Biased Fiona Bruce Reassures Tory Chairman Brandon Lewis on Question Time

Can the Beeb’s political bias get any more blatant? This is a piece of news that Mike covered on his blog last Friday, and it’s important. I’m afraid it’s taken me a week to cover it myself here, because I’m afraid I’ve been unavoidably busy. But this does need further scrutiny, as it’s part of a mountain of evidence showing just how blatant the Beeb is in its outright bias towards the Tories. On last Thursday’s edition of Question Time, host Fiona Bruce asked Tory chairman Brandon Lewis a question he couldn’t answer. After Lewis struggled to say something, Bruce decided to reassure him by saying that she was ‘only teasing’.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/09/13/more-question-time-bias-as-fiona-bruce-pats-brandon-lewis-im-just-teasing-you/

As Mike asked in his article, how is that impartial? It contrasts very strongly with the way the show and Bruce herself treats left-wing guests. Bruce gaslit Diane Abbott when she appeared on the show, telling her that she was wrong even when she was perfectly right. She allows right-wing guests time to answer while cutting left-wing panellists short when they give a reply she doesn’t like. The producers also suddenly sprang right-wing mouthpiece Isobel Oakeshott on Carole Cadwalladr when the Guardian journo was due to appear on the show in order to embarrass her. And in a glaring show of massive journalistic cowardice, QT’s producers pulled out of appearing with Cadwalladr at an event at the Edinburgh Television Festival. Despite having agreed to appear with her, they suddenly found that unavoidable events meant they couldn’t.

The Sage of Crewe over at Zelo Street has also pointed out how the Beeb regularly packs the panel and audience with people from Conservative and right-wing organisations to the exclusion of the left. All while claiming impartiality, of course.

And then there’s the massive bias on the mainstream news programmes. This was shown yesterday by Laura Kuenssberg revealing that Omar Salem, who had criticised BoJob to his face for his destruction of the NHS, was a Labour activist and gave his twitter handle. Salem was the father of an ill seven-day old child being treated at the hospital the Comedy Prime Minister was visiting. He was supported in his comments by a doctor at the hospital, who was appalled at the low standards of patient care due to government policies. But Kuenssberg’s action had the effect her Tory masters were no doubt hoping for: Salem was deluged with abuse by right-wing trolls. Kuenssberg has rightly been criticised for this, and defended on ITV by the odious Piers Morgan in a demonstration of the kind of boorishness and plain bias that has made him notorious.

Kuenssberg the troll: She started a Twitter dogpile on the father of a sick child

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/09/piers-morgan-attacks-father-of-sick.html

Kuenssberg, like her mate John Pienaar and the rest of the BBC news team, has hardly wasted any opportunity that has come her way to attack the Labour party. She has vociferously and aggressively promoted the anti-Semitism smears, as has a recent Panorama special. And there have been any number of the news team, who have left the Beeb to take up residence as Tory spin doctors. And several them have come to the Beeb from the ranks of the Tory party. Like the Manchester Goebbels, Nick Robinson, who was head of his branch of the Young Conservatives or whatever.

It looks to me very strongly like there are only two questions that mean anything in any application to the Beeb’s news service.

1.  Did you go to public school?
2. Are you a member of the Tory party?

If you answer ‘yes’ to both questions, you’re in.

Racists4Rees-Mogg on the Racism, Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism of Rees-Mogg’s Supporters

A few days ago Evolve Politics published an article exposing the massive racism and islamophobia within the Conservative party, and specifically a Facebook group dedicated to getting Boris Johnson elected as the party’s next leader. Another internet campaigner, tweeting under the name of Racists4Rees-Mogg, has been active collecting and exposing tweets from the Young Master’s supporters, which show how vicious racist, anti-Semitic and islamophobic they are. The thread linked below particularly shows this, and the Racists4Rees-Mogg has repeatedly challenged Rees-Mogg himself to do something about them. He says

[THREAD] For months I’ve been asking @jacob_rees_mogg to address the violent threats, abuse and racism his followers display on social media. I’ve had no luck so far, so I’m asking everyone to please retweet this thread, and see if we can get his attention:

