Cut Along Now

They say Cameron and Johnson don't get on these days. Part of the reason may be the public recognise the Mayor with a little affection as 'Boris' but the PM as Cameron not Dave.

The PM will not ever gain that level of popularity as the masses will suffer plenty of hardship in his 'reign' and although some may pull on the forlock and admire their 'betters' the majority have a bit more dignity and self-respect.

'Bonkers' Johnson has plenty of political courage and is not phased by defying the part line. So he did not hold back when unleashing his views on DWP's intention to take a machete to housing benefit. It is not being a deficit denier to question why someone who has been looking for work for 12 months should qualify for a cut in housing benefit too.

Johnson knows politically his chances of re-election would be very limited if the capping of benefits engineered a series of homogonised wealthy communities purged of the working classes.

But he gives the impression he really beleives in it and has, in his time as Mayor, got a genuine feel for the people and wants to protect a London "where rich and poor can live together. " That's the politics of community and it is welcome to hear a Conservative say it. He went further, "On my watch you are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have put down roots."

Cameron will have none of it and predicatably his press has talked of Johnson being "slapped down" (yawn). The emphasis has shifted to the over the top language he used about "ethnic cleansing". In fact it was Labour's frontbencher Chris Bryant who coined the phrase earlier in the week prompting Dave's ridiculous claims of housing benefit claimants getting £50,000 a year. If such payments even exist they are very exceptional and should not be portrayed as typical.

But Cameron gave the game away when he said these people didn't deserve to live in houses "they couldn't possible dream" of owning. Simon Hoggart of the Guardian said it showed, like many of the upper classes, the PM expects "the poor to lead disagreeable lives".

At least one the 'hoity-toity' is prepared to stand up for them and Cameron will find, given Johnson's greater political ambition, he will be hard to quell.

The Narrowest Shoulders

Politics is not economics. George 'Gideon' Osborne has always conflated the two.

It used to be make him appear simply gauche, underlying his very shallow experience of economic matters. Now he is wielding power, it is far from a joke just for the columnists. His tenure at No. 11 will bring misery to millions and threatens to pull the whole economy into a nose dive.

During yesterday's Spending Review statement, Osborne (and Cameron too in PMQs) declared tritely, the UK was "out of the danger zone". Saying it, doesn't make it so.

Taking £81Bn out of the economy at the precise moment it is emerging groggily from the recession is a huge gamble with the highest of stakes. For all the yarns about huge benefit pay outs and massive capital projects, this amount is still much less than we, the taxpayer, paid out to prop up the banks.

In any event it was, as Alan Johnson pointed out, at least distasteful to see the Government benches cheer with delight at impending hardship for the least advantaged. Housing will no longer be built by Government and council tax rents will rocket. Housing benefit will be slashed. Osborne portays the recipients of this benefit as dole-ites who are making a pretty penny from the sweat of our brows. They don't actually get to keep the money which goes to the landlord, they just get to stay in their home.

Buried in the headlines was the announcement of a US style 12-month limit to those on sickness benefit. This pernicious policy will punish about a million people for living with the misfortune of having mental or physical problems which prevent them from seeking work.

Quite what happens when their time is up is not clear, short of destitution. But even if a few made an extraordinary recovery, they may not find jobs that easy when competing with four million others.

We knew the exact forecast of 490,000 public sector job losses from the couldn't-be-more-independent Office for Budget Responsibility because Danny 'Beaker' Alexander let the press read his briefing notes (above). The Lib-Dems complicity in this is pretty sickening - they are like the annoying ticks who pick on even smaller boys to please the school bullies but still gain no credibility.

Of course, throughout the catalogue of punishments came the soapy word 'fairness' to which Cameron nodded sagely like a benign Lord of the Manor. But I heard none of it, the child benefit cut for higher earners appears to be the only truely progressive measure and has already been shown to be uneven and unfair.

We've been here before, of course. This is 1980-1 all over again but even harsher. The social division from that era is still evident in many areas particularly the industrial ghost towns of Yorkshire, Tyneside and Lancashire. We also had civil unrest and riots then.

To think, the last Tory Prime Minister, John Major, sought "a nation at peace with itself."

Una Sola Familia

The story of the 33 miners trapped half a mile under the Atacama desert since early August may not have much of a political edge. But it was a fully global media event, the first other than sport, since 9/11.

Thankfully the themes here were not chaos, terrorism and retribution but courage, defiance and triumph. It was only the same old human story of men who work underground; now and again we are reminded how dangerous and intensely stressful this work is. Often the miners are struggling with company officials on applying minimum safety standards which really are a matter of life and death.

