficulties the Chancellor's arrogance has got him into, but there's no upside here. Labour should be desperate for Osborne to succeed, even as he fails. Lower growth means higher unemployment,  more costs of failure, more stubborn deficits, less room for future investment. It means the choices the next Government will face on the deficit and the economy get harder, not easier.

Every quarter without falling unemployment, every quarter of sluggish or negative growth, every failure to increase tax revenues by anything other than squeezing family living standards makes Labour's task harder, our future choices a little less easy.  How do we create the Investment Bank, if we face cost pressures from unemployment benefits? How do we fund upstream research, or major infrastructure, if high deficits are projected for the next decade? How do we help employers raise salaries and create jobs in an environment where domestic demand is weak, and exports don't seem able to make up the gap. How do we do all, or any of this, within a tight fiscal settlement defined by low growth?

I hope to God Osborne finds a way to wriggle out of this. I hope he finds a way to adopt a different path now. Because if he doesn't, the starting point for the next government will be worse, and the options available to it even less pleasant, than we feared a year ago.

I was reminded to blog about Mehdi Hasan's discussion of Labour's economic policy by his recent blog post on how Labour's position on welfare reflected a poor "Framing" of the issues of economic credibility and competence*.

Mehdi's argument in both the original New Statesman article and his subsequent blog post shows the difficultly of separating out a debate about political rhetoric from the policy position which underlies the rhetoric itself.

Labour are, Mehdi argues, trapped by an Conservative frame, in which "cuts and credibility" become the test of political virility, and since this is a battle Labour cannot hope to win, this is a foolish attempt to fight the enemy on their own turf. This creates, he argues a position in which "There is a theme here – the Tories set the agenda, Labour operates within it."

It is perhaps worth comparing this with what is allegedly a strategic phrase of George Osborne:  "in opposition you move to the centre, in government you move the centre." I think a fair few Conservatives would look at the journey their party has undertaken over the last five years and question whether they were really setting the agenda until they entered government. Indeed, the whole history of the last century suggests that the conservatives are not notably successful at setting the agenda, but very successful to adapting to newly set agendas (witness Cameron's position on gay marriage.)

Mehdi's argument is that Labour has conceded to a Conservative narrative framework on the deficit, and that since this is a battle Labour cannot win – we cannot "out-austere" the Tories, we are destined to lose this debate, Mehdi prays in aid the work of George Lakoff, saying that it is a great shame that the Labour front bench haven't read Lakoff's "Don't think of an Elephant"**. Now, I have read that book, and also Lakoff's "Moral Politics". Indeed, I was a minor evangelist for his work inside the Labour party, finding it a useful tool to emphasise particular words and themes in copy we were producing. 

Tip: If you don't want to buy Lakoff's book, his ex-colleagues at the Rockridge Institute keep PDFs of their practical guide to reframing "Thinking points" here

Lakoff's work is ultimately about the power of language. He believes that particular metaphors, or ways of framing arguments, allow you to make a more persuasive case for that argument.  

For example, A conservative should argue for "Public Sector Restraint", not "Cuts". Why? Because Conservatives already have the "Cuts" group bagged up, and need to reassure those who have a bit more of a "nurturing parent" in their make up and fear the pain a cut might bring (I simplify).  A progressive on the other hand, should not accept the language of "a Death Tax" because it accepts a Conservative frame. Instead, call attempts to reduce estate taxes a "Paris Hilton Tax break".

To me, this is a powerful -technical- insight.  it helps a politician to understand whether they are doing their job, well, or badly. Want to appeal to environmentally minded left wingers about GM crops? Then don't talk science. Talk about the historic mission of ending hunger on our shared planet.  Want to sound reasonable and non-threatening while demanding a restriction on Child Benefits?  Talk about encouraging a culture of responsibility, not of dependence.

In many ways, it's worth thinking of some of Lakoff's work as a liberal response to Republican strategist Frank Luntz's "Words that Work". Indeed, when looking at the practical application, they often feel like very similar Vade Mecums for political comms professionals***. Further, Lakoff himself will admit that much of his political work was driven by a sense that the Conservatives in America somehow knew how to "Frame", while Liberals and progressives did not.

