Avery Hancock, Amy Mollett and Chris Gilson take a look at the week in political blogging
Housing strategy
Left Futures discusses the government’s plans to build 450,000 new houses by 2015, which it claims could risk a sub-prime mortgage crisis in the future. However, The Coffee House believes there is some merit to the proposals, and Dave Hill notes that London residents could indeed benefit.
The Green Benches unearths shocking news about a 99% fall in affordable housing construction, while Faisal Islam warns that mass house building and localism is a difficult marriage. The FT’s Westminster Blog notes that figures on house building can get quite confusing, and shows how the infrastructure plan is quite a clever way to raise money off the balance sheet.
Public sector strikes
Women will suffer the most from cuts to public service pensions, according to Left Foot Forward, while Liberal Conspiracy finds that the public trusts unions more than the government on pensions. Thetorydiary admits the coalition has an uphill battle to win support for reform, as the False Economy blog discusses the exit threat to public sector pensions that would increase costs and poverty. Henry G Manson at politicalbetting.com says Ed Miliband has wasted his chance to develop a stance on the forthcoming strikes.
Owen Tudor at the TUC’s Touchstone blog argues that the unions need to hone their message on wage inequality and point out the link between decent wages and sustainable demand/growth.
Youth unemployment
Faisal Islam notes the eerie similarity between the government’s ‘youth contract’ and the Future Jobs Fund that was scrapped last year, while Chris Dillow at Stumbling and Mumbling reckons the new scheme is a con. Thetorydiary quotes a Lib Dem insider who complained that trying to get the Tories to help the jobless was like ‘getting a vegetarian to go buy a kebab’.
High Pay Commission
Following the launch of the High Pay Commission’s final report (PDF), Labour List asks if politicians have what is needed to straighten out unfair pay. Prateek Buch at Liberal Democrat Voice believes that liberals of all churches should embrace the recommendations, which include improving transparency, accountability and fairness.
The economy and the eurozone
Liberal Conspiracy examines just how likely it is that Britain will stagnate for the next decade as Robert Peston warns that 2012 will be a year of great risk in which another bank or an over-extended government could go bust. Sunny Hundal takes a deeper look into a report that says that the 50p tax rate will cost Britain £1billon annually, and calls the research “hilariously bad”. Tim Montgomerie at thetorydiary has seen the same report and says that it is a warning to George Osborne that Britain will lose its high earners if the tax band is not dropped.
Douglas Carswell at Talk Carswell says that recent efforts towards fiscal stimulus make no sense when the money could have been better spent on corporation tax cuts, and Matthew Barrett at thetorydiary says that there is growing concern amongst the Tory backbenches that a possible VAT cut might be funded by more borrowing. Left Foot Forward takes Dominic Raab to task for his evidence-free attacks on workers’ rights, and the FT’s Westminster Blog provides a report card on Osborne and Cable’s March Growth review
The parties
The Economist’s Bagehot labels David Cameron a toxic Tory and discusses the internal party wrangling over how to promote growth, but warns Labour that they cannot expect to be warmly welcomed back into the fold if the economy falls off a cliff. Left Foot Forward provides the full text of the speech that Ed Miliband gave at the IPPR this week, although this could not prevent his leadership rating dropping 4 per cent (courtesy of politicalbetting.com).
At the beginning of the week UK Polling Report has the Tories at 36%, Labour at 40%, and Lib Dem at 19%, although Peter Watt at Dale & Co is gearing up for Cleggmania part 2 in 2015, speculating that the deputy prime minister could again name his price to form a coalition. Phil Ling at Liberal Democrat Voice critiques some recent reports where parliamentarians are getting to decide the rules of their own employment, such as on electoral boundaries, expenses, and party funding. Hopi Sen writes that he wouldn’t so much mind career-politicians – if only they were actually good at politics.
Leveson inquiry
The Staggers covers Hugh Grant’s 10 myths of tabloid journalism which he set out at the Leveson inquiry, including the belief that only celebrities and politicians suffer at the hands of the red tops.
And finally…
Sarah Hayward at Labour List speaks out in favour of women-only shortlists, reminding us that equality doesn’t happen by accident.
The JRF blog discusses climate justice in the UK, noting that those who emit the least carbon are most likely to suffer from the consequences of climate change.
The Oxford English Dictionary has selected “squeezed middle” as their Word of 2011.
