The Conservative Party Conference is now under way in Manchester. The stage set this year is a rather gloomy dark blue. Not for the Tories the brightly-lit sky blue of last week’s Labour conference. No. This is a much more reserved blue. Darker. More stern.The Chancellor was introduced by the businesswoman Karen Brady, who has just been appointed as Small Business Ambassador for the Conservative Party. Osborne, she said, was “the man who stuck to the plan,” and also “the right man, with the right plan,” and at this the inhabitant of No 11 appeared on the dais.
His suit was, like the stage set behind him, dark blue, shirt white, face rather fixed. Osborne is an unusual figure. Is he right, or wrong on the economy? This was the subject of a hotly-contested debate in the last issue of Prospect, and it remains an open question—has austerity worked? Those who think it has failed regard him as a cynical ideologue, whose policies have choked off recovery and reduced government payments to the most vulnerable at their time of greatest need. Supporters, in contrast, claim that he has saved the economy—and Britain. Such absolute divergence of opinion is somewhat disconcerting. And so he stands before his party as a combination of opposites: both saviour and blunderer, pragmatist and ideologue, both right and wrong, all at the same time—not so much the Iron Chancellor, Osborne is the Quantum Chancellor.
“Our plan is working,” he assured the crowd, although he conceded that “family finances will not be transformed over night.” He shared none of Ed Miliband’s pessimism, and said that Miliband’s energy price cap policy, which was unveiled at the Labour conference last week, deployed “essentially the argument used by Karl Marx in Das Kapital.”
He accused Ed Miliband of having drawn up his energy policy suggestions “on the back of a fag packet,” claiming that it would lead to “higher energy prices for all,” before adding that “Britain can do better than that,” a groan-inducing reference to Labour’s slogan. Labour had some decent jokes at their conference. If this is anything to go by, the Tories have extended their policy of fiscal restraint to include outlay on gag-writers.
But it was the tone of Osborne’s speech that was most arresting. It was all very stern. “Hardwork,” according to the backdrop, is now a single word. “Sacrifice,” a most unfashionable word, cropped up in Osborne’s speech as did the dread phrase “very hard choices.” Then came a startling passage on the structure of the budget—the Chancellor intends to return Britain’s economy to “surplus” in the course of the next Parliament. There was a drizzle of applause. The ambition of this is startling—is it even remotely viable? It would mean getting rid of an annual deficit that currently stands at £120bn by 2020. But that would still leave a £1.2 trillion debt pile. What of that?
“This time we are going to fix the roof while the sun shines,” said Osborne, a comment that assumes the sun is—metaphorically at least—shining, a comment that is open to challenge. Fuel duty will be frozen for the rest of the Parliament, he said, adding that the Conservative party is “nothing if we are not the party of small business.” It is not certain why meddling in the price structure of this energy market should be good, while fixing prices in other parts of the market, as Labour intends to do, is bad.
As for the Government’s Help to Buy scheme, this was not, repeat not blowing a bubble in the housing market. This was a canard being spread by snarky London commentators and the whole scheme would be moved forward—to next week.
The rhetoric picked up as he spoke of Britain’s place in the world, about HS2, nuclear power stations and other such great projects, in which the Chancellor suggested, the true expression of Britain’s greatness could be found.
The Conservative economic prescription for Britain is a “serious plan for a grownup country,” said Osborne and in an echo of Churchill’s sunlit uplands said that “the sun has started to rise above the hill.”
It was a strange rhetorical end that was at odds with the tone of the rest of Osborne’s speech. Throughout, he claimed repeatedly to be an optimist—but the delivery was dourness itself, the dark eyes peeping out like cannon, his demeanour embodying anything but optimism. He chided Miliband for his apparent “socialism”, but had only a large dose of sour Stakhanovite medicine to offer as an alternative. He wailed at Labour interference with energy prices—and then announced that he planned to fix fuel prices.
