STEPH DOESN'T RIDE TO THE RESCUE!

*
In contrast to Messers Peston and Easton, the lovely Stephanie Flanders has posted an article on her blog (which you will all know is called Stephanomics) that plays fair:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/stephanieflanders/2010/04/april_fools.html
*
In it she dismantles Labour's latest dodgy dossier on the Conservatives 'Credibility Deficit'.
*
The comments beneath are full of surprise:
*
8. At 2:15pm on 01 Apr 2010, Rose Norman wrote:
Jolly good, Stephanie, you are starting to look at matters from a slightly less partial viewpoint.
*
11. At 2:34pm on 01 Apr 2010, NBeale wrote:
Well done. People were beginning to wonder about the objectivity of the BBC.
*
18. At 2:54pm on 01 Apr 2010, BugHunter wrote:
At last - a BBC report which does not just regurgitate the Labour line. Impressive, ma'am! You will be sent to Coventry in the BBC canteen; mark my words!
*
28. At 3:33pm on 01 Apr 2010, Mike wrote:
Steph, you ain't gonna last long at the BBC with this kind of impartial reporting
Well done in the meantime
*
38. At 4:08pm on 01 Apr 2010, Jom Forest wrote:
At last a non biased non partisan view from the BBC
Furher more for the first time ever I actually understood what was being said.
More Laura less Nick
*
104. At 00:49am on 02 Apr 2010, Cynosarges wrote:
It is nice to see one BBC reporter who shows a semblance of neutrality in reporting on the election. Congratulations, Stephanie.
All the BBC needs to do now is to persuade the Labour supporters who make up the other 99% of the BBC's reporting force to meet the BBC's duty of neutrality, and the BBC will no longer resemble a Labour party political broadcast.
*
One swallow doesn't make a summer, of course. Still it's a relief to see any swallows on the BBC's blogs!
*
*
Not a sheep also pays tribute here:
http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2010/04/stephanie-flanders-bbcs-economics.html

...AND BACK AGAIN

*
That revised article about the Chancellors debate has certain features you would expect from the BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8593509.stm
*
There are videos for all three politicians. How long does each last?
*
Alistair Darling - 2 minutes 13 seeconds
Vince Cable - 2 minutes 9 seconds
George Osborne - 1 minute 40 seconds
*
Also, only one politician is granted the honour of a 'blockquote' in a box on the right hand side of the page - Alistair Darling, attacking George Osborne.
*
The only other 'blockquote' belongs to Stephanie Flanders, the BBC's biased economics editor and links to her blog, Stephanomics. Go there and you find...not a review of the debate as such but just another of her many articles questioning Conservative economic policy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/stephanieflanders/2010/03/osbornes_tricky_balance.html
*

MARCHING IN STEPH WITH LABOUR

*
As UKIP leader Lord Pearson, receiving a rare invite onto the airwaves of Radio 4, said on today's The World at One (he got under 2 1/2 minutes and yet was interrupted twice by Martha Kearney), it's more than a bit rich for the European Commission, with its dismal track record over its own finances, to be lecturing any British government over its deficit.
*
Still the Great Bureaucracy has spoken and Labour has not enjoyed hearing what it has had to say. What can the BBC do to help Labour in its hour of need? How about getting Stephanie Flanders to spin the story so that it's really a bad news story for the Conservative party!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/stephanieflanders/2010/03/the_incredible_shrinking_gap.html
*
The whole piece needs quoting to give you the full biased effect:
*
It's no surprise that the European Commission would like Britain to bring its deficit down faster than the government plans. (Nothing to see here then!) Potshots from Brussels have been a regular feature of HM Treasury life since the "excessive deficit procedure" began - and this time, the UK is far from alone. Nearly every EU country now has a deficit over 3% of GDP. I'm told that the UK will not be the only government this week that the commission tells to try harder. (So that's all right then. No reason not to vote Labour).