The thread gives not just the comment, but also the identity of the tweeter when they have revealed themselves, including their membership of the party. And it’s a grim, disgusting read. The assorted bigots, conspiracy theorists and xenophobic maniacs refer to Gypsies and people of Pakistani origin as ‘Pykies’ and ‘Pakis’, think that Sadiq Khan and Sajid Javid shouldn’t be allowed in government because of their religion, and nor should any other Muslims, want mosques to be bulldozed and think that Muslims are lazy, they should be thrown from bridges. Britain, according to them, is becoming an Islamic ‘sh*thole’, Khan and Javid are ‘political jihadis’, and that Sayeeda Warsi should be deported for protesting against the islamophobia in the Tory party. Another tweeter on the thready, apart from using another racist term for Muslims, refers to Diane Abbott as ‘kinky head’ – hardly surprising, considering the most abused female politico is Abbott. They also discuss various ways of killing Sadiq Khan, others want to see Warsi forced to wear a burka and fear that Britain is being ‘mongrelised’. Another member rants about the Rothschilds and the international Jewish banking conspiracy of Nazi infamy, believes all Muslims are liars and talks about violent immigrant invaders. One woman declares that immigrants and ‘home-grown wasters’ should be sterilised – another real Nazi policy! Another member of the group wants the public hanging of ‘treasonous politicians’. And there is one long thread in which the members of the group discuss preparations for a civil war, and urge each other to buy guns and get shooting licenses. They also support the flogging of some MPs and wish to see the emergence of ‘right-wing terrorists’. One of those spouting this nonsense declares that ‘the f**king German SS Einsatzgruppen will seem like a f**king Boy Scout outing compared to us p***ed off Brits’. One lady also wants people to make petrol bombs.

And it goes on and on, with tweeters repeating their attacks on Javid and Khan, Muslim mayors turning their cities in ‘sh*tholes’, demands that Muslims shouldn’t occupy positions in government and that Tweezer is colluding with them to Islamicise Britain. Racists4Rees-Mogg interrupts the string of abuse and bigotry at regular intervals to address Tory chairman Brandon Lewis and inquire what he is doing about these individuals. To see it all, go to https://twitter.com/MatesJacob

I haven’t seen it all, as the thread goes on and on, and there’s only so much rapid bigotry, paranoia and venomous hatred you can take in. And I’ve no doubt that whatever Racists4Rees-Mogg hopes he will achieve by bringing this to public attention, it will be absolutely ignored by Rees-Mogg himself, Brandon Lewis and indeed the entire Tory party and their complicit media.

As Mike has discussed on his blog, the Tories will not respond to accusations of racism until the scandal becomes too much for them to ignore. Because, it seems, such racism is endemic in the Tory party, and senior politicians like Boris Johnson and Rees-Mogg depend on it for support, regardless of Dave Cameron’s actions in supposing modernising them and cleaning out the Monday Club and the supporters of the BNP and other Fascist groups. And the Tory media establishment will also ignore it as far as possible. And when it becomes impossible to ignore, as Laura Kuenssberg has shown in the case of the Beeb, they will lie that it is smaller than the anti-Semitism in the Beeb.

The Tories are the party of vicious racism, conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim hatred. Whatever they claim to the contrary, there is still a section that has the racism and eugenic hatred of the poor and immigrants as the Fascist far right. And the media is absolutely complicit in this. But it will be covered up, and attention given instead to the anti-Semitism smears against the real anti-racists in the Labour party.

Vox Political on the Tories’ Proposed Privatisation of the Fire Service

Yesterday Mike put up a piece showing precisely what the fire service would like if Brandon Lewis gets his way and privatizes it. His piece follows an article in Mirror Online. The Mirror obtained a letter in which Lewis calls for new laws, which would allow fire and rescue organisations in England to contract these services out to other providers. This could result in all 46 fire and ambulance services being sold to private industry. Lewis says in his letter that he realizes this would be controversial, but defends it as it would give the fire and rescue authorities more choice over whom to contract their services.

