Crunching the numbers

Eamonn Mallie is getting het under the collar about numbers and economics. However, he appears to be relying on comments by John Simpson who calculated down the £200m cuts figure to £60-100m and thus potential job losess down to as little as 300. However, in his radio remarks Simpson was mistaken.

Simpson's argument is that if you apply the Barnett formula to the total of £6bn you do get £200m. However, because of the possible ringfencing of the health budget, which accounts for about half of Northern Ireland's Departmental Expenditure Limits, it potentially falls to £100m with other Barnett consequentialls reducing that further to as low as £60m. However, two problems with those sums.

First the real level of additional cuts in public expenditure the Tories propose is £12 billion. The £6 billion figure is the net reduction on the economy as half of the £12bn savings are to stop Labour's proposed National Insurance increase. Therefore, the potential starting figure under Barnett is £400m. Therefore a £200m isn't an exaggeration but a reasonable one.

Second, the ring-fencing of a budget in England and Wales does not automatically mean the same for the comparable DEL in the devolved areas. So the protection he perceives is by no means guaranteed as Barnett consequentials are at the Treasury's discretion, doesn't take account of the different proportion the health budgets as part of total government expenditure and to protect one budget you have to have deeper cuts elsewhere.

Also a recent example further undermines Simpson's figures. Labour announced £5bn in cuts and the Barnett consequential for Northern Ireland was a £122m cut well above Simpson's estimate of £60-100m for £6bn cuts. It may also be worth mentioning that according to the independent think tank the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the Tory proposals for the lifetime of this parliament are for £59.4 billion cuts in Departmental Expenditure Limits.

Tories eye deal with DUP

The Financial Times (registration required) is reporting that a deal with the Liberal Democrats is the Conservative Party's second preference. They would rather pusue a deal with the DUP, SNP and Plaid Cmyru. On the central issue of public spending:

"...any support would be to protect their parts of the UK from the worse effects of any spending cuts - a tough demand on a government looking to reduce the £163bn deficit. But Mr Cameron's team believe it may be preferable to doing a deal with Nick Clegg's Lib Dems, who say that electoral reform would be the price of any post-election pact."

This implicitly undermines the Ulster Unionist and Conservative relationship even further. It also leaves a key local negative message against the DUP. It is hard to scaremonger about a hung parliament never mind the SNP if CCHQ seems to prefer such an outcome. The article also highlights that:

"The Tories also work closely with the SNP in the Scottish Parliament".

It predicts that:

"...the Democratic Unionists, the largest party in Northern Ireland with nine MPs, could use its muscle during debate over the Budget to extract concessions."

Are the markets frit?

In his UTV interview at the Ulster Unionist and Conservatives manifesto launch, Sir Reg Empey claimed that the markets would react negatively to a hung parliament. This parrots Tory claims at a national level. However, as Guido Fawkes points out, the markets seem to be taking a different view to Tory predictions. Since a hung parliament developed as a real election outcome the markets have actually moved in a positive direction.

Vance accepts TUV law won't block Adams

On the Nolan show today it was the TUV's turn to be interviewed about their manifesto. One of the questions was about the TUV proposal to have 'No terrorists in government' by passing legislation to bar those with terrorist convictions. Vance accepted that this legal bar would not block Gerry Adams from ministerial office.

What he meant to say...

In Alan Clarke's diaries he talks about how on Question Time he dropped a clanger on the issue of defence. He described how Sir Bernard Ingram dealt with the resulting media controversy, he issued what Clarke described as a "what he meant to say" statement.

This morning Ulster Unionists and Conservatives appear to have adopted this approach to deal with the fall-out from Cameron's News Night interview. There is an opinion piece in today's Belfast Telegraph by Cameron and two more in the News Letter (by William Hague and David Shiels). The Ulster Unionist are touring the news studios this morning to reinforce this. There are no special plans for extra cuts in Northern Ireland, the expansion of the private sector is a 20-25 year goal etc. However they are having difficulty in dealing with what "unsustainable" means and the manifesto commitment to a £6 billion cut in expenditure this year.

Threats to the Union

The Ulster Unionists and Conservatives have been going big on a hung parliament being a threat to the Union. This is on the basis that the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cmyru could wield an influence. However, a poll in Scotland highlights how a Tory win will have implications for the Union.

A YouGov poll (who are one of the Tory party's pollsters) showed that:

"...an anti-Tory backlash in Scotland would push support for separatism from 31% now to 40%. Opposition to independence would fall from 54% to 43%"

The poll also shows the Tories on 15% in Scotland (their lowest for 3 years) so the small gains (2-4 more seats) they had hoped for now seem unlikely. Also such is the mistrust of the Tories by Scottish voters that they are minded to punish the SNP if it does a deal with the Conservatives.