What's interesting about this story is the light it has shone on the two largest parties' plans for the deficit. Once again, we find that the chasm between Labour and the Conservatives on this central electoral issue is more of a ditch. And a fairly shallow one at that.

This will not come as a surprise to readers of Stephanomics (yeech!) But the commission report has helped underscore the point. (Now here it comes!:) It has also highlighted the lack of clarity in the Conservatives' position.

We keep hearing that the government wants to halve the overall deficit by 2015. We will hear it again next week in the Budget.

Now, another way to describe the government's plans would be to say it plans to cut the structural deficit - the borrowing that won't go away with the recovery - from 9% of GDP in 2009-10 to 3.1% of GDP in 2014-15. In other words, they would reduce the structural deficit by two-thirds over the period.

On the Today programme this morning, Ken Clarke initially suggested the Conservatives would eliminate the structural deficit by 2014-15. (Did he? That's what Liam Byrne interpreted Ken Clarke as having said during their joint interview with James Naughtie, but when Ken Clarke said it was 'necessary to get rid of the structural deficit' he didn't say (and it doesn't sound to me either that he meant) 'by 2014-15'. See if you think that's what he said, or meant. The crucial passage begins at 5.20 here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8569000/8569657.stm) But he later stepped back from this, to return to the usual Conservative script, which is that they would get rid of the "bulk" of the structural deficit. When Mr Clarke interrupted Liam Byrne to protest about the interpretation the Labour minister was putting on his perhaps loosely-chosen words, saying "No I'm not, I'm saying the bulk of the structural deficit", I believe him completely - and hearing the clip in context, I suspect you will too. Steph, however, is wholly with Liam Byrne - and, boy, how she milks it!

A few observations about this.

One is that on the big macro question of this election - cutting the deficit - the Conservatives have actually given us yet less detail than Labour. Yes, they have offered some micro tasters: a few benefit cuts here, a public sector wage freeze there. On that front, you could say they've offered a bit more than Labour.

But on the basic question of how much they hope to cut the deficit over five years, Labour has a clear answer. The Conservatives do not. If Ken Clarke, probably the most experienced - and certainly one of the most economically literate - members of the shadow cabinet (suggesting, of course, less economic literacy from others in the shadow Treasury team. Who could she mean?) , cannot stick to a single answer in the course of a 10-minute interview we can be fairly sure there is no precise answer to the question that the Conservatives are willing to offer.

But what if Ken Clarke did stick to a single answer in the course of his 10-minute interview - as I think it's clear that he did!!!???

Anyhow, on she goes:

So, what is the difference between the parties? Well, that gets us back to the parlour game of what counts as "the bulk" of the structural deficit. We are told that the Conservatives are hoping to echo the language of the governor of the Bank of England on this point. He talked about getting rid of a "large part" of the structural deficit over that same time frame.

Is two-thirds a large part? As I've said before, if you took half of my dinner I would consider that a large part. If you took away two-thirds I'd feel seriously hard done by. I might well say the bulk of my dinner had been nicked.

Reading between the lines, the IFS have previously concluded that the Conservatives would like to eliminate the current structural deficit - the part of the structural hole that is not due to public investment - by 2014-15. On current Treasury forecasts for the economy, it thinks that meeting this target would involve "extra" cuts in borrowing of just over 1% of national income, or £15bn in today's money - on top of the 4% of national income cumulative cuts in borrowing by then that Labour has set out.

But note that this is simply the IFS interpretation of Conservative policy, based on what George Osborne has said. It is not official policy, and behind the scenes, officials will neither confirm nor deny that this is what they have in mind. This is their right. But you might think it a bit strange, when they have made cutting the deficit such a central part of their campaign.