The emotional peak was reached when the second miner to emerge, Mario Sepulveda, celebrated with his colleagues and rescuers. They chanted 'Viva Chile' singing loud and from the gut. Amid all the misery and turmoil we have for once a great story of inspiration and pride. Viva.

The Impossible Dream

During the General Election campaign, Nick Clegg, did a Vlog for students in an honest bid for their votes. He could say with hand-on-heart only the Liberal Democrats had the policies on tuition fees which students would vote for. He looked down the camera and said raising the cap was "wrong."

Five months later and the Lib-Dems are doing another political pirouette where the old sage Vince Cable (above) is compelled to adopt a laissez-faire approach to higher education. He has accepted wholesale the report from John Browne, former BP Chief Executive whose adherence to pure free-market solutions is hardly a surprise.

If it passes it will allow the BIS to cut University tuition funding by 80 percent so effectively privatising higher education. That's a pretty shameful legacy for anyone seeking to proclaim the achievements of the Liberal cause.

There are rumours of 30 (that's half) of the Lib-Dem MPs are willing to vote against it which with Labour support could actually defeat the Government. Such is the political turmoil at the heart of every Lib-Dem, they will be distraught whatever the result.

George...Don't Do That

'Brilliant' Chancellor George Obsorne, got his first feel of a British political backlash yesterday, after he announced child benefit would no longer paid to the top 15 percent of earners.

For the public, it was quite an unpalatable measure, particularly as exactly a year ago Osborne had promised unequivocally, "we will preserve child benefit."

These cuts would raise a measly £1Bn but they hold a greater symbolic significance by making the first blow against universal benefits. No-one could now accuse them of being 'liberal' again. But instead of introducing a means test, George simply attached identical tax disbenefits to those in 40 percent tax bracket because of the "need to reflect the British sense of fair play. "

Admittedly a means test would have been a worse option, as it puts off many people claiming who are in genuine need. But the outcome of George's little weeze is an obviously unbalanced policy, unfairly punishing families with only one good earner. Families with a dual income of up to £87K will keep child benefit: families with single income of £44K will lose it. Dave said he would try and find other ways of helping, "stay-at-home mothers". So much for the new men of the Tory party.

George and Dave obviously weighed up this 'anomaly' to those little middle class folk and judged it were preferable to a messy system of assessment. Not so, say Middle England (short hand for the Daily Mail) who are thoroughly put out at the unfairness and suggestion that £44K amounts to a wealthy household after mortgage, utilities, council tax, food and clothes are paid for.

Already, Dave has begun to wobble and promised there could be tax reilef for married couples but that does not fill the hole felt by all the 'Mr-and-Mrs-plus-2.4-kids' who voted Tory. The PM may yet learn constantly repeating he is driven by a sense of "fairness" is not enough to convince people who are struggling to pay the bills.

"In the end, politics comes down to guts," said Dame Shirley Williams. This Government's first flirtations with unpopular cuts may be too much for the Tory backbenches who are calling for "compensating measures". The policy could yet be slowly killed through the 1922 Committee.

Unfortunately next time, I fear, George will be determined to make us meet our pain. It won't be long.

Police? I Would Like to Report A Breach of Trust

Putting to one side my inaccurate predictions over David Miliband, attention is turned to the real divsion in the cabinet over the scale and scope of the proposed defence cuts.

Dr Liam Fox, for it is he, made a robust and mostly persuasive case for maintaining levels of funding for troops and their support functions, especially as we are still engaged in our longest war since Napolean.

The media image of handing redundancy notices to heroes from Helmand is at least unedifying. Fox pointed to the "grave consequences" and "political damage" to the PM in a private and throughly leaked letter.

Fox's decision to call in the police to investigate the matter perhaps underlines his Department's guilt in wishing to publicise Treasury dominance on the country's strategic defence capability. But the police?

The Conservatives were suitably outraged when Home Office neurosis over a few leaks, led to an invasion of anti-terrorist police into Parliament and also the arrest of one of their frontbenchers, Damian Green. But now they are in power they can't resist but press the plod button at the first opportunity.

Sky News reported thirty (!) flatfoots pounding around MOD's Main Building pulling out hard-drives and drawing up mobile phone records. I am sure the leaker knows it only takes someone to photocopy a letter and post it to a newspaper to make it completely untraceable.

Let's just say they find it was young Toby from Liam's Private Office. What are the police actually going to do with him other than wag a finger? There is no criminal offence here unless they chose to proceed with the Official Secrets Act. The letter was about budgets not nuclear codes so that would be a dead end.

But what a dramtic loss of dignity. One day Fox looks a solid chap, standing up for his Department (unlike Hunt and Spellman) and the next he looks as mealy-mouthed and reactionary as Old New Labour.

And in the end, we all know the Treasury will win.