Posts Tagged ‘Conservatives’

When London Student interviewed Frank Dobson, Labour MP for Holborn & St. Pancras, as well as his Liberal Democrat rival, Jo Shaw, we contacted – but couldn’t arrange to interview – Tory candidate, George Lee. Given the chance to make his case, however, George now speaks to Alex Naamani.

George Lee is the Conservative candidate running for Holborn and St Pancras. Following London Student’s interviews with Frank Dobson and his Liberal Democrat rival Jo Shaw, we ask a third contendor about the ‘credit crunch’, apprenticeships as an alternative to universities, tuition fees, and ‘domestic terrorism’.
On the ‘credit crunch’, Lee insisted that “in 1997, the Blair Government took over the best set of economic data any government ever inherited. Unemployment, inflation and interest rates were all down. They’ve blown it”.
When I insisted that Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize Winner for Economics praised Gordon Brown’s handing of the economic crisis, Lee maintained: “I can name you lots of others who said differently.”
Lee cited “Danny Quah the current Nobel Prize nominee”, who “said in his lecture on 4th Nov 2009, to much laughter, that he and many others don’t think Gordon Brown saved the world.”
“Moreover”, he stressed: “we are still in a recession. All other major economies are not.” Lee continued: “we entered this recession worse prepared than any other major economy; entering with the biggest debt”.
“The debt”, Lee assured me, “was fuelled by Brown raiding the private pension schemes, thus creating a blackhole. “This drove many people to speculate on proprieties. The consequence was the housing bubble, increases in second home ownership, and lots of low pay buyers unable to buy homes.”
After asking Lee how a Conservative Government might have handled the ‘credit crunch’ differently, Lee insisted that “the first thing you do is put a National Credit Guarantee Scheme in place to encourage banks to lend to large and small businesses”.
He went on to stress that the “reason banks were not lending being that there was a contrary government directive for them to recapitalise and save. How can banks lend and save at the same time?”
When I stressed that the Conservative Party appeared to be doing little to get people back into work, Lee returned: “if the National Credit Guarantee Scheme was adopted, good sound businesses would still be running. They would be able to secure jobs”.
Furthermore; “the Conservatives have lots of proposals to stimulate the job market with improved tax provisions to encourage businesses to hire people, creating more flexible working conditions and also increasing apprenticeships and employment training.”
I challenged Lee, insisting that the Conservative Party was the only major party opposed to the nationalisation of Northern Rock, though nationalisation was recognised as necessary at the time. Lee hit back: “I totally disagree with these assumptions regarding the need for the Government to step in”.
“I believe the only reason Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley were nationalised, was because they were both Northern building societies and banks. There were Labour seats to be lost”. Lee added: “I don’t think those building societies and banks were ever going to drag the economy down”.
Naturally, when London Student interviewed Jo Shaw, the Lib Dem candidate was more critical of the Conservative party. “For the last 12 years they cheered on Labour’s light-touch regulation of the City”, she claimed. Shaw elaborated that “George Osborne would have failed to provide support for banks while unemployment is rising”.
Lee explained the rationale for “allowing Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley to go into administration just like any other failed business”, as being: “depositors’ monies were already guaranteed up to £50K so they weren’t going to be any major social impacts”.
Declaring that “Brown’s finger prints are all over this crime scene, Lee went on: “the reason Bradford and Bingley failed was because they went into the buy to let loans market, created by Brown’s raid on the pensions. These loans became toxic once the crunch began and the housing bubble burst”.
We moved from the social impact of the ‘credit crunch’ onto ideological views towards society in general. Lee described himself as a “one-nation”; essentially “centrist” Conservative. “I would not have joined the Conservative Party ten years ago”, Lee explained. “We were the nasty party”. Lee comes out in support of “social justice and community cohesion”; concepts he argues “are central to compassionate Conservatism”.
Stressing the importance of social justice, Lee emphasised: “I certainly believe that we should have a welfare state that provides a safety net for people. I also believe that we should have a ladder to allow people to climb as high as they can”.
Lee highlighted the importance of “individual responsibility for your actions”. He outlines as one of his concerns about society today; “the fear that some adults have about interfering with kids on the street, which stems from a concern that allegations regarding assault against kids, might be made”. Accordingly, Lee advocates “encouraging people to speak out when something is not right in their community, so as to take back ownership and pride in their neighbourhoods”.
Lib Dem Jo Shaw adopts a somewhat similar hands-off approach with regards to the state. “Our starting point is that we let people get on with things. We espouse individual liberties”. “The state only has to intervene to set rules or laws when someone’s behaviour has too negative an impact on another person”.
That is not to say she is anti-welfarist. “Our goal is to lift every low-income family out of income tax altogether with a tax-free £10,000 allowance.” Shaw told me “middle-income families would be £700 better off.”
Naturally, Frank Dobson placed himself “fairly to the left” on the political spectrum. Consistent with his ‘leftist’ stance, Dobson outlines the minimum Wwge and tax credits as “some of the most successful aspects of Blair’s governments”. He added that these “Old Labour” elements “enabled the worst off to receive the biggest boost in their practical income that they have ever received in the history of this country”.
Frank Dobson also came out strongly against the 42-day Bill, reminding me: “I was the leader of the Labour revolt against locking people up for 42 days”.
Regarding the 42-day Bill, Lee’s position was that “we have given up many of our rights through anti-terrorism legislation, but is this sacrifice worthwhile with the release of terrorists?”. 
Speaking as en ex-cop, Lee criticised the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan Lockerbie bomber, insisting the release “gives the message that you can shoot a policeman, bomb our cities, kill people, and if the price is right, we’ll release you in ten years time”.
“Does it also mean that the 7/7 bombers might also be released in seven or eight years time because someone’s comes up with the oil and the money?”
He added: “it sends a totally wrong message to our troops in Afghanistan”, to whom “we’re saying you’re keeping us safe from terrorists”, but “when you release a guy like [al-Megrahi], it’s just not worth while”. 
Concluding on universities and tuition fees, Lee reminded me that Alex Jones of the NUS, has praised David Willetts [Shadow Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills], for outlining that the Conservatives would not support a £7,000 tuition fee increase, on the grounds that universities have not justified why they need it and that any review must have within its ranks student representatives.”
Encouraging apprenticeships as a viable alternative to university, Lee rhetorically asked, “Why do we think that fifty per cent of all kids have to go to university? It’s a crazy notion.
“Kids are being sent to university to do degrees that are totally worthless. A lot of the degrees that I see today were vocational courses not that long ago”.
Lee described a degree as “common currency.” He added that “degrees have been devalued. Employers are more selective about who they employ. Unfortunately, it’s the Russell Group Universities that get looked at first”.
Lee outlined “100,000 apprenticeship places” as an alternative, insisting that “there’s no shame in encouraging kids to go and do an apprenticeship, and thereby get a trade for life.”