In 2007, Osborne pulled a inheritance tax announcement out of the air the impact of which was so great that it knocked Gordon Brown into a tailspin of indecision from which he never recovered. Today’s speech contained no such moment. Osborne has not grabbed the party by the scruff of the neck. The noise levels did not rise much above “polite acknowledgement”. People began to leave before the applause had ended. The appalling muzak kicked in as the silence fell. And as quickly as he had appeared, the Quantum Chancellor was gone.
His suit was, like the stage set behind him, dark blue, shirt white, face rather fixed. Osborne is an unusual figure. Is he right, or wrong on the economy? This was the subject of a hotly-contested debate in the last issue of Prospect, and it remains an open question—has austerity worked? Those who think it has failed regard him as a cynical ideologue, whose policies have choked off recovery and reduced government payments to the most vulnerable at their time of greatest need. Supporters, in contrast, claim that he has saved the economy—and Britain. Such absolute divergence of opinion is somewhat disconcerting. And so he stands before his party as a combination of opposites: both saviour and blunderer, pragmatist and ideologue, both right and wrong, all at the same time—not so much the Iron Chancellor, Osborne is the Quantum Chancellor.
“Our plan is working,” he assured the crowd, although he conceded that “family finances will not be transformed over night.” He shared none of Ed Miliband’s pessimism, and said that Miliband’s energy price cap policy, which was unveiled at the Labour conference last week, deployed “essentially the argument used by Karl Marx in Das Kapital.”
He accused Ed Miliband of having drawn up his energy policy suggestions “on the back of a fag packet,” claiming that it would lead to “higher energy prices for all,” before adding that “Britain can do better than that,” a groan-inducing reference to Labour’s slogan. Labour had some decent jokes at their conference. If this is anything to go by, the Tories have extended their policy of fiscal restraint to include outlay on gag-writers.
But it was the tone of Osborne’s speech that was most arresting. It was all very stern. “Hardwork,” according to the backdrop, is now a single word. “Sacrifice,” a most unfashionable word, cropped up in Osborne’s speech as did the dread phrase “very hard choices.” Then came a startling passage on the structure of the budget—the Chancellor intends to return Britain’s economy to “surplus” in the course of the next Parliament. There was a drizzle of applause. The ambition of this is startling—is it even remotely viable? It would mean getting rid of an annual deficit that currently stands at £120bn by 2020. But that would still leave a £1.2 trillion debt pile. What of that?
“This time we are going to fix the roof while the sun shines,” said Osborne, a comment that assumes the sun is—metaphorically at least—shining, a comment that is open to challenge. Fuel duty will be frozen for the rest of the Parliament, he said, adding that the Conservative party is “nothing if we are not the party of small business.” It is not certain why meddling in the price structure of this energy market should be good, while fixing prices in other parts of the market, as Labour intends to do, is bad.
As for the Government’s Help to Buy scheme, this was not, repeat not blowing a bubble in the housing market. This was a canard being spread by snarky London commentators and the whole scheme would be moved forward—to next week.
The rhetoric picked up as he spoke of Britain’s place in the world, about HS2, nuclear power stations and other such great projects, in which the Chancellor suggested, the true expression of Britain’s greatness could be found.
The Conservative economic prescription for Britain is a “serious plan for a grownup country,” said Osborne and in an echo of Churchill’s sunlit uplands said that “the sun has started to rise above the hill.”
It was a strange rhetorical end that was at odds with the tone of the rest of Osborne’s speech. Throughout, he claimed repeatedly to be an optimist—but the delivery was dourness itself, the dark eyes peeping out like cannon, his demeanour embodying anything but optimism. He chided Miliband for his apparent “socialism”, but had only a large dose of sour Stakhanovite medicine to offer as an alternative. He wailed at Labour interference with energy prices—and then announced that he planned to fix fuel prices.
In 2007, Osborne pulled a inheritance tax announcement out of the air the impact of which was so great that it knocked Gordon Brown into a tailspin of indecision from which he never recovered. Today’s speech contained no such moment. Osborne has not grabbed the party by the scruff of the neck. The noise levels did not rise much above “polite acknowledgement”. People began to leave before the applause had ended. The appalling muzak kicked in as the silence fell. And as quickly as he had appeared, the Quantum Chancellor was gone.
