Gordon Brown is fond of reminding the Tories that one of their central economic measures – the Fuel Duty Stabiliser: add a little to low fuel prices to be able to afford to take a little off when they are high – would have meant that now, during a period of low oil prices, prices at the pump would have gone up. 5p, in fact, he taunts the Tories. Tory aides go around rubbishing this critique, saying in teenage tones: ‘no stooopid, it
would still be cheaperrrr, just not as cheap.’
Well, behind the scenes, the Labour attack machine had a key intellectual sympathiser. David Cameron is supposed to have listened to the shadow Treasury team when they pitched their idea, taken a deep breath and said…well, said the very same thing as Brown. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong’ (you can just imagine the Master saying), ‘but this policy means that if oil prices go down, we will end up being the only party advocating a policy of higher fuel prices?’ ‘But they won’t go down,’ aides were supposed to have replied. Then oil prices did.
And so has Team Osborne. Spool back to June and Tory economic theory-du-jour was one word that now seems like Watch With Mother Economics – the economics of ‘nudge’. But how do you nudge a bank into maintaining credit lines? It is not completely defunct, but in such serious times it is an economic policy for which the cliché ‘rearranging furniture on the deck of the Titanic’ is only sanctionable because a boat soon becomes involved: Oleg Deripaska’s yacht, which both George Osborne and Peter Mandelson enjoyed.
Now the writing is on the Osborne & Little wallpaper, and it isn’t just Labour graffiti. Tory modernisers are appalled that the public are learning stories of the man who would be chancellor drinking limoncello (maybe?) on the deck of a yacht that’s the length of the average street. Tory old buffers are appalled that the Lib Dems have announced (and Labour look set to announce) tax cuts, leaving their party – who used to be to tax what sabatier knives are to a rack of lamb – as the only one without cuts in its platform.
Some muster a defence of Osborne’s piddling economic policy. ‘It’s true, we’ve struggled to get “cut through”,’ said one shadow minister. ‘First Gordon and the banks and then that Russell Brand thing. And of course, there was George and the yacht. Not helpful.’
But others are more despondent. One member of the Tories’ economic team, about to disappear away on holiday, was heard to confide: ‘I’m off for two weeks, maybe when I come back we’ll have an economic policy.’
There is of course some Labour delight, but it would be impossible for counter-briefing from the government to be the only thing driving the demise of Osborne. What is discernible is an open ridicule of the shadow chancellor – witness one Treasury aide listening to the recent Tory proposal on unemployment: ‘How odd’ they said. ‘They are choosing to focus on unemployment… very different from the conclusions of our polling.’ These are not the musings of an embattled team.
Postman Peter
During a historic PMQs in November that saw the two leaders trying to extract political advantage over the death of Baby P, you might not have noticed that other issues were raised.
Claire Curtis Thomas asked whether the commitment to pay contractors within 10 days would be extended to small firms who supply those contractors since many of said firms further down the supply chain were going ‘belly up’. Angela Smith, one of Brown’s PPSs who now sits behind him rifling through a sheaf of papers and ripping out the relevant page, was momentarily still before she lifted her eyes heavenward. She then scribbled something down and thrust it forwards to the prime minister. Manna from heaven. Or Mandelson-from-heaven. The Lord was sitting in the visitors gallery above our heads and had simply mouthed a rebuttal to Smith.
The issue of post office closures had been placed in the centre of the chamber that day in a similar way – raised by a concerned Labour backbencher and placed in front of Brown with, it seems to all onlookers, a key role somewhere lofty for Mandelson. When the government decided to return the post office card account to the post office – saving 3,000 further post offices from the chop – a veritable bank holiday broke out in both houses of parliament.
The next test of how the government chooses to handle a matter of deep division within its party will be the third runway at Heathrow. Might the new emollient Mandelson be arguing right now for scrapping it? Whatever happens with that decision, the post offices of the future may now be stamped with the initials P.M. instead of P.O.