The Conservatives have come up with a policy. That is an event in itself. Their strategy of late has been to say as little as possible to avoid upsetting people. When you are as unpopular as the Tories have become, there is a lot to be said for that approach.
Not only that. Damien Green’s idea of getting rid off tuition fees, and financing the move by scrapping plans to extend the number of students even further, has a lot to be said for it.
In this party we know what a good campaigning issue tuition fees are. And everyone knows (though it is not yet acceptable to say so) that increasing the number of students – up to 50 per cent of 18-year-olds, if the government has its way – is bearing diminishing returns for all concerned.
The Liberal Democrat solution to expand student numbers while scrapping fees is to encourage students to live at home. But it is hard to feel enthusiastic about a state-sponsored extension of adolescence.
One of the scandals of British life is the small number of working-class children who get to university. The huge expansion in student numbers over the past decade has been made up of increasingly ordinary middle-class youngsters.
And that is the flaw in Damien Green’s idea. These are the students who would disappear if his idea was ever put into operation.
If the Conservatives do not speak for the stupid middle classes, who do they speak for?
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Two of the minsisters who flank Charles Clarke at education questions are Margaret Hodge and Stephen Twigg. A wonderful piece of polemic in The Times this week reminded us of some of the facts about their stewardship of schools in Islington when they were both councillors in that borough.
Results in Islington schools fell to be the worst in the country, while the authority ended up with highest per capita debt in Britain. Under Hodge a £12-an-hour toy expert was hired to organise games for babies in crèches. Race and sex equality inspectors were hired on double the average teacher’s salary, together with an adviser to combat racism among under-fives.
I don’t know if all this is true, but it certainly should be.
Exciting news. This paper has a new reader. It’s a big ‘Hello’ to Iain from Chingford.
Speaking in Guildford a few days before the local elections, the Tory leader asked the audience to imagine the revulsion he felt when he “saw, in a letter published last month, our servicemen and women described as ‘contract killers’ ”.
Was it written by a propagandist in Baghdad or North Korea or a class-war warrior from the Socialist Workers' Party? No. "That letter was published in Liberal Democrat News."
Imagine the scene at Smith Square. “Mr Duncan Smith, you have to leave to address the Saffron Walden Round Table.” “No, I haven’t read the by-election results yet. Then there’s Tony Greaves, and if I am lucky there’ll be something about Donnachadh McCarthy’s roof.”
He may even read this column (“Why is he always going on about hedges and fireworks?”). Which presents an opportunity.
I could tell him that pretending to laugh whenever someone asks a difficult question goes down well with the voters. I could tell him his agent was in tears at the count here a couple of weeks ago because she was overcome with joy at the party’s results. I could tell him we are quaking with fear at the thought he will lead the Tories into the next election.
But there must be someone left who can make him see sense. So let’s just point out how desperate he must be to claim that a party is responsible for the views of each of its individual members.
If you were judged by that standard, Mr Duncan Smith, you would be in even deeper trouble than you are now.
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Recent weeks have seen some interesting developments.
There was Clare Short in I’m a Socialist, Get me out of Here, and the discovery that Crisp 'n Blunt is not a cooking oil but a Tory MP.
Then there was the return of David Mellor from the political grave.
One of his former colleagues was unkind: “It feels as if he went years ago – and so what? He's has little following and it's 10 years since he has been in government.”
But House Points thinks it only fair he should be remembered in the week that Chelsea qualified for the Champions’ League.
There was a good speech in the debate on the health and social care bill last week, spelling out what has been wrong with Labour's approach over the years.
It showed up the way so many left-wingers live in the past: “The NHS has for 50 years provided good care to millions of people, but it was formed in the era of the ration book. People expected little say and had precious little choice. Today, we live in a different world.”
It questioned fears of a ‘two-tier service’: “One of the great myths that sometimes pervade the debate about the national health service is that we have a one-tier health service today. We do not. Some hospitals are good, some are poor and some, sadly, need to improve.”
It emphasised local control: “Sustaining improvements in NHS performance can happen only when staff have more control and local communities have a greater say in how services are run. Different communities in our country have different needs. They are not uniform; they are multifaceted and multicultural.”
Unfortunately, the speech came from Alan Milburn, the secretary of state for health. The Liberal Democrats voted against giving the bill a second reading.