It is here that I raise my first concern with the use of Lakoff's linguistic approach as a critique of a particular policy agenda. If Lakoff is right that we can use words to appeal to those who disagree with us by constructing a frame in which it is difficult to dissent from, and which then defines the debate in the public sphere, then two things follow:

First, this approach is, in itself, essentially neutral. You should be able to construct a "frame" for any given proposition which maximises its likely appeal.

It doesn't matter whether you are arguing for or against a progressive tax rate, if you can apply the correct linguistic frame to it, you will maximise likely success. Same goes for the deficit. In Moral Politics, Lakoff gives the example of Reagan's approach to the Federal Deficit as an example of how a Conservative can justify high deficits using a moral framing. It should follow, therefore, that a liberal-leftist should be able to successfully promote long term fiscal restraint using similar framing techniques. There should be no policy position that cannot be successfully "framed" by a skillful practitioner.**** In essence therefore, any policy critique based on framing must be incorrect. Any position should be susceptible to skillful framing.

However, my deeper critique is that if both sides take the advice of simply developing the "best frame" for their existing position, there is essentially no interest in the voter at all, merely a competition of framing devices. You end up with a left winger trying to bludgeon a right winger with their superior frame, and the right winger returning fire in kind. The person left out of the debate is the most important – the shifting, variable concerns of the voter.

I believe politicians prosper not when they seek a retrospective linguistic justification for their preferred policy agenda, and seek to impose it on the electorate via strong framing, but when they put the worries and concerns of the sympathetic but unsure elector first, and try to construct their rhetoric around addressing these concerns, first in policy, then in framing terms. (If you cannot find enough potentially sympathetic voters to win you an election, then you probably have a bigger problem than framing to think about).

So for example, Labour might discover that the barrier that prevents a significant number of "open" voters from supporting Labour is a concern about whether Labour will tackle issues of crime. Labour can then develop a policy agenda that demonstrates a firm approach on crimes of particular voter concern, and use these as the framing device to persuade the voter their concerns are unfounded, without undermining our essential policy agenda or image. So an ad for a party perceived as being "Weak" on Crime, might emphasise a focus on strong action on violence against women, and of toughening up the legal threshold for prosecution of sex crimes, or demonstrating that the leader understands why these issues matter.  In advertising terms, this is called "overcoming the benefit barrier" – removing the obstacle that stands in the way of a potential consumer desiring the overall benefit your product offers.*****

Now, how does this apply to the debate about the deficit?

At one level, it doesn't at all. After all, the first question about the deficit is not "What frame shall we seek to apply to our plan?" That's a second order question. The first question is "What are we actually going to do. and why?".

While an argument about language is helpful in deciding how to frame a debate, it doesn't in any way help you to resolve the policy tensions that are fundamental to successful governance. Labour is proposing a policy of short term stimulus, long term restraint, not because it fits in within a frame, or because it overcomes a voter benefit barrier, but because we think it is the right thing to do.

Now, if we are wrong about that, this is a whole other debate. But let us accept that it _is_ the right thing to do and that we are not prepared to jettison this for electability, because our overall purpose – a fairer society- is important to us.

We next need to understand what the barrier of key parts of the electorate are to our offering. These are, I think, likely to be along the lines of – "why should we trust you after what just happened, you're profligate with our money, you can't be sure that spending more money will work, you say you'll pay off the debt, but never when". 

So, the purpose of the political rhetoric we use should be to overcome those barriers. If they are the ones I have identified, that suggests focus on cheeseparing, on being anti-waste, on the value of state restraint, of being careful with pennies, of setting boundaries for government spending for only productive purposes, for being – to borrow a phase- both "tough on the deficit, tough on the causes of the deficit".

You can frame your policies in this light of this need. So If your policy agenda is one of spending to save, then you come up with specific examples where spending will clearly and measurably reduce expenditure, and emphasise these, rather than assert the vale of spending more generally, If the policy is "spend now, save later", you might need to prove your commitment to the second part of that equation.

This is not "submitting to the frame" of your opponent, but focusing on people who might be interested in the benefits a centre left government offer (for example, more jobs, or a more equal society, or a better run NHS or school system), but who have doubts which leave them unconvinced.

