Our children can't afford to buy a house here now.

There is a Bank of Scotland report out this morning about how three coastal towns in Scotland have seen their house prices double in 10 years. The bank's researchers found that a number of coastal towns had seen "substantial" increases since 2005.  Of 59 coastal towns surveyed, 15 recorded price increases of at least 50% in that time.  Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire experienced the biggest rise with a 109% jump from an average price of £63,540 in 2005 to £132,920 last year.  Lerwick in Shetland, and Peterhead, also in Aberdeenshire, recorded increases of 102%.  All interesting stuff that may have the good people of these towns rubbing their collective hands in glee.

Now I don’t know if you are like me and sometimes wonder exactly who benefits for the rise in house prices. Well, there is the obvious one set of people, children selling their parents’ house when they pass away. But beyond that, who benefits?

Take the Fraserburgh example.  You discover the value of your house has gone up.  So if you sell you will have a lot more money than you paid.  But unless you want to live in a tent or considerably down size, you won’t be able to buy a house in the town and have a wee bit left over because the value of all the other properties has also gone up.

So who does benefit?  I would suggest there are people who smile when the see the headline today.

But non smilers first. The people who want to get on the so called property ladder. They can't afford the higher prices.  And the next thing we will be hearing from these communities will be “our children can’t afford prices here, something has to be done”.

But on to the smilers.  Starting with Lenders. A higher price generally will mean you will have to borrow more.  That’s good business for banks and building societies.

Then there are the support services.  Estate agents.  If you do a percentage deal, your costs will go up.  Lawyers. Higher value, your costs will go up.

The government.  Yes, some houses can be outwith the taxation applied to most house purchases. But in general, the higher the price the more tax the government takes out of your pocket.  Oh yes, and more income from taxing the increased profits of these lenders and services.

So next time someone says, "magic, the value of my property has risen”, ask them who exactly will that benefit.  Cos it sure won't be them.

The case for compulsory voting in a referendum

Until recently I was rather in favour of referenda.  It could at one stroke give an answer to a tricky question by the people of the nation. Or so it seemed.  But two recent referenda have created more questions than answers.

Take the recent Irish one on so called same sex marriage.  An amazing low turnout of 61% voted on an issue of such supposed importance.  Of that 61% turn out about 61% voted yes.  Do the arithmetic and you find that this means only 37% of the voting population actually supported the measure.  So in reality, far from Ireland giving a real universal support to the measure, the truth is 63% of the population didn’t. 

It was similar in Scotland in the independence referendum.  Of the total eligible to vote only 37% voted in favour of Yes.  Obliviously that didn't pass.  But you could still have had a Yes vote with less than 50% of those eligible to vote actually voting Yes.

Now, given the campaign for Yes probably managed to get out 95% of their supporters, it really means you have rather a lot of disaffected people in Ireland.  The failure of both campaigns to win more than 50% of the electors over shows that referenda are by no means a way to change a countries laws or constitution.

Should the question of a Scottish independence referendum come up again, it should be insisted that 50% of the electorate and not just 50% of the votes cast must be reached before the vote will be carried.  That way we can be sure that a vote does exactly what it’s intended to do.  Give a clear answer from the whole country.

Do as I say.

Two statements from leading people this week.

Paul Kahn, president of the 16,000-employee Airbus UK, said Britain must compete for international investment. The "best way to guarantee this is by remaining part of the EU," he said.  Got that?

But his comment was a bit odd given it's barely 12 months since the CEO of Airbus said this:  "Clearly we have a massive investment in the UK and I don’t think there has ever been a plan to change that. The key issue is for the UK to continue to be a competitive place to do business. Profitable trade and political union are not joined at the hip. Russian and American companies trade with companies in Europe without being part of a political union. Business investment depends on profits not politics.".  Hey ho.

Now I will tackle Mr Kahns statement another time. But as a start, is it not fanciful to think that the UK, the 6th largest economy in the world, could not do its own trade deals like Switzerland, Iceland and Norway to name but three “local” countries?

