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Four billion pounds (to be precise, £4.1bn). That's the cost of today's Tory pledge to scrap the tax on savings for basic rate taxpayers and to increase tax-free allowances for pensioners. So how will they pay for it? The answer is by spending less starting now.
Before Christmas David Cameron had already reversed his policy of matching Labour's planned spending increases for 2010 onwards. Now he's saying he'd spend even less this year too. He hasn't however specified what programmes he'd spend less on. That is not how government works. He has a point.
When any large organisation - the BBC for example - cuts spending its boss announces target savings and his underlings are tasked to identify how exactly they can be found. That however has not been how politics has worked for the past two decades.
For three elections Labour has simply added up Tory "spending cuts" - in fact pledges to increase spending at a lower rate than the government - and then they've told voters how many doctors, nurses or policeman would go as a result. In response, the Conservatives have specified savings in waste or government programmes that they cancelled. In each case the Tories lost the argument and the election.
BCC (that's Before the Credit Crunch), David Cameron and George Osborne concluded that they could not win this battle and that the next election would be all about "it's society, stupid". Today's announcement confirms that they've been forced to return to the fray. Their hope is that the changed circumstances, falling interest rates, rising debts and Labour's acceptance that spending can't go on as it has ,will make their policy an election winner now as it's not proved to be in the past.
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Are the Tories about to pledge to abolish tax on savings?
The signs are all there.
This morning on the Today programme the Tory leader promised to set out how his party would help savers and how they'd pay for that help in a speech he's making this lunchtime.
A week ago the shadow chancellor told the Sunday Times that he wanted to help people "who did the right thing in the age of irresponsibility". The paper reported that he was working on a £2.4 billion plan to abolish the basic rate of tax on savings and spending even more to increase the tax-free allowance for pensioners.
The Conservatives are likely to claim that their proposals will encourage "individual independence" and "social responsibility". Those are the words used by William Hague when he proposed a similar package in February 2001.
If Labour want to save themselves time they could dust off their press release from that day when a certain Alistair Darling declared "This is the same old Conservative Party. Its sums don't add up".
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, you may say.
There is, though, one massive difference between the politics of 2009 and 2001. It's the recession.
The Conservatives can argue now as they couldn't then that savers are suffering thanks to plummeting interest rates. Indeed, they can quote the prime minister himself who told Andrew Marr yesterday that ministers were looking at ways to do "more to help savers" in the run-up to the Budget.
What's more, they can point to the need to build an economy based on saving and not debt.
Labour, of course, will demand to know where the money's coming from. Before Christmas David Cameron signalled that the answer was lower public spending. If he doesn't spell out today what he'd spend less on, ministers are likely to come up with answers of their own.
Happy Christmas to all my readers. Back in the New Year.
He didn't quite say we have nothing to fear but fear itself but Gordon Brown is increasingly adopting the tone and language of a war time leader.
Today he spoke of a "can do attitude" and "a fighting spirit". Tellingly, he declared that Britain had been the "victim" of the economic downturn which, as no doubt you recall by now, he says came from abroad.
As forecasters line up to compete to tell us just how gloomy and miserable 2009 will be, the PM is trying to stay resolutely upbeat and looks more relaxed than ever.
In comparison, at his news conference exactly a year ago, he looked rattled and defensive when facing questions about his alleged dithering over the future of Northern Rock, the loss of the names and addresses of millions of child benefit claimants and another party funding scandal.
The opinion polls tell the story of the Brown rollercoaster - up and up went the Tory lead. In the past three months it's gone down and down until now the two parties stand roughly where they did 12 months ago.
The big difference is that now the momentum is with him, not his opponents - so much so that today he had to insist that he was not even thinking about an early election.
If this goes on, we political commentators may start to suggest that what a failing leader really needs to rescue them is a massive economic crisis.
But then, the next 12 months look like being as unpredictable as the last 12.
Combine Bob the Builder and Barack Obama and what do you get? Nick Clegg or, at least, his latest economic offering.
"Can we fix it? Yes, we can" is the Lib Dems message today. They are arguing that £12.5bn cost of cutting VAT would be better spent on fixing and building things.