An emphasis on overcoming voter "barriers" through both policy and framing should not undermine your fundamental purpose. In the same way Ariel overcoming concerns about cost or stringency by telling consumers it is not as expensive as they think, or is recommended by Washing machine manufacturers does not imply Ariel is rubbish at washing clothes, then saying Labour is concerned about reducing the deficit over the long term does not imply an abandonment our mission of a fairer, more just society.

Using this approach to overcome barriers voters have erected to voting Labour allows those who sympathise with our aims and hopes to believe we are addressing their fears and doubts. Consider the alternative – often recommended on the centre-left – of trying to somehow distract the attention of the voter from a concern about the deficit, by focusing on some other policy – say jobs and growth. If enough voters regard a lack of commitment to debt reduction as an important barrier, then no amount of well framed distraction is going to succeed, not least because your opponents will surely not neglect propagating doubt in the voters mind. Indeed, by seeking to avoid a focus on the issue which produces the greatest doubt among voters, you may even underline their concerns about you. Imagine if Labour responded to questions on Unilateral Nuclear disarmament in the 80s by simply claiming it wasn't an issue. Or if the Tories decided that public concern over their NHS policies was best dealt with by talking about Europe and immigration (they did try this, with limited success)

If, Instead, we emphasise that we will reduce deficits best by both employing public restraint and encouraging private growth, we frame our policy in the light of voter concerns and worries.

Is this employing someone else's "Frame" to decide your rhetoric?

Yes.

It's applying the frame of the doubtful voter. I reckon they're probably quite important if you want to win elections.

*I await eagerly the publication of "White flag Labour", which has been trailed by Mehdi and Neal Lawson as a brilliant riposte to the sallow collection of Blairite Zombies who have assumed control of the Labour party through the famously pliant puppet of Blairism, Ed Balls.

**The Title is a play on the old game of it being impossible not to think of something you've been told not to think of, as Mehdi notes. It's also a play on the elephantine symbol of the Grand Old Party

*** Luntz's book came after Lakoff's but his direct political influence, over Gingrich and the GOP, came much earlier.

**** There's a danger of this lapsing into the sort of poorly understood NLP stuff that comes dangerously close to bullshit here. Forgive me if I cross the line on that one. I'm not saying you can get people to buy more beer by saying tier name when they walk in the door, or somesuch.

*****When I worked on Daz, one of the benefit barriers was that people thought, since it was cheap, it _had_ to be bad. So proving that Daz buyers were confident enough to show their clothes to the nation helped overcome that barrier. Later, one of the barriers was that Daz was cheap and brash and not something people would be pleased if others new they used, so I see the latest advertising reassures on aspiration by using popular celebs, and stresses things like good fragrance.

It's not all about Labour politics, this blog.

Reading Tariq Ali's account of his trips to North Korea in June 1970 and 1972, published in this week's London Review of Books, I was struck by how every single communist and radical Ali meets is either despairing, corrupt or evil, and how Ali conspires to ignore this completely.

Consider: We meet a Pakistani communist who lies to Ali to get him to depart for North Korea immediately. You can sense Ali's disdain for the fat, beer swilling apparatchik,

Then, we take a diversion to China, which though despising North Korea, Ali is desperate to see. Of course, in June 1970, though Ali barely mentions it, China is in the backwash of Cultural Revolution and the ascendency of Lin Biao).

After Ali enjoys a nice meal, is delighted by the absence of cars in Beijing streets and observes without comment children bowing to posters of Mao, we meet two connected officers in the PLA, who in June 1970 are taking a trip to a Resort used by top communist officials.

Then, once in PyongYang we meet the wife of Black Panther Leader Eldridge Cleaver (who has been taking money from Kim Il-Sung). As a favour to the Black Panthers, Kim-Il-Sung has apparently imprisoned Cleaver's wife in a hotel room for four months

Then Ali meets a Cuban ambassador who says he's been sent to North Korea as a punishment by Castro for daring to criticise the Government, and who says he would have preferred prison. He's learnt his lesson, he says, and will in future lie cheerfully to save his neck.

On his next visit, two years later. Ali's original interpreter has disappeared, allegedly to go and live in a small town. I think we can guess what this might mean.