But on to the second statement.

On Sunday, Len McCluskey said it was "essential" that the correct leader is chosen to lead the Labour Party, adding:  "It's up to them. If they inject more disillusionment in the party then the pressure will grow form our members to re think."

Both gentlemen are in effect issuing threats. Do it my way or we may pull out. The problem with both these statements is that they do not reflect that in a democracy the will of the people is, or should be, greater than the will of the head of an industry or trade union.

Give an inch.

MSPs have said that plans for new Holyrood powers fall short of recommendations made by the cross-party backed Smith Commission in a report just published.  The BBC reported that the Devolution (Further Powers) Committee said the UK government's draft legislation did not meet the "spirit or substance" of Smith.

Sounds an interesting story till you dig only the teeniest bit below the surface and are quickly not at all surprised at what you find.  The Committee has a majority of SNP members on it.  And it fits rather nicely with the continual confrontational narrative coming out from the SNP contingent at Westminster.  Give us more is the constant theme.

Now if the SNP and others who rather amusingly call themselves “progressive” had won a majority at Westminster they could agree to do just that.  But in case Nicola hasn’t noticed, the “progressive” majority never materialised.  They lost the election. 

So when you read the words of committee convener Bruce Crawford (SNP), "The committee believes that the current proposals do not yet meet the challenge of fully translating the political agreement reached in the Smith Commission into legislation.”, read, we lost  the election but we will twist and turn till we get what we want. 

Now I know it was a unanimous report with one Conservative one Lib Dem and two Labour Members putting their names to it.  But be not mistaken, this is a report that has as its core Mission Creep.  And if the Conservative Government didn’t know before, they better watch out now.  The SNP under Ms Sturgeon are pretty smart outmaneuvers and negotiators.  Give an inch and all that.

How can I say that?  Well, I don't recall the Scottish people being asked "do we want proposals like what is in the Smith Commission".  I recall a very simple question to which the Scottish people gave a pretty emphatic answer to.  Mission Creep is well underway SNP style.

The answer to why Scotland should recieve additional funding is 4 hours 43 minutes.

I had a lovely lunch with the family at Cherwell Boathouse in Oxford on Sunday.  Inevitably the election came up.  And the Barnett Formula.  How come Scotland can get free prescriptions and England can’t?  

Now this question is frequently addressed to me by southern cousins because in England the people have never really had it explained to them in the media what the Barnett formula actually is for.  I suppose the easiest way to explain it is to say if you see someone in need, you help them.   

Or to put it more in political terms, if, because of geography, it costs 10% more to treat the average patient in Scotland, the rest of the UK will help them out.  If you don’t get the geography bit go to www.travelinescotland.com and work out how long it takes to get  from Campbeltown to the nearest big general hospital, Glasgow University Hospital, formerly known as the Southern General.  I’ll save you the search time.  It’s 4 hours 43 minutes.   

So in order to ensure no matter where in the UK you live you get similar levels of care, there is an adjustment in the block grant that Scotland gets to compensate for the additional costs of providing the same treatments in such a geographically challenging environment.  And that can be reflected in many other areas that the Barnett Formula was intended to address.  Now I know it’s not perfect.  But while Scotland remains in the UK, it’s the best we have.  Indeed, being able to help each part of the UK when it was in need was a key justification given in the referendum for Scotland staying in the Union.

Now this is where it gets interesting.  Scotland gets its adjusted block grant.  But the settlement says that the Scottish Government can then prioritise what it spends given situations can and do change.  So we have a Scottish Government deciding that, because of local economic situations, prescriptions should be free.  But it doesn’t get any more money from Westminster to fund it.  No, it has to make cuts elsewhere to fund it. 

So the premise that England is paying for free prescriptions is one cultured by the media in London and really rather disingenuously doesn’t tell the whole story.  No new news there I guess!

"Four legs good, two legs better!"

