Fraser Nelson: Balls is a crypto-Soviet, I am a crypto-McCarthyite ...

Fraser Nelson, Spectator editor and arch-Thatcherite, takes issue with what seems a perfectly reasonable - you might even say innocuous - statement by Ed Balls in his Sunday Times interview today:

“I think our family policy now is actually about the strength of the adult relationships and that is important for the progress of the children.”

What is Fraser actually objecting to in this statement? We don't really find out, as he immediately goes off on a tangent, parroting the Tory line about promoting marriage and ending welfare depedency - oh, and of course, Balls is a crypto-Soviet "lefty":

"Does Balls have any idea about the extent of which the welfare state under Labour has robbed the low-income family of its economic function, about how adults are no longer better off together, and incentivised to split up with all the effects that has on the children? But it gets better: children are to be given lessons in the importance of relationships from 2011. More resources may be given to marriage guidance services. It’s like Balls is mentally living in 1975 Moscow. Family problems? Why, the Party will simply ask the schools to simply program the kids to be better at relationships."

Is it just me, or do relationship lessons in school sound like a reasonable, moderate, interesting idea? We have already have Relate for grown-ups. Why not start earlier? Certainly, as evidence of Balls' Brezhnev-style statism, it is pretty weak.

So why are the Tories - and the Right - apparently so scared of Balls, if his politics are so old-fashioned? Are they worried his policies might actually be popular?

Sounds like McCarthyite paranoia to me. And if Fraser Nelson wants to talk about jobs ...

Unemployment under Thatcher peaked at 3.5m. That's 3.5m families "robbed of their economic function". And the Centre for Economic Policy Research estimates that unemployment in the 1930s peaked at 15% in 1932.

In this recession, at least the Government is trying to do something about it. The UK unemployment rate was 7.9% in the last quarter. Wild predictions of 3m or even 4m unemployed now - touch wood - seem wide of the mark.

This is because of Government action like the Young Britain campaign - a pledge to create 85,000 jobs for the young - more apprenticeships and university places.

Balls may be stuck in the 1970s ... Nelson - who would apparently do nothing but tinker with marriage rules - is stuck in the 1930s, 15% unemployment and all.

Left Foot Forward banned from Tory conference - a backhanded compliment

See this from top new prog website Left Foot Forward:

Left Foot Forward has been banned from attending Conservative Party conference. In a letter dated 23rd September from the Conservative Party’s Head of Conferences, Stephen Williams writes:

“I am writing to let you know that you application to attend the above event [Conservative Party Conference] has been rejected…

“For over twenty years the party has included the following words on its application forms; ‘the completion and submission of this application does not confer any right upon the applicant to attend conference. The Conservative Party reserves the right to refuse admission to any person without ascribing any reason thereto.’

“I am sure you appreciate that these words and this policy were carefully chosen to avoid the development of any misunderstanding.

“I know this is not the reply you were hoping for, and I am sorry for that. However, it would not be sensible for me to fly in the face of agreed and accepted practices.”

Left Foot Forward will, nonetheless, report live from the Conservative fringe.

Take it as a backhanded compliment, I think. It's not like Labour hasn't been known to to do the same. I can think of at least one Labour pressure group that in the past denied a press pass to Iain Dale, then of 18 Doughty Street, for fear of adverse coverage.

Mandy: Even in the 1970s I was relatively influential

Earlier this week, Peter Mandelson castigated the Tories in his Labour conference speech for their lack of commitment to industrial activism

When did you last hear David Cameron or George Osborne last say anything about Britain's industrial future?

Such a line of attack would have been pretty much unimaginable only a few years ago. New Labour bought into the Thatcherite shibboleth that the only indispensible industrial policy was not to have one at all.

The Tories may try to label this as a return to 1970s-style dirigisme. In fact, you get the impression Mandy would quite like that. Labour conference this week was all about stressing the new, post-crash dividing line: government action is needed to deal with the recession, and the Tories would do nothing. The new bogey decade is the Thatcherite 1980s where the Government 'did nothing' to help out-of-work young people.

Mandy warms to this theme in an article on youth unemployment for the Young Fabian Anticiaptions magazine, published this week (as ever, check for modesty):

Back in the 1970s, I chaired the British Youtyh Council and whilst there published what was then a relatively influential report: "Youth Unemployment: Causes and Curses". I remember taking it to the Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan, in Downing Street to discuss the issue of young people and their prospects.

Even then, the now First Secretary of State was relatively infleuntial!

Muse are the perfect New Tory band

Tory Bear is clearly desperate for his teenage heroes (how young is he?), Muse, to be revealed as Tories. It wouldn't surprise me if they were, as I elucidated as a comment on the TB site ...

Muse are the perfect New Tory band.

They have that veneer of cool that
might make someone who is totally uncool think that they are cool. If you see
what I mean.

Muse, of course, are total rubbish, thoroughly in the MOR
rock tradition of overblown, slightly gothic choruses. To me, they have clearly
always wanted to be Radiohead. But ultimately they're just fucking boring.

To stretch the analogy to the limits of usefulness, I think that makes
Tony Blair Thom Yorke ...

MPs boozing during the Commons Afghanistan debate?

Glad to hear the Tories aren't getting complacent about winning the next election - or the state of Afghanistan.

It seems I wasn't the only person following the cricket today. Like most people who have to work for a living, I had to follow online updates from sites like Cricinfo. Here's one update, helpfully sent in by a reader:

"Hello from Westminster!" cheers Ed Condon from the Policy Exchange, one of those slightly meaningless think tanks which British politics is filled with. "In the pub with, wait for it.... 10 chiefs of staff and six MPs. Your tax pounds are hard at work!"

I can't imagine such an impeccably Tory think-tank hanging around with anyone but Tory MPs, or their 'chiefs of staff'. Whoever they are.

The post seems to have come in the same over that Kevin Pietersen got out, around 1613 this afternoon. So much for the Tories' outrage about lack of helicopters. This was slap bang in the middle of the House of Commons Afghanistan debate.

Show this to any young person thinking of voting Tory

This, from Don't Panic, was definitely my video of the week:

The New Young Conservatives
by DontPanicOnline

The video has already been removed from You Tube 'due to a copyright claim by London Conservative Future'. You can see why; they know it has the damaging potential of Cameron's infamous Bullingdon club snap.

Anyone desperate to avoid a Tory victory at the next election should show it to any friends thinking of voting for Cameron, especially if they are under 30. The reaction I got from one serious waverer: 'What idiots! I am never voting for them.'

Result.

Hannan sounds like a crank

Right-wing blogs like Guido, Drudge and Coffee House were seriously impressed by Tory MEP Daniel Hannan's broadside following Gordon's speech to the European Parliament.



They're hoping it'll become an internet phenomenon. Here's hoping indeed ... it'll scare voters in the UK.

The guy sounds like a crank, indistinguishable from UKIP, bad-mouthing the European Parliament from the inside and referring to 'Brezhnev-era apparatchiks'.

Hannan rails against the fact that Brown has 'subsidised where you have not nationalised outright, swaths of our economy including the car industry and many of the banks.'

I had been under the impression that support for bank recapitalisation and subsidising lending to industry - including the car industry - were official Tory party policy. Will the Tory leadership disown these comments? Or will we see Cameron and Osborne campaigning for Hannan's re-election in June?