Despite our best efforts, Adrian Oliver, the Green Party candidate for Holborn and St. Pancras, could not be contacted. To view the arguments
advanced in the last issue of London Student  by Frank Dobson and Jo Shaw,  respectively Labour MP and Lib Dem candidate for the same constituency, go to www.london-student.net.

“I’m pretty much restless about everything and want to make things better”, says, Nick Walkley, recently appointed chief executive of the Conservative-led London Borough of Barnet, “it’s my trademark”. Is it? I can think of one or two fairly well known people who might have something to say about that. For instance, Gandhi. Or the X-Men.
His use of the word ‘trademark’ is depressing as well as contentious. It suggests a view of humankind pitched somewhere between Hobbes and Adam Smith, where virtues exist only as a means of getting one over on our fellow man, to the extent that you should really register your temperance and grace with the intellectual property office before some other unscrupulous do-gooder beats you to it.
Aptly enough, the media coverage of Walkley’s comments came on the back of news that, as part of a drive to cut costs and increase efficiency in light of increasing public debt, his council are planning to adopt the business model of budget airlines like Ryanair and easyjet. The idea is that you start charging people for things previously thought of as part of the package. So, on a Ryanair flight you have to pay for dinner and in Barnet elderly people have to pay for respite care.
But if you let the comparison get that far you’ve already missed the point. It’s a bit like misdirection in a magic trick, where, if, say, you don’t notice that it’s not Derren Brown who’s walked back on stage, and assume it’s him scribbling stuff on a white board, you’ll be really impressed when he strolls on at the end. If you’re seriously considering what business model a local authority should adopt you’re already equating government with business, just like Nick Walkley equates altruism with the Nike Swoosh.
A business like Ryanair operates in several markets where consumers are able to exercise choice. The air travel market, where if people don’t like having to pay extra for meals they can go elsewhere; the transport market, where the alternative is going by train; and the free market, where if people don’t like it they can just go for a swim.
A government operates on the assumption that it provides things which either you don’t or shouldn’t have a choice about. You don’t or you shouldn’t, for instance, have a choice about whether someone else can shoot you or not.
Saying a government should operate like a business, implies that it’s in a market where people can choose whether to use it. Just like Ryanair are justified in charging for meals because potential customers can choose to use British Airways, Barnet are justified in not providing live-in wardens for the elderly because pensioners can just move to Islington.
Except they can’t. There are whole groups in society – the old, the poor, the disabled, the young, what with the recession, actually, most of us, who can’t afford to shop around local authorities, let alone countries. If Barnet don’t provide live-in wardens for sheltered accommodation, those pensioners who use it won’t suddenly discover the money to move to Islington. If they could, they wouldn’t need to live in sheltered accommodation in the first place.
What’s disingenuous about the comparison between government and business is that the people who make it don’t really mean that all public services can be compared to business costs. Very few of them would suggest cutting back on a police-force, or an army, things which even the wealthy can’t afford to provide for themselves. So, really, it’s a way of reducing the amount of tax the best-off pay to as little as they can possibly get away with.
A council that says it’s operating like easyjet isn’t just naff, it’s sneaky. It’s surreptitiously redefining things we might have thought of as a local government’s duty to provide, like comfort and security for old age pensioners as optional extras. That is fine for those of us who have got the cash to shop around, but pretty grim for those of us who don’t.

London Student has discovered that right-wing think tank Policy Exchange is set to advise David Cameron to free Russell Group Universities from state control – establishing a British ‘Ivy League’. Read the rest of this entry »