Cameron’s candidate list is like his cabinet: full of empty suits

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David Cameron and Tory election candidate Chris Davies: A suit full of hot air next to a suit full of nothing at all.

Here’s one to file under “missed opportunities”: David Cameron passed within seven miles of Vox Political central and we didn’t know about it.

He made a surprise visit to the Royal Welsh Show in Llanelwedd, Radnorshire, to talk about some agricultural scheme – but we don’t need to discuss that. Nor do we need to discuss the fact that the bronze bull statue in nearby Builth Wells town centre was found to have had its tail ripped off shortly after the visit; it would be wrong to suggest that the comedy Prime Minister was responsible but if he starts sporting a uniquely-shaped swagger stick, well, you read it here first.

We don’t even need to discuss the fact that Cameron arrived by helicopter, which is an exorbitantly expensive form of travel. Yr Obdt Srvt was watching a documentary about a Doctor Who serial made in 1969 and featuring a helicopter – just starting the rotors cost £70, which was a lot more money then than it is now! Next time you hear that there isn’t enough money around, bear in mind that this government always has the cash to hire out a pricey chopper!

No, Dear Reader – what was really shocking was the fact that Cameron allowed himself to be photographed with Chris Davies, the Tory Potential Parliamentary Candidate for Brecon and Radnorshire – a man who this blog has outed as having no ideas of his own, who parrots the party line from Conservative Central Headquarters and who cannot respond to a reasoned argument against the drivel that he reels off. Not only that but the new Secretary of State for Wales was also at the Showground – his name is Stephen Crabb and he is on record as saying that the role is “emptied and somewhat meaningless”.

Bearing this in mind, those who didn’t attend the event, but would like to recreate the spectacle of David Cameron flanked by Messrs Davies and Crabb, can simply fill a few children’s party balloons with hot air, arrange them in a roughly human shape, and put a suit on them – that’s Cameron – then add two more, empty, suits on either side.

Discussion of empty suits brings us inexorably to the dramatic cabinet reshuffle Cameron carried out last week, in which he replaced his team of tired but recognisable old fools with a gaggle of new fools nobody’s ever heard of. The whole situation is reminiscent of a routine that Ben Elton did back in 1990, when he was still a Leftie comedian.

Still topical: Ben Elton’s ‘cabinet reshuffle’ routine from 1990.

The parallel with today is so close that the routine may be paraphrased to fit the moment:

These days the cabinet minister is a seriously endangered species, constantly culled by the boss… How stands the team today? All the personalities have been de-teamed, and Mr Cameron was rather left with a rack full of empty suits. So he reshuffled Philip Hammond, a suit full of bugger-all from Defence across to the Foreign Office. Then he reshuffled Nicky Morgan, a skirt-suit full of bugger-all who had been at the Treasury for 13 whole weeks. She was reshuffled to Education and is also now Minister for Women and Equalities. A suit full of bugger-all called Wright, who nobody had heard of that morning, became Attorney General. This is the British cabinet we are dealing with; not the local tea club.

Now Nicky Morgan, come on, be honest, six months ago, who’d heard of her? Hardly anyone. Since then she’s been Financial Secretary to the Treasury and Education Secretary; nobody can say the girl hasn’t done well because she has. She reminds me of Jedward – everyone’s saying, ‘She may be rubbish but at least she’s trying!’

Who the hell is Jeremy Wright? He’s the Attorney General, that’s who. When he leaves home for work in the morning, even his wife doesn’t recognise him! ‘Bye bye darling – who the hell are you?’ … I confidently expect to see Keith Lemon elevated to cabinet status, with Gary Lineker becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer due to his amazing powers of prediction (“The Germans really fancy their chances, but I don’t see that”). He’ll be joined at the Treasury by financial wizard Jimmy Carr. Katie Hopkins takes over as Iain Duncan Smith so no change there.

This isn’t a party political thing. There have been lots of towering figures in cabinet before. Tebbit! Heseltine! … Lawson! You may not have liked them but at least you’d heard of them! These days, what have you got? The only reason a ‘dramatic’ reshuffle is ‘dramatic’ is because it takes so long to prise all their faces off the team leader’s backside, that’s why! They’re all stuck down there like limpets; they’re clinging on to the mother ship! If they all breathed in at once, they’d turn him inside-out.

That’s why they all speak so strangely – their tongues are all bruised and knotted from the team leader trying to untangle the top Tory tagliatelli flapping about behind.

