Most political news is about personality and politics rather than policy.  At the moment that’s particularly true – the big stories of recent weeks have been about Brown’s behaviour, Lord Ashcroft, what the polls say.  Next week promises more of the same – a Channel 4 programme on Cameron, and the court appearance of some of the people charged as part of the expenses scandal.

I’ve often wondered how much difference all this news makes.  Sit through a focus group, or speak to your least political friends and you will hear one thing time and time again: “they are all the same”.  So much of this bad political news is just reinforcing what people think anyway – it is “already in the share price” as they say in the City.

Danny Finkelstein made the point nicely in an article last week:

The cynicism about politics is so pervasive that it embraces almost all political activity. Use a statistic? It’s a lie. Cry on television about your dead child? It’s an election gimmick. Attack your opponents’ policy? You would say that, wouldn’t you.   And this cynicism extends to the media and our coverage.  So not only politics, but news about politics, is seen as a fiction inside an untruth wrapped in a piece of spin… Most of politics and most political coverage proceeds as if there was still a reasonable degree of trust. As if the messages were still getting through, still being listened to, still being weighed up.

For the government of the day the clear implication is that what really matters is not their spin but whether they can deliver better results on the ground (a point grasped by Tony Blair some time in his second term).  It is rather more difficult for the opposition to act on this insight.  However, at the start of his time as Conservative leader David Cameron did emphasise that he would always aim to “show, not tell” people that the party had changed.  And there was something of this in Cameron’s initial reaction to the expenses scandal – when he was prepared to take a stand unpopular among some of his MPs.

The big problem for Cameron is that the Government has managed to shift so much the real-world pain the public will feel until after the election by running up huge debts.  So right now the public services are still hiring away. On the ground, things don’t look so bad.  At least, not yet.

We know more or less what the Budget is going to say already.

The Government is thinking not about how to reduce the soaring deficit – but how to spend the receipts from the super-tax in a pre-election giveaway.  We will see mock “surprise” at how much the bonus tax has raised, and condemnation of those who “said it wouldn’t raise any money”.  We will see big figures for savings based around finally officially scrapping the disastrous NHS IT programme and merging a few Primary Care Trusts.  If Liam Byrne has his way (and he probably won’t) the government may even nod to the markets by stressing how “tough” it is planning to be on public sector pay post election (nominal rises less than 1%, meaning small real-terms cuts).  The one thing it won’t do is make any meaningful effort to control the vast deficit.  Instead the Government will try to keep the debate narrowly focused around the timing of cuts – not the content.

Ironically, this is where public cynicism might ride to the rescue of the Conservatives. The idea that politicians will spend now and cut after the election is highly plausible for most world-weary voters. In the 1974 election Willy Whitelaw accused Harold Wilson of going “round and round the country stirring up apathy”.  The Tories won’t need to go round “stirring up” cynicism about the budget.  But they will need to try and be in a position to exploit it.

Neil O’Brien is the Director of Policy Exchange

I haven’t really got much to say on the specifics of Abdelbasset al–Megrahi’s compassionate release from his Scottish jail. I think it was a fudge; if the man was guilty he should have stayed in jail, while if people seriously believed him to be innocent his appeal should have gone ahead.

But the terrible thing is this: our automatic assumption is that someone, somewhere, is lying about what was said to who, and when.

I talked briefly to someone about this during the week, and suggested that CCHQ must have had some concrete knowledge of something dodgy going on – they are a cautious bunch, and rightly ensure that they have as much information as possible before going in hard on an issue.  My friend (while not knowing for sure) was of the opposite view – given who was involved, and that the handling of the release of both Megrahi and the information surrounding his release has been so messy, CCHQ took a punt and gambled that there was something else happening behind the scenes.

I don’t know. And I doubt we will ever know for sure.  But it is hugely disappointing that we have so little trust in this government that the automatic assumption is that they have done a dodgy deal.

I was catching up on Today in Parliament last night (thank you iTunes) and heard this absolute gem from Gordon Prentice:

“I want to alert the House and the people outside to what this is all about. It is about very rich people buying elections. We can listen to the exchanges between lawyers until we are blue in the face, but that is what it is about—multimillionaires who live abroad buying elections.”

In proper ex-CRD style, I source this to Hansard, 13 July 2009, col. 81. Or click here.

I have two things to say: Lord Sainsbury, Bernie Ecclestone & the trade unions. And if you can’t persuade people of the benefits of your programme sufficiently that some of them support you financially, I’d argue that your policy programme is probably not good enough for voters either.

Anyway, given what’s happened in recent months with MPs expenses, I was initially all for demanding stricter rules, independent oversight and stringent limits. Then I thought – is that really consistent with my belief in smaller government, transparency and wider participation?

I don’t think so.

When the proposals for more state funding for political parties were first made in early 2006, I had a lengthy (and ultimately pointless) argument about the merits or not of no donations. I wanted there to be less state funding (see above, point 2 to Gordon Prentice), with political parties able to take funding from absolutely any individual, of any amount, at any time – a total free for all with two important provisos. Firstly that no companies could donate so you always knew who the individual was. And secondly that every donation should be published within seven days.

I believe that the only way to ensure honest political funding is by being fully transparent. If a party wants to take money from someone – fine, but they need to be prepared to defend their involvement. And realistically if someone is determined to get round the rules, they will, despite the theory of the Governor’s eyebrow or the smell test. So I think the best way is to get it all out in the open, be honest and straightforward with people and to make sure that individuals are willing to take responsibility both for who they give donations to and who parties take donations from.

There’s a report in the Observer this morning about Andrew Mitchell’s draft policy proposals for international development. It concerns vouchers for schools and hospitals in developing countries. Like Andrew, I don’t have any qualms about whether access to health, education and other services are privately, publicly or third-sector provided. I do want them to be provided in a fair, sustainable and effective way.

I don’t have any inside track on what the proposals are, but I think it’s worth making a few things clear.

Number one – the 0.7% of GDP target for international development is not a “bid to promote compassionate Conservatism” – it’s an agreement that most developed countries around the world have signed up to. It was set in 1970 – nearly 40 years ago! Yet by 2005, only five countries met or exceeded this. If we don’t abide by international agreements, we have no right to expect others to do so.

It’s a drop in the ocean of government spending, and if properly targeted, spent and monitored could in fact reduce costs for developed countries’ governments. For example, I was watching Stephen Fry’s HIV & Me programme the other day (it’s EXCELLENT. Sad, but excellent). One woman from Uganda was featured; she came to the UK, was diagnosed HIV positive, and is now appealing against deportation because her visa has run out. She won’t get the drugs she needs in Uganda. I think she had appealed 4 or 5 times. If she goes back, she will probably die fairly soon after.

I don’t believe that we have any sort of case to send her back to die; I do believe that if aid money was properly spent and third-sector organisations such as Bill Clinton’s Foundation (which has negotiated agreements for developing countries to buy antiretro-viral drugs at cost price) were given proper support, she could return to Uganda safely. In short, we live in a global village, and what happens on the other side of the world can and does have a significant effect on us.

And finally, it’s a moral cause – it is disgusting that there are still children dying of malnutrition, dirty water and preventable diseases. We forget, living in Britain, just how appalling some people’s lives really are.

Aid is not the answer to everything. More important in the long-term are foreign investment and trade. But aid is a vital part of the development spectrum, and should not be cut for selfish reasons. Or if you have to think about it selfishly, at least understand that slashing aid now will lead to far greater problems for you at home in the future.