You will remember that line from Animal Farm.  But do you remember this line?  “Cuts are never good, state intervention is always good".  No, I thought you wouldn’t.  I don’t either.  But then maybe it was in 1984.  No, not there either.  But it is a good line all the same and it reflects a still present view in some of the media.  Which is all well and good if it’s the Daily Record, Daily Mirror, The Guardian or Sky.  Privately owned media outlets.  We know where they stand and choose, or not, to buy their paper or media streams.  It’s not so good if it’s the licence funded broadcasters or the other publicly owned organisations like Channel4. 

Now I don’t believe this silly stuff about their infiltration by socialist and specifically Labour Groupthink. But it is difficult not to see there has been a problem.  Partisan?  Possibly.  Badly judged?  Almost definitely.  Why?  Because the culture that has existed in the BBC seems to have drifted to a shared ideology with Labour - "cuts are never good, state intervention is always good".  Perhaps they fear, because the public is the key funder of the BBC, it too is in line for “cuts”.    I actually do believe that BBC is an excellent organisation that produces world class stuff.  But it shouldn't be exempt from the effort to put the UK back on a sane fiscal footing than any other taxpayer funded activity.  Just look at Greece this morning and think of what we could have been like.

But I’m not sure your money and mine should be going to fund a Press Office that, within a day, is sending out what effectively is a briefing note against the new Culture Media and Sport Secretary. 

But perhaps it's no surprise.  Take one screen shot from the BBC web site on 27^th April.  

Labour’s lines and policies feature prominently and are completely unquestioned.  The only mention of the Tories links back to an ancient story about a Cameron speech given on 14 April.  Or another screen shot a few days earlier.   

 

See a pattern? 

Now I’m really not so sure it really is a plot by the BBC to go against everything a non-Labour government does as some conspiracy theorists would argue.  I think it’s just a lazy culture that has been allowed to grow over the years.  They employed like-minded people.  It’s the easiest way to recruit.

Peter Sissons in his autobiography, wisely penned after he'd retired, commented that he wouldn't call it a bias so much as a mind-set.  And that, in the BBC newsroom, you'll see any number of copies of the Guardian and the Independent floating around, but rarely a Telegraph.  He recalled the times he arrived to work when there was some major new story developing.  Asking for a briefing he would be handed a Guardian and told, "It's all in there. "

That's the core of the BBC's problem.  And they are going to have to sort it out very quickly before John Whittingdale does it for them.

Living by numbers.

If you are old enough to remember British synthpop group New Musik, you will remember  their 1980s hit 'Living By Numbers'.

So here are three last observations about the numbers the Election has thrown up.

First. In Scotland 50% of the votes cast went to the SNP.  But they got 95% of the seats.

Second.  Only 71% of the electorate voted in Scotland in the Election.  

Third.  This means the SNP actually only managed to persuade 36% of the Scottish electorate to vote for them. Nicola persuaded 37% to vote Yes in the Referendum.  So in reality support for SNP dropped by 1%.  And given the SNP managed to get virtually their whole vote out on Election day, that means 64% of the Scottish electorate didn’t vote for the SNP.

Credit where credit is due.

One person has come out of the Labour disaster with a great deal of credit. Ed Balls took his defeat with considerable dignity.  No gripes, no recriminations, no blaming anyone else.

I think many are like me think his economics were one stop short of Dagenham Docks.  But how he handled himself in a moment of painful public humiliation was a tribute to the man and he should earn the respect of us all. Well done Ed.

How much was your vote worth?

Two parties, two different stories.

Party	%	Votes	Seats
CON	36.9%	11,334,920	331
LAB	30.4%	9,347,326	232
SNP	4.7%	1,454,436	56
LIB DEM	7.9%	2,415,888	8
GRN	3.8%	1,157,613	1
UKIP	12.6%	3,881,129	1

A few observations to get you thinking.

The Greens polled 296,823 votes (3.8% of total) less than the SNP (4.7% of total) and get 1 seat compared to SNPs 56.

The Lib Dems polled 961,452 votes (7.9% of total) more than SNP (4.7% of total) and get 8 seats compared to SNPs 56.

