David Cameron ‘coming back into politics’

David Cameron, our previous Prime Minister, managed to bring together a coalition government that achieved some good things, but his legacy will be one of disaster.  In my view this is due to his lack of analytical thought. Maybe he just didn’t have the mental toolkit and training to analyse complex policy situations.  He shot from the hip time after time, with precious little sign that he thought before opening his mouth.  Now we hear that he’s considering ‘coming back into politics’. Please, no. His failures are too obvious.

A typical example is the commitment to ‘immigration in the tens of thousands’. A cheap sound bite, which an hour’s consideration with knowledgeable people would have consigned to the rubbish bin of political history.  Instead, this nonsense has poisoned our politics for a decade.

He has a politician’s talent for finding a tactically attractive posture.  But he failed. He refused to think and analyse  the possible outcomes of his promises. He has a track record of rash and thoughtless commitments, and then sticking to them regardless of evidence and impact.

His ultimate crime against the United Kingdom was to offer a referendum without thinking about the conditions first. And then to be bounced from an ‘advisory’ vote to one where the vote would count and the result be respected.  Resigning as Prime Minister was obvious, and necessary - he had already done as much damage as could be allowed.

We were talking in the pub tonight, and the view was that he should never be forgiven. Certainly, he should keep his head. It would only be fair if he wakes up every morning in the early hours screaming in agony as his conscience, if he has one, tells him what irreparable damage he has done to our nation.

Charity tax debacle - update

The Spectator has a lot more information than my simple opinion piece, blogged yesterday, in its Coffee House blog: How Mitt Romney inspired the British charity tax debacle. Fascinating insight, and certainly confirming that the Departmental ministers for Business and for Culture, Media and Sport were cut out of the policy-making loop.
The Times gave five cases where HM Treasury say that charitable donations are abused. These all look pretty tenuous and could be handled under existing rules if the Charities Commission and HMRC do their jobs properly. To summarise the abuses and the charities' response:

	Treasury case	Charity response
1	Shares donated to charity found to be worth less than claimed	Relief is based on fair market value
2	Business gives money and claims relief. Money is then lent back.	Government has already cracked down on 'tainted donations'
3	Relief claimed for donation to a dubious charity that doesn't do much charitable work	This is for the Charities Commission to police
4	Tax relief claimed for donation to a dubious foreign charity	It's not allowed to claim relief on donations to charities outside the EU
5	Tax relief given on donation to UK charity which passes the cash to a dubious charity abroad	UK charity has to satisfy HMRC that the foreign charity would qualify

In a final dagger thrust to the Government's credibility, it also vented rumours that Oliver Letwin is to be asked to sort out the political mess. For heaven's sake!

Charities tax breaks - impact analysis?

The UK government has decided to limit the tax breaks that are available for charity donations because there are some cases where people use their donations to reduce their effective tax rates to very low levels. The feeling seems to be that money donated to charities is unjustifiably lost tax. The policy appears to have been introduced without proper planning or impact analysis. Other Government departments seemed not to have been consulted.

David Gauke MP, the Treasury Minister responsible for defending the policy on BBC2 Newsnight programme tonight (12th April) mentioned charities that don't distribute much money to real causes, but refused to name them. Apparently some charities lend money back to companies controlled by their 'donor'. To me this is a sign that the Charities Commission isn't doing its job properly, not a reason to cut off significant flows of major donations to key charities that support (to pick a few from many) health, social causes, sports, and the arts.

Whether he was completely out of his depth, or just defending the indefensible, is hard to say. But to me, without names and evidence, this just looked like bullshit being raked together to defend a poorly thought-through policy announcement.

Hacking

The Tory backbencher, Nick Boles, who lost his cool when Harriet Harman kept interrupting him on BBC Newsnight on 18th July, then uttered a phrase that will come to haunt him, when he described the hacking and police bribery scandals as "a little local difficulty". The revelation that Millie Dowler's phone messages were hacked and some deleted, potentially destroying evidence and giving her parents false hope that she might still be alive, was absolutely vomit-making. I hope that those responsible are prosecuted to the furthest extent that the law will allow. The occasional bent copper taking money for a tip-off? That seems as surprising as the information that bears defecate in the woods.

But when you think about the global issues facing the Government, such as the possible collapse of the euro, Libya, Afghanistan, the recession, the debt, you can see where Boles was coming from with his ill-judged comment.

Harman is following the Labour plan of conflating issues to cause as much noise and confusion as possible around these scandals, on the basis that making noise now will make life uncomfortable for the Government, and hoping that people have short memories and will forget that this mess started on Labour's watch. They have a clear strategy to set a trap for Cameron by demanding an apology for appointing Coulson. If he apologises, he'll be seen as following a lead given by Milliband, if he doesn't then Labour can keep on and on suggesting that Cameron doesn't "get it". The ball is rolling on the enquiries and these should be allowed to run their course.

Reasons to be cheerful

Now that we've left behind the mess of last weekend, I'm feeling optimistic.  It looked as if there was a real possibility (as seen from outside) that a Lib-Lab pact could be formed, keeping Brown in power for months or years.  The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats seemed to be struggling to reach an agreement, and various die-hards in both parties were telling us all about red lines.

In important ways, the components of the new Government fit my views perfectly.  I'm an economic conservative, strongly so; I believe in markets, opportunity, rewards for enterprise and penalties for failure, and having been a borrower, I hate uncontrolled debt and spending money that can't be paid back.  Socially, many of my views are liberal; some views expressed by readers of some of the more right-wing papers make me sick, and I think that we should fight hard to maintain the tolerance for which this country is renowned. This Government can steer a middle path, leaving extremists behind - the best of all worlds.

I think that both party leaders have played a blinder.  Clegg has achieved more for the Lib-Dems than could have been thought possible last weekend, and Cameron has gone further too.  Maybe Brown's death-bed conversion to the faith of electoral reform was the catalyst, but never mind.

The combined parties have offered Cameron a much larger pool of talent from which to fill the roles in the new Government.  His appointment of more Lib-Dems than demanded by the coalition agreement is a master stroke, money in the bank when decision-making gets tough in the fight against Labour's legacy of debt.

All in all, it's been a great start.  I'm concerned about electoral reform; I don't want to see BNP MPs at Westminster. The horse trading that we saw in the last week could have allowed a cynical Lib-Lab pact to deny the people the change of Government that we so badly needed; 'first past the post' elections usually allow the electorate to choose.  I'm nervous about the consequences of fixed term Parliaments that stop the country from voting when a vote might be the best solution.  But these questions can at least be addressed with careful consideration rather than as the sort of stitch-up deal that could have happened.  Reasons to be cheerful...