Tories told to justify budget ‘squeeze’

Published: 7 October, 2010

CONSERVATIVES in Camden know they are facing the biggest PR job of their lives as they return home from the party conference season trying to justify a barrage of government cuts and benefit curbs to their constituents.

While there was a buoyant mood in Birmingham among members who believe they are now within touching distance of winning back the ­parliamentary seat for Hampstead next time the country goes to the polls, many admitted that their colleagues in government needed to be better at explaining how they have been forced into tough and possibly unpopular decisions by what they call “Labour’s legacy”.

They have also vowed to expose what they believe is the lack of an alternative credible plan from Labour to reduce the national debt.

Nevertheless, many arrived at the first conference since the Tories formed a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats in May without realising that the chancellor George Osborne would announce a hacking back of child benefit for families where one parent earns more than £44,000 a year, a measure which will have a far-reaching effect on so-called “stay at home mums” in Camden.

Rather than publicly challenge the detail of the policy, the large contingent from Camden, in general, said there needed to be a greater explanation of why the cuts were being made and that it was impractical to expect everyone’s lifestyles to be protected.

Chris Philp, who was just 42 votes short of beating Labour MP Glenda Jackson at May’s general election, said: “There is an inevitability to the situation we find ourselves in. Nobody came into politics wanting to reduce public spending and services but it’s a situation we are forced into and if you consider the alternatives they are massive: crippling tax increases which would see half of all national income diverted to the government, killing en­terprise and causing job losses. 

“National bankruptcy is another alternative or a massive bill for our children. All of the alternatives are terrible.”

Mr Philp, a former councillor at the Town Hall, added: “If Labour in Camden try and tell ­people that services will be cut because of the government it is shorthand for their own bad management at the council.”

He said that even after four years of efficiency drives at the Town Hall ordered by the former Conservatives and Lib Dem coalition locally, there was “still more juice to squeeze”.

“You can make savings that don’t affect frontline services,” said Mr Philp. “It’s not a fun job but it’s an urgent task that needs doing and frankly no ­other party would do it.” 

The benefit row will be followed later this month with the publication of the Comprehensive Spending Review, effectively Mr Osborne’s final list of commitments and cuts. It is expected that the council will be ordered to make its deepest ever cuts and, in advance, officers yesterday published on its website information about the government grants it relies on to keep some services afloat.

Back in Camden, group leader Councillor Andrew Mennear said: “It’s all right for Labour to criticise but they have to say what they would do if they were still in government. 

“We’ve heard nothing from them. They had no alternative plans and the truth is they would be forced into doing similar things.”

Cllr Mennear said he sympathised with families that would be affected by cuts to benefits, adding that his own family would lose out on financial support because of the changes.

But he added: “It is going to be tough for people everywhere, it is going to hurt.”

Cllr Mennear said that he supported tax breaks for married couples, a measure which Tory strategists say would ­mitigate the loss of child benefit for families.

“You can have family units where the parents are not married but I am in favour of a tax measure that encourages ­marriage because the research shows that children thrive better when it is there,” he added.

“I would say that the way the policy has been announced wasn’t done very well. I’d be open about that. It would have been better to announce it in the context of all the changes to benefits.”

Privately, some members said that Mr Osborne’s speech had  taken the shine off their week away, during  which other Cabinet members had been in­spirational.

And in Camden, Labour members will greet them on their return with an assault on the  party’s benefit cuts.

Labour cabinet councillor Sarah Hayward said the coalition policies on child benefit – following on from planned curbs to housing benefit – would have the effect of “socially cleansing Camden”.

“The poor and even the not that poor will no longer be able to afford to live here,” she said. “This is driven by ideology. It makes no sense that two people earning £43k would be entitled to child benefit, while a family where one parent is earning just over £44k is denied it.”

She said the cuts would hit hard in the south of the borough where she said there was a cul­ture of women staying at home and looking after children among Camden’s Asian communities while fathers went out to work.

“The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have colleagues in government,” said Cllr Hayward. “As a party leading the council we can do all we can to campaign and lobby, but the hard questions should be for the local members of the other parties who should be lobbying their ministers and saying: This isn’t fair.”

Liberal Democrat leader Councillor Keith Moffitt said: “It is strange the way something as important as this was announced in the way it was and it seemed to lead to some confusion. But in principle, I do think that we need to look at the question of universal benefits and whether we are paying some to people who can afford to live without them, especially when you are looking to save money across the board.”

He said his party’s by-election candidate in Kentish Town, Nick Russell, would not be forced to defend the benefit cuts on the doorstep during the campaign.

Cllr Moffitt added: “We have  never gagged our candidates at by-elections. The last time there was a by-election, we said that they could criticise the coalition council over issues like the Camden Law Centre if that’s what they felt.”

New Blair aiming to win in Kentish Town

“BLAIR STANDS FOR THE TORIES”

This was the jokey headline being sugges­ted by Conservative activists in Birmingham this week as Will Blair – no relation to the former Labour Prime Minister, Tony – was unveiled as their candi­date for the Kentish Town by-election.

Mr Blair is facing an uphill task in a ward which has never elected a Conservative and in recent years has been a tug-of-war between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The poll, which will take place on October 28, was triggered by the death of Labour councillor Dave Horan from cancer last month.

Mr Blair, who works in communications, joined the Conservative contingent in Birming­ham and pledged to turn the contest in a three-horse race.

He said: “I love living in Kentish Town because of the unique community atmosphere that exists here. 

“We are our own little town, far less chaotic than Camden and far more eclectic than Highgate. You’ll see me trying to keep fit in our brand-new Kentish Town Sports Centre [Prince of Wales Baths] or enjoying a pint after work in one of the great local pubs.”