Ali meets Algerian and Mozambique communists who tell him they've been bought for a few thousand dollars, and Ali is offered a hefty bribe himself.

The Ambassador from North Vietnam, not, in 1972 a particularly open state (for obvious reasons) tells Ali how awful things are in North Korea.

But what does Ali do? 

Does Ali act on any of these insights, or allow his private disgust to impact his public worldview? No.

Indeed, every time Ali meets a senior North Korean functionary his famous obstreperousness disappears, and he is politely passive.  

On his first visit Ali takes the opportunity to give the North Koreans a small propaganda victory by delivering a lecture on human rights to American soldiers stationed at the DMZ. On his second, his great protest at the lies paraded before him involves taking conspicuous notes.

Nor, as far as I know, does he return to the west and tell the truth about what he has seen, at least, not for forty years.

It's worth noting here that Ali's approach to history is still extraordinary. The Korean war is entirely America's fault, The only evils Ali sees are committed by Americans, the only atrocities committed or mentioned are American. Even the failure of North Korea to be rehabilitated is due to American self interest.

It is as if the famines of the Great Leap forward never happened, as if North Korea had no jails, as if Stalin had never ordered a bullet for the back of some recalcitrant deviationists neck. 

What's more, Ali must know how Communism dealt with dissent. After all, his urge on meeting Kim Il-Sung is to put a bullet in his neck, as if Ali were a Decembrist revolutionary liquidating a deviant. (As any fan of Koestler will know, a bullet in the neck was the favoured execution method in the Lenin-Stalin era.)

Back in 1972, Ali is told the Koreans have changed the topic of the conference he is attending to a celebration of Kim Il-Sung. He first demands to leave, then relents. His protest is to sit on the panel, ostentatiously taking notes then return to the hotel to covertly satirise Kim's vainglory with other communists.

Here we perhaps find a clue to Ali's dislike for North Korean communism under Kim Il-Sung.

For Ali, the problem with North Korea is that it is insufficiently subserviant to Marx and Engels, too ungrateful to the Soviet Union and China.

Yet Ali must also have known the famines, the deaths, the proscriptions, the prisons happened across the communist world.

After all, people keep showing them to him. They tell him they've been imprisoned, or punished for free thnking. They quake at dangerous questions, or quietly warn him how bad things are. They confess to being bought, or are bought. They are cynically corrupt, or cheerfully despairing.

He even knows it himself. His instinctive solution to the problem of Kim Il-Sung, is after all, a political assasination inspired by Leninist terror.

At every turn, it seems, the decay and corruption of the communist world is thrust at Ali, but he chooses instead to grasp the functionaries bouquets, and say nothing.

Ali saw all this, but somehow chose not to see.

After all, the real enemy, the comfortable, contradictory, hypocritcal west, is what really had to be exposed.

Since certain people appear to be seeing Blairite conspiracies everywhere at the moment, it probably would be divisive and self-serving for someone who self-defines as a Social Democratic Fiscal Conservative"*  to respond in kind to today's attack by Len McCluskey and Paul Kenny on Ed Miliband and Ed Balls.**

So instead of lambasting my comrades in the Union movement, can I try to be constructive?

Coming at all this from the other end of the telescope changes your perspective. While the left are outraged, I am puzzled by their anger.

That's because, while I strongly agree with the Leadership, I don't see any reason to declare that the likes of "In the Black" Labour have  won the party to our programme, not least because our "programme" is currently more of a first sketch than a detailed landscape. Trust me, this isn't a policy coup, Blairite, Black Labour, or otherwise.

What the leadership have done is say we'll start in Government with the situation the current lot leave for us, and that with a tight fiscal inheritance there will not be room to both unpick the choices of the immediate past and focus on increasing employment.

Given that, they say creating jobs must be the priority. Quite right.

Yet the weekend's acceptance that the next Labour government will begin where the Tory government ends has led to two union general secretaries, who represent mostly private sector workers, threatening disaffiliation because the Labour party threatens to embrace a policy priority of… creating more private sector jobs.

If I were advising a Union GS, I'd be telling them that any pay deals they reach with the current government will obviously not be unpickable by the next Labour government, that the major political challenge for the left is to win the battle over the 2015-19 policy agenda, and so the smart move would be to use leverage gained by tacitly accepting Labour's decision not to unpick 2010-2015 decisions to secure a strong commitment to a more expansionary post-2015 policy. 

