Where It is Really At…
May 22nd, 2009 | 
Author: 
Whilst we can all be grateful for the fallout from the Telegraph’s expose on MPs expenses which has shaken the general public out of their normal torpor, it is not yet clear where this may end or where it will take us to in terms of meaningful Constitutional Reforms but something else is certain…
I keep banging on about the economy and the need for there to be a General Election sooner rather than later and my views seem to have been backed up today by Edmund Conway writing in the Telegraph, this is where it is really at…
The IMF Visit
Although I will quote some stuff, it is better that you look at the complete article itself, the URL is as follows although you may need to copy and paste it into your web browser if this does not show up as a hyper link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/edmundconway/5363790/Labour-must-go-if-the-economy-is-to-be-saved.html
“When the delegation of International Monetary Fund economists finished their annual survey of the British economy this week, they did not wait to be escorted out of the Treasury. The six men and women simply packed their calculators into their bags, handed in their passes and quietly walked out of the building, leaving an empty room and a trail of bemused officials in their wake.
Given the chaos which ensued in the following 24 hours, this rapid departure should have been taken as a warning. The IMF’s verdict, delivered on Wednesday, was pre-agreed with the Treasury: even so, there was no disguising the organisation’s concern about the state of the economy and public finances. The recent Budget, it concluded, hadn’t done the trick. Alistair Darling’s plans to cut public debt were not ambitious enough, his projections of economic growth unrealistic. It is one thing for a newspaper columnist to say this; it is another for the world’s leading economic authority to say it.”
Towards the End of the Article…
“The incumbents in Downing Street have shown they are incapable of meeting this challenge. Let’s try for a moment to think purely in economic, not political, terms. As a deficit nation, Britain is reliant on investors – whether the pensioner from Kent or the central bank reserve manager from Beijing – buying its debt. If the Government was, all of a sudden, unable to raise this debt from the markets, and had to balance its Budget, it would take a 42.7p increase in the basic rate of income tax to make up the shortfall.”
And So…
This Autumn is the latest time at which an election should be held, there is no longer even the vague possibility of it being held next year because the time is up on this Parliament and Brown’s Government.
True, perhaps an increasing majority might want a June/July election but the wait until late September or early October will be useful. The summer holidays over and a “back to work” mentality will produce a better Parliament than the highly charged emotions of right now. But there is also something else…
Although I think the staff of the DT really aren’t that smart, their disclosures have already had an unexpected impact, people are looking beyond just changes to the MPs Expense System, they are looking towards what can only be described as constitutional changes in the way their Parliament works. In this regard it makes sense that these ‘expectations’ should be given time to mature over the summer holidays rather than dealt with by immediate cosmetic changes, there is a bigger game afoot now !
A Cameron Government
We simply cannot expect Gordon Brown and his minions to dissemble the over expensive public sector they have cobbled together over 12 years, that is both an admission of failure for their actions and requiring Turkeys to vote for Christmas so politically, they just must go, it’s kinder for them.
The harsh reality is that the Public Sector payroll will be trimmed both in terms of jobs but also, the dismantling of the Public Sector pension system, it is going to be a hard slog and Cameron taking on the public sector will be worse than Maggie taking on the Miners and the Print Unions but, it will have to be done and a bitter road ahead for all one suspects.
Through job sharing and cutting unnecessary services associated with Labour’s mealy mouthed political correctness regime, the public sector needs to shrink by 25% pretty much within 2 years and even that, may not avoid tax increases.
Against This Background
It is absolutely crucial that against this awful economic background, the impetus for constitutional change is kept alive and discussions as to identifying the cause and the impacts of change are constantly under review.
We do not want instant change, that is not our way, evolution not revolution is in these British Isles. My own feeling is that so dire are our financial circumstances, there will be absolutely no funding available for any scheme and however socially desirable. It therefore follows that Parliament can fill the majority of its time examining our current constitutional arrangements and debating where changes may be best made, a worthy endeavour that taxes the mind but not the taxpayer.
Posted in Law, Politics | 
Tags: British Interests, Parliamentary Reform, Pensions, Political Parties, Politicians, The European Union, UK Economy, Within the UK
Pain is coming, but neither party seems willing to own up to that as that might upset the electorate.
If they don’t own up to it, to themselves to start with, then the shrinking number of tax payers, not employed by the British State will revolt, emigrate or just give up working, until there are none left. What then?
The Telegraph article was interesting, but you have quoted most of the important bits IMO. I would like to see the actual IMF judgement. You and I remember the IMF’s 1970s judgement of the British economy, no doubt, and the painful measures that we were forced to take.
I suspect that the hard facts unlike the days of Uncle Jim Calorgas are that the IMF with so many other teetering economies, don’t want to make very highly charged statements about the UK economy publicly, it wouldn’t make sense for them to do so.
Someone once said: “What we need most is to want less…” Apparently said by an Athenian some 2000 year BC so no change there then !
I must admit that I don’t fear the ‘pain’ that much, I am more concerned with the lack of progress in facing up to it and I suspect that is true of very many people. I feel that quite a lot of the vitriolic public anger over the MPs expenses has less to do with that and is more concerned about the fear of the unknown.
I used to work for a company where ambitious executives would be parachuted-in to departments they were wholly unfamiliar with, implement and whole raft of changes purely to be seen to be doing something, then disappear before the damage they had done became fully apparent. This kept happening, year after year, and the only good thing about it was they only had six months and not 4/5 years. Needless to say, the company was badly managed at the very top and it became so apparent the entire board were fired by shareholders. Replacing an entire board is difficult, as the company’s culture was entirely wrong. That is difficult to change. British politics are the same.
Yes we need savage cuts in public expenditure and Cameron’s chat about more local government may be part of that. Unfortunately, local government has become accustomed to abusing public funding with massive pay awards at executive level and I wonder if MPs can approach the level of comfort enjoyed by these executives even if they abuse their expenses to the limit. I doubt it. These executives are amongst those we must expect to act responsibly and vote for Christmas. Will the honesty demanded of politicians by the public extend to local government, where standards may be justifiably expected to be even lower? I am sceptical.
Party politics has played a part in local government for too long, though I can never understand why anyone would be so stupid as to let that decide who they vote onto their local council. If the local authority is politically opposed to central government, will they impose politically motivated spending cuts to embarrass central government? Yes, as they have in the past.
In the finest meaning or the word, the public are revolting and I think reform goes far further than spending cuts. Blunt honesty and absolute integrity is required. Does anyone offer that? No. What we need is not offered by any established political party, because they are an established political party. That requires the emergence of a new force in British politics. I hope it appears before the public revolution takes inspitration from history.
Apologies for injudicious editing, my effort was thrown together in a bit of a rush.
Sheumais
You make some very good points and the problem is that devolving “political power” to the local level is no good unless you also devolve tax raising too because otherwise as you point out, games can be played at the local level to embarrass the Government of the day.
Indeed it was such “gamesmanship” that led under Thatcher, to ever greater centralization which remains to this day. It is the same issue of Parents as fundholders with schools, patients with the NHS.
The problem is to devise a suitable funding mechanism that rebates from Central Government a percentage of locally collected taxes back to the appropriate local bodies such as the County Councils in England and the Devolved Assemblies/Parliament.
However that is not a simple thing to do if the public demand a universal standard across the whole of these islands instead of services and indeed salaries, tailored to the local circumstances and needs.
As a friend of mine once remarked on other topics: “The problem is that everybody wants to get to Heaven but nobody wants to die !”