Big GDP growth...can Labour try and hide their disappointment

So the figures are in...the UK economy grew by  1% in the last quarter at first estimate beating the 0.7-0.8 predicted by most forecasters....this must be excrutiating figures for Labour. They'll be in the TV studios doing the usual 'We welcome these positive figures, but...'

There are no 'buts'. It's good news! The ONS estimate the boost from GDP tickets as 0.2% of that growth but they didn't seem to make note of the lost productivity while the Olympics was on. Also these figures are posted despite the continuing weakness on the continent and slowdown in other major economies.

Ossie, if you're watching feel free to upgrade yourself to first class this weekend...and have some champagne while you're there! Just don't charge the taxpayer for it...but then again, unlike Ed Balls you never have.

Osborne's Speech - no magic bullet but some new policy

Well, I've just finished watching Osborne's speech to the Tory conference and he's probably never been under as much pressure as he was before this one. 6 months of negative headlines over pasties and caravans and other such trivia have not made him popular. Some argue he's cutting too fast, the Redwood's of this world argue he's not cutting fast enough. I'm an arch pragmatist...given that unemployment is coming down steadily and the private sector job market is also growing apace I think he's judeged it about righr.

What else did he talk about? Well, he took a bazooka to Miliband's 'One Nation' tanks and got them off the Tory lawn but he didn't concentrate on making it an overtly party political attack on the labour party. Unlike his shadow chancellor he actually concentrated the bul on the economy and played on the recent press headlines that the Tories would be seeking to do things for the strivers in Britain...all good red meat for the natural supporter of the Tories and the sort of people who gave Thatcher  their vote in the 80's, which is good because they're still out there. He also nixed the disastrous idea of a wealth tax or mansion tax (and anything that blunts a Vince Cable proposal is welcome). There were two proposals which really caught my eye and I'd love to see some more detail on them.

Firstly this 'Employee Ownership' voluntary scheme. In exchange for less employment rights and regulations employees would receive shares in the company they work for. Now this scheme has a few things that make it worth exploring.

1. It will make it far easier and less risky for an employer to hire people. If it doesn't work out then the employee can belet go.
2. It gives the employee more incentive to make the business a success, they have a stake in the future of the company...they'll work to ensure it's future as theirs is tied in to it...meaning the company would be less likely to sack them anyway.
3. The Treasury would put a 0% rate on any capital gains from these shares.

Personally I thinkEmployee ownership is a great thing, It's like John Lewis writ large. My uncle was one of the Miners who bought Tower Colliery in the 90's and ran it as a successful profitable coal mine for 13 years, in a far better way than the NCB ever managed. I love employee ownership so I think this could be something potentially huge for the workers of Britain,

The second item that caught my eye was the tax relief for Shale Gas. It could be as important to us now as North Sea Oil was to the 80's recovery. And it would also reduce our reliance on overseas oil as well as acting as a stabiliser from increased energy prices. And it indicates that Ed Davey will not be permitted to torpedo it.

He got the tone of the speech right, he's not going to be easing up on the cuts (this is a good thing, the markets will have appreciated that speech and will instead harass the French), he didn't make it a gag a minute but the few jokes he made were well-timed and Mandelsonian (And that is a compliment) in their barbed nature. All in all, while the speech didn't blow the roof off it was a solid outing with a few moments which may prove significant for the future.

This follows on from Solid Speeches by Shapps, Hague and Hammond yesterday. It looks like the Tories have had enough of rope-a-dope and are up for the fight....about bloody time!

Red Ed...prolier than thou!

So this is Ed's great strategic objective this week. To convince the electorate he's just a simple comprehensive schoolboy made good...one of our own. Pull the other one, Edward. You were born with a silver spoon in your gob and nothing offends us proleteriat like a posh boy looking to gain kudos by slumming it with the plebs.

You may have gone to a comprehensive, but it wasn't a crappy comprehensive where hope was at a premium for the pupils. In fact you probably only went to a comprehensive because old Ralph the marxist had an overwhelming belief in the state. You went to the same primary school as Boris and the same university before a spell in Harvard. I'm sure the factory workers in the Midlands can relate. You interned for family friend, Tony Benn and got yourself ensconsed in the Labour party due to family connections. There you came under the wing of Gordon Brown and alongside Ed Balls you 3 helped to engineer the biggest economic balls up in the UK since the great depression. Don't pretend to be one of us, it's an insult. Cameron and Clegg came from similarly priviliged backgrounds but at least they don't try and hide it. In fact, maybe you should take a leaf out of Clegg's book and apologise for the economic shambles you left behind.

Oh, and last night's COMRES poll...you've got to laugh!

Ed Balls Leadership speech (he wishes!)

Blinky was at it again, with another spending promise to add to his recent list (remember the £20 billion he wanted to borrow on a VAT cut and National Insurance Holiday), this time hewants to spend £3 billion (a pittance!) on building 100,000 affordable homes and a stamp duty holiday for first time buyers (Which made no difference to first time buyers the last time they did it). This is not to be no borrowing though, according to Balls....oh no, remember, he was the advisor to 'Prudence' himself. This was to be funded from the sale of the 4g licenses estimated at £3 billion pounds. The trouble is, that there's no guarantee it will raise that figure and in anycase £700 million was already allocated from that in the last budget. So yet again blinky has flunked the economics...so with that a dismal failure, let's move onto the politics...his speech had the look and feel  of a leadership speech. If I were Ed Miliband I would avoid getting onto a train to Bradford any time soon!

Labour Mp with £550k hiiden in secret bank accounts

well this article in the Telegraph will not be good news dor Keith Vaz MP, the chairman of the Home office select commitee. He had the whiff of Sleaze about him back in the Blair era and it looks like it's come back to bite him again. And it does look like that investigation over a decade ago was quietly undermined. Not the story Labour would have wanted at the start of their conference....diddums!

No more pussyfooting from CCHQ...finally

The one constant message over the last 2 years from Tories has been that Ed Miliband is crap. It's not been trumpeted much but anyone who's not a died in the wool Labour supporter that has a vague knowledge of politics has at times reached that assumption.

And in his first major piece of action since  becoming Tory Chairman Michael Green *ahem* Grant Shapps has decided to take the gloves off and give him a tickler to the ribs with the launch of this poster...just in time for Labour conference.

About time too. They've been waiting until Miliband was secure enough to remain Labour Leader for the next election (and 12 months ago it was touch and go) but have now decided to go on the offensive. So it explains why they were pulling their punches for the last 12 months. Now they need to continue to press home the reminder that the two Ed's were Gordon Brown's advisors when he was chancellor, which lead to the biggest boom and bust (even though they thought they'd abolished it) in living memory. The tories will need to be constantly pressing on the front foot on programmes like Newsnight. The likes of Shapps, Fallon, Grayling, Gove and even Osborne (When he does intervene and go on the attack, his barbs usually hit the target but he's not seen nearly enough) will have to be at their combative best.

Labour have had probably the best 6 months they could wish for with the government copping flak fron all sideds of the media. Now is an ideal time to turn the spotlight back onto them and their vacuousness.