As Mike shows, it’s a rubbish idea, and one that will ultimately cost lives. He gives a very short scenario portraying how the privatized service would operate. A householder would phone up their local fire brigade to ask for help. They’d then get a reply telling them who the current provider is, which firm is currently sponsoring them, before finally asking them how they’re going to pay for it. By this time, the fire’s out of control and their house is burning down. The private fire service then informs the customer that they’ll bill their descendants.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/09/14/want-to-know-what-brandon-lewiss-privatised-fire-service-will-look-like-itll-look-like-this/

This plan is, of course, pure idiocy, and Mike’s absolutely right about how it would operate. This is another idea the Tories have stolen from Rothbard’s wretched Libertarians. Rothbard was an anarcho-capitalist, who believed that all state functions should be taken over by private industry, including the courts. They were solidly behind Ronald Reagan, and it was the Libertarians in the Conservative party who formed the party’s base for Thatcher.

Obviously, while Thatcher wanted to privatise everything that wasn’t nailed down, as a believer in a ‘strong state’ she definitely wouldn’t want to do anything so radical as sell off the courts or the armed forces, although the Tories had a pretty good go at selling off the forces’ support infrastructure, like various barracks, as revealed at the time by Private Eye. And way back c. 1991/1992 Virginia Bottomley wrote a glowing piece the Depress or Heil looking forward to the privatization of the police and their replacement with private security forces.

And the privatized future Mike portrays in his article is all too plausible. It’s what happened in the past. Viewers of the antique shows on the Beeb, like Bargain Hunt, will recall that every so often the presenters came across a house plaque dating from the 18th century. These plaques were to show that the householder was registered with an insurance company against fire. If fire broke out, the local fire brigade would come round to put the fire out. But they did this only for those, who were insured with them. If you weren’t insured, then they let your house burn down.

The Tories have been trying to cut down on the fire service for a very long time as part of their general campaign of cuts, including to the firemen and women’s pay, conditions and pensions. And the fire brigade union has fought against them. This looks like another attempt to break the brigade’s resistance by selling it off to a private contractor, just like the Tories have done to the personnel and their unions in other sectors of the state.

I don’t doubt that they’ll present this as a new way the brigade can raise necessary funds outside of taxpayer’s money, just like the part-privatization of the NHS was intended to allow GPs and other service providers to raise money from private industry. It’ll also be presented as still giving the people of a particular area uniform coverage while in fact removing the state’s obligation to do so, just as Andrew lansley’s vile Health and Social Care Law of 2012 removes the state’s obligation to provide health care. And just as the Tories want to introduce and increase charging within the NHS, so they’ll introduce charges into the fire and rescue services.

The result will be tax cuts for the very rich, as usual, while the people in the fire services will be placed on drastically reduced pay and conditions, and those unable to afford private fire protection will be left to fend for themselves. Just the Tories have done right across the entire economy.

May’s Popularity with Tories in Negative Figures as Corbyn Beats Her at PMQs

Earlier today, Mike put up a piece commenting on a report by Evolve Politics and a tweet by Robert Peston that the Tories are finally losing patience with Theresa May’s spectacular lack of leadership. According to Peston, a former supporter of Tweezer said that they can’t go on with her for much longer, as her lack of leadership and inability to make decisions was creating a vacuum which allowed the Remainers to run riot. After the votes are in next week, she will have to go. The article in Evolve Politics commented on this tweet, and pointed out that only 48 signatures are needed for force the Tory chairman Brandon Lewis to hold a vote of no confidence in Tweezer. And the latest revelation of her plunging popularity means that the figure could be easily reached.

Mike himself went on to suggest that her days as PM could be numbered, and possibly in single digits at that, particularly after Corbyn scored points against her and her government again and again at Prime Minister’s Questions today. He attacked Tweezer Brexit, and her failure to publish a White Paper on it, or to negotiate it properly with the EU and also the ridiculous buffer zone idea for Northern Ireland. The Labour leader commented that her government had produced more cancellations and delays on Brexit than Northern Rail.

