Budgeting for the future

I do love budget day in the UK. Yes I am a geek. You can make an educated guess about what the Chancellor is going to say but you just don't know what rabbits will be pulled out of the hat. I am sure to those outside the UK it will seem a bit bonkers that with probably six weeks before a general election, Alistair Darling presented his economic and fiscal plans today and that parliament will spend the time between now and the Easter break debating them. It is one of the quirks of the British political system. We don’t have fixed term parliaments but we do need to have a budget at the end of the financial year.

It was exciting viewing. Clever politicians debating real issues that matter to real people. This is what politics should be all about. Unfortunately, for much of the past year, it hasn’t been and it is depressing. When children in the future study British political history of the early 21^st century, this period will be known for grubbiness and sleaze and this parliament will be known as the Rotten Parliament. A group of politicians, some greedy, some foolish, some both, have reduced the reputation of Parliament to the lowest levels for decades. This is a huge problem, especially with an election coming up. British politics is in dire need of a rebrand. I don’t mean parties softening their logos and coming towards the centre, but politics as a whole repositioning itself. For our democracy to work, people need to have a reason to stop being cynical, they need to want to vote and voters need to start trusting politicians again. That means politicians have to reconnect with voters. We have to believe that politicians understand the challenges of raising a family, running a business, holding down a job. Politicians need to engage with us on real issues, the ones that really matter. The economy, jobs, health, education, crime, transport. The politicians who get this, will be the ones who ought to get the votes.

Battling in the middle

It was at Saturday's Fabian Conference (did I mention I got up at the crack of sparrow to attend this?) that the Dear Leader set out to woo the middle classes. Not necessarily a bad strategy and certainly one that Peter Mandelson is determined the party should follow. What was slightly odd about Gordon Brown's speech was how crude the woo-ing was. I had expected him to talk about so-called middle class values and how Labour would meet middle classs aspirations. What I hadn't anticipated is that GB would actually talk about "middle class jobs", "middle class families" and the "threat to middle class Britain". It felt forced and inappropriate, not least because many of those the party is trying to court don't necessarily regard themselves as middle class. His pledge to protect the "squeezed mainstream middle" literallybrought water to my eyes. My plea to camp GB - more subtle messaging, please.