Morning Report – June 16th

The NHS and the economy – the two issues that will define the next election – are front and centre today as the Tories try to get on the front foot. We’ve already brought you extracts of Ed Balls’ speech to the LSE this morning, in which he’ll argue that George Osborne is putting politics before economics. It’s reminiscent of Alan Johnson’s line that Osborne “puts the political cycle before the economic cycle”. The real attention grabber though is that Balls wants to see tax cuts to stimulate the economy – will this gain any traction and help to restore Labour’s economic credibility? We’ll see…

Another part of that equation looks likely to be a “war on waste”(£). Every party does it in opposition, because it’s easier to talk about dealing with “wasteful” spending than it is to talk about making cuts. Yet this might be a little different, as there’s also a covert mea culpa – not all of Labou’r spending in government was smart spending, and there was waste.

The NHS is becoming something of a festering sore for the coalition, with the Tory right up in arms over possible concessions to the Lib Dems. So they’ll be reading arch-Blairite Alan Milburn’s views on the reforms with great interest. Milburn seems genuinely annoyed that the NHS plans (which he seems to back) have been shelved. This will do little to win over those who aren’t already Milburn fans, but it’ll sow some seeds of discontent amongst the Tories. If a Labour member can back these reforms, why can’t Cameron? The other side of the equation are the Lib Dems – if you’re interesting in where they’re at on this, you’d be advised to see what Shirley Williams has written in the Times(£) this morning.

And finally, June 30th looks likely to be a big day for public sector strikes, as civil servants union PCS joined teachers’ unions in backing strike action. The Guardian reports that they’ll also be backed by UK Uncut. Over at ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie argues that unions are taking advantage of “weak” strike laws – yet Britain has some of the most restrictive trade union legislation in Europe. It seems only a matter of time before the Tories try to make it harder still to use the right to strike….