Mike’s article ended with another tweet from Dazza, who said that May wants to be put out of her misery. They should call another general election, which the public will use as a second referendum.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/06/06/weak-pmqs-performance-will-only-fuel-tory-plans-to-backstab-theresa-may/

This came after the Conservative Home website published its ‘league table’ showing how popular May and various members of her cabinet were. This was reported by RT in the video below. For some reason, Gove is in the lead, with an approval rating of 72.5 per cent. Just behind him is Sajid Javid with 70.4 per cent. Tweezer is in minus figures, -9.5. But there is someone even more unpopular than she is: Jeremy Hunt with -25 per cent.

So much for Theresa May, and the Tory party’s attempts to brand her as Margaret Thatcher Mark 2, and all that rubbish last year about her being ‘strong and stable’. Instead, as Mike pointed out in a series of articles on his website, she’s very weak and wobbly indeed.

Quite why Gove should be the favourite amongst the Tory faithful is still a mystery, however, as he’s as stupid and incompetent as she is. It was Gove, who managed to get Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s sentence increased by the Iranians when he came on TV to bail out his equally incompetent chum, Boris Johnson, who’d also managed to get her sentenced increased through his wilful ignorance. Gove declared that the government didn’t know what the poor woman was doing in Iran, which played into their hands and allowed them to claim that she had been spying. She hadn’t; she’d been there on holiday, and had taken her daughter to meet her Iranian relatives. This shabby incident shows how absolutely unfit for leadership Gove is. He is, after all, the man, who managed to run down the British educational system when he was minister for it a few years ago. If he looks better now, it’s probably only because ‘Thicky’ Nicky Morgan, his mad-eyed successor, was even worse. Nevertheless, the Tories seem to love him, at least for the moment. According to Chunky Mark, one Tory donor has even called on the party to ditch May and put Gove in No. 10 instead.

For the rest of us, this wouldn’t change anything. All of the Tories are incompetent and malign. The best thing that could happen for us is that they hold a vote of No Confidence, and then collapse amid a frenzy of backstabbing and infighting, leaving Corbyn to enter No. 10.

Chunky Mark on the Tory Supporter Who Punched Female Protester at UWE

One of the big stories this weekend, apart from the Sunset Times and Robert Peston libelling Mike as a Holocaust denier, was about the violence at a meeting held by Jacob Rees-Mogg at the University of the West of England in Bristol. The story, as reported by the mainstream news, was that the Antifa assembled there had attacked and hit Rees-Mogg. In fact, as Rees-Mogg himself stated later, he hadn’t been attacked.

But there was violence. And the Skwawkbox revealed that later footage of the incident showed it started with one of Mogg’s own Tory supporters. This thug stood in front of a young woman holding a placard, and struck her in the face. He then continued to stand there menacingly, and I think may have tried to hit her again.

And it also appears that this same man has also on occasion thought it would be jolly good fun to dress up in Nazi uniform.

In this clip from Chunky Mark, the Artist Taxi Driver, he expresses his own anger and disgust at the incident, and the thug’s predilection for Nazi dress. He also criticises the Tories’ hypocrisy over the incident. They’ve made much of the violence by the Antifa in order to discredit the left, as it shows them as intolerant. In the meantime, none of the mainstream media have covered the attack by this character. It was done by the Skwawkbox as a piece of citizen journalism. And Brandon Lewis, David Gauke and other Tories have actually defended the thug, who hit the young woman. Chunky Mark also attacks the way they want to take this round the universities.

He states very clearly and loudly that the Tories have no policies, and are attacking those who do. This is the people, who fight for higher wages, against homelessness, for the NHS and against people dying in corridors. People who believe that another world is possible.

I’m not surprised that the Tories supporter, who punched the protester liked to dress up in Nazi uniform. A number of them were caught doing this several years ago in a series of scandals. And Private Eye reported several times that the late Conservative cabinet minister, Alan Clarke, used to describe himself as a ‘Nazi’. He probably wasn’t, but it shows the fascination the Third Reich and the Nazis have for a certain type of right-wing Conservative.

