Analysis: Osborne breaks free
George Osborne
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By Matt Hallam. |  |
Tuesday, 06, Oct 2009 02:45
"I'm gonna be straight with you," George Osborne told the Conservative party conference today. He wasn't kidding.
By Matthew Champion.
The shadow chancellor introduced his speech with a strange anti-commitment, claiming: "I can't deliver a budget for 2010 in 2009."
Yet that's almost exactly what he did. Such was the flurry of announcements that it is possible David Cameron will be left with little to say on Thursday in his leader's speech. This wasn't just a shadow budget, it was practically a manifesto.
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Last night Alistair Darling moved to scupper Osborne's speech by announcing a pay freeze next year for 40,000 of the public sector's highest paid workers, while about 750,000 will see their pay rise by only one per cent, if they receive a pay increase at all.
The shadow chancellor went a great deal further in Manchester today by pledging to freeze the pay of every public sector worker (excluding frontline troops) earning over £18,000 for one year. This would save 100,000 frontline public service jobs, Mr Osborne said. In contrast, Alistair Darling did not say how much his move would save, or whether it would translate into jobs.
"What the government announced yesterday will not be enough," Osborne said. "It covers less than a fifth of the public sector workforce.
"You will see that whoever wins the election is going to have to ask from 2011 each part of the public sector to accept a one year pay freeze."
But then Osborne tried to change tack emphasising that he was a modern Conservative. He told the delegates he did not believe in "balancing the budget on the backs of the poorest - and nor do you" to which he received reasonable applause.
There was less applause however when he said: "Everyone must pay their fair share," adding a cautionary finger wag against the bankers, who he said he had given "fair warning".
Nor could Osborne reconcile scrapping the government's 50p top tax rate while public sector pay was frozen. "We are all in this together," he said, a phrase he would use seven times throughout the speech.
And if the public sector was facing pay freezes, that would not exclude the government itself. All future Tory ministers would accept a five per cent pay cut, while Whitehall spending would by slashed by a third over the next parliament and any public servant with a salary higher than the prime minister would have to justify it in person to the chancellor. This seems potentially unworkable, it could even lapse into gesture politics but it was an attempt if nothing else to make him appear strong and determined.
The speech does probably represent a coup and transformation for the shadow chancellor. Boy George to Labour and a man dismissed as not knowing the difference between a bank and an insurance company to the Liberal Democrats put on the sort of performance he needed to. He bounced back.
"This government will get more personal the more desperate they become," he warned delegates, anticipating a spate of attacks upon his shadow chancellorship and callow experience in comparison with Alistair Darling and Vince Cable.
The man regarded as not as trustworthy as Dr Cable by his own party's supporters still bumbled occasionally. His speech too often strayed into the territory of 'Labour bad, Tories good', while his delivery will never, ever be considered rousing.
But what he did do was present voters with a clear choice, probably the first time a politician has done so this conference season.
It wasn't in his "reality v fantasy/prudence v profligacy/truth v lies" sabre-rattling". It wasn't in his failed attempt to invoke some sort of Blitz mentality in the conference hall.
It was laying out, step by step, line by line, how an incoming, increasingly likely, Tory government would reshape the UK public services to ensure their survival, something Labour outright failed to do last week.
He was austere, he was severe, but most importantly he was able to outline how the Tories would save £7 billion during the next parliament.
David Cameron is, in some ways, in a difficult position to outdo his shadow chancellor in his speech on Thursday, not based on performance but in terms of his willingness to talk about the cuts the Conservatives believe are necessary.
Osborne's speech doesn't put Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling into a position they may not be able to recover from, it's by no means a killer blow, but as a first salvo in terms of drawing real, defined battle lines between Labour and the Conservatives it sends a clear message. The question will be who the voters choose to believe.