Mr Blair said he had been to the same dinner parties as Lib Dem opponent Nick Russell and knew him well, and he has connections with current serving Labour councillor Georgia Gould as the pair were at the same university together.

Mr Russell, who won a by-election in 2008 in Kentish Town but lost his seat at May’s council elections, said: “I worked hard to make Kentish Town Baths a success, and it’s wonderful to see so many people using and enjoying the refurbished building. There is lots more to do and It would be a huge honour to be re-elected to fight for Kentish Town on the council.”

Front-runner Jenny Headlam Wells, a governor at Torriano Junior School, stands for Labour and Naomi Aptowitzer is the Green candidate.

The Camden losers are enjoying their lines to Whitehall

THIS time last year these conference columns came with a soothsayerish, albeit trite, forecast: “How bittersweet would it be for our Tories if they won a general election but lost their stake in Camden’s politics on the same day?”

And look what happened.

We know Labour will always claim that the Conservatives did not win the General Election and it’s true that the failure to land seats like Hampstead and Kilburn – by just 42 votes – forced the Tories into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats rather than the majority government which had previously seemed on the cards.

But their top people, from Pickles to Warsi, to Osborne to Cameron, had the strut of winners as they strode among the delegates lost in Birmingham’s International Conference Centre, a multi-level spaghetti junction of steps and overhead walkways.

They meted out new policies from the stage which seemed to be catching their own delegates  by surprise – some of them trailed neither in the election manifesto nor the coalition agreement hatched with the Lib Dems.

And every speech from a top-table Tory began with some elaborate crow along the lines of it is with the greatest of wonderful pleasures in the world to be at a party conference where we are in government once more. The words rearranged each time, the sentiment always the same – we won, even if you say we didn’t.

While the Conservatives were much discussed at sessions held at the Lib Dem conference in Liverpool last month, the same time and attention to what the Lib Dems might want from this whole enterprise was hardly on the agenda in Birmingham. In fact, in fringe meetings and the conference hall, a Martian could have been forgiven for thinking here was the government in its entirety. 

It should be a warning to the Lib Dems – those harmless, cuddly Tory grannies in the comfy seats seemed to have mighty big teeth. All the better to...

Camden’s Conservatives relished this clinical atmosphere, even as the Cabinet burped out some messages not previously telegraphed by all of its members.

It makes a difference going to lunchtime events to hear a minister – rather than a shadow minister – speak. The channels of communication are there.

Largely losers in Camden in May, there is that bittersweet feeling predicted last year. But many feel they are at least tapped into important decisions at Whitehall. There are special advisers and researchers in the home ranks. 

With that relationship will come responsibility. Critics will argue that this week should have been about winning concessions for Camden on changes to the benefit system rather than the wine and nibbles. For the Tories, it was about reminding everybody whose in charge now, whether you like it or not.

Crumbs of comfort! Cutbacks bite

• TRANSPORT for London’s David McNeill promised a fringe meeting on Monday that all areas of spending were being cut back and that there would be no compulsory staff redundancies. The printing of business cards has been curbed and sandwiches at board meetings have been cancelled. The gourmet Caerphilly tarts and cream cheese and herb strudel at the back of the room, he said, might be the last complimentary refreshments ever on offer. Out with a culinary bang then. Nom nom nom....

• SO did the Conservatives ever have any squabbles when they shared power with the Lib Dems in Camden, from 2006 to 2010. The open secret about a leadership challenge to former head man Andrew Marshall was being retold in conference whispers. No need for names, everybody involved in the coup that never was has their own version of events. History shows Andrew kept his place for the full life of the four-year council. Besides, was he really the only political party leader during that time to face a challenge from within?

• SPOTTED: Hampstead’s Daily Mail columnist Andrew Pierce. He had a healthy shake of the hands with Kentish Town by-election candidate Will Blair in the corridors. Will has clearly already made an impression on some national hacks, possibly from a past-life working for Immigration Minister Damian Green.

• LOVABLE ex-Labour motormouth Nic Careem, now a firm supporter of David Cameron and the Conservatives, was his usual ebullient self in Birmingham. He stopped “old friend” Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the conference courtyard only to be asked by the Independent columnist: “Why aren’t you in the Labour Party anymore?” Nic shuddered: “No, no. I left over Iraq.” Alibhai-Brown turned on her heels, calling back: “The Conservatives supported the war as well, why didn’t you join the Lib Dems?”

• WHO will be the next Conservative challenger to win in Hampstead, an area colonised by Labour since Glenda Jackson first won there in 1992? No decision until boundary changes have been confirmed is the official line from the party. But why not Pam Chesters, the former leader of Camden’s Conservatives who now works for Boris Johnson and was in sparkling form in Brum. Sadly, it’s not a suggestion she takes seriously. “I fought an election in Bristol, I moved down there for a year – it is very hard work,” she recalled.

• ED Fordham, third-placed Lib Dem in Hampstead and Kilburn in May, was in town for his day job as a lobbyist. Maybe he regrets walking into a conference pub quiz. Hampstead Tories also inside the bar named their team 474 To Lose. Readers may remember Ed’s tagline for his failed attempt to oust Glenda Jackson from Parliament was 474 To Win, a target based on notional figures from previous elections angrily disputed by Conservatives on the doorstep.

• Chris Philp, a gracious loser by 42 votes to Glenda Jackson in May, says people are actually rarely stuck for words when bump into him. More than 42 fans have apparently told him since that they either forgot to vote, didn't bother or didn't get round to registering to vote in the first place. Sometimes it's better to say nothing at all.