As for Brandon Lewis wanting to tour this round the universities, and pass legislation so that it’s impossible to criticise it, this refers to the government’s concerns about democracy on campus. The Tories are afraid that some of the groups at university threaten free speech. By which I think they mean the anti-racist, feminist and gay rights groups. I think they’re afraid of the strong position such groups hold on campuses throughout Britain, and want to attack them as part of a campaign to promote approved Tory values. It’s just part of their programme to change educational system to indoctrinate children and young people with Conservative views. Like Michael Gove tried to do when he was head of education a few years ago, and complained about schoolchildren getting the ‘Blackadder’ view of the First World War.

They’ve clearly realised that actually admitting that they want to promote Conservativism amongst students would sound bad, and so they’ve been trying to pass this off as a defence of free speech. But the only speech they’re interested in defending is for themselves. They really want to close down everyone else’s. And so they and their supporters in the press were busy promoting this story about Rees-Mogg and his supporters being attacked, and very carefully ignoring the fact that the violence was started by the Conservatives.

Tory Chairman Lies about Abuse from Labour Party

Another day, another lie from the Tories. The Tory chairman, Brandon Lewis, was in the papers yesterday because of comments he made on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday. Lewis claimed that Tories were afraid to go on the internet because of abuse from the Labour party and Momentum members. Apparently, he mentioned Esther McVile as a victim of this abuse, claiming that John McConnell had made a speech demanding that she be lynched. He then claimed that he was making all the Tories sign a document pledging them not abuse their political opponents, and challenged Jeremy Corbyn to do the same.

This story was then taken up by a number of right-wing papers and magazines, including the Tory rag, the Spectator, and here in the West Country, the Western Daily Press. But the truth wasn’t quite like Lewis claimed. Mike’s written a long piece tearing apart Lewis’ comments to show how false and nasty they are. First of all, the comments made by McConnell were made three years ago, so they’re hardly contemporary. Secondly, he was quoting other people. Ah, replied the Speccie, but he was doing so approvingly. Whether he was or wasn’t clearly depends on a matter of perception, I feel. As for making Tories sign a pledge of good conduct, you can ask a number of questions about this. Like it clearly didn’t apply to Toby Young, when he wrote pieces advocating eugenics, commenting on women’s breasts, saying he had his d*ck up the a**e of one woman, and talking about masturbating over pictures of starving Africans. All of which qualify Young as a truly loathsome human being. But nevertheless, Tweezer wanted him as part of the universities regulatory board. Possibly because he is vociferously against everything modern educationalists stand for, like diversity, anti-racism and anti-sexism. They’re the values most student union bodies very strongly support, and which hardline Tories sneer at as ‘political correctness’ and moan that they are stifling free speech. And Young was almost certainly put in because he’s another Tory who wants to privatise education. Witness his leadership of the ‘free school’ movement.

And most odiously, as Mike points out, Lewis tried to portray McVile as a victim.

McVile isn’t, not by any stretch of the imagination. She’s a very rich woman, who has made a very good living by killing the disabled. She and her husband run a production company, which I believe may have been responsible for the Benefit Street series of programmes on Channel 4. Under her aegis, tens of thousands of disabled people have been unfairly declared ‘fit for work’, and been left to starve to death after having their benefits cut off. Mike has covered these deaths, as have Stilloaks, DPAC, Johnny Void and many, many others. Some of those, who have taken their lives left suicide notes behind stating that it was the removal of their benefits that were driving them to this extremity.

But still the Tories deny it.

McVile presided over this system, for which, as a government minister, she was very handsomely paid compared to the rest of us, and definitely far more than the poor souls, who are forced to rely on state benefits. She carried on with her task of murdering the poor gleefully and without remorse. She’s an evil woman.

Now I don’t believe that there is any abuse from Labour or Momentum. I’ve heard that song before, when the Blairite women were all complaining that they were suffering misogynist abuse from Corbyn’s supporters. They weren’t, and an extensive checking of various posts showed it. But it has set the narrative for the Thatcherite right to tell lies about Corbyn and the Labour left. Whether it is true or not is immaterial. The Tories lie like Goebbels, and Lewis’ comments are yet another smear campaign.

