Gordon Brown admitted he made some mistakes when he listened to banking lobbyists and loosened regulations on their clients. Like the banking regulators in many other countries they put the banks interest before that of their customers and the public in general.

After becoming PM Brown has said that regulations should have been tighter around the world, however his statements during an interview in ITV’s Tonight program contradict his previous position that as chancellor he did everything he could and the banking crisis was largely the fault of American regulators.

Of course David Cameron jumped straight onto this with: “Gordon Brown told us two things: he said this all came from America and he said his judgment was right in every regard. He is now saying that those two things are not true, that there were big mistakes made here in Britain in the regulatory system that he designed.”

Brown followed his admission that he screwed up by listening to lobbyists with “So I’ve learnt from that. So you don’t listen to the industry when they say, ‘This is good for us’. You’ve got to talk about the whole public interest.”

In another interesting admission during the interview he said he’s not very good at the whole PR side of politics. And this is news to whom exactly?

Interestingly after this interview aired the election polls tightened a little. There is now 4% (down from 5% yesterday) between the two major parties in some of the polls. Polls once again show that a minority or hung parliament is a distinct possibility.

Following on from the two big boys the Lib Dems published their manifesto yesterday. Somewhat ironically, the party that’s been the loudest critic of the big banks and their role in the economic downturn chose the heart of the City of London to have their press launch.

The overall message seems to be “trust us”; there is no marketing wet dream slogan to stand behind. The party described this as a “serious document for serious times”. The Lib Dems have been preaching the “change for people” and “building a fairer Britain for a number of years, and quite successfully at times too.

First examination and the party seem to have put a lot of effort into differentiating themselves from the Conservatives and Labour. Perhaps more work on showing how they can actually afford their promises would be nice.

The biggest “bribe” is no income tax paid on the first 10K/year. Add in raising pensions in line with earnings or inflation (why this is not done already just disturbs me) and the usual more police/smaller classes promises and it’s a large hole in tax revenue and additional costs that has to be filled from somewhere.

There is some tax raising proposals in the mix. First was to tax homes above 2 million pounds, followed a levy on bank earnings to help pay for the support they’ve had over the last year. Some tax credits for higher earners were also to be scrapped under the Lib Dem plans.

There are notes about public spending cuts and some nice tables at the back. Restrictions on public sector raises along with stopping the ID card program, not replacing the Trident and a few other things are part of the opposed cuts. Not sure if this adds up to the 15-17 billion a year required to pay for the promises.

Interestingly there were no pledges to keep income tax or VAT at current levels. In fact the manifesto makes it clear that tax raises may be required to reduce borrowings, but that it’s a last resort and the big focus will be on cutting spending. One big point of differentiation was talking directly about the deficit and that the borrowed money has to be paid back somehow.

The public sector savings proposed are substantial and first glance makes it tough to confirm that the numbers add up, this does create something of a credibility issue, but if the party set out to make sure people knew they were different from Labour and the Conservatives they did a nice job.

The BBC has Paxmans full interview with Nick Clegg here. Paxman comes off as being his usual direct self, while Clegg took a little time to get in track, but did OK

David Cameron stood in front of the crumbling, but iconic Batersea power station and  framed the launch of the conservative manifesto as giving power back to the people (Tooting Popular Front and Wolfie anyone?) by asking the voters to join them in forming the next government.

Once I got past the jargon (Labours was refreshingly buzz-word free) I felt much like I did after perusing the Labour manifesto yesterday. Once again there is a lot of effort talking about how tomorrow will be different from the last few years, but with no compelling vision for what the country will look like in 2015 if we were to believe.

The sharing government part comes from a proposed “Big Society”: a combination of decentralization and social responsibility. The idea as I saw it was that the electorate will be able to take over public services, choose the run their own school or hospital as a trust. No detail is given as to how that could happen,

“The Labour way assumes that only Big Government can solve our problems, but the alternative to Big Government is not no government: its good government, effective government”

Labour and the Lib Dems have both claimed VAT will have to rise to pay for Tory tax cuts and spending pledges. The NI rise, affecting anyone earning over £20,000, will hit small businesses “especially hard”, costing, according to the document, up to 57,000 jobs in small and medium-sized enterprises.