With no advance in Scotland, the tacit abandonment of the Ulster Unionist pact and the attack on the North-East of England it looks like the poll squeeze has made the Tories pursue a more obvious southern england strategy.

The TUV PEB

Now for a critical eye on the TUV PEB (still can't find the original Alliance PEB on the internet for some odd reason I can only find a remix version). There are no surprises in terms of the TUV's messages - scandal, terrorists in government, Stormont's crap etc.

In terms of message they actually do the DUP three small favours - they acknowledge the DUP shift on multiple mandates, they reiterate the hung parliament narrative and attack the Ulster Unionist and Conservative link-up. They do repeat the fallacy that they have the answers to 'terrorist inclusive government' but they are hardly going to admit that in a PEB or anywhere else for that matter.

Visually it's a mixed bag - they use the newspaper headline approach (useful for reinforcement of message by 'neutral' sources). In terms of backdrops they veer to having them to not - Allister and Ross do others have blank walls. Falls down a bit on their candidates failure to learn their scripts and the Harbinson, Kilpatrick, Ross sections needed re-shot - the off camera eye movement isn't good.

Slogan Subversion and Mainstreaming

Some political communication from the other side of the big sheuch. This is from the Republican Governors Association. They have gone for a mix of subversion and mainstreaming. First it attempts to subvert the successful 'Yes We Can' slogan of the Obama campaign by tying it to a series of negative outcomes. However, its sub theme is an adaption of remember remember the 5th november simply remember november. The 5th November theme was used successfully by the Ron Paul presidential campaign in an online fundraising drivewhich itself was influenced by left-wing emphasis of the Fawkian myth as an anti-Bush metaphor.

We Will Remember from Republican Governors Association on Vimeo.

Cameron pulls out?

It is being reported on Slugger that Cameron will not be coming for the UCUNF regional manifesto launch instead sending William Hague.

If this is true why? Is Cameron wishing to avoid the local backlash from last night's Newsnight interview? Or is it a tacit admittance that he has given up on UCUNF delivering anything?

Cameron trips on Paxman

Comments from David Cameron on last night's Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman seem to have caused something of an Ulster (and North-Eastern England) stir.

The Guardian has gone with "David Cameron targets north east and Northern Ireland for spending cuts". The SDLP's McDevitt has pounced on the cuts message while even 3000 versts is emphasising the need for clarification. Iain Dale is denying there is a problem and alledging leftist bias.

This highlights a key weakness in the UCUNF economic message because while one feature of Tory plans are clear - cuts - its policy on the corporation tax aren't. As David Gordon points out in his review of the corporation tax issue all that is offered in the Tory manifesto is:

"...David Cameron's Conservatives committed themselves to a review."

So the first queston mark is will it happen at all? At the moment this isn't a bird in the hand for two in the bush offer rather a bird in the hand for the possibilty, that at some stage. maybe, subject to EU approval, that there could be two in the bush.

It also shows the weakness of the UCUNF relationship. It claims to have been working on the idea for a couple of years so why is it still effectively on the drawing board and not a clear commitment?

This review will apparently look at the option of devolving the corporation tax to Northern Ireland. However, if devolved, to meet present EU law any cut would have to be matched by a reduction in the block grant. Aside from reinforcing the Tory cut narrative, if the block grant is being reduced year on year how feasible is it for Stormont to find the tens if not hundreds of millions to pay for using such powers?

The recent report by the Economic Reform Group argued that:

"In any event, the difficulties in making a one-off reduction in the baseline should not be overstated."

They highlighted past under-spends as a solution. However they did concede that under devolution the level of under-spends has dropped significantly but they did not include the future environment of public spending levels, how possible is it in an environment of other cuts?

So the second question mark is would it be financial possible for a constrained Stormont to act on its devolved powers?

Minority and coalition governments can work

Peter Riddell of the Times offers an examination of a hung parliament looking at other European examples:

"If you look away from Westminster, single-party governments are the exception. Apart from Britain, there are only three in the EU: France, Malta and that paragon of good governance, Greece. Many countries most highly rated for good government, such as Germany, New Zealand and the Scandinavian nations have multi-party rule...Moreover, multi-party administrations have been as effective in maintaining fiscal discipline as single-party ones...The classic example is Sweden in the mid-1990s which had a budget deficit of around 12 per cent of national income, similar to Britain now. The Social Democrats elected in 1994 were in a minority but pushed through a tough deficit-reduction programme that slashed the stock of public debt by a half in a decade. Göran Persson, initially the finance minister, justified the cuts in a country dedicated to generous welfare provision by the slogan “those who are in debt are not free”. He became Prime Minister in 1996 and survived as head of a minority administration until 2006."

No terrorists in government

The TUV manifesto is out. No surprise is that a central theme is 'No terrorists in government' essentially code for Sinn Fein. However, how do they intend to fulfil this promise? They offer three ideas but none of them keep their pledge.