There’s also more than a touch of hypocrisy about the claims, too. Quite apart from the vile comments and writing of Toby Young, you only have to look at Twitter to see frothingly abusive comments from outraged Tories, or look at the comments they leave on left-wing vlogs and videos on YouTube.

If the Tories are scared to go on social media, I can think of a couple of reasons why, which have nothing to do with abuse. Firstly, the Tory front bench are solidly public school boys and girls, who all went to Oxbridge. The ancient Romans didn’t have information technology. The closest they got was the Antikythera Mechanism, a kind of geared computer, which showed the position of the planets. It’s a masterpiece of ancient engineering. However, public school classics are all about generals, emperors and Roman politicians, not the work of the rude mechanics and craftsmen. Aristotle in his politics firmly demanded that these should not be allowed a voice in the political life of his perfect state. That was to be reserved for leisured gentlemen, who should have a forum of their own so that they didn’t mix with the trades- and craftspeople, who actually made things and supplied services.

And one of the complaints I’ve seen of the Oxbridge educated upper classes is that they still have this snobbery towards science. Boris Johnson is possibly the most notable of those public schoolboys and girls advocating the classics, which were used in previous centuries as part of the education system to show the young of the upper classes how to govern. Despite Harold Wilson’s comments in the 1960s about Britain embracing the ‘white heat’ of technology, science and engineering were very much the province of the oiks in secondary moderns, and definitely looked down upon.

And I also think that the real some Tories may be avoiding going on social media, is that they’re all too aware that people know they’re lying, and will correct them. Go see some of Mike’s articles for comments left on social media by very well informed commenters, tearing into Tweezer’s and Jeremy Hunt’s lies over housing and the state of the NHS, for example.

And I also think that if people are making extreme remarks about how vile Esther McVey is on social media, some of them at least have a right. Lewis can afford to act shocked. He’s another, very middle class professional on a very tidy income. He is not poor and desperate, as McVey’s victims are. He can therefore afford to be complacent about their very real fear and despair. He is part of the Tory machine working towards their impoverishment and starvation, and so he has a vested interest in playing down the horrific reality behind their comments. If you go in for an interview at the Job Centre, you will be humiliated by clerks trying to get you off their books as quickly as possible. This will leave you fuming with rage, but there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Especially as they will sanction you without a moment’s hesitation for the most trivial of reasons. This system has been created and is overseen by the Tories, including Esther McVile. She therefore deserves to be an object of anger, hate and loathing by people, who are genuine victims. What Lewis hates and fears is the amount of hatred there is for her, and the fact that it’s expressed, as the Tories demand absolute deference from the rest of us. Remember how the Daily Mail went berserk with rage when Thatcher died, because people in the north had the audacity to celebrate and burn her in effigy?

There must be no clue how much the Tories and the leaders are hated, in any media, ever. And so he demands that people, who have every right to loath McVile, stop talking about how repulsive and murderous the Wicked Witch of the Wirral, responsible for the genocide of the disabled, really is.

And so he falsely accuses Labour of abuse, while defending a woman who is directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of disabled people.

She’s a disgrace. So is he. Get them out.

Last Fortnight’s Private Eye on Dave Cameron’s ‘Right to Buy’ Policy

Cameron formally announced today his ‘right to buy’ scheme, which would see the remainder of Britain’s stock of social housing sold off. Tom Pride and Mike over at Vox Political have already posted pieces on this today. I’ve reblogged Mr Pride’s, in which he tells it like it is. It’s just a return of Thatcher’s ‘right to buy’ scheme from the 1980s.

He goes further, and describes Cameron as ‘a pound-shop Maggie Thatcher’. Which is pretty much exactly what he is. Though it does leave you feeling that we’ve been short-changed. Surely with his blue-blood and Eton education he could be something a bit more up-market. A Fortnum & Mason’s Maggie Thatcher, perhaps, or may be a Harrod’s Maggie Thatcher? Or perhaps something a little more popular, but still offering quality: a Sainsbury food hall Maggie Thatcher?