The UKIP polled 2,426,693 votes (12.6% of total) more than SNP (4.7% of total) and get 1 seat compared to the SNPs 56.

The UKIP polled 1,465,241 votes (12.6% of total) more than the Lib Dems (7.9% of total) and get 1 seat compared to the Lib Dems 8.

And when they were up they were up. And when they were down they were down.

I’m not sure how Nicola Sturgeon felt at the Cenotaph earlier today at the VE Day Celebration event.  The awkward twitch of her right foot and looking away as the Duke of York laid his wreath was perhaps an unconscious display of her republican leanings.  Not that there is anything wrong with republican leanings.  Or was it she was remembering the other Duke of York, the Grand Old one, who marched his troops to the top of the hill only to have to march them back down again.  And I wonder if that’s Nicola’s concern.  I say that on two fronts. 

First of all she has marched her troops very effectively up the hill with the hopes of her supporters high.  And it was “her” supporters, this had a very presidential feel to it north of the Border, including the helicopter.  (I did hear some wag wonder if she could see the food banks from her helicopter).  But the march up the hill was done with the promise of influence and power at Westminster.  Now it’s clear she has neither it’s a new form of words that have appeared.  They are diluted to making Scotland’s voice heard at Westminster.  How she manages that drop in expectation for the thousands who have swelled the ranks of the SNP in recent months will be an interesting one to watch.

But it’s a second issue that is more concerning.  If marching charged up people back down has its own troubles, the behaviour of the new MPs will be an even bigger worry for her.  A good number of her new colleagues at Westminster have no track record of elected office.  Some of them have said pretty unwise things.  For example, Mhairi Black who unseated shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander as MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South described No voters in the referendum as “gullible” and “selfish”.   She has a turn of phrase for every occasion it would seem.

She bragged on Twitter: “Smirnoff Ice is the drink of the gods - I cannae handle this c*** man.”  Dangerous thing Twitter for any elected politician.  And there is nothing wrong with being a Partick Thistle fan.  But for an aspiring politician there is a lot wrong in the west of Scotland saying: “I’ve only just realised - I really f***** hate Celtic” and “Celtic, yer a joke!#scum".  Or when she fantasied about “putting the nut” on Labour councillors at a rally in George Square in Glasgow. 

Now in isolation these are not really issues.  But when you have a troop of similar hot headed loose cannons around Westminster, how long will it take for the credibility of the SNP as a disciplined body to fall to bits and with it the message they are clearly wanting to bring to the UK public. 

Think before you vote

Labours good luck note to the incoming Coalition after loosing the election five years ago.  How true were Liam Byrnes words.

How much is Ed Milibands house worth?

One of the phrases that has been doing the rounds this last week of the campaign has been Labour will speak up for the workers as if they are some minority that is being done down by the Coalition.  It’s been used time and time again.  The workers, they must be a distinct group of nearly extinct people that Ed wants to speak up for.

This confuses me.  In Scotland we have 94% of people eligible to work in work.  Which leaves 6% unemployed.  Some of that 6% will be what we call residual unemployment, people between jobs for example. 

Ed Miliband, in these class ridden statements, invites us to comment.  And I will. Ed Miliband is the only party leader whose house would be hit by Labour's mansion tax.  The Labour leader's north London home is worth a whopping £2.7m, more than triple the area's average house price, according to online property portal Zoopla which also reckons a Labour win would be bad for housing.  And Zoopla should know better than any politician.

It really is the economics of the madhouse from Labour.  Business leader after business leader I meet has the same story.  They struggled to get out of the the mess the last Labour government left us with. And crucially they are enjoying a little bit of growth and stability now.  They hold their heads in their hands when they listen to Labour and the SNP. Tax and spend. It brings back the memories of the last time Labour had their hands on the wheel when Ed Miliband, Gordon Brown and Ed Balls, the man who aspires to be chancellor, drove us to the edge of the the fiscal cliff, and they are still in denial of what they did.

