Englander 1

Simon Lee: Middle England may wield the sword to topple Gordon Brown
WHEN Margaret Thatcher led the Conservative Party to victory in 1979 and Tony Blair led New Labour to victory in 1997, their manifestoes accorded with the aspirations of middle-income voters.

Both political parties then sustained those politics of aspiration sufficiently to achieve consecutive General Election victories, in a manner that completely disorientated their political opponents.

Gordon Brown's challenge is to recapture Tony Blair and New Labour's decade of skilful propagation of the politics of aspiration. As George Osborne's announcements on stamp duty for first-time buyers, the £1m threshold for inheritance tax and the £25,000 levy on non-domiciled residents demonstrated, the Conservative Party is showing signs of making a determined counter-bid for the loyalties of aspirant voters.

The weekend's most telling opinion poll from ICM revealed not only a six per cent lead for the Conservatives over Labour in key marginal constituencies, but also that a majority of those questioned thought the Government had done a bad job for the NHS, law and order, taxation and immigration.

Brown said that his reason for not calling an autumn General Election was his desire "to show people the vision we have for the future of this country, in housing, in health, in education". Because of devolution to other parts of the UK, here "this country" means England. Since becoming Prime Minister, this is a fact Brown has never acknowledged because he does not represent an English constituency.

Brown's plans for new housing, for eco-towns, and for building on green belt land apply in England alone. His agenda for personalised public services and Lord Darzi's NHS review apply to England alone. Ed Balls's powers as Schools Secretary do not extend beyond England.

In domestic policy terms, the Brown Government is quintessentially a government for England. Paradoxically, the people of England were bypassed by New Labour's devolution reforms.

Brown knows the potentially politically fatal implications of this for this Government only too well, especially when the consistent opinion poll trend among a majority of voters in both England and Scotland is for the creation of an English Parliament.

Labour's postcode lottery in citizenship is compounded by the postcode lottery in funding for public services. In Scotland, identifiable spending per head in real terms in 2006-07 was £8,623, or 20 per cent higher than Yorkshire and Humber's £7,188.

This is not just an accounting detail. The 12 per cent discrepancy in real terms health spending per person between our region (£1,596) and Brown's native land (£1,788) can have real life consequences for access to services.

Regrettably, measures to end the postcode lotteries in citizenship and public spending will be absent from the Brown Government's agenda for the new parliamentary session.

To give his government renewed momentum, Brown brought forward both his own statement on Iraq to yesterday, and Chancellor Alistair Darling's Pre-Budget Report and the announcement of the results of the second Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) to today.

The impact of the second CSR has been devalued because Brown as Chancellor had been working on it since June 2005. The Treasury published the analysis underpinning the CSR as long ago as November 2006. Brown himself confirmed the CSR's principal implications for spending in his December 2006 Pre-Budget Report and his March 2007 Budget statement.

We know that overall public spending for the next three years will increase an average of two per cent in real terms. We know that spending on education in England will rise by 2.5 per cent a year in real terms during this period.

In his own final Pre-Budget Report, Brown indicated that the challenge for the next decade would the creation of "a new British framework for investment and innovation, a British strategy to make the next stage of globalisation work for the British people".

Darling will repeat this mantra, in the hope of distracting attention from the deteriorating economic prospects for the years ahead, and the Government's failure to redress the long tail of underperformance in Britain's companies, workforce skills and investment.

It is difficult to persuade voters in key marginal seats in Middle England that you have a new vision for government in the years ahead, when you have already announced that vision before. Even in an environmentally aware politically era, there are limits to recycling.

That task will be exacerbated when it becomes apparent that the squeeze on central government spending over the next three years will mean a much tighter settlement for local government, and the likelihood of further significant real terms increases in council taxes.

Furthermore, Brown needs to recapture Middle England at the very time when the fattest years for spending on public services are over, and when his Chancellor has already indicated that economic growth will slow during the year ahead.

As Chancellor, in his final Budget statement, Brown claimed to have personally delivered an unprecedented decade of growth and prosperity. However, it is now increasingly evident that the UK's economic performance was not investment-led, but instead built upon spiralling public and private imprudence.

Most damningly, as the recent opinion polls confirm, the general public thinks the extra resources levied from taxpayers for the public services have been spent ineffectively.

A probable winter of discontent among public service unions is unlikely to reverse the emerging trend of voters who think they are a far superior judge of how to spend their money than the Treasury.

The popularity of the Conservatives' plans both for inheritance tax and for first-time buyer stamp duty suggests the political and fiscal pendulum may finally be swinging against Brown and his government.

When the Conservative Party sought a fourth term in October 1964, the Labour Party campaigned successfully with the slogan "Thirteen Wasted Years", because of the Conservatives' alleged failure to modernise the economy.

A faltering performance for the economy and public services during 2008 and 2009 will leave the Brown Government open to a similar charge.

When Gordon Brown does seek a fourth term, he had better hope that the second CSR has revived the politics of aspirations for voters in those key Middle English marginal constituencies. Otherwise, as in 1979 and 1997, he will be powerless to prevent the electorate's conclusion that it is time for a change.

Simon Lee is Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Hull University and author of Best for Britain? The Politics and Legacy of Gordon Brown.

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/opini...may.3360416.jp