Their "Green Road out of the Recession" proposals include:
• A five-year programme to insulate every school and hospital, with 20% completed in the first year
• Funding insulation and energy efficiency for a million homes, with a £1,000 subsidy for a million more
• Building 40,000 extra zero-carbon social houses
• Buying 700 new train carriages
• Reopening old railway lines and stations, opening new ones, electrifying the Great Western and Midland mainlines and beginning the Liverpool light rail network
• Installing energy and money saving smart meters in every home within five years
These are designed to be the sort of schemes which Obama describes as "shovel ready" - ie projects that can begin now without lengthy planning, design or logistical delays.
Interestingly, I sense that the Tories are beginning work on how to re-target public spending to prove that they can get more bang for the buck than the Treasury.
Both main opposition parties are bringing forward their plans just in case the PM does hold that an election in early 2009.
How long before the widespread relief that Britiain's involvement in Iraq is coming to an end is replaced by anxiety about Britain's role in Afghanistan?
My hunch is not very long.
Sure, the war against the Taliban has never been as controversial as the war in Iraq. There was no row about its legality. There were no missing weapons of mass destruction. There is much less of a feeling that it was "Bush's war". There is also more of a sense that what happens in the region - in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan - has a direct impact on British national security.
However, I detect a growing concern amongst the political classes about the cost and chances of success of the war in Afghanistan.
It is unpleasant to reduce the death of men and women who are serving their country to a statistical comparison but the statistics do tell an important story :
There are now twice as many British servicemen and women in Afghanistan as in Iraq.
The death toll in Afghanistan this year was more than 11 times that in Iraq.
If casualties continue at the current rate more British troops will have lost their lives in Afghanistan than in Iraq a year from now.
IRAQ
British troops 4100
Deaths since the invasion 178
Deaths this year 4
AFGHANISTAN
British troops 8000 rising to 8,300 from April 09
Deaths since the invasion 133
Deaths this year 47
The man who's resigned his government post this morning has declared that it "beggars belief" that Dutch company TNT could be brought in to advise Royal Mail on its operations.
What really does beggar belief is the idea that Jim McGovern could sit in the department for business as bag carrier for the minister responsible for the Royal Mail, Pat McFadden, and not have known for many weeks that this was precisely what was being planned.
Could his resignation have more to do with the fact that the SNP are targeting his Dundee West constituency? The nationalists already control the council, both Holyrood seats and the neighbouring Westminster seat?
PS. Some readers have pointed out that although the SNP have the most councillors in Dundee, they do not in fact control it.
I've just interviewed Lord Mandelson and reminded him of his previous words on privatising Royal Mail.
His answer should still the doubts of those who fear that part-privatisation is merely a first step to fully privatising it.
He told me: "We have no desire to privatise, no intention to privatise it and no plan to change our intention either."
So, he's saying yes to part-privatisation but no to full privatisation.
He suggests that if Royal Mail were a private company it would not deliver a universal, single price, six-day-a-week service throughout the UK.
At last!
It's back to business as usual. The natural order has been restored. The era of political disorientation is at an end.
Peter Mandelson is, once again, being condemned by many in his own party. This after many, including even the man himself, had begun to wonder whether the Labour Party would - as Tony Blair once hoped - "learn to love Peter".
The reason? His proposal for part-privatising the Royal Mail and selling part of it off to a foreign provider.
This is an idea first pursued unsuccessfully by the Tories. It was taken up by Peter Mandelson 10 years ago when he was secretary of state for trade and industry and abandoned after his resignation.
It's worth studying the words of the business secretary in a recent interview with the FT. He expressed his surprise and, by implication, his regret that his original plan a decade ago had never been implemented - a plan which he described as allowing Royal Mail "to be progressively private, even if initially part [of the company] stayed in the government's hands".
Today he repeated the commitment made in Labour's manifesto to keep the Royal Mail in public hands. That manifesto doesn't have long to run. Will the next manifesto include a commitment to make Royal Mail "progressively private" even if "initially" part "stays in government hands"?
