Hello, Ed …

As an ex-special adviser to Gordon Brown, it was perhaps to be expected that Miliband’s first stab at economic rhetoric would focus on the pace of public spending cuts. Labour is
itself divided on this issue, of course: the Darling plan would have halved the deficit in four years and the Balls plan would have put recovery first and deferred cuts until they could be made in safety. Miliband seems to be somewhere in the vast terrain between these two positions: quite where is difficult to say right now, although his eventual choice of chancellor ought to be a pretty good clue. In the meantime, it’s refreshing to see the beginnings of organised opposition to the coalition.

The CITB may well already have a plan in place to follow the old Building Research Establishment and transform itself into a shiny new freestanding privatised brand

Speaking of the coalition, the latest development is the appearance of CITB-ConstructionSkills on a leaked deathlist of quangos. Now, the CITB is not immune to criticism on value-for-money grounds (as anyone who read Tony Bingham’s column last week will know), but the fact is that construction is the largest labour and skills-intensive industry in Britain, and is therefore uniquely dependent on deploying massed ranks of well-trained workers. Without some form of state intervention, companies would be unlikely to produce them, for the simple
reason that many would decide that the best way to spend a training budget is to poach staff from rivals. And as we found out when Labour’s public spending was at full tide, governments rely on construction to keep their promises to the voters.

For the management team at the CITB, the coalition’s stance will come as a surprise, but hardly a shock. They may well already have a plan in place to follow the old Building Research Establishment and transform itself into a shiny new freestanding privatised brand. But whatever becomes of the CITB, there will be repercussions throughout the industry. Trade federations will organise their own specialist training, paid for with increased membership fees; unions will no doubt want some mechanism in place to bolster health and safety and apprenticeships. And for companies, there is the enticing possibility of a system that ensures that they pay a fair price for the training they receive.

… And goodbye, David

David Higgins should take a bow. When he was appointed chief executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority five years ago, the mutterings from rival candidates were that whoever took charge from the ODA’s inception would probably never deliver the Games. The reason was simply that the job was so large, so complex, and involved so much toxic land - and of course the Wembley stadium fiasco was fresh in everyone’s memory. Higgins proved them wrong (despite the appearance of a global financial meltdown followed by a sovereign debt crisis in the middle of the works). He leaves to join Network Rail, where he will undertake projects of similarly epic proportions and he’s surely the right man for those jobs. Dennis Hone, Higgins’ successor, will inherit an Olympic Games that has 18 months to do the final fit-out, commissioning and testing. During this time, the militant electrician army will no doubt establish camp on the site, and the eyes of the Olympic committee and wider world will be fixed on London. Whoever said politics was all about timing?

Tom Broughton, brand director