Further, I'd argue the announcement over the weekend says nothing about the spending commitments Labour will make in it's next manifesto, so there is ample room to argue that the next Labour government should go further and faster in using the state's resources to "create jobs".

What's more, I'd point out that the Leadership, and indeed the wider party, would find it very very hard to resist calls for investment led expansion, especially if couched as a drive for full employment and private sector growth.  

Obviously, I am not advising a Union GS, and Messrs McCluskey and Kenny have instead decided to invite the Leadership of the Labour party outside, presumably for further detailed discussions.

I think this is a tactical error on their part. There is little appetite in the wider party for internecine warfare, as Luke Akehurst says. Also, you should rarely enter into a fight your opponent feels he must win. The Eds can't be seen to lose this tussle. Next, McCluskey and Kenny have invested so heavily in Miliband and Balls that to turn on them would be self-harming.

Last, and most important, I think they've misread the actual politics and the policy so are fighting on the wrong ground (On this, I find myself agreeing with Jackie Ashley).

By picking a battle they're very likely to lose, they may also lose ground on the post-2015 agenda, which is what really should matter to them.

Clearly, all this is coloured by the fact I agree with Ed Miliband and Ed Balls on this issue.

To secure the agenda I prefer, the best thing I should do is to take my own advice, and focus not on the fight over what we do up to 2015, which is a dead end, but on what we should do afterwards, which is what might win us the next election

I want a fight about Labour's policy priorities. I think it's important.

But the fight I want is about the future, not the past. So please, Mr McCluskey, Mr Kenny, can we fight about that instead?

I promise, you're much more likely to win than I am. 

* I know, it's dreadfully pretentious. Still, since I'm sick of being defined simply by a leader who left politics four long years ago, it will have to suffice until my attempts to popularise "Sennite" meet with more success.

** It would be particularly churlish to link to pieces like this one, by Owen Jones, called "Why the Labour left should welcome the appointment of Ed Balls" and append some cutting remark. Unfair too. The all powerful Blairites have clearly got to Balls in the meantime, as he's well known to come over all knock kneed and lily-livered when faced by pressure from Blair and Blairites.

In the comments in my previous post, Alex suggests I am less than clear about what I think Labour should do.

It strikes me this is fair enough. After all, I'm suggesting clarity should be our watchword, so if I am unclear, mea culp and all that.

Sadly for me, I am not leader of the Labour party, so can only offer advice, and just like, everyone else, I only know that I don't know what the precise economic conditions of 2015 will be. So, if I were Leader of the Labour party, I'd try to do something tike the following.

1. Accept that where the Country is going to be in 2015 will be your starting point in government.

2. Accept that the 2015-17 spending envelope will be extremely tight, even if we don't know what the precise economic situation will be, so no promises can be made just yet.

3. Accept therefore,  that we will not be in a position to reverse cuts others have made. We will have to choose priorities carefully with limited resources.

4.  Based on this, first explain what your priorities for investment are, and why.

5. To begin with, demonstrate your investment priorities by re-allocating existing resources, not proposing incremental spending. Use the "pain" of re-allocation as evidence for overall fiscal credibility.

6. Set up specific structural rules that will bind you to the overall fiscal path you have set out. The precise nature of these rules matters less than the principle they can never be fiddled with.

7. If you do decide to make incremental spending pledges, as you feel they are essential for social justice and economic success, ensure by 2015 that they are costed and clearly paid for by specific revenue measures. Pledge not to go beyond these.

8. Never deviate from 1-7, no matter how tempting.

Of course, I am not the Leader of the Labour party. I am one of those bloggers no-one has ever heard of until they do something monumentally silly, like join the Tories. This makes devising strategies somewhat easier than they are to actually deliver.

I went to the Fabians 2012 Conference yesterday to speak and listen*.

Of course, the session was dominated by Ed Balls speech. As part of my commitment to not being fat, I force myslf to Eltham every Saturday morning to do the Greenwich Parkrun**, so missed the actual presence, hovering instead like a virtual spectre. Naturally I’m bit mystified by the rending of garments of some. What exactly do they expect a Labour government in 2015 to do? Come in and say, You know that decision taken two years back. Right, we’re starting with unpicking that?