Ed hasn’t a clue what it’s like to be a “worker”.  He’s never been one.  Or what it’s like to be a business owner as he so clearly demonstrated in the three way leaders debate on BBC.  He just doesn’t get that the public sector needs a dynamic productive sector.

In a Sky News question-and-answer session with young voters, the Labour leader was asked about his life experience outside politics.  What qualifies him to represent the people of Britain?

His answer: “I’ve done a number of things which I think, I hope, are relevant to this. I was obviously an economic adviser in the Treasury and I think that’s important. I think that’s important because the economy and how we change our economy is at the heart of the country.  I’ve taught. I taught at Harvard University.  I actually taught around government and economics and I think that, actually, one of the things that that did for me … [was the ability] to listen and engage with people about what their issues are, what they’re interested in.”  Read that answer again.  Let it sink in.  He's done nothing in the real productive world that pays for the politicians promises. (It was in 2003 that he did his stint in Harvard, a year's sabbatical, to study and lecture at Harvard's Centre for European Studies, before becoming an MP for the safe seat of Doncaster North in 2005).

Yes, I’ve been personal here, a thing I’ve consistently tried not to be in my blog.  But it’s the hypocrisy.  It's breathtaking.  And if you vote Labour, that's what you're voting for.

When is a mandate not a mandate?

It is interesting to hear Scotland’s First Minister time and time again talking about the wishes of the Scottish people.  Assuming that she does get the seats landslide the polls are suggesting, according to a TNS survey in Scotland she will still only have garnered around 54% per cent of the votes cast by the electorate.  

In other words, given the turnout won’t be 100%, it’s highly unlikely she will have persuaded a majority of Scots to vote for her.  Even if there is a whopping 84% turnout like there was at the referendum last year, Nicola will only have had 45% of Scottish people voting for her.

So when she claims to speak for the people of Scotland, hardly.  And if indeed she does get her wish and her influence is writ large over an incoming Labour government, I hope she remembers who she will be representing, the more than 50% of the electorate that didn’t vote for her.  But somehow I don’t think I’ll ever hear Nicola saying that.

And while we are on the subject of the SNP, it is pretty amazing to hear some of their ground troops at Hustings and on the streets indulging in what can only be called bully boy tactics.  Shouting to drown out people who have a different view is a sad reflection on where politics has descended over the past few years.  Nothing wrong with a good robust conversation.  But we all know where the fine line is crossed.  And too often it’s the SNP supporters who are crossing it.

Why drive something like a Golf when you can drive a Golf?

Do you remember that classic VW Golf advert, the one where various people said thing like, "it sounds just like a Golf".  Of course the punch line was "Why drive something like a Golf when you can drive a Golf?".  Why indeed.  You want the real thing.

Which leads me very quickly and neatly into todays revelation by Ed Miliband that Labour will stick to Conservative borrowing plans and not exceed them.  Well, of course in the obscure way he has, he didn't quite commit Labour to that and that will be his fall back position.  But any normal listener will have heard Ed say just that. 

So, with Labour seemingly agreeing to keep to an increasing number of pledges the Conservatives have made, why would you settle for something sounds like the Conservatives when you can have the real thing?

The light at the end of the tunnel may not be an oncoming train.

Across a number of marginal seats, Survation, found that 46% of Tory voters and 37% of Labour voters would back the Lib Dems if their own candidate had little chance of winning.

So let’s take one such seat, East Dunbartonshire, where Jo Swinson (Lib Dem) is fighting the seat.

Let's do the arithmetic. In the latest Lord Ashcroft poll taken 17^th April, it suggested that the following would be the result. Then along comes Survation with their more recent poll. I've applied the Survation effect to the Lord Ashcroft poll and the results are very interesting.  No wonder the Lib Dems are throwing the kitchen sink at East Dunbartonshire.

