On not getting it, Mandelson style

This morning Mandelson gave what, 13 years ago, would have been an excellent speech. It promised all sorts of glowing things. We would have an economy built on innovation and industry. Government would facilitate. It would reform politics. What was there not to like?

The answer, of course, is that it is not 13 years ago. Labour has had a long time to go down the routes that Mandelson mapped out, but had not. But there is something more.

In promising to reform politics and the economy, Mandelson repeatedly used the phrase that the Tories "did not get it". In doing this, he showed that far from bringing any improvement to political life, he continues to inhabit the world of spin. Intelligent argument is eschewed in favour of attractive buzz-words and slogans. The Tories "do not get it"!! And don't ask about the last 13 years, because "we get it". In short, Labour has seen the light, praise the Lord!!

But what does Labour get:

- So, it will make constituencies of similar size giving up its in built advantage in the name of fairness? No.

- It will give Scotland and Wales a proportionate number of MPs? No.

- Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs won't be able to determine for England policies which, for their own constituencies, are nothing to do with Westminster? No - heaven forbid.

What they have done is go root through the voting systems and take out the only one that promises to skew the system even more in their favour. They have latched onto the Alternative Vote System. Even here, they are equivocal. They doubtless know that an unpopular Fourth Term Labour Government might find itself hammered under Alternative Voting. All it needs is for them to disillusion the country so much that they cease to be the second choice of most LibDems.

What else do we find from Mandelson? Wealth through investment in the universities. Is this the same Mandelson who recently cut their budget - something which facilitated Darling announcing new special funding. A new politics? An end to spin? I think not.

And they will secure the (doubtful) economic revival... This is the party that bought into not one but three Ponzi schemes during the last 13 years:

1. The Ponzi scheme of debt.
2. The Ponzi scheme of expanding the economy through immigration - you need more immigrants for the next expansion, and to pay for the services when the old ones settle down and do awkward thingsw like have children, grow old, fall ill, etc.
3. The Ponzi scheme of out-sourcing - it may make some businesses more profitable, but it does have obvious limitations as a long term business plan.

But forget all of this,because, Labour "gets it".

It is a desire to wipe out the last 13 years, and present again the fresh faced promise that seemed so attractive in Blair's 1997 victory speech.

But we know that they have failed because their methods have failed. They have targets which are corrupted into a "tick box" culture. Hospitals become breeding grounds for germs. Pointless appointments are scheduled so that a patient can "see a consultant" within a time frame, after which it can be "no-business as usual". Discipline collapses in the class room - and, even if there is some irony at Guardian reading teachers squealing at the inevitable outcome of their own progressive principles, it is a very bad thing for our future.

Labour doesn't get it. But it still corrupts politics with facile slogans. Sadly, that infection has also spread to the Tories.

A strange turn of events

Labour's rise in the polls has been built largely on a simple trick. Mandelson and Brown simply do not acknowledge any defeats or blows made against them. It would be very easy for an intelligent man to agonise about having once denied the need for cuts and (shortly after) presented himself as a man who could be trusted to cut public spending. Similarly, we would probably worry about presenting ourselves as having succeeded in controlling immigration, when it has merely fallen a little from record heights achieved on our watch.

But why worry if you can simply ignore those problems. Why be concerned if you can flatly deny them when the heat is on, and sneak out an apology later. Do not admit a failing when being cross-examined in Chilcott enquiry. Do not admit in PM's questions that the whole G20 was out of recession first. You mislead the enquiry, and put up a good show when it matters most. And you pretend (to cheers) that Spain is a G20 member.

Like Eddie Murphy in the sketch, and Shaggy is in his song, if you simply ignore your fault regardless of all the evidence, you may just get away with it. Hence, the taunts of Cameron as to Brown's boast of "no more boom and bust", does not ruffle Brown - and Cameron looks like a name caller.

At least that, perhaps, is what you see if you watch too closely. The audience on last night's Question Time seemed almost at times to queue up to call Brown a liar. Maybe the public do not take enough interest to end up giving high marks for artistic impressions to politicians, even when they are spinning tall tales. Like RicRoc's rebuke to Shaggy: but they caught us on camera saying we'd solved boom and bust, that we would lead the world out of recession, that there would be no cuts, etc.

So, maybe Cameron should not worry too much that he seems to be bashing his head against a brick wall trying to get Brown to admit failure.

His worry should instead be to present a positive case, and let the public take care of Brown's nonsense. We have seen with the National Insurance issue that a positive policy can cause havoc to Labour. Labour have committed themselves to outright denunciation of everything about Tory economic policy. They could not cope with the idea of businessmen supporting the opposition. So, they over-reacted and fell into the trap that they have laid for Cameron.

It is obvious that Labour should have respectably disagreed. They should have wheeled out those who back their approach. Then repeat a lot of half-truths and untruths about how the Conservatives have got everything wrong from Northern Rock onwards - Newsnight exploded this, but it still makes a good line. Instead, they ranted and raged. Labour does not really do criticism well.

Will it matter? I think, yes. The polls may go up and down in the next month. But Labour need the aura of being a saffe pair of hands, and they need the Tories to have an aura of danger and incompetence. They need those impressions to be whirling around the heads of undecided voters come 6 May. The sight of businessmen queuing up to endorse supposed "Tory incompetence" was actually good, doubtless helped. But it helped that Labour made it a much bigger story with their hysteria.