Their key proposal is a law barring anyone with terrorist convictions:

"...we propose that it should be provided in primary legislation that no one with a terrorist conviction can ever hold ministerial office."

There is one fundamental and obvious flaw with this - not all terrorists were convicted. So a more honest slogan would be "No convicted terrorists in government". Neither Martin McGuinness nor Gerry Adams has a terrorist conviction in a British court. McGuinness could be excluded if the TUV legislation recognised his conviction in the Republic of Ireland but Gerry Adams has none in any country. So if enacted the TUV law would potentially result in Adams taking over from McGuinness as Deputy First Minister which I doubt is what those with moral objections would like to see.

The second idea that will allegedly achieve this is voluntary coalition. However, this cannot guarantee no terrorists aka Sinn Fein either. Jim Allister has already publicly admitted that Sinn Fein can still remain in government under voluntary coalition:

"If Sinn Fein can persuade others to join them in government then, distasteful as it would be to me, I'd have to accept them getting there."

The third idea is "enhanced local government". However, this doesn't remove Shinners from government either it just changes the form of government they are in.

Football, Debates and Polls

A 14 month year old put pay to football and debates this evening. Missing the football turned out to be fortunate (mumbles complaints about general uselessness of Benitez) but got five minutes of the national debate - Cameron seemed to be mimicing Clegg's style from the first debate, Clegg was playing it safe while Brown had even managed to raise his game too.

The pollsters have the second debate much closer than the first with Clegg and Cameron sharing the honours but Labour will take solace in Brown's performance being 'better than expected' (although that was probably from a pretty low expectation base).

Locally Ken Reid has called it for Gerry Adams and Mark Devenport bemoans the lack of polls and worms to help assess impact. The choice of Two Tribes as music was trite. Will the focus on the national debates have engendered more interest in a format which has been more common here for some time?

Keith in Belfast has the post-debate spin from the leaders themselves - Peter Robinson, Reg Empey, Gerry Adams, Margaret Ritchie - although the very close camera angle is a little too close for comfort.

While others debated, dissidents launched a gun and bomb attack on Newtownhamilton police station.

The eye of the beholder

On the last minute offer to attain Unionist Unity, Sir Reg Empey described it as:

"It is all very grubby."

The News Letter editorial disagrees, it describing it all as:

"The DUP made a very generous offer to Miss Bradshaw...The offer was regrettably spurned."

The News Letter also picks up that despite the close of nominations it is still not too late for an agreement:

"...which is still possible even if both names appear on the ballot paper."

Scrutiny or Panic?

Quote of the day

Accordingly to Ken Clarke it would be a 'tragedy' if Ulstermen were to have an influence on the UK government:

"A hung parliament, a minority government, held together by backroom deals with the Scottish and Welsh nationalists, the Lib Dems and Ulstermen would be a tragedy."

Last time I looked there wasn't an identity test before you were permitted to have an influence on Government.

Car Crash Part II

After climbing out of the wreckage of the car crash of their PEB it seemed someone at SDLP HQ thought having a second was just what they needed. "Let's use the arse corner of a warehouse with bare breeze block walls, dodgy seats and next to no room for the media to launch a positive vision for the future. The building was opened by John Hume you know."

The Green Party PEB

Just when you thought it was safe to return to this blog, here is another review of a PEB. Political communication nerds of the world unite is what I say. This time it is the turn of the Green party. Visually it is the best so far copying the Hearts and Minds comment section format. The candidates get a good airing but possibly began to drag near to the end and the Brian Wilson speech could have easily been cut without losing anything, especially as it was unclear what issue he was actually talking about.

UCUNF's second PEB

This second effort is in the same mould as the first - visually dull but a range of candidates stating the key messages. One rather surreal moment when shots of daffodils were used as the visual representation for the Bill of Rights section.

Canada, Crisis and a Hung parliament

UCUNFers are getting hot under the collar about the issue of a hung parliament. Events can be troublesome things for the central narrative of a campaign so at present it is not easy to sell being 'at the heart of government' when polls show being 'at the heart of the opposition' equally if not more likely.

David Cameron returned again to the theme of a hung parliament warning that it could lead to economic and political stagnation. It certainly could lead to political stagnation for the Conservatives. If a Labour Lib Dem coalition is the result of this election and they reform the electoral system it would be highly likely the Tories would be out of government for two parliamentary terms (based on past voting trends). Although those who think it would lead to a 'permanent' shift are probably over-stating the case as voting patterns will adapt to the new system. Labour expected they'd be the 'permanent' government of Scotland and Wales under devolution and that was quickly disproved.

As regards economic stagnation is it worth noting that Canada has managed to find a course through the economic difficulties while being governed by a minority Conservative administration?