Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband is reported to be delivering a speech, later today, where he will commit Labour to accepting the spending plans that they might inherit from the UK Coalition government. The Lib Dems leader, Nick Clegg, is scheduled to deliver a speech where he too, will speak of the need for a 'realistic manifesto' rather than a fanciful one.
Labour being Labour and Miliband being Miliband, we must consider the caveats that he employs in the non-embargoed speech.
According to the BBC
That kind of sounds like spending plans will be maintained but that doesn't exactly rule out tax increases. Given Gordon Brown's propensity for all sorts of new tax wheezes, who can say what Gordon's protege, Ed Balls, will come up with.
The BBC goes on to report that Milliband will say
"Our starting point for 2015-16 will be that we cannot reverse any cut in day-to-day, current spending unless it is fully funded from cuts elsewhere or extra revenue - not from more borrowing."
So where does that leave Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and all of those Labour politicians and those in Europe and the IMF/OECD who kept on saying that the UK's 'austerity' programme was going to far and that the UK government should borrow and invest in infrastructure?
Of course this massive policy U turn is just passed-by, by the biased BBC. Watch and listen and see how many times the BBC ask either of the two Eds the 'when did you stop beating your wife question' - as in
Nick Robinson or James Landale to Ed B or Ed M
' So do you agree that this represents an endorsement of the Coalition policies pursued by David Cameron and George Osborne and vindication of what they have been saying all along, about the difficult economic conditions that they inherited, from the last Labour government and the harsh global economic situation?'
The Lib Dems too are sniffing the coffee and sensing that making unrealistic policy promises just won't fly with the electorate. My view though is that it isn't coffee that they are smelling this morning, it is napalm. Their abandoning of their student fees pledge will, I suspect, leave them in a scorched earth position.
For the Tories, this welcome dose of reality from the other parties, should provide them with an opportunity. George Osborne should seize this to make and plan for deeper cuts and this time, take a large and sharp axe to the NHS. Osborne is a very political Chancellor and surely he can see this is a chance to 'wrong-foot' Labour by getting them to commit to his spending plans before he has actually made them. Why not then, use this as a weapon to make meaningful cuts in state expenditure. I know that the Tories made some commitments about ring-fencing the NHS but now is the time to cut, cut, cut, in that department. There cannot be a person on the planet, save for some head-hunting tribesman in Papua New Guinea, who doesn't think that the bloated NHS doesn't have some fat that could be trimmed. Couple that with the rising anger at the way that the NHS is mis-run and they way it's patients are being mis-treated and, in some cases killed off and you sense that the scales are falling from the eyes of the public.
I say that this new realism 'should provide' an opportunity for deeper cuts rather than does because at heart I don't think that the current Conservative leadership are really Conservatives, in the traditional sense. So I am not holding my breath for anything radical in the upcoming spending review.
Look at their pushing of the homosexual Same Sex Marriage bill. Not in their manifesto, not supported by the party in the country but still they persisted with it.
Look too at Europe, Cameron absolutely knows that he will not gain any meaningful concessions from the other EU members. None. Their will be a bone or two thrown to the UK, so that it can be dressed-up as a 'significant re-claiming of power' but the reality is that nothing of substance will come our way. So why not start the re-negotiation process now and then go to the electorate, in 2015, with a clear position - vote Conservative and we will re-take control of the UK and will remove the UK from the EU? I suspect that at heart, Cameron and the rest of the leadership want to stay in the EU because that is where all of their chums, from the elites that rule us, are located. After all, it is only the man in the street that wants out. No politician wants to stop the 'gravy train'.
Labour being Labour and Miliband being Miliband, we must consider the caveats that he employs in the non-embargoed speech.
According to the BBC
"The Labour leader will say his party will not be able to reverse any spending cuts announced by Mr Osborne unless equivalent cuts are made elsewhere or a similar amount of revenue is raised from other means."
That kind of sounds like spending plans will be maintained but that doesn't exactly rule out tax increases. Given Gordon Brown's propensity for all sorts of new tax wheezes, who can say what Gordon's protege, Ed Balls, will come up with.
The BBC goes on to report that Milliband will say
"Our starting point for 2015-16 will be that we cannot reverse any cut in day-to-day, current spending unless it is fully funded from cuts elsewhere or extra revenue - not from more borrowing."
So where does that leave Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and all of those Labour politicians and those in Europe and the IMF/OECD who kept on saying that the UK's 'austerity' programme was going to far and that the UK government should borrow and invest in infrastructure?
Of course this massive policy U turn is just passed-by, by the biased BBC. Watch and listen and see how many times the BBC ask either of the two Eds the 'when did you stop beating your wife question' - as in
Nick Robinson or James Landale to Ed B or Ed M
' So do you agree that this represents an endorsement of the Coalition policies pursued by David Cameron and George Osborne and vindication of what they have been saying all along, about the difficult economic conditions that they inherited, from the last Labour government and the harsh global economic situation?'
The Lib Dems too are sniffing the coffee and sensing that making unrealistic policy promises just won't fly with the electorate. My view though is that it isn't coffee that they are smelling this morning, it is napalm. Their abandoning of their student fees pledge will, I suspect, leave them in a scorched earth position.
For the Tories, this welcome dose of reality from the other parties, should provide them with an opportunity. George Osborne should seize this to make and plan for deeper cuts and this time, take a large and sharp axe to the NHS. Osborne is a very political Chancellor and surely he can see this is a chance to 'wrong-foot' Labour by getting them to commit to his spending plans before he has actually made them. Why not then, use this as a weapon to make meaningful cuts in state expenditure. I know that the Tories made some commitments about ring-fencing the NHS but now is the time to cut, cut, cut, in that department. There cannot be a person on the planet, save for some head-hunting tribesman in Papua New Guinea, who doesn't think that the bloated NHS doesn't have some fat that could be trimmed. Couple that with the rising anger at the way that the NHS is mis-run and they way it's patients are being mis-treated and, in some cases killed off and you sense that the scales are falling from the eyes of the public.
I say that this new realism 'should provide' an opportunity for deeper cuts rather than does because at heart I don't think that the current Conservative leadership are really Conservatives, in the traditional sense. So I am not holding my breath for anything radical in the upcoming spending review.
Look at their pushing of the homosexual Same Sex Marriage bill. Not in their manifesto, not supported by the party in the country but still they persisted with it.
Look too at Europe, Cameron absolutely knows that he will not gain any meaningful concessions from the other EU members. None. Their will be a bone or two thrown to the UK, so that it can be dressed-up as a 'significant re-claiming of power' but the reality is that nothing of substance will come our way. So why not start the re-negotiation process now and then go to the electorate, in 2015, with a clear position - vote Conservative and we will re-take control of the UK and will remove the UK from the EU? I suspect that at heart, Cameron and the rest of the leadership want to stay in the EU because that is where all of their chums, from the elites that rule us, are located. After all, it is only the man in the street that wants out. No politician wants to stop the 'gravy train'.
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