I think what the complaints represent is an insufficiency of anger. These cuts are horrid, goes the cry. You are supposed to be anti-horrid, and pro-good, you tell us all the time that you dislike horrid and prefer good, so why are you now saying you’re going to eat a nice bowl of horrid pie, when there’s this big bowl of good stew sitting right there, over by the SWP pamphlets.

the trouble with this approach is that it doesn’t knit it anywhere with what a labour government is going to face, when it comes into office. Come 2015, Ed Balls will wander into the Treasury, plonk himself down by the desk and open up a note from George Osborne. That note will say something like this:

“Ed, Sorry, there’s still no money left. Yours, George”

That’s what the next Labour government will inherit. We might have spent the intervening years grinding our teeth with frustration at the idiocies perpetrated by the buffoons of the current administration, wailing at their stupidity and pointing out how we wouldn’t have started from here, but at some point we will need to start from there. That’s what winning an election is. A starting from here, no matter how much you wish you weren’t.

So what might the 2015 May morning look like? In truth , we don’t know entirely. We can make a reasonable guess. Unemployment will still be high, perhaps. Living standards will be depressed. We may be told that the aim of reducing the structural deficit is going to be missed, and that there is growth in the economy, albeit of a sluggish and anemic sort.  Whatever the world does look like the essential job of the new government will be to address those issues, not the challenges of 2012.

We might need to put more money into a National Infrastructure plan, for example, which will mean further tightness on spending in services. Or we may decide any extra tax income we get should go into fixing the mess that Universal Credit has become, not reversing caps on Housing Benefit (which may not even exist by 2015). Whatever challenge the next Labour government faces, whatever choices it seeks to make, it will, inevitably, be starting from the point the Coalition leaves office. “Accepting cuts” simply means knowing that you start in government by dealing with the consequences of the accumulated decisions of the last lot. You might not like it, but you start from there.

That’s the logical answer. But there’s another, more political reason why a “No pledge to reverse cuts” position has to be taken. To demonstrate this point without drawing the ire of colleague to my left, I shall indulge in a bit of friendly fire.  Somewhere in the bowels of CCHQ, a Tory researcher is looking at Jim Murphy’s announcement on accepting lots of defence cuts. He perhaps has beside him outraged articles by left wingers about the heartlessness of this decision. He is staring at it, trying to work something out. Perhaps as he stares, he adjusts his pocket square, or fiddles with his prince-nez. He may twirl his watch fob. However he prefers to muse, at some point a light is going to switch on, and he’s going to realise that if you look at them squintwise and widdershins, they’re a spending pledge.

We’re accepting some of the cuts, see. That assumes we’re going to not accept others. Subtract one from the other, and you have an unfunded spending commitment that can go right into the pile marked “Labour’s tax bombshell”***.  Hosannah, the CCHQ staffer will cry, as he goes to pick up the phone to Matt Hancock, humming an aria to himself at the simple pleasures of the world.

This is how Tories win elections.

They mark out all the things we say we dislike, or think are terrible, or that we have gone onto Newsnight to denounce with fiery passion or a little tremelo in our voices, and they write them down in a little book. They assign numbers to all these things.  They add those numbers up. Then, as an election approaches, they approach the voter with the regretful manner of a Maitre’D in a posh restaurant who fears a regular customer has been consorting with a disreputable type. They say “Ma’am, the charming gentleman at the Bar has been ordering caviar and champagne on your behalf, on your account. They are excellent choices, but thought it best to check if he had sought your permission to do so. If not, I can arrange for him to be escorted discreetly from the premises. Ah, I understand. Most unfortunate. I shall ensure he does not bother you again”.

To stop that from happening, a potential Labour government has to be absolutely blazingly crystal clear what it will and won’t spend taxpayer’s money on. In essence, this isn’t a question of how big the bill should be. Even if you want Cocktails, Beluga, and an Omelette Rothschild, you don’t want to be landed with a tab for six bottles of Yquem that you’d quite have liked but decided to forgo so you could have a martini or two.  I favour restraint for its own sake, but as a matter of practical politics, Labour should make no commitments now, even if it ultimately decides the right thing to do is to splash out.

