What Lord Young tells us about politics

Lord Young, who along with Caroline Lucas won a Spectator award this week, has quit his unpaid role advising the Prime Minister. His crime? Having lunch with the Daily Telegraph. Serious stuff.

Actually the key thing he said that has been held up in horror was "the vast majority of people in the country today, they have never had it so good ever since this recession - this so-called recession - started."

Now, as it happens, this is factually incorrect. His opinion that low interest rates meant most people with mortgages had more spending money is not borne out by the statistics but, I'd argue, being wrong about something over lunch is not enough grounds to lose your job.

Labour is posturing saying that those out of work will be "offended" by the peer's remarks which is irretrievably prissy. A minor figure, who isn't even in the government, tells a journalist they think the rhetoric around the recession is overblown over what sounds like a rather sumptuous lunch. Hardly that insensitive and hardly likely to offend any unemployed person who takes the Telegraph.

Actually my favourite bit of the interview is where he says that the cuts will take government spending levels to 2007's figures which wont be that bad. "Now, I don't remember in '07 being short of money or the government being short of money," Well, of course he wasn't short of money he's Lord blooming Snooty! You can't judge the state of the economy on whether the rich are forced to buy economy beans.

However, I don't think he should have gone. We're breeding a generation of political robots, who serve simply to provide an antiseptically wiped set of progressive sounding sound bites no matter how horrendous the policy. By punishing honesty in this way we deepen the trend towards power for its own sake.

For me it seems that Cameron took a "safety first" attitude towards his health and safety advisor, worried about negative press from these off hand, off message remarks. It shows tremendous weakness on his part that he's afraid that the slightest rustle of leaves means the whole tree is about to come tumbling down.

It also shows how this government is much more of an extension of New Labour than it is of Thatcher. Thatcher's government in the eighties had a tame press that was willing to go to war for it's ideals. When the government was criticised they rarely caved in unless it was completely unavoidable.

Lord Young's departure, for what amounts to rather mild (if wrong) remarks, demonstrates a remarkable lack of nerve or loyalty on the part of the top brass. It also reveals Cameron's priority to be seen to "care". That's the taint of Blairism not the boot print of Thatcher and the Coalition wont get through five years cowering at just the thought of gunfire.

The mainstream political consensus has led to the death of ideological politics and the rise of a political class that services the industry, seeking power for its own sake. To lose an advisor for such a minor deviation from the party line is a bizarre waste of "talent". I've no idea whether Lord Young is any good at writing Health and Safety reports but his views on the overall effects of the recession can't possibly effect the work he was doing.

It's all very well those in opposing parties, like me, crowing at a Tory head having been taken - but this is a worrying sign that politics is far, far shallower than it should be. No genuinely radical government could survive in a political atmosphere where people can't say what they think without being shot for it.