The Conservatives and Labour traded barbs over taxes (this is good, they get that the economy is the central issue). Labour proposes a 1% increase in National Insurance (social security for my American friends) for those earning over 20K/year. The Conservatives are not totally against the rise, but have pledged to raise the threshold for the higher contribution to 35K/year.

Cameron said nothing about keeping taxes where they are; both income tax and VAT (sales tax) were not mentioned. The Conservatives have said that the 6 billion/year hole left by pushing out the National Insurance raise will be met by efficiency savings. In an organization the size of the civil service that should not be a difficult figure to find, but the question comes why has it no been done before now.

This is one of my biggest problems. Labour offered some public sector workers guaranteed minimum wages. Call it what it is, a bribe. The conservatives pledged a public sector pay freeze for all but a million of the lowest earners (how many public employees are there in the country?)

Politicians the world over forget whose money they are blowing on legions of managers for the NHS (more managers than hospital beds…), quangos overseeing public services and civil servants micro-managing public services.

“Together we can even make politics and politicians work better. And if we can do that, we can do anything. Yes, together we can do anything. So my invitation today is this: join us, to form a new kind of government for Britain.”

Labour published their manifesto today, Cameroon and the Conservatives tomorrow and the third of the major parties, the Lib-Dems release theirs on Wednesday.

Brown said Labour has a plan for the future and their first priority is to secure the recovery. Any party that says continuing the recovery is anything other than job #1 will be dead in the water, so no shocks there..

Labours manifesto harboured no was no real surprises (as these things generally don’t). There were some minor give aways and one fairly major one that looks a lot like a bribe. Labour is offering a “living wage” to all those employed by the government, this is to lead by example and show the government can be a good employer. Under Labour the public sector has grown by close to 600,000 over the last 13 years.

To appeal to the squeezed middle class there was some minor tax credits, but that’s about it.

No increase in income tax rates in the next Parliament. No commitment to increase VAT (sales tax), but they did promise not to extend VAT to food, children’s clothes, books, newspapers and public transport fares.

Brown added a shot straight at one of the perceived weakness of the conservatives, taxation.  “We have not raised VAT since 1997, the only party that has raised VAT in the last 25 years is the Conservative Party.”

The economy thankfully gets lots of play and there is a commitment to halving the deficit over the next four years and some additional funds (sounds like venture capitol seed money) to “green” businesses. For a significant number of voters it’s going to come down to who is most trusted, or perhaps is least distrusted, to run the economy.

A lot of it seems like “business as usual with a lot of talk about the positives and minimizing the negative. There was little to no detail about where the spending cuts are going to be, the government have acknowledged they are coming and they will be deep, but have said they will not affect “front line” services.

Economists compare the depth of the cuts needed to those put in place by the Thatcher government in the early 80’s. Those cut a lot of public services, including the NHS, rather severely.

My first flick through the manifesto indicates it’s about hope. Along with showing that Labour should be trusted for another four years and don’t let the conservatives wreck the recovery.

The major parties are all publishing their manifestoes over the next few days. Each party is making statements about where they will not raise taxes to fill the black hole in national spending. For example Labour has said no change to income tax, but said nothing about VAT (sales tax) and the pledge to increase National Insurance (social security contributions if you are American) was already known.

The open promise to keep “business taxes as low as possible” is a pointless waste of good paper and does nothing to help Labours’ dwindling credibility on the economy.

Once again David Cameroon and the conservatives are not talking about the economy, the economy, but how the National Health Service (NHS) will be safe in their hands. It’s an interesting strategy, because if there is one thing that Labour has looked after OK over the last 13 years it’s the NHS. The previous conservative government under Thatcher and Major reduced funding and did the NHS a huge disservice. While there may be many problems with the NHS, too many managers seems to be one of the favorites, it provides a top quality service and is staffed by people who really care about the patient.

Clearly money public money is tight, clearly all the major political parties, if they’re going to be credible and trusted by the electorate in the run-up to the election, have got to make promises which we know the costs for and are clear know where the money is going to come from.

Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg (who I’m rather warming too, if my vote were still in Guildford they might get it) did have a couple of good lines over the weekend. He pointed to the rioting in Greece as a warning of what could happen if public spending were cut back too much.

Earlier this year Greece’s socialist government introduced some rather deep cuts to public spending to bring its deficit under control. Many thousands took to the streets and there was a general strike across the country in protest to the cuts.

While the UK has a nice history of rioting and social unrest over government taxation in the past (see “Pole Tax Riots” on Wikipedia), it seems difficult to see something similar happening. Primarily because the social stress brought about by the growing divide between the disenfranchised working class and those the new-money middle class no longer exists in quite the same stark fashion that it did under Thatcher.

With out that stress and the divisive policies along side the strict anti-strike laws in the UK it seems difficult to imagine to same level of coordinated protests over the loss of civil servant jobs.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the upcoming election. In 1997 Tony Blair promised the electorate real change and asked us to give Labour the mandate to go and make those changes. He got his mandate through a landslide election.

May 7th could dawn with the same optimism we felt when New Labour swept aside the Tory old guard and promised us a new tomorrow. As we watch the opening salvoes in the election fight I don’t see the same excitement, the same promise of a bright future.

This election is shaping up to follow the traditional pattern; the parties and their spin doctors spend the next four weeks talking about how the other guy is wrong, that it does not all add up and that there are “black holes” in their budget figures. This election could rapidly devolve into mud slinging, dirty lies and twisted half truths.

There is an alternative to the “business as usual” election race for the bottom. Someone could see this as an opportunity to truly engage the electorate and set out their vision for Britain in 2015.

Voters are not stupid; we see that the present government is in trouble and seems to be running out of ideas. Just for once I’d like to hear from the politicians that they understand what we want, and repeat it back to the electorate just so we can hear it.

After the lies over Iraq, the sexing up of dossiers, the expenses scandal and the usual run of illegitimate children and affairs we deserve to be respected. We have lost trust in our elected representatives. This is why the mood and desire for change is different from that in 1997.

Today it’s legal for an MP to simultaneously work as a paid lobbyist and still take their seat in the House of Commons. It’s not just the rules that need to change. To the outsider looking in there is a culture of entitlement, and that needs to be put right.

After the expenses scandal none of the parties dare claim the ethical high ground in the way Tony Blair and Labour could in 1997. They offered the country a real change from the Conservative culture of sleaze.

If politicians can treat us with respect, then maybe we could start believe in British politicians once more. All we ask is that our representatives let us know they hear our problems and remember who they represent when they take their seat in Westminster

Our demands are not much. We want fiscal responsibility from our leaders; we want them to lead by example, we want personal freedom to pursue opportunity and a safety net for those who need it. We want to be responsible and just ask the chance to be so.

There are too many professional politicians in parliament, too many MPs of questionable quality who have never worked a day in the real world in their lives. They seek power not to make a better Britain, but to build a career in politics.

The sad truth is that MP’s are not beholden to the people that elected them, but to the party whips. They are too indebted to the party to show real independence. Parliament should be controlled by it’s members, it should be more transparent and better understood by the voters.

I got a series of calls from Dad. They started just before lunchtime on Friday in Seattle, Friday evening in Guildford. First I was told that mum is coming home and they are waiting for the ambulance to take her home from the hospital. Not exactly smiles all round, but it’s where mum wanted to be.

Twenty minutes later I missed a call from my brother. I called back within a minute or two, dad answered the phone. The message was short and to the point, Mum’s gone.

In my first couple of days back in Guildford I went with dad and we got the death registered, spent time with the funeral directors, made arrangements with the crematorium, met the parish vicar, dealt with the hospital, got all the various pieces of paper to the right place and made many, many decisions about what’s going to happen.

Then all of a sudden it comes to a halt. In the last week we’ve not stopped, but now everything was done and it is just a matter of waiting for the service, getting dressed and turning up.

When we started to discuss the service with the funeral director we felt that someone should talk at the funeral, dad was clear he could not do it with out breaking down totally. My brother immediately passed, which left me.

