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| Jailed Amanda Knox tells AP that she's scared PERUGIA, Italy (AP) -- Amanda Knox sounded casual, surprised even, by the simple question as it came through the door of her prison cell in English on Sunday: "How are you?" "OK, thanks. How are you guys?" said the American student, who had been sentenced eight days earlier to 26 years in prison for the murder of her British roommate. But minutes later, Knox confided, in answer to a question from an Associated Press reporter in her cell: "I am scared because I don't know what is going o... hosted.ap.org |
Serbia Applies for EU Membership The move marks a key step for the Balkans country to break from its wartime past. www1.voanews.com |
In Tsunami’s Wake, an Unexpected Second Chance The flood of aid money that followed the Asian tsunami five years ago — an unprecedented $12 billion — has rebuilt and refashioned local economies. feeds.nytimes.com |
Obama Pledges Full US Aid to Haiti After Earthquake American rescue teams have been dispatched to the disaster area www1.voanews.com |
Cuts and tax divide Labour, but could sink the Tories too | Martin Kettle The spending plans to be outlined in the budget, and Osborne's response, will be the critical pre-election momentTwo weeks ago senior ministers read the riot act to Gordon Brown, telling him to stop Âframing the coming Âelection in terms of Labour investment versus Tory cuts. The word went out from Westminster that Labour would get real. Everything about the key election battleground of public spending after the bank bailout would be different from now on.As it turned out, ministers managed to speak from the same script for a mere 10 days. That was how long the ceasefire lasted before Alistair Darling gave his strikingly austere interview to the Financial Times this week, in which he insisted that the task of halving Britain's £178bn deficit over the next four years was "non-negotiable", and appeared unwilling to deny that all departmental budgets except schools, health and the police are facing cuts of 17%.I am told that "splenetic" language could be heard from the direction of the PM's office as soon as Brown read Darling's interview on Tuesday. But it wasn't just Brown who was annoyed. The axe-sharpening interview touched raw nerves across Whitehall. Ministers who regard themselves as closer to ÂDarling than to Brown on how to approach the politics of the deficit were angry that the chancellor had apparently given such a cuts-centred account of the government's deficit strategy.As ministerial indignation about unbalanced interviews goes, in fact, Brown's anger at the FT interview was on a par with the annoyance with which Darling and others listened to the PM's pre-coup interview with Andrew Marr at the start of the month – in which Brown talked a lot about how taxes would rise to pay down the deficit while failing ever to utter the dreaded word "cuts".Labour's problem about its public spending narrative is proving easier to state than to solve. It needs to differentiate its approach from that of the faster and deeper cutting Conservatives. At the same time, however, it must avoid appearing merely Tory-lite on cuts (the Darling deviation), since this will alienate Labour's core voters. But also it cannot afford to be in deficit denial (the Brown blunder), since this will not wash with moderate voters, even those with some understanding of Keynes. There is, nevertheless, a coherent course between this Scylla and this Charybdis. It is the one most consistently argued by Vince Cable for the Liberal Democrats, but nowadays also to be heard from Peter Mandelson. Cable's version emphasises that neither the economy as a whole nor the public sector can just be patched up and run as they used to be. Cable thinks the Tories are too ready to cut prematurely and that Labour underestimates the scale of what is needed. But it is hard to pretend that Cable's approach has more in common with the Tories than with Labour, especially Mandelson, these days.Mandelson's approach, set out at the Work Foundation on 6 January and again in the Lords yesterday, stresses that deficit reduction requires three complementary approaches. The first is cutting spending from 2011 onwards. The second is targeted tax rises. And the third is government action to promote economic growth. In the business secretary's mind, all are equally important politically, although in fiscal terms the savings from the first – cuts – add up to the total from the other two put together.Mandelson will have been almost as irritated by Darling's focus on cuts as he was by Brown's emphasis on taxes. It would be wrong to pronounce the post-coup ceasefire dead, but this week confirms that Labour hasn't got its story right yet on the deficit. Partly that's because there is still genuine disagreement, as well as different instincts, among ministers. But it is also because, after 13 years, these people are tired, and the leadership from Brown is fitful. Though Labour is closer to having a coherent story about the deficit than the Tories have, it is not at ease with itself.Compared with the Conservatives, however, Labour's problems on the deficit could soon seem quite small. George Osborne's autumn promise of an age of austerity and his commitment to cut faster, thus deeper, into departmental spending may have been a risk worth taking while Brown stuck to deficit denial. But that's why the post-coup ceasefire is Labour's last best hope of making a real contest out of the 2010 election.The Osborne-Cameron approach would be more vulnerable if Mandelson lined up Labour's ducks in a more Âbalanced way, and if Darling – whose approach is closer to Mandelson's than the FT interview implies – used the March budget to add some detail on cuts and growth to the tax rises announced in December's pre-budget report. The budget will be the critical pre-election moment. It will be a million miles away from that which Norman Lamont unveiled in 1992 for John Major. But it will nevertheless be the moment when all the parties declare their priorities, the Tories even more than Labour.Even today, nothing is potentially more damaging to the Conservative cause among middle-ground voters who have embraced David Cameron than a perception that he presides over "the same old Tories". At which point, cue Michael Forsyth. The once and possibly future Scottish secretary's speech on Wednesday, saying taxes were already too high and that spending should be cut by £75bn a year, is exactly the sort of Thatcherite fruit Labour is looking to shake out of the Tory tree. If voters start worrying that Osborne is thinking in that ball park, implying big VAT rises or slices off the schools budget, the election really might open up as a contest.That still seems unlikely; nevertheless, these are volatile times. Labour had good news this week on unemployment, with potentially big knock-on savings in benefits. But ministers fear it may rise again next month and until after the election. Likewise, Tuesday's Âpreliminary final-quarter growth figure for 2009 may allow Labour to say that Britain has at last emerged from recession. But the first-quarter growth figure for 2010, due just before the probable election date, may actually be weaker, sending a less certain message to voters.Politicians, always far more nervous than people assume, tend to Âexaggerate the importance of small things as campaigns quicken. In spite of Labour hyperactivity and Tory twitchiness, the truth is that most people have not engaged with Westminster's election mania yet. But these are important times. It is getting harder and harder to say the parties are all the same, or that the choices between them do not matter.ConservativesLabourGordon BrownAlistair DarlingDavid CameronGeorge OsborneMartin Kettleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |