Trying to head off any accusations of electioneering, then deciding that confusion is his best option, Danny Alexander says: “The timing is what the timing is. As a country we need to think about the number of houses as a country.” As chief secretary to the Treasury, Alexander was at the Institution of Civil Engineers to announce the national infrastructure plan 2014 for Britain.
It hadn’t been going terribly well ever since ICE’s director general, Nick Baveystock, had referred to this being the fifth iteration of the NIP, as he ergonomically referred to the government’s plan in his introduction.
That isn’t the kind of reminder a Cabinet minister finds helpful when trying to present old projects as new initiatives. “It’s not new money or old money,” Alexander said in a sentence that he didn’t get round to completing when he noticed that one of his special advisers had written “It’s Monopoly money!” in the margin of the text.
That may well have been the only bit of his speech he had read. Perhaps he felt he had remembered it all from last year, or maybe it was the knowledge that no amount of money spent on flood defences in Lib Dem marginals could stop his party being washed away next May.
Either way, Alexander appeared disengaged and stumbled through the announcement with all the enthusiasm of the walking dead.
He began with “infrastructure is a long word that doesn’t necessarily mean a lot to many people”, before reading out a dictionary definition of infrastructure to a bemused audience of policy wonks and engineering company bosses whose main specialism – apart from hoovering up government very-long-word-infrastructure contracts – is talking wonkese with very long words.
The longer and more obscure the words used, the bigger the contract. Amazingly, the dictionary turned out to be the high point of Alexander’s speech.
“Integral, pivotal and huge,” he said, turning to words not often used by a Lib Dem politician. “A relentless focus on delivery … electricity grid flexibility … direct government home building.”
This last announcement sounded suspiciously close to a Soviet model, but Alexander assured everyone that George Osborne was on side with it – so it could just have been his pitch for a job in the next government as chief estate agent.
The chief secretary wasn’t so good on numbers, which some might consider a disadvantage working at the Treasury. “We need 300,000 new homes,” he continued. “ Some say 250,000. Others say 220,000.”
What’s 80,000 homes between friends? On the deficit he argued that there was still a third to a quarter of austerity to go. How about a half, someone asked. Alexander shrugged. Maybe yes, maybe no. “I know that Paul will talk about this at greater length.”
And how. This was Paul Deighton or, since last year Lord Deighton, commercial secretary to the Treasury, a man not given to self doubt or to using one word if 10 will do. He is a man who doesn’t have breakfast: he has morning calorific objectives.
“I believe in three things,” he said, waving his arm triumphantly, “Delivery, delivery and delivery. And I am not complacent.” So far he had only delivered delivery and delivery and he was happy to admit there was more delivery to be delivered.
“There are diggers on the ground within the funding envelope,” he continued. “Improving pipeline visibility … reversing the tide of underinvestment … massive execution responsibility.” Maybe China, Saudi Arabia or the US could help with that last bit.
Throughout this Alexander stared dead-eyed in to the abyss of hyperactive acronyms before unexpectedly smiling at someone in the audience. It looked every bit as though he’d just collected on a bet he’d made on the amount of self promoting jargon Deighton would squeeze in.
His smile was soon gone. “I know that Danny is always looking for more things to do,” Deighton declared. Alexander zoned out again, all too aware that, come May, he’d probably be looking for even more things to do.