Yes, the government has not said much about how its overall spending plans would be reached. And yes, it's true that the numbers are subject to huge revision. What we thought was a £37bn structural hole 18 months ago, was revised up to £90bn a year ago, and then revised down to £73bn in the November PBR. If the Tories tied themselves down to a fixed target, they could find the spending and tax implications vary hugely from year to year. But if this is their thinking, perhaps the Conservatives should explain that, rather than simply claiming - in effect - that whatever Labour plans to do on the deficit, they would do more.

Another key point, which the IFS's director, Robert Chote alerted me to, is that, on this interpretation, the Conservatives wouldn't be tough enough for the European commission either.

Brussels always looks at the "treaty deficit" - the deficit as measured under the Maastricht Treaty, which excludes public sector corporations, and is therefore a bit bigger. In the leaked report, the commission says it wants the UK to bring its "treaty deficit" down to 3% of GDP in 2014-15, instead of the 4.6% forecast in the PBR. Other things equal, that implies an addition 1.6% in fiscal tightening by that year, versus an extra 1.1% under the Conservatives. So the Conservatives might not measure up either.

Now, the Conservatives may say this misreads their position. (They certainly should if it does!) But to do that, they would surely need to say what their position is. Until they do that, we can only conclude, once again, that the difference between the parties is less than they would have us believe - not just on the short-term approach to cutting the borrowing but well into the future.
*
You could almost guarantee that Stephanie Flanders would take this sort of stance on a story that everyone else outside the Labour Party sees as being worse news for Labour than for the Conservatives, whatever the vaguenesses of the Conservative position (or the credibility of the European Commission).
*
The piece features prominently on the home page of the BBC News website.

P.S. Sorry for the strange changes in text size here!*

A FEW CRUMBS

*
Just a few more brief vignettes from Radio 4's coverage of the recovery yesterday:
*
At 6.35am you would have heard Nils Blythe on the Today programme talking up expectations of 0.4% growth when the figure came. Well, not quite Nils.
*
Both Nils (on PM) and Stephanie Flanders (on The World Tonight) were suggesting that a revision upwards of the 0.1% (rather than a revision downwards) was not unlikely. We'll see, and we'll remember these pronouncements if they're proved wrong yet again.
*
The expert on Andrew Bomford's report on the recovery for PM was a Professor Paul Gregg of Bristol University (and a former advisor to James Purnell), who talked on the "lost generation" of the 1980s (Mrs Thatcher, booo!!) and said everything must be done to make sure that doesn't happen again.

STEPH HANDS THE PRIZE TO LABOUR

*
On each of the programmes I review in the course of a weekday, yesterday saw the 'election campaign's' first big day on the BBC (and wasn't it fun?). It was the day the Conservatives launched their plans for the NHS & the day Labour launched another of its dodgy dossiers, this time listing why the Conservatives' sums don't add up (though holes in Labours' sums appeared within 45 minutes). Guess which one led each programme's coverage. Yes, the Labour attack on the Tories, with the Conservatives' health plans limping along behind. And each time the BBC's economics editor Stephanie Flanders was on hand to award the prize for successful campaigning to Labour - as she did on her blog too http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/stephanieflanders/2010/01/the_thought_doesnt_count.html
:

But it's true that there have been a number of not-quite-pledges in the rhetoric
of senior Tories over the past year - like the talk of tax cuts for married
couples, or reversing the 50p rate for top earners. Here and elsewhere, they
have wanted to gain credit for aspiration, without having to pay for it.
Yet, to coin a phrase, it's not the thought that counts.
The only message that Labour wanted to get across with this document is that you can't have your cake and cut it too. To the extent that the Conservatives are now
forced to clarify what they have and have not promised for a Tory first term, I
suspect Labour will consider this first big day of the 2010 campaign a success.

So Stephanie - whether on The World at One, on PM or on her blog - supported Labour's main charge of the day and claimed success for it as an electioneering point. Unlike her commentaries on Radio 4, however, blogs can be updated and Stephanie has judiciously balanced the above comments with warnings for Labour.