"Psst, have you heard? They're planning an election... The word is that Labour's getting loads of money from its donors... Their ad agency is buying up poster spaces and Peter Mandelson's been seen plotting with Charlie Whelan..."
Yes, Westminster has got election fever again, and at last night's Tory Christmas drinks party the fever was particularly hot.
The first of the claims made above is certainly true but the second two are hotly denied. So why the excitement? Well, this is how the argument goes.
First, things can only get worse. After all, the chancellor and Tessa Jowell let the cat out of the bag yesterday when they said the recession would be deeper here than elsewhere.
Secondly, Labour have got the Tories where they want them, portraying them as the "do-nothing nasty" party.
Thirdly, Obama comes to power in January. He is, of course, the world's biggest celebrity, a latter day saint and a supporter of Gordon's economic policies.
The theory goes that what Gordon needs to do is surf the wave of Obamamania, announce some more plans to save the world, hold an emergency recession-beating budget and then invite the country to choose between his approach and that of David Cameron.
The only problem with this theory that I can find is a small matter that Labour are still behind in the latest polls. Yes, they've made progress, although that has stalled in the past couple of weeks but they are still behind.
So the prime minister would have to consider, in January let's say, whether he wishes to call an election which his opponents would present as unnecessary, opportunistic and a distraction from helping people in these difficult times, or whether, as I still suspect, he'll have no choice but to play it long.
Let's be clear though. It makes sense for his advisors to give him the choice in January if they can. I have no doubt at all that they're doing all they can to make it possible to run a winning election campaign then. I simply doubt that it is.
What's more, it makes sense for David Cameron to talk up the possibility, partly as a way of making an election less likely, and partly as a way to look like a strong and decisive leader. This is precisely what he did last time there was election fever.
Update, 12:00: David Cameron's news conference this morning could have come with the slogan "We really aren't the party of the rich". The day after calling for a day of reckoning for bankers who drove us into debt, he condemned the government's "shameful... macho posturing exercise" in threatening lone parents of pre-school children with sanctions if they don't take part in compulsorary back to work schemes.
The politics of David Cameron's latest speech on the economy are intriguing. He calls for an enquiry into those whose failure has led to the current economic crisis and he's talking as much of City folk as he is of politicians.
He says that an enquiry is necessary "in order to send the right message about our country's values". He insists that it is a "failure of moral leadership" on behalf of Gordon Brown not to have already done so.
Ever since becoming Tory leader, David Cameron has been nervous about being associated with the politics of the rich and of comfortable success. Remarkably, he has so far managed to avoid that.
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David & Shelley Ross;
David & Samantha Cameron |
However, the recent alleged scandal about George Osborne on a billionaire's yacht and the photograph of Mr Cameron himself alongside the shamed co-founder of Carphone Warehouse have raised a real danger for the Conservative Party. It is of course one that the Labour Party wish to exploit ruthlessly.
By today, talking about the importance of responsibility and of treating the richest people of our society the same as everyone else, the Conservative leader is not merely arguing for something he clearly believes in but trying to head off a real political danger.
The crisis in Zimbabwe is causing real tension in Whitehall. This week the home secretary warned the cabinet of a possible mass influx of refugees, many travelling on false papers. And she warned of a growing risk of the spread of cholera from the region.
Some in the Foreign Office regard such talk as an attempt to justify tougher border controls to make it even harder for refugees to make it to the UK from Zimbabwe.
Currently any Zimbabwean needs a visa to travel to the UK. Those however who come from South Africa do not. The result is that many refugees flee over the border and buy false papers before making their way to Britain.
The Home Office wants to see the introduction of visa restrictions for all countries in the region, the Foreign Office does not.
There's also a debate going on about what to do about thousands of Zimbabweans who are in limbo here. They have not been granted asylum and therefore cannot legally work or claim benefits but the government is unwilling to send them home.
The debate in each case is about the moral imperative to help those fleeing the Mugabe regime, poverty and disease and the danger of encouraging more from Zimbabwe to stay here and make their way here at an unacceptably high cost to the tax payer.
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