Toast, Anyone?

Dan Hodges described Ed Miliband as 'toast' the other day after David Cameron's speech to the Conservative Party conference.

Now politics is a funny old business, so you can never be quite sure what the voters are going to do, even if it all looks so predictable after the event.

But what made me laugh is the use of the word 'toast' because Ed Miliband used this himself in a rather nasty jibe at the Conservative Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell, who is now widely regarded as being 'set up' by officers of the the Metropolitan Police and Police Federation, the police trade union.  

Which all just goes to show that life, sometimes, is just not fair.


Ed Miliband is toast. Only Nigel Farage can stop David Cameron now

By Dan Hodges - The Telegraph

That should be it. Anyone objectively assessing where British politics stands after David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party conference could only reach one logical conclusion. It is him, rather than Ed Miliband, who will be Britain’s Prime Minister after May next year.

Talking to MPs and advisers in the wake of the Labour leader’s speech last week, the most optimistic line I could get from any of them was the assessment: “Yes, it’s been a disaster. But the impact of party conferences is overestimated.” They’d better pray long and hard that is indeed the case. Because I’m struggling to recall a conference season – or two leaders' speeches – that have so starkly drawn the dividing line between the two men, and parties, who seek to lead their country.

In what was easily the most political address of his premiership, David Cameron tore the Labour Party to pieces. Its senior leadership were simply eviscerated. Ed Miliband: “Ed – people forget their car keys, school kids sometimes forget their homework. But if you want to be Prime Minister of this country, you cannot forget the biggest challenge we face”. Ed Balls: “A few weeks ago, Ed Balls said that in 13 years of government, Labour had made 'some mistakes'. 'Some mistakes'? Excuse me?” Tristram Hunt: ““Tristram Hunt and I might both have been educated at some of the best schools in our country. But here’s the difference. You, Tristram – like the rest of the Labour Party – want to restrict those advantages. I want to spread them to every child in Britain.”

Labour’s strategy had been to try to bridge the chasm between the two parties on economic credibility by arguing that the macroeconomy could not be divorced from the day-to-day costs being born by ordinary families. Cameron turned that strategy on its head. You can only deliver for ordinary people, he said, if you get the management of the macroeconomy right.

He then proceeded to drive a coach and horses through Labour’s cost of living narrative, by unveiling not one but two dramatic tax cuts. The bottom rate income tax threshold would be raised to £12,500, he announced, while the threshold on the 40p rate would be raised to £50,000.

A strong element of intellectual – not to mention economic – dishonesty underpins this offer. Despite the constant mantra of “tough choices”, it’s nothing more than a good old fashioned pre-election bribe, one that a country staring at a £100 billion deficit mountain can ill afford. But it will work, for the simple reason that over the past four years the Tories have earned the right to be trusted on the economy, and Labour have not.

With every fresh passage he pumped another bullet into the warm corpse of Ed Miliband’s New Politics. “Other parties preach to you about a Brave New World. We understand you have to start with the real world and make it better."

And then, in the most powerful section of his speech, he set out to demonstrate that – unlike his opponents – he was not prepared to accept any political no-go areas. “I am someone who has relied on the NHS – whose family knows more than most how important that is. Who knows what it’s like to go to hospital night after night with a child in your arms, knowing that when you get there you will have people who will care for that child and love that child like their own. How dare [Labour] suggest I would ever put that at risk for other people’s children? How dare they frighten those who are relying on the NHS right now?”

Tonight on your news bulletins, you’ll see Samantha Cameron, moved to tears by that passage. And it will remind the voters – not that they really need any reminding – that David Cameron does not need to go wandering about on Hampstead Heath to connect with ordinary people.

So that should be it. There will be no more relaunches for Ed Miliband or his party. There is no more time. Today was the day that David Cameron finished Labour as an electoral threat. The choice facing voters at the next election will be as glaring as it was when Margaret Thatcher and Michael Foot were last on the ballot paper in 1983.

Or that would be it, if Labour were the only political threat confronting David Cameron. But they’re not. Rumours are currently circulating of a fresh Ukip defection, to be unveiled at 5pm. It could turn out to be a feint. But even if it is, the threat of further defections will remain.

Yesterday, I wrote that the time had come for David Cameron to tackle Ukip directly. In the end, he did tackle them, but only obliquely. “If you vote Ukip that’s really a vote for Labour,” he said, before adding “Here’s a thought. On 7 May you could go to bed with Nigel Farage, and wake up with Ed Miliband."

It was a nice line, and it underpins his central message: “Vote Farage, Get Miiband”. But will it be enough?

David Cameron has drawn a clear dividing line between himself and Ed Miliband. What he hasn’t done is draw a clear dividing line between himself and those malcontents in his party who would be only too happy to get into bed with Nigel Farage, even if it means seeing Ed Miliband taking up residence in the master bedroom of Downing Street.