AUGUST'S I.C.s - MARR'S STAND-INS

With Andrew Marr off our screens during August, he had three stand-ins: Huw Edwards, Stephanie Flanders and Sophie Raworth. How did they fare? Were they any less biased that old Marr?
*
*
SOPHIE RAWORTH(pictured above with a pleased-looking Jeremy Bowen)

Sophie's appearance on 9th August contained two relevant interviews:
Andrew Lansley, Conservative - 1.2
Hilary Benn, Labour - 0.3
The Lansley interview was on health and public spending (and, of course, cuts), whereas Benn's was bout the 'food revolution'. The sharp disparity in I.C.s does her no credit.


STEPHANIE FLANDERS

Steph's appearance on 2nd August contained two relevant interviews:
Vince Cable, Lib Dem - 1
Harriet Harman, Labour - 0.7
Please click on the label for the fair Stephanie for my comments on her un-BBC-like interview with St. Vince. The interview with Hattie ranged widely, but was not so strenuous.


HUW EDWARDS

Huw's show was on 16th August and contained three relevant interviews:
Michael Gove, Conservative - 1.1
Bob Ainsworth, Labour - 0.9
Caroline Flint, Labour - 0.3
Hard to judge off just three interviews, but it doesn't surprise me that the Gove interview was the toughest.

MS. HATE-MEN

After praising aspects of Stephanie Flander's interview with St. Vincent Cable, I must report that the babe's ( I would) interview with Harriet Harman (I so wouldn't) was not in the same league.

This was a chat between two voices from the left, disagreeing amicably over the 'human rights' of UFO hacker Gary MacKinnon, assisted suicide (both for - as, BTW, am I) and the equality commission (which I would immediately scrap, in these tough economic times!).

Away from BBC bias though, I want to quote Harriet Harman: "I don't accept (for) one moment all those people who say, you know, starting with the Tories, who I think are insufferably arrogant about this, say 'Oh, Labour's already lost the next election. We've already won it. We already have the keys of Downing Street'. I think that's arrogant. I think it's taking the voters for granted."

Good synthetic anger there Harriet! Except that 'the Tories' have said no such thing, indeed have gone out of their way not to say any such thing. Labour are such liars, such smearers. Harriet Harman should be ashamed of herself. She won't be though.

Steph did not point this out though. Still she is hot.

STEPH AND THE SAGE

This morning's 'Andrew Marr Show' featured posh single-mum Stephanie Flanders - the Beeb's economics editor - as guest host. This was at least an aesthetic improvement on Marr!

Dr Vince Cable, a man you might be forgiven for thinking also works at the BBC as their economics correspondent (given the frequency of his appearances on the Beeb and the easy ride he tends to be given) was one of Steph's guests.

She introduced him thus: "Well, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, has earned himself a reputation for being something of a sage in this economic crisis."

*

This use of the word 'earned' tells us that Steph thinks the reputation (held by unspecified people) is deserved. She is not alone at the BBC, where Dr Cable's reputation has always been especially high.

That said, Ned's lovely daughter went on to give Confucius a tougher time than is usual at the BBC, at least according to the interruption coefficients. She interrupted the great sage 7 times in a 7-minutes-20-seconds-long interview (I.C. of 1.0).

*

Her questions (in tone and content) weren't that tough though, but they hit a few targets missed by most of her colleagues and her final question was spot-on: "There was a press release I got from your office last week actually that said we need to have an honest debate about how we can cut the budget deficit without squeezing key public services, but a lot of people" (including Beeb Bias Craig) "would say that was a dishonest statement in itself, that you can't cut the deficit, that you can't balance the books, without cutting key public services. Do you think, maybe, that youv'e had a bit of an easy ride on this, that you haven't had to be honest about this?"

*

Lovely Stephanie's colleagues at the BBC are among the ones who've given Dr Cable 'an easy ride'. Respect to the lady for acknowledging the fact!!!