My parents live in the Parish of Stoughton; the vicar of the Emmanuel church in Stoughton, Rev Frank Scammell would be conducting the service. As a family we sat with, talked about mum, how she was, her friends and how she was loved. After an hour or so we had the order of service set, it was going to be short and intimate.

I’d had some ideas about what I was going to say, but putting my scribbled notes into a coherent speech was a lot harder than it probably should have been. It was after midnight and unable to sleep I started writing, deleting, writing a little more, paring down and trying to be relevant.

On the day of the funeral dad was dressed 3 hours before we needed to leave. He’d pick up the newspaper, stare at the crossword for a few minutes, put it down, pick it up and start over again.

I spent the time pacing back and forth, trying to keep the most severe of the emotions down while I went over the eulogy.

Dad and I made it to the crematorium with plenty of time to spare; my brother and his family were already there. I wandered through the gardens, trying to collect my thoughts, find a calm moment for myself and get some control over my emotions.

The service was short; I paused a couple of times and took a deep breath, but made it through what I had to say. Like many families we’ve had our ups and downs over the years, but there was never any doubt about how we felt about each other.

I saw mum three days before she passed. I was on my way to the airport and she was on Onslow Ward. Our last exchange was the same as the closing statement of my eulogy “I love you”.

“I’m going to make this short.

I’ve talked to a few of mums friends and my family over the last few days. A lot of tears have been shed, and I’m sure there are plenty more to still to come.

For me, the most emotional moment was Monday. Dad and I were at the funeral directors and Dad was asked what should be done with mums rings. He replied “she’s worn her wedding ring for the last 43 years, she won’t want to take them off now”. We both lost the façade that everything was OK, because it’s not.

There were a couple of themes that ran through the conversations and that story illustrates the first one, she was loyal. She knew who her friends were and they in return, knew they could count on mum.

Second was that she lived her life with conviction. She had very clear ethics and taught us the difference between right and wrong, and she lived her life the right way until the end.

There are other stories from over the years, some her love for her family, her sense of humour, sense of adventure and a couple that involved whiskey and should be saved for elsewhere.

As you may know I am a cancer survivor, I know how scary it is to have the first conversation with your oncologist. My mother bore each stage of this disease with much more grace, strength, determination and stubbornness that I was ever been able to muster. I’m so proud of my mother and the way she fought over the last three years.

Thank you all for your thoughts, your wishes, calls and offers of help to my father, my brother and myself. As the weeks go by Stephen and I would really appreciate it if you could keep my father in your thoughts and give him a call occasionally as he adjusts to life with out mum. Thank you.

I love you mum, I miss you.”

Having spent most of the last month in London has been rather tough at times, however feeding my ongoing interest of British politics has been one of the bright spots. Dad is a Daily Mail reader, previously he got the Mirror untill that paper got caught in the race for the bottom a few years ago.

Historically my family is a center voting, concentrating on issues that matter to us (less about immigration and more about the economy). Dad has some sympathy with UKIP, but in what used to be one of the safest Tory seats around (Guildford) he’s typically voted Lib-dems (or Lib, or SDP and so on as appropriate). After 91 years of Conservative representation in Westminster Guildford returned a Lib-Dem MP in ’01. The Lib-dems only narrowly (by 347 votes) lost the seat to the Conservatives in the 2005 election.

The good news today is that Gordon Brown will have finally done the right thing and called an election to get himself a genuine mandate to lead, rather than the backroom deals that allowed him to replace Tony Blair. Having said that indications are that Gordon will not get than mandate from the electorate next month.

That doesn’t mean I think the Tories would be inherently much better than the incumbent in No. 10 marvelous either though. To me it seems they may be the least worse option on the table. The party is making lots of promises (it’s election time after all, promise the earth and hope the voters buy it) but under it all seem to understand that the solution to the country’s problem do not lie in ever increasing spending and spiraling debt.

While Parliament does not actually dissolve for another week, this was the start of a month of what may be some of the fiercest and perhaps most spun campaigning for many years. The conservatives are desperate to show that they are a good choice, but have yet to really gain any traction on Browns handling of the economy. I think Labour really see this as a winnable election.

