THE LIBERALS REVEAL THE TORY WITHIN

Important members of the Lib-Dem  high command are repositioning themselves. They want to be Liberals not Social Democrats. This will be interesting. Two members of the Quarterdeck quoted Peel approvingly, as if he'd been a Liberal. He was, as we know, the man who created the modern Conservative party; he fell nobly in the cause of free trade, repealing the Corn Laws, and after his death, erstwhile colleagues went on to form the Liberal party.

The vote on abandoning the 50p top rate of tax is enormously important to this repositioning. If they fail to carry the conference tomorrow, Ming's leadership will be pointless, at a stroke.  

PLAYING CATCH-UP NEEDS FLEET FEET

18 September 2006: The Independent's story on the NHS today is very significant. Colin Brown reveals Patricia Hewitt's answer to the question Cameron should have been asking all this year: "What is the natural limit of the private sector's role in the NHS?" Hewitt's answer: "None."

Blair's government is making all the running, way ahead of its competitors.

At the Reform fringe, David Laws and Jeremy Browne showed that the Orange Book principles (suppressed two years ago) are alive and well in the party and have taken over the balance of opinion in the high command. But Blair is (desperately, brilliantly) putting on such a turn of speed they'll need to change gear if they want to keep up. Remember when L-Ds were demanding an extra £500 million for the health service, Blair/Brown produced an extra £5 billion. They can get caught flat-footed by this government. 

Jeremy Browne pointed out that houses in the good-school zone of Torquay command a £40,000 premium, or £10,000 a year for the four years of secondary education. Oddly similar to private school fees. He recounted a school visit where the teachers of the three-year-olds had charts up showing Mondays was the day they played in the sand, Tuesdays was Playdoh etc (an Ofsted inspection was imminent).

David Laws reminded his (fairly thin) audience that Labour's centralisation and Tory reticence represented a great opportunity for Liberals (free trade, markets, choice being now core Liberal values).

Laws told them that if the proposal to abandon the 50p top tax rate was rejected by Conference it will allow the party to be characterised as "instinctively high taxers" and that would make it "much more difficult to sell the rest of the package." He says the proposals represent the biggest shift in tax policy any party has suggested; that it will lighten the load on the lowest earners, and that it is essential to the decentralisation programme (according to Chris Huhne, he said, we are about the most centralised state in the world since the collapse of the Soviet union). The fringe meeting applauded dutifully but without enthusiasm.

Ming does well to look so relaxed about it, considering.

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