Evan Harris tried hard, but his was a difficult brief. Parts of his speech were good: he asked when there would be “freedom for all parts of the health economy, with tax-varying powers locally”.
But at other points he sounded like the dinosaur Labour backbenchers we ended up voting with. Will the removal of pay beds from the NHS achieve anything beyond forcing more people out of the state system altogether?
For years the Labour Party lived in a political la-la land where all doctors, teachers and nurses were doing a wonderful job. If they were not, it was the fault of government for not paying them more or giving them larger budgets.
In part it was because of the sort of people who become Labour Party activists. In part, it was a form of rainbow coalition politics. Say enough nice things about enough interest groups and they will all vote for you and carry you to power.
It didn’t work for Michael Foot or Neil Kinnock, and it won't work for the Liberal Democrats.
On Tuesday a New Labour backbencher introduced a bill to ban something. Nothing new there. But Debra Shipley’s Children's Television (Advertising) Bill sounded rather a good idea.
The Stourbridge MP wants to outlaw food advertising during programmes for under-fives. According to Department of Health figures, 85 per cent of children are eating too much sugar and 92 per cent too much saturated fat.
And the result? “Our children are increasingly suffering from obesity and diabetes,” Shipley told the Commons. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport “has failed to take action to prevent high fat, high salt and high sugar content food and drink adverts being targeted at pre-school children”.
Our plight isn’t all the food industry’s fault. A few decades ago children eat more, but they also got more exercise. Now an unholy trilogy works against this. Blame the motor car, exagerrated fears about safety, and government enthusiasm for homework, after-school clubs, before-school clubs and between-school clubs.
Meanwhile, the minister for sport endorses a scheme where children collect chocolate wrappers to raise money for sports equipment for their schools.
House Points hates to support any ban; it’s just that the arguments against this one are so weak. When pressed, the industry will tell you there is not much advertising aimed at children, it does not work well and if it is not allowed there will be no programmes made for them. (Muffin the Mule writes: nonsense.)
Sorry Muffin, you should read the government spokesman quoted in the Observer last year: “He said that the important thing was to make sure [children] ... can ‘deconstruct the ads’, using schemes such as Media Smart to show them how to become more critical, even cynical, about the adverts to which they are exposed.”
Teaching teenagers to deconstruct advertisements sounds an excellent idea. But even after six years of New Labour education policies I doubt that four-year-olds can manage it. And since when have we wanted children of any age to be cynical?
Ultimately, a ban would be a way of reasserting parents’ authority in a culture increasingly hostile to the concept. Faced with the double whammy of welfare professionals and Ronald McDonald, they need all the help they can get.
I have a soft spot for The Spectator. Last week’s issue included the magnificent headline ‘Is Blair just an empty, vainglorious, narcissistic creep?’
It also contained an article by Michael Gove, based on a report he helped to write for the Tory pressure group Cchange. The full report, available on its website (www.cchange.org.uk), makes cheery reading for ambitious Liberal Democrats.
Gove’s article begins by pointing out that it is now ten years since the Conservatives fell behind Labour in the polls. And, though dissatisfaction with Blair’s government is growing, there is no sign of a Tory revival.
His figures bring out the scale of their decline. In 1992 82 Tory MPs were elected in metropolitan constituencies: today there are 13. At the last election the Tory vote went up by one per cent, but that was almost entirely in seats they already held. In Labour seats it rose by only 0.17 per cent. In the seats we held it actually went down.
It gets worse. Since 2001 the Tories have fallen to third place among the 18 to 24 and 25 to 34 age groups. In the latest polls, they are third among the 35 to 44s too.
As Gove says: ‘The Tories have become a party of Victor Meldrews raging against contemporary life. They are continually campaigning to bring things back, whether it is the Royal Yacht, matron or grammar schools. This deep uncomfortableness with the way we live now doesn’t inspire respect. It only confirms the voters’ view that the Tories have one foot in the grave.’
In short, they are still the nasty party. Listeners to Radio Four’s The Moral Maze may say that if Gove is the nice alternative then the Tories really have got problems, but his analysis deserves respect.
Meanwhile in Wales, the nasties are in full cry. In recent days the Tory Leader has talked of Britain being ‘swamped’ by asylum seekers and complained about an ‘influx of people on a benefits bonanza bringing attendant problems into the community’.
It may be that Gove is wrong and that by the time you read this the Tories have been swept to power in Cardiff and everywhere else. But that is a risk I am willing to take.