The one thing all the parties should be most concerned with this time is voter turnout. The ongoing expenses scandal along with the lobbying busts over the last few weeks have lowered how people feel about politicians even further (and the existing bar was set comically low), this could mean that a lot of people really can’t be bothered to vote. If the turnout is lower than during the 2001 and 2005 general elections (about 60% in round numbers) then serious questions need to asked about how the electorate view Westminster overall.

The answers may not be pleasant for the career politicians, but if they wish to make Westminster relevant once again they had better take notice.

An election is coming in the UK, last summer I started getting e-mail from Labour, the Lib Dems, the Torys and UK Independence Party. All were looking for my vote in the imminent British general election. Brown can leave polling day as late as early June, but the serious money is on May 6^th as polling day.

The process is far different from the US. The date the country goes to the polls is only announced a little over four weeks beforehand. The incumbent PM goes to the Queen, asks for parliament to be dissolved and the race is on.

For the next four weeks the battle-busses and chartered airplanes take the party leaders, Members of Parliament, their staff, spin doctors and advisors up and down the country stumping for votes.

Even from a distance I find British politics far more coulourful and entertaining than domestic politics at home in the US. Ultimately because my vote is cast in one of the safest Labour seats in the country it’s actually fairly irrelevant, but I will take part in the process and vote in the election.

Some American friends are familiar with Prime Ministers Question Time, it’s shown on one of the more marginal cable channels on a Sunday evening, and are fascinated by the whole process. I thing Question Time actually shows off the best parts of the British process, it forces the PM to actually answer the questions, deal with the traditional heckling, attempt to show some form of leadership and respect the traditions of the House of Commons.

I sat and watched PMQT a few weeks ago and Gordon Brown answered questions ranging from hospital bed availability in a rural hospital to international treaties.

From a distance (with a serious nod to the newspapers and some parts of the new media world) six months ago it looked as though the Conservatives (AKA Tories) had Brown on the ropes and the election all but wrapped up. The economy was all that mattered, lets not forget that before taking over the top job Brown had spent years at number 11 Downing Street as chancellor and was (quite rightfully by the way) getting a lot of the blame for the state of the British economy.

The upcoming general election is really about one thing – The Economy – somehow David Cameron has been unable to make any serious capital out of the way Brown has handled of the downturn. If this continues and the Tories really can’t gain traction on this issue then the election becomes a far closer run thing.

The feeling is different from the situation in 1997, at that point the country wanted change more than they wanted Labour. Blair provided hope, promised change and assured us it was going to be different in the future. It was as close to a revolution as I’ve ever seen in British politics. Today the conservatives are desperate to give the same message, and either the message is not being heard, or it’s not being believed. Personally I think it’s the second, trust in government to do the right thing seems to be non-existent after the expenses scandal, lies about Iraq and bailing out the banks.

Interestingly it appears that many people view both the major parties as untrustworthy, not just the incumbent.

With worries about tax hikes and cuts in services the Conservatives are vulnerable. If this fear were to grow the Torys may be unable to really take Labour to the cleaners in May. If this were to happen the country is faced with the possibility of a minority or hung parliament.

If neither party have a majority in the House of Commons all of a sudden Nick Clegg and the Lib-Dems become both the major parties best friend. Heading into the election the Lib-Dems have 63 seats in parliament and won 22% of the vote in the 2005 election.

I did not know much about Clegg, he seems to be a true centralist. Previously the Lib-Dems appeared to have a slightly left of center position, that seemed to be the natural politics of previous leaders like Charles Kennedy and Paddy Ashdown.

From a distance it seems that under Nick Cleggs leadership the party has moved a little further right. However in an impressive balancing act it is more of a true a more central position, rather than towards the Conservatives.

During the month before the election there will be a series of televised debates, and somehow Clegg got an invite to join Brown and Cameron on stage and make them a three-way affair. This is what third party leaders dream of, equal billing with the big two and a chance to show why they should be involved.

Of course the Conservative attacks may start working and people could start believing in Cameron as a potential PM. If these occur then I think on May 8^th we find Cameron moving into Number 10 and a nice working majority in the house, if neither of those things happen then potentially Clegg and his list of demands become very important.