Party                        Ashcroft Poll        Survation Applied

Conservative                12.00%                       6.48%
Labour                         16.00%                      10.08%
Liberal Democrat          29.00%                      40.44%
UKIP                           1.00%                          1.00%
SNP                            40.00%                      40.00%
Green                          1.00%                        1.00%

So assume the Tory and Labour voters do as the Survation poll suggests they might do, Jo Swinson would get an additional 11.44% of the vote, enough to give her the seat by 0.44%.  And it sure isn’t all over yet if you replicate that in other seats.  For example, across the Clyde in East Renfrewshire, Jim Murphy (Labour) may also benefit from the bounce with Lib Dem and Tories abandoning their party to get Jim Murphy back in. 

But there is nothing new in this in a sense, certainly in Scotland.  Tactical voting has been a factor in elections for decades given Scotland has had a four party system in full swing unlike south of the border where it’s been two party dominance.

So if one thing is sure, every vote counts in this election.

They still think it's all over....

How far back can your memory go?  I suppose it's the thing you notice as the years go by, you remember more from years ago.  I'm sure there must be a medical word or expression that covers it. 

I was in one of these flashback moments the other day.  Clear as a bell it was.  Labour were going to win the 1992 General Election.  Everyone said so.  The polls.  The media.  The pundits.

Even Neil Kinnock the Labour Party leader thought everything was going to be all right on the night.

And who can forget the presumptuous Labour Party rally.  Oh yes, it was all over bar the counting of the votes.  John Major would sink without trace.

Then the unthinkable happened.  It didn't happen that way.  Red faces all round. And if my memory serves me correctly, John Major ended up with more votes than any other Prime Minster in history.  And he got a majority of MPs too so he formed the next government.

So it's not over in the 2015 version, by a long way.

Who gets the keys?

The months are turning into weeks. The weeks to days.  And soon it will be days to hours.  And before we know it we will be hearing Returning Officers across the UK telling us what individual has been elected to serve that constituency.

Then it's the morning after the night before.  My view is it won't go to this and a single figure Conservative majority will emerge. But what if there is no overall majority?  Who gets the first go at forming a group of parties that would give them the most seats?  Should it be the party with the most seats?  Or the party with fewer seats that thinks it can cobble together a majority? 

Well, how about we adopt a position that apparently is clear in the minds of some.  Certainly one candidate for the keys to Number 10 thinks it's clear anyway.   He said the “constitutional position is clear” and “very simple”.   In the event of a hung parliament “the Prime Minister gets to have the first crack”.  

Sound fair?  I though so too.  So who said that?  None other than Ed Miliband.

So Ed has already conceded that Dave gets first crack at it if he gets the greater number of seats. 

Sometimes party leaders must wish YouTube had never been invented.

A moral compass

There was an interesting point in the debate last night when one gentleman suggested David Cameron had not talked about morality.  Which in one sense was true.  But in another more real sense the gentleman misunderstood what the whole political process is about.  You start with values (or call it morality) and you then devise policies to match that vision.  So you may not talk directly about morality but all you seek to achieve should reflect it.

So, a few thoughts about what having a moral compass brings in policy terms.

1.         An economic policy that allows for people to regain dignity through the creation of 2 million jobs since 2010 - 83% of which have been full-time, not zero hours contracts.  This has to be the No 1 achievement of David Cameron's time in office.  We all remember the cries from Ed Miliband and Ed Balls that unemployment would soar. They were wrong.

2.         As any family knows a deficit is bad news.  So in the UK family the deficit was a crippling factor that had to be dealt with.  What is interesting is even though half the deficit has now gone, some still think it was too much too fast.  But is it not a moral position to adopt to avoid this generation's debts falling on our children's shoulders?  Nearly every cut the Coalition has made has been opposed by the Labour.  Britain is slowly on its way back to fiscal sanity.

3.         Dignity.  Making work pay.  Two sides of the same coin.  Surely it’s a moral case to target welfare on those in real need.  Surely it’s a moral argument that says people who aren't genuinely seeking work should be sanctioned. Surely it’s a moral case to have a policy that will provide more certainty for low income people as they decide whether or not to move from benefits to work.  It will ensure that work always pays.

4.         How we help the really poor on our planet has to be a measure of morality.  Under the Coalition the UK became the first nation to spend 0.7% of national income on overseas aid.  If that doesn’t make you proud then you and I are not on the same page in life.