All this means Ed Balls and Ed Miliband are dead right to draw a line under the spending pledges. We will be where the Tories leave us, and we have to deal with that. What’s more, if we aren’t utterly clear, every sigh of dismay at their stupidity will be translated into a bill.  That won’t be what we will do, never has been what we would do, so it’s best if we say so clearly.

After all, it’s the only way to start the fightback. Why, because the fightback should be about the really interesting issue: What we can do better from May 8 2015 onwards.

*The speaking bit went quite well I think. At one point I teetered on the edge of getting a round of applause for capitalism, social democratic variety, but then lost my train of thought and the moment was lost).

**Creditably, since you ask. 18th in 22.50. Not a PB, but it was cold and frosty underfoot. A post Christmas improvement

***Sorry Jim, but they’re not dumb, They were going to work it out in the end. Hammond’s going to stand up at next Defence Questions and do you on this, so best you’re prepared, eh?

I’m quite suprised at the outrage from the left of the Labour party at Ed Balls announcement and speech this morning. Well, not surprised exactly, but puzzled. I suppose it is a return to the status quo for Labour shadow Chancellors. having to remind the rest of the Labour party that they will be inheriting a budget situation they cannot know, and that our plans for our next government will be based on what we inherit, not what we would like to inherit. The logical alternative to accepting the cuts, is that the 1997 Labour government should have immediately legislated to return to 1979 tax and spending structures.

In effect, what those who are angry at Ed Balls are angry at, is his refusal to bend the rules of space and time to reverse the result of the 2010 General Election. When we win the next General Election, we will inherit a political and economic environment with significant challenges, and it is those we will have to deal with, inside what will still be a very tight spending framework, with further cuts likely needed as a result of the failure of George Osborne to deliver jobs and growth.

Of course, it’s rather comforting to reject all of this, as the likes of Neal Lawson are wont to do, which leads you to the sort of incoherent babble Neal published in the Guardian today.

Incoherent babble is harsh, but it’s all can think of saying. What else can one say about an argument that states something as Tory-delighting as “Labour must accept that economic efficiency and social justice do not go hand in hand.” and then saying in the very next parapraph that “the political challenge is not just developing the right political economy but developing a state that can credibly regulate markets to meet society’s needs and save capitalism from itself” – in other words that social justice and economic efficiency do, in fact, go hand in hand.  As Neal says “So where does that leave us? Confused, that’s where.”. On this, we agree.

I have no idea what Neal wants to do about the deficit Labour will likely inherit in 2015. He appears to be arguing for major stimulus now, and possibly, maybe cuts later. Since this is clearly not going to happen, it offers no guidance at all for what Labour should do in 2015. It is a demand that Ed Balls and Ed Miliband place themselves in favour of a world in which none of us reside, as it is a far, far better one than the one we will actually be in.

I suppose that is a comforting strategy, of a sort.

I am a dreadful hypocrite. I loathe and despise two staples of modern political activity. The first is the tradition of one day conferences on worthy topics at central London conference venues. The second is panel discussions. These fill with me with rage and fear, because as an audience member I have been convinced the audience knew more than the panel, and as a panelist, I’ve been fearful of the same.

Nevertheless, this Saturday will find me at the Fabian society’s annual one day conference in central London, appearing on a panel. I even asked to be featured. Pleaded even. Why? Because it is very important to me to be seen as the sort of person who is taken seriously. Fickleness, thy name is a desire for approbation from your peers.

Since I am revealed as a fraudster, I felt it important that I set down the lessons for success as a panelist that I have absorbed over many years of being on the receiving end. I pledge and affirm to do all the below tomorrow.

1. Ensure your brief introductory remarks extend for at least twice as long as the Chair suggests.

All Panelists have to make some brief introductory remarks. This is why you are here, so make the most of it. You’re a panelist because you’re not quite famous or important enough to be a keynote speaker, and your task is to demonstrate you have the rhetorical chops to make the step up. So go for it. Swing for the fences in the Minor leagues to prove you’ve got what it takes to make it in the show. Your introductory remarks should be a speech, and a speech needs time to develop. Time Limits are for sissies. (Also, the longer you speak for, the less time there will be for the inevitably stupid questions.)