Mr Pride also points out that the beneficiaries of the original right-to-buy fiasco weren’t the ordinary tenants, but the private landlords who purchased them and then hoiked the rents up accordingly. People like Charles Gow, the son of the minister, who privatised them. Young master Gow is a multi-millionaire with forty of them.

Johnny Void also wrote a piece I’ve reblogged earlier last year, when IDS announced it as his big idea, pointing out, along with Mike, that it would lead to a complete absence of council houses, and that the affordable housing that’s supposed to replace it isn’t anything of the sort. It won’t solve the housing crisis. It will only make it worse.

Which was Private Eye’s view in their last issue a fortnight ago. In ‘Housing News’ they wrote

The wheels are falling off Tory housing policy as the desperate search for votes intensifies.

Chancellor George Osborne’s final budget saw yet another ineffective give-away to first-time buyers in the form of “Help to Buy ISAs” – up to £3,000 in taxpayer cash to top up savings for a deposit. Like umpteen other schemes designed to help those who can’t afford a mortgage, this one may just inflate prices further while failing to address shortage of supply.

Not to be outdone, the Iain Duncan Smith faction promptly leaked the latest version of its own pet idea: to extend the Right to Buy to Britain’s 2.5m housing association tenants. This sounds like music to Tory ears until one realises that, unlike the social homes owned by the councils, housing association assets are private property.

For decades, governments trying to keep the national debt down have restrained council borrowing by tying up council housing assets in ring-fenced housing revenue accounts (HRA) and making it almost impossible for councils to build. Housing associations, on the other hand, are independent charities so their £65 bn in borrowing is safely “off balance sheet”.

As the chancellor must be only too aware, compelling housing associations to sell to tenants and use the RTB discounts enjoyed by council tenants (up to £102, 700 in London and £77,000 elsewhere) would cost serious amounts of taxpayer money and bankrupt a few housing associations. Then again, as this is the eighth election in row where the Conservative party has said it will extend RTB to housing association tenants, will the vote-catcher fare any better than usual?

That isn’t the end of the TRB saga. Under localism, some councils have found a way round Treasury borrowing caps via public-private partnerships, using the new “general power of competence” to create their own “local housing companies” and build homes – for sale and for social rent – and keep them outside the HRA. Not only does this evade the borrowing caps, but it also means the new homes are not, er, subject to the Right to Buy. Housing minister Brandon Lewis is not happy, and has threatened councils with serious reprisals. So much for localism.

Now public-private partnerships, like the Private Finance Initiative, are by and large a colossal waste of money and a massive drain on the state, all in order to provide contracts to the Tories’ donors in private industry. But if local councils are using such schemes to build more social housing, then perhaps we could do with more of them in this specific instance.

As for Osbo and his Help-to-Buy ISAs, one of the commenters over at Tom Pride’s or Johnny Void’s blogs stated that the last thing the Tories wanted was for the price of housing to go down, as this would have a knock-on effect on the rest of the economy through the way mortgages are used to stimulate finances elsewhere. Hence in the short-term, I really don’t think Osbo would be at all worried about housing prices going up, so long as the bubble burst when someone other than the Tories were in power.

As for the ‘Right-to-Buy’ policy having now been wheeled out by the Tories in eight elections in a row, that shows that they have absolutely no intention of honouring it. Not if it’s been touted in the past, but obviously not been put it into practice, if they’re still claiming they’re going to do it this time.

This means that Mr Pride was probably being overgenerous in his description of Cameron as a ‘pound-shop Maggie Thatcher’. The stuff in pound shops is cheap, but it’s still good quality. This, however, is a decidedly shop-worn policy, that is definitely past it’s sell by date. This is the Arthur Daley, Trotters Independent Traders version of Maggie Thatcher. If the policy was an animal, it’d be the dead parrot in the Monty Python sketch, gone to join the ‘choir invisibule’.