Shadow Chancellor George Osborne will set out the Conservative Party’s strategy for rebuilding the UK economy in an exclusive Thomson Reuters Newsmaker at 11 a.m. on Monday, October 26.

We will bring you full coverage of Osborne’s speech, including a live video feed and blog, after which we will conduct a short social media interview with him.

We want you to send us your questions to put to him.

This is your chance to grill the man who, according to the latest opinion polls, looks set to inhabit Number 11 Downing Street after the upcoming general election.

Be it on bankers’ bonuses, tax havens or the Conservative Party’s plans for leading us out of a recession, send us your questions now using the form below or via Twitter using the hashtag #askosborne.

- Guy Aitchison is a contributing editor at openDemocracy and writes regularly for its UK blog, OurKingdom -

The Labour politician and intellectual Richard Crossman once described the British constitution, with a sovereign Parliament at its centre, as a “rock” against periodic “waves of popular emotion”.

As MPs reflect on the recent expenses scandal during their 82-day summer break, many will be tempted to congratulate themselves for once again weathering the storm of public outrage.

At the height of the crisis the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition were competing with each other to propose ever-more radical constitutional solutions to the catastrophic loss of trust precipitated by the Telegraph’s revelations of MPs’ shameless, and in many cases fraudulent, abuse of taxpayers’ money. Gordon Brown called for “a written constitution”, David Cameron for giving “power to the powerless” and Nick Clegg, whose party has long been calling for reform of a “rotten” Westminster system, demanded change in “100 days”.

The impulse of all three party leaders to respond to the furore with promises of democratic reform showed they understood public anger was about more than simply duck houses, moats, dry rot, and other abuses of expenses, however petty or extravagant: it was symptomatic of a much deeper disconnect between the public and politicians that has been building for years.

The problem comes from an over-centralised and antiquated British state whose monarchical constitution is totally unsuited to represent the interests of a modern pluralist society. Parliament itself is a creature of the executive that has permitted the systematic erosion of rights and freedoms under a barrage of illiberal legislation and failed to prevent disastrous decisions like the Iraq war.

Our absurdly unjust electoral system means that, when the Prime Minister exercises his royal power to call an election, the effective choice of voters is confined to two parties born out of ancient class antagonisms but now purged of ideology by party managers chasing “floating voters” in the handful of marginal constituencies that determine who wins.

Local government meanwhile lacks independence or any meaningful power with 90% of its funding coming from the centre. In these circumstances it’s no wonder the public feels alienated and cut off from the political system with so many choosing not to vote (40% in recent general elections).

But now that the two main party leaders have shown signs they understand the problem, where is the revolution we’ve been promised? Unfortunately, there’s every indication that much of what was said in the heat of the crisis was mere rhetoric aimed at appeasing angry voters until the whole thing blows over.

Cameron has quietly dropped his earlier talk of reform emphasising the victory of his party in a general election as the best solution to the democratic crisis. The comfortable victory of the Tories in the recent by-election in Norwich North will only strengthen defenders of the status quo within his party, despite the abysmal 45% turnout.

The Prime Minister, meanwhile, served up a pathetic Constitutional Reform Bill in the last few days of Parliament which makes a few tweaks to the House of Lords without taking us much further towards a democratic second chamber. There’s apparently talk from inside Number 10 of a possible referendum on the voting system at the next election, but the only alternative to first-past-the-post being muted is the unproportional AV system which would do nothing to ensure the seats a party has fairly reflects the number of votes it receives.

It’s almost impossible to feel inspired by such weak proposals for reform aimed at party advantage and offered in a controlling and calculating spirit without popular involvement. It’s clear that if we’re going to seize the political moment opened up by the expenses crisis and secure the kind of modern constitutional democracy polls consistently show voters want then we cannot rely on politicians to do this for us.

What is needed is a popular force of opinion outside Parliament demanding change at the next election. This means citizens meeting together in living rooms, pubs and town-halls across the country to discuss the kind of democracy we want before joining together independently of parties, corporate media and the formal structures of political power, to pressure parties and candidates at the next election.

In the coming weeks the Rowntree Trusts will be launching an open politics network that aims to help galvanise such a movement. It will assist citizens to organise, draw up and articulate a clear demand for change at the next election, reinforced by the involvement of thousands across the country. If it succeeds, we, the people, will exercise a moral hold over the next Parliament and make real change happen. The alternative is a return to business as usual with an angry and helpless electorate even more alienated from a political system they feel does not represent them - and politicians smug and insulated in their “rock”.

-Jill Kirby is author of “The Reality Gap” and director of the Centre for Policy Studies. The opinions expressed are her own. -

In the midst of an economic crisis, we have a crisis of trust in politicians. But it is not through their lack of activity. Over the last ten years, layers of government have multiplied, more regulatory bodies have been put in place, thousands of new laws have been passed and greater powers of surveillance have been accorded to the State.

Yet as government activism has increased, so public confidence has fallen. High levels of regulation co-exist with extreme regulatory failure. From the banking crisis to Baby P, Labour had introduced elaborate new systems of governance which, far from preventing disaster, appears to have contributed.