2. Make sure that your introductory remarks contain a controversial jab at someone present.

It is imperative that you make the most controversial remark of all the panelists, so that your contribution is the only one that will be remembered. But a controversial remark directed against someone not present may simply be tactfully ignored. So go for someone in the room. A fellow panelist, the chair, the nice old lady doing her knitting. It is of no consequence. Someone must be so offended by your opening that the remainder of the hour is a drama where you are the star. If you do this carefully, you can pick someone who knows that this is the game, and your remarks can escalate into a hostility so strong it might even make it in the gossip column of a small left wing periodical.

3. When asked to respond to another panelists remarks, simply repeat your own remarks more forcefully.

You will, on occasion be asked to respond to something another panelist has said. On no account do this. Instead, simply return to what you have previously stated, and say it even more controversially. You’re not there to discuss what some other tedious hack has to say. You’re they’re to prove how clever you are and impress people. If you feel awkward ignoring the content of another speakers remarks, simply preface your response with “Jane has made an important contribution, but has underestimated the significance of X” where X is what you want to talk about. Then return to your own topic over the bridge of fake interest..

4. You will be asked to reply to questions. Don’t.

Often, you will be asked to reply to questions from the audience. You may fall into the trap of thinking you are there to answer them. Don’t. First, the organisers don’t really want you to answer questions. If they did, they wouldn’t group three entirely different questions together, and ask you to respond to them briefly. It’s an impossible task, and the trick is not to attempt it. Second, if the audience at your event were important, they’d be on the panel. You don’t care what the hayseed munchers think. Who’s been invited to share their views here? You, that’s who. So your job is to find ways to share your important opinions on your terms. What is required is that you show some impressive opinion free-styling skills. Take a single point mentioned in one of the three questions, then riff on why this proves your original point was completely right. You receive bonus marks if the question you build from is utterly unrelated to your original remarks, but you are able to somehow construct a link.

In truth, the reason for allowing questions is because an hour of four minor political figure arguing with each other is not that interesting, even for political types, and second, the audience needs their an opportunity prove to their own satisfaction that they should really have been on the panel. Think of questions as auditions.

5. Deal with incomprehensible questions by appearing to agree with them, while not actually expressly doing so.

One of the great dangers of being a panelist is that you are exposed to the opinions of the audience, and whenever any number of political types are gathered together, there is a quota of cranks and bores that must be fulfilled. Since all political conferences employ a positive discrimination policy for this beleaguered minority, they will be encouraged to share their opinions with the group. This will be in the form of a statement which is as long as your opening remarks, covers eight issues, and involves no stated question.

On no account engage with any of these statements. Do this and you are on a one way ticket to cranktown, as it will soon become obvious that the bore knows more about the 1853 Abyssinian crisis than you ever will, and no amount of frantic iPad googling is going to rescue you from losing a fight with the crank on the topic. Instead, simply compliment them on raising an important and neglected element of the debate, which you hope receives more attention in the future. Afterwards, complain that the Chair did not control the cranks.

6. Respect the crank and the bore. For they are the ghosts of panelists past who failed to ascend to the plenary session.

They are a warning, and a lesson. Do not be overly interested in the topic, or have a complex, intricate view that allows for many different factors, for that way lies obscurity and contempt. Keep it splashy, keep it bright, keep it vague.

7. Nod like your life depended on it

It’s impossibly for you to know as much as the collected experience and knowledge of the audience and the panel. So you need to show that you are engaging with their contributions, while of course entirely ignoring them when it comes to your own turn to speak. So to prove you aren’t disinterested in the views of others, spend around eighty per cent of the time you are not speaking nodding at what others say. The other twenty per cent should be spent apparently making detailed notes. These can just be doodles. The important thing is that the pen files across the paper while you have an intense look on your noggin.  The very best panelists can nod, scribble and make eye contact simultaneously, making everyone in the room feel incredibly important. These super-panelists are usually women, which is why you only need one on any given panel.

So with those seven tips for success, I’m sure our session tomorrow will be brilliant and informative for you, and a timely boost to the ego for me. See you there.