5.         Discrimination is wrong.  So no matter your view on same sex marriage, morally you must agree there shouldn’t be discrimination.  And like most reforms that have delivered equality in this and indeed in many other areas of life, they will make for a better more tolerant society. 

6.         Slavery has never gone away.  It was just made illegal.  Trafficking became the new order.  But the moral case to break trafficking saw The Home Secretary Theresa May legislate against human trafficking.  The new law consolidated human trafficking and slavery crimes, provided better protection for victims and harsher punishments for traffickers.

So when our friend in the audience suggests there is no morality in what the current Coalition have done, he needs to look again.  

They think it's all over, it is now. Almost.

Have you event noticed how some football teams develop a habit of conceding a goal in extra time?  After watching last night’s three way Leaders Question time, an interrogation by a balanced and clearly knowledgeable audience, the same thing happened.  It started with Edward Miliband talking about zero hours contracts but then completely failing to answer the man who ran a tourist business who, because it’s a seasonal business, couldn’t dream of taking on people full time.  But he employs lots on zero hours contracts.  The way Edward looked quizzically at him as if to say, what kind of bizarre question is that, and the way he answered him was so alarming for anyone who is in business.  He just didn’t understand how the productive sector of the economy that actually creates the wealth that allows us to have hospitals, police, army, international aid works.  He just doesn’t get it.

One problem with Edward is he preoccupied with the wrong things.  Of course inequality is wrong.  It’s bad for a society.  And he is right to talk about it.  But his prescription of attacking those who actually create the wealth is simplistic and ultimately will be found wanting.  His prescription is an increase in taxes such as restoring the 50p level for high earners and imposing an ill-conceived mansion tax.  There needs to be balance and he displays none.

But Edwards other problem is he has too often found himself on the wrong side of the argument.  If you look at an earlier blog on energy prices you see he doesn’t understand how they work.  Maybe it is a sector badly set up and regulated.  But at least understand how they are set up before trying to change them.  He promised to freeze energy prices shortly before world prices collapsed. So we would be paying higher prices for oil than the market was selling it for at the moment under his plan.

Then there are the banks.  Yes, I know in partnership with Gordon Brown they brought us to our knees.  And David Cameron’s flourishing of the Liam Byrne letter reminded us of that.  But you need considered reform.  What’s the point in taking the moral high ground then losing the contribution the sector makes to the UK economy. In 2014, financial and insurance services contributed £126.9 billion in gross value added (GVA) to the UK economy, 8.0% of the UK's total GVA.  The sector's contribution to UK jobs is around 3.4%.   And in 2013/14, the banking sector alone contributed £21.4 billion to tax revenue.  That’s a lot of money a future chancellor is going to have to replace if banks decided to up sticks and go to Geneva.  Now, I’m not defending the banks.  They and Gordon Brown caused the mess.   I’m saying, have a plan.

At least New Labour understood that markets can be harnessed to progressive outcomes.  It's interesting that at a time of economic challenge, when we look over our shoulder and think we could have been Greece or Spain, we should even want to think about upsetting the applecart and give the guy who was Gordon Browns right hand man as they drove us to the edge of the cliff a chance at the wheel again so soon.  Do we really want a deficit and over spending denier at the wheel? That's what Mr Miliband was last night.

Interestingly, there seems to be a realisation that the last five years actually have been pretty stable. The FT come out and suggest that “at this delicate moment, the best outcome would be a continuation of the 2010 coalition between the Conservatives and Lib Dems…The country would benefit from the countervailing force of Lib Dem moderation at Westminster. In seats where the Lib Dems are the incumbent or the main challenger, we would vote tactically for them.”

And the problem for Labour is, it’s their own fault they will fail in this election.  The primary thing that the British people are waking up to is Mr Miliband has not offered a credible economic prospectus and would apply a brake on enterprise.  So a vote for Labour would bring about a poorer nation that ultimately would bring about more inequality, the verything that that Edward is seeking to get rid of.