Cabinet government is one of the safeguards of our precious democracy. It involves discussion, consensus, and it has produced great cabinets on both sides of the House. Churchill – the largest, perhaps the greatest political figure in the last century – a Tory, he was a constant thorn in the side of his boss, Baldwin. Wilson included Tony Benn, even though they were never friends, let’s face it. Heath employed Mrs Thatcher. They all understood that cabinet is a microcosm of democracy – but these days, it’s different. Nobody must dissent in cabinet. And nobodies are exactly what we’ve got.

There was more talent and personality in JLS – and at least they knew when to quit.

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Social housing abyss means bedroom tax will cost us dearly

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The Manchester Gazette ran this striking image alongside an article on what the bedroom tax would mean for that city. You can tell that they weren’t thrilled.

The failure of government to replenish social housing means that the introduction of the ‘bedroom tax’ from April next year will lead to a huge increase in human suffering.

It was (of course) the Conservative Party that first decided to sell off council houses, at discounts that went up to 70 per cent. The first sales took place in 1980, piloted by Michael Heseltine, after the plan had appeared in the Tory manifestos for 1974 and 1979.

Even then, the Tories were obsessing about shrinking the state. This, and the now-infamous privatisation of state industrial/utility assets, were both conceived as populist moves to encourage private sector alternatives indirectly. They understood that the welfare state was popular and that a frontal assault on it would harm their own credibility.

The plan was phenomenally successful. By 1990, 1.2 million houses had been sold – one-fifth of the entire council house stock. The sales raised £20 billion.

Whatever happened to that money?

We know it did not go into new council house construction – the annual level slumped from 86,000 to 21,000 during the 1980s and this meant there was a worsening social housing shortage by 1990.

Now, more than 20 years further on, that shortage is diabolical.

Everyone who is affected will know that the bedroom tax affects anyone who has a bedroom that is going spare, according to strict rules devised by the Coalition government. I’ve gone into these rules elsewhere so I won’t rehash them.

The intended result – what the government wants – is generally taken to be that people with too many bedrooms will ‘downsize’; they’ll move into smaller homes.

The problem with that is: there aren’t any. This means people who no longer have the funds to stay where they are will have no choice but to continue doing so anyway, getting into a debt that they may not be able to repay.

Housing associations have already stated that they cannot afford to fund the deficit that is likely to build up, meaning they will throw people out onto the streets.

But don’t take my word for it. Many Vox readers are affected by this. Let’s see what they have to say.

“I’d bet money that most social housing countrywide is (or was – before the great sell-off of the 1980s and 1990s) three-bedroomed,” according to my blogging colleague Smiling Carcass. “Almost all were built as homes for families; three and four bedrooms, gardens, and flats generally had two or more bedrooms. There just isn’t, and never was, enough single accommodation to displace all the ‘under-occupied’ people from three- and four-bedroomed houses because they were conceived as family homes for life.”

How about this from Joanna Terry: “Not only is there an issue with the amount of one-bed properties available, (none where I live) but what about those just below pension age that need to sleep in separate bedrooms because of their health (I have a friend like this)? You can’t force people like this, not without causing phenomenal stress.”

“This will massively impact, mostly on the women now in their 50s who are divorced,” wrote Victoria Brown. “Chances are they are the same women who have struggled and raised children alone on either benefits or very low income jobs and because that child has flown the nest that is the reason they now have a spare room. We are alone and childless with no purpose and soon no home too. Many will kill themselves rather than live on the streets or commit a crime to at least get prison accommodation because there are no one-bedroom properties for us to downsize in to and there is no spare cash if you are on benefits to pay the Bedroom Tax with.”

Tony Bennet wrote: “There are times I feel like giving up. The more I read about these changes, the more I see it will affect us and we will be lucky to keep our home. With the changes to DLA and the UC I can’t see how I will be able to pay our bills and feed us.”

Morry: “I am going to be taxed on a box room that you might – if you’re lucky – fit a single bed in, and that would be it. I can barely manage to survive as it is and that means wearing as much clothing as possible and keeping the heat off as long as possible and living on salad and sandwiches. I have also been trying to get out of this house for the last five years.”

Graham: “We have asked for a bungalow/ground floor flat – one-bedroomed, so no stairs to climb. Guess what? There are none – not enough to go around. The Government know this, but they are intoducing a law to tax us knowing that there are not enough houses.”

There are not enough houses.

Back in 1974, the then-simply-Margaret Thatcher MP outlined her plans: “Our new policies are designed for the needs of today. A nation of home owners, who will be self-reliant, independent and able to do what they want with their own lives in their own homes.”

That was her self-professed dream. It seems modern Conservatives, propped up by the Liberal Democrats, are determined to turn it into a nightmare.