First Title Group lunch- Coogan and Portillo
April 2010
report by Rosalind Renshaw
David Cameron will lead a minority Conservative Government and will not be challenged by the other parties for two years, a leading Tory told estate agents last week.
Michael Portillo made his predictions at a lunch in London hosted by Live, a First Title Group company.
He does not believe the Tories can win the election outright. saying: "Last time, the Government got less than 36% of the votes whilst the Tories got 33%. Yet Labour won 159 seats more than the Tories.
"A swing of only 3% will be necessary for Labour to lose their overall majority, and I would have thought that extremely likely. But the Tories need 7% to win." He was doubtful this could be achieved.
He added: "I think David Cameron will lead a minority Government - and for some time. People will not want another election for maybe another couple of years and the other parties will be very cautious about voting the Tories out."
He said that Brown was unpopular - he also described him as "irrational" - and Clegg a non-contender.
Portillo went on: "I think a big question for the Tories is how they resolve the question over George Osborne." He said of the Shadow Chancellor that he suffered from "young policeman" syndrome.
National debt
Portillo said the election would be played out against a backdrop of a skewed economy, with massive public and private debt. "For most people 2009 ended up better than it started, but not many will be able to say that about 2010," he said.
"Our national deficit is running at the same level as Greece's. The British government debt is more expensive to fund than Italy's. We are walking on ice, but we don't know how thin it is until we go through. Suggestions of a sense of recovery should be taken cautiously."
Taxes, he said, would have to rise, and the effect of pouring £200bn into the economy via quantitative easing would inevitably be inflation, which would force interest rates up.
"I am absolutely clear that whatever Government is elected, it will have to tackle national debt," Portillo said.
Not uncritical
He voiced his support of Cameron as leader, saying that Osborne did not have the ambition to lead and that Haig had no wish to return. "Is there anyone else likely to take over from Cameron? Absolutely not. Forget it.
"But that is not to say I am uncritical. The Tory message has become obscure. People have not known what the Tories were about since November 22, 1990 - when Margaret Thatcher left office."
Portillo also said that HIPs had been an example of how the Labour Government worked: "HIPs were fundamentally unnecessary, and a symptom of this Government's obsession with micro-management."
Tough times
Speaking at the same lunch as Portillo, Michael Coogan, the director general of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, said that transaction levels this year would not rise above those of 2009 and that tough times face the housing market with mortgage rationing set to continue.
He said first-time buyers would remain scarce "because the bank of Mum and Dad has died".
Coogan also revealed how the recession has hit his own organisation. "We have lost one-third in membership and 20% of staff. These are nothing like the good old days".
He warned his select audience of 24 people, who included agents from as far afield as Manchester, Newcastle and Kent, to "get the business in when you can".
He said there had been a good start to the year: "But it is not coming on in the way we had hoped." Confidence would remain a problem, and the election and World Cup would both put brakes on the housing market.
He did not forecast a change in interest rates this year, but predicted that from 2011 the banks would need to encourage people to "start hoarding money again".
Coogan said mortgages would continue to be rationed, and that when a sub-prime lender ventured back into the mortgage market, they would be charging interest at credit card rates.