Ken Clarke, Peter Mandelson and the C word

Vintage Ken Clarke on Radio 4 just now, talking about cuts.

He attacked the quango (he didn’t have its name at his fingertips) that was planning checks on everyone who ever meets a child, and when challenged that the Tories weren’t planning to cut it he said he didn’t know what policy on it was as he hadn’t checked.

Ken Clarke also said “we have a man” going through all possible cuts for a future government. It sounded to me as though he referred to him as “Philip Holland”.

Ken Clarke, though, was a B feature after the earlier interview with Lord Mandelson. His speech later today was billed as another milestone on the government’s path to economic honesty about the need to cut public spending…

But Peter Mandelson fought shy of the C word like crazy and produced a new formulation for the political debate ahead – Tories are into “public service reduction” while Labour wants “deficit reduction”.

In reply to a question about whether Trident and ID cards should be cut, Peter Mandelson said the figures he’d seen linked to those areas didn’t match the big savings floated by other politicians.

The government has often said cutting ID cards wouldn’t really save a penny as the main costs are linked to biometric passports. But was Lord Mandelson showing a bit more ankle on resistance to making any moves on Trident?