tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3881762807913180318.post1521633103506085085..comments2024-01-23T16:53:02.428+00:00Comments on Mark Thompson: Why Alan Johnson's NI "gaffe" mattersMark Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00744387583593537268noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3881762807913180318.post-66901043627272166412011-01-12T07:48:46.163+00:002011-01-12T07:48:46.163+00:00I still don't know why?I still don't know why?RoHShttp://www.ecoangel.jp/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3881762807913180318.post-49775250535666804092011-01-11T12:07:11.184+00:002011-01-11T12:07:11.184+00:00Foregone Conclusion - I think I normally am quite ...Foregone Conclusion - I think I normally am quite forgiving of these sort of gaffes. I certainly try to give politicians across all parties the benefit of the doubt. However this one just really rankled with me, maybe because of my position in running a company.<br /><br />Sunder - Your point about Clegg is fair and I was very surprised that he did not know the ballpark figure for a pension. I suppose the difference is that by the very nature of Clegg's position he has to be a generalist whereas Johnson's speciality is supposed to be finance. However I would not seek to defend Clegg's mistake, he should have had a much better idea of the pension level and he was rightly castigated when he did not.Mark Thompsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00744387583593537268noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3881762807913180318.post-69295986494779499652011-01-11T11:09:47.874+00:002011-01-11T11:09:47.874+00:00Sunder,
Surely there's a difference between a...Sunder,<br /><br />Surely there's a difference between an deep knowledge of economics and simply knowing your brief? Most Chancellors can't be expected to be academic economists - that's why they have advisers. But policy in the Treasury is inevitably, because of the nature of the thing, highly technical, and so the Chancellor has to engage with this side of things as well as the broader policy questions.<br /><br />Personally I'm perhaps slightly more understanding than Mark is - one gaffe by itself does not mean very much (Johann Hari has been using the 'Lib Dems are awful because Nick Clegg didn't know what the state pension was in 2008' line for 6 months now, and now it's just getting boring.) But Johnson's now got to work even harder to engage with the issues on a more than superficial level and appear impressive.Foregone Conclusionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15299377986312285047noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3881762807913180318.post-85741575888324194322011-01-11T11:03:44.581+00:002011-01-11T11:03:44.581+00:00But its a "gotcha" interview technique. ...But its a "gotcha" interview technique. (I think, by the logic of this piece, you must, though, have thought Nick Clegg thinking the pension was worth "about £30" a much worse gaffe for a politician? I expect Clegg was tired, and said something daft on his feet, but he clearly didn't know much about it).<br /><br />And look how much was made of it. Either you think that a similar amount should be made of it or that Labour being the third most influential party in Britain nothing much should be made of it.<br /><br />(As that list catches, I think there have been many fewer specialist economist Chancellors than your post implies. Both types have been successes and failures. )<br /><br />It's hardly SPECIALIST knowledge for an economics spokesperson of even the Green party to know the rates of NI!Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3881762807913180318.post-26256579099392594392011-01-11T10:43:15.623+00:002011-01-11T10:43:15.623+00:00Mark
I agree that everyone involved in employing ...Mark<br /><br />I agree that everyone involved in employing people would know this, as I would for the same reason.<br /><br />Embarassing, I agree. But not very convinced, for two reasons.<br /><br />But its a "gotcha" interview technique. (I think, by the logic of this piece, you must, though, have thought Nick Clegg thinking the pension was worth "about £30" a much worse gaffe for a politician? I expect Clegg was tired, and said something daft on his feet, but he clearly didn't know much about it).<br /><br />The political judgements of a chancellor and economic advice are different. If you ranked Chancellors by performance and by economic knowledge, they would not correlate. (There are examples - Churchill - where more economic knowledge would have helped avoid a bad mistake). But there are other examples - Lawson, Brown, perhaps Gaitskell - where a relatively high level of knowledge makes the Chancellor much less likely to take a range of advice, compated to a more political Chancellor like Asquith, Neville Chamberlain, Macmillan, Roy Jenkins, Jim Callaghan or Ken Clarke might.<br /><br />As that list catches, I think there have been many fewer specialist economist Chancellors than your post implies. Both types have been successes and failures. <br /><br />It is in the nature of the role that advisors to Chancellors (eg Peter Jay for Callaghan, Ed Balls for Brown) can be v.important and some of the most important figures in any government, though the problem for Thatcher and Lawson was that the prime minister took her adviser's views over those of the Chancellor. But the key test of a Chancellor is political and policy judgement in taking decisions based on advice.Sunder Katwalahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06671411534003530927noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3881762807913180318.post-28869490461441111922011-01-11T10:37:32.481+00:002011-01-11T10:37:32.481+00:00Until recently I, like you (and my wife), ran a sm...Until recently I, like you (and my wife), ran a small business. We were intimately involved with the minutiae of such things as VAT, PAYE, SSP, SMP and NI. And we knew the difference between a gross profit and a net profit!<br /><br />But the biggest responsibility every month was signing off the pay cheques upon which a whole raft of families depended. Too few people in public life have ever experienced that discipline and that responsibility - even those in 'real' jobs in large companies are largely shielded from those pressures.<br /><br />It worries me that so many of our politicians and would-be career politicines have emerged from an upper-middle class background and moved effortlessly from prep to public school, to PPE at Oxbridge and on to an 'internship' in the Westminster village.<br /><br />At best they learn the conventional wisdom of two decades earlier - at worst they learn nothing at all of relevance to the bulk of the citizens they aspire to lead!Nick Hollinghurstnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3881762807913180318.post-57752931563899031392011-01-11T10:32:34.248+00:002011-01-11T10:32:34.248+00:00It's hard to disagree with any of this. Johnso...It's hard to disagree with any of this. Johnson gives the impression of being clueless and not in command of his brief. In a lower profile position you may be able to get away with it but not as Shadow Chancellor and certainly not in the current economic environment.<br /><br />If Labour want to dislodge the coalition they have to win the economic argument and Johnson is proving a major liability. I don't see him lasting much longer. <br /><br />The difficulty for Miliband as I see it will be satisfying all wings of the party if he moves Johnson. Right now in the four big jobs you have three people associated strongly with Gordon Brown (Miliband, Balls and Cooper) so it will have to be someone from another part of the party. If you look at the Shadow Cabinet there are an awful lot of mediocrities - perhaps the answer would be to move Balls into the Shadow Chancellor and promote Denham or Hilary Benn<br /><br />Balls would at least mount stronger arguments than Johnson although an awful lot of swinging voters find him pretty repulsive and if Cameron sorts out the postal vote fiasco he may well be under pressure in his own seat.<br /><br />My feeling in the end is that Miliband lacks the status and the party lacks the talent to put the pressure on the coalition that they would want. Bit like the Tories in 98 in that regardLady Virginia Droit de Seigneurnoreply@blogger.com