Perhaps the strength of his speech will give them pause for thought. The Tories are leaving Birmingham emboldened, confident that the election really is there to be won. Maybe that will be sufficient to keep David Cameron's backbenches pacified, if not unified.

But maybe it won’t. The Prime Minister has had conference triumphs before. And when the applause has faded, treacherous figures have again and again been seen flitting through the Westminster shadows.

Last week, Ed Miliband’s supporters were telling anyone who would listen that party conference speeches don’t really matter. After the speech David Cameron just delivered, they will be praying long and hard that they're right. The Prime Minister and his supporters must pray with equal fervour they are wrong.

Policing Plebgate (17 September 2013)

Now here's something you don't see every day, a former Labour MP and government minister - Chris Mullin - commenting on the treatment of a politician from a rival party without, but seeking to exploit the situation or turn it to his party's advantage.

Instead, Chris Mullin deals honestly with the underlying issues which suggest that police corruption has been at work - aided and abetted sections of the press - ironically at a time when standards of behaviour amongst the press were under scrutiny by the Leveson Inquiry.

Yet the usual suspects amongst the newspapers queued up to 'monster' Andrew Mitchell and drive him from office with even the leader of the Labour opposition - Ed Miliband - joining in at Prime Minister's Questions - when he gleefully declared Mitchell to be 'toast'.

So, I take my hat off to Chris Mullin - if only more of our politicians behaved with principle and integrity, the country would be a much better place.   

The long arm of Plebgate

The never-ending police inquiry into the treatment of Andrew Mitchell should be of concern to all democrats

By Chris Mullin

Andrew Mitchell resigned as Tory chief whip a month after the Plebgate affair broke. 'It is not in the public interest that the police should be allowed to reshuffle the government on the basis of evidence of which some is clearly fabricated.' Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

This week sees the first anniversary of "Plebgate", the extraordinary series of events that brought down the Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchellafter an altercation with an officer of the diplomatic protection squad on duty at the entrance to Downing Street.

It seemed as though Mitchell was bang to rights. He admitted using bad language and swiftly apologised to the officer concerned, who accepted his apology. That ought to have been the end of the matter, but for the intervention of the Sun, which next day splashed the headline "Cabinet minister: police are plebs" across its front page. To make matters worse the incident occurred the day after two police officers had been gunned down in Manchester, a point the Sun managed to work into its story.

The apparent use of the word "plebs" was toxic. Mitchell vehemently denied saying it, but immediately the Police Federation was demanding his head. A feeding frenzy followed. After a month under siege, he resigned.

It soon became apparent, however, that there was more to this story. When the security tapes were eventually disgorged from the Downing Street cameras, they showed that, contrary to what was asserted in the police log, the incident was not witnessed by sightseers. What's more, an investigation by Channel 4's Michael Crick concluded that a damning email sent by a constituent to the deputy chief whip, John Randall, was fabricated. The author, who turned out to be a member of the diplomatic protection squad, claimed to have witnessed the incident in the company of a number of tourists who, he asserted, were "visibly shocked". But, as the security tape disclosed, he wasn't there.

Alarm bells began to ring. Bernard Hogan Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, cut short his Christmas holiday to appear before the home affairs committee. Hogan Howe, who from the outset had been unwisely professing his complete confidence in his officers' version of events, now promised "a ruthless search for the truth". Operation Alice was set up, involving 30 police officers who were to leave no stone unturned. The issues they had to resolve were simple enough. Why did the Downing Street log suggest that the incident had been witnessed by members of the public when it hadn't? Who contacted the Sun within hours of the incident taking place? Who leaked the contents of the log to the Daily Telegraph? And, above all, who put Randall's constituent up to apparently claiming he had witnessed the incident when he hadn't?

Nine months on, the outcome of this "ruthless search for the truth" is still awaited. A number of officers and one civilian are reported to have been arrested, but as yet there is no sign of any charges. We will, of course, never know precisely what was said by Mitchell in his exchange with the officers. All one can say is that what has since come to light undermines the credibility of the police witnesses and adds weight to Mitchell's version of events.

There will of course be those who ask why all this should be any concern to those of us who are not Tories. Why, they may argue, intrude on private grief? In my view, however, there are wider issues at stake that ought to be of interest to all democrats. First, it is not in the public interest that the police should be allowed to reshuffle the government on the basis of evidence of which some is clearly fabricated.

Second, as one of my Tory neighbours remarked: "If the police will go to these lengths to fit up a Tory cabinet minister, imagine what they could do to a black boy late one night in the back streets of Manchester." Finally, somewhere at the back of all this lies the Police Federation, a mighty vested interest with a long track record of defending the indefensible. It is high time it got its comeuppance.