How has government become so big and yet so ineffective? Five techniques have been used to disguise failure as success. First, moving goalposts - changing the criteria for measurement. In the dilution of education standards, in the selective us of targets and statistics, in the manipulation of public finances and Gordon Brown’s flexible use of the so-called Golden Rules, the Government has relied on bending the rules of the game in order to claim success.

The reality gap widens; public disbelief and disillusionment set in. The media begin to challenge the Government’s version of events. And ministers cast around for new ways ] to convince us that life has got better – like putting targets into law. This is technique number two.

Having failed to meet all its (redefined) intermediate targets to abolish child poverty, the government is now legislating for its abolition. No-one seriously believes that this – or the targets in last year’s Climate Change Act - can be met, but opposition politicians are unwilling to challenge them.

The third technique is to treat governing as a public relations exercise. Every department publishes a stream of glossy brochures in the guise of departmental reports, consultation papers and “business plans.” The Treasury’s Budget Report used to appear in plain covers.

Now it’s called “Building Britain’s future.” The Home Office alone has ten documents listed on its website as “Corporate Publications.” We are not told how much all these brochures cost the taxpayer – but the figure would dwarf the 400 million pounds officially spent last year on government advertising.

Technique number four is the collection of vast quantities of data. Another form of virtual activity by government and its agencies, it places a huge burden on social workers, school and NHS staff, the police and probation service. The fact that data has been collected does not mean it is used effectively; it simply creates the appearance of compliance. It also crowds out human contact and common sense.

The fifth and final technique, overlaying all the rest, is complexity – of systems and language. From the elaborate structure of our tax and benefits system to the maze of procedure in children’s services, with its “multi-agency partnerships” and “consensual decision-making.” With benchmarks and beacons, learning pathways and person-centred planning, most government documents require translation into plain English before their significance can be assessed.

This Government has proved that more means worse. The only answer is a serious reduction in State activism: cutting the size of government and its departments, abolishing targets, freeing up public services and charities, axing databases. If a new government can disavow the five techniques outlined here (and learn to live without them) the age of spin will truly be over. But learning to let go will not be easy.

– Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

“All political careers end in failure,” the late British Conservative Enoch Powell famously said. And perhaps all political cycles end in scandal.

The outcry in Britain over politicians’ expenses that has claimed ministerial scalps and threatens the survival in office of Prime Minister Gordon Brown reflects more than just anger over taxpayer-funded duck houses.

Parliamentarians have become scapegoats for a deeper malaise combining the twilight of the Labour Party’s long reign, the worst economic slump since the Great Depression and the shaming of the City of London’s financial titans.

This is not to belittle abuses of the public purse by individual lawmakers. But they do not fully explain the nervous breakdown that has gripped Britain in the last month.

Seen from abroad, many Britons seem to feel their country has been politically, financially and morally devalued. It is easier to vent frustration at MPs having their moats or tennis courts cleaned at public expense than to accept that Britain has been on a binge for a decade and faces a long, costly hangover.

Bits are falling off Gordon Brown’s fag-end government in the same way that befell John Major’s hapless last Conservative cabinet in the 1990s and James Callaghan’s washed-up minority Labour administration in the 1970s.

Parties that stay long enough in power get lazy, sleazy and accident-prone. Remember the political funding scandals that tainted the sunset years of Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac in France, and of Helmut Kohl in Germany. Or the “back to basics” sex scandals and bonfire of mad cows that did for Major.

What makes the current mood in Britain particularly toxic is the cocktail of political brown-out and economic distress.

In the last 18 months, house prices have tumbled in a country where home-ownership is central to wealth. The pound has lost a quarter of its value against the euro, as Britons discover when they go abroad. Banks have been nationalised or propped up by the state. Unemployment has surged. Government debt has gone through the roof and taxes are rising.

Britons who own homes, shares and/or private pension savings are worth less and face an enormous bill for the clean-up. Many home-buyers who joined the party late have “negative equity” — they owe more in mortgage than their house is now worth. Consumers are groaning under unsustainable debts.

There is also a dawning awareness that after 25 years of deregulation and fast fortunes, Britain is going to have to do something other than financial capitalism to earn an honest living in the coming years.

Financial Times economic commentator Martin Wolf put it starkly when he wrote that the UK had “a strong comparative advantage in the world’s most irresponsible industry” and needed to diversify away from finance. The bill for rescuing banks will be comparable to the fiscal costs of a big war, he said.

Such introspection does not come easily to a proud old nation fond of lecturing foreigners, especially continental Europeans, on how to run their economies.

The French, Germans and Italians can be forgiven a smirk of “schadenfreude” (pleasure at others’ misfortune) after years of being hectored — not least by Gordon Brown — about economic reform, deregulating financial services and labour markets, privatising pensions and modernising the welfare state. But they should not feel too smug, since most are facing an even deeper recession than Britain this year.

Now that politicians have replaced bankers as public hate figures, it is safer for British party leaders to outbid each other with proposals for reforming parliament than to tell the public the ugly truth. Whoever wins the next election, most Britons will earn less, pay more tax, retire later on a smaller pension and enjoy less public spending on schools, hospitals and transport.

The bankers will cost Britons far more than the politicians. It will make the cost of removing dry rot and changing chandeliers in MPs’ second homes look like small change.
(editing by David Evans)