DON’T BE DISTRACTED BY THIS DISGRACEFUL OPPORTUNISM

It takes a fair bit for me to scream at the television (yes really, I gather some people do it constantly), but I found myself yelling at Ed Miliband on Question Time the other week.

He was commenting on the coalition’s spending cuts, which is all fine and good – that’s his constitutional job, after all. But what got me yelling ‘That’s disgraceful!’ at the set was his comment ‘and the British people will show what they think of these cuts at next year’s council elections’.

If ever there was a case of bringing democracy into disrepute, this is it. The contempt he has for local government encapsulated in such a brief statement is breathtaking.

Next May’s local council elections have nothing, repeat nothing, to do with national politics. They are a vote on who runs your local council, in our case Wealden District Council. Is the council well run financially? Is it well run democratically? What is one party offering by way of a local programme for the next four years? How does that compare with what another party is offering? These are the questions that should take centre stage at council elections.

OK, a bit of realism here. I know there are a lot of people who vote in council elections on the basis of national politics. A lot of people don’t know who runs their local council, indeed many don’t know the name of their council – it’s easier just to blame everything on ‘the council’. Many even think the MP is the leader of the local council.

This situation isn’t helped by the demise of local media. Because of financial pressures, local newspapers are often run these days with one news reporter, who’s looking for the granny-rescued-by-the-fire-brigade story rather than scrutinising the local council. But that’s no excuse to encourage local elections to be run on national issues.

There are some brilliant councillors – of all parties – who put in four years of hard work, stand for re-election, and are then unceremoniously dumped because their party nationally isn’t flavour of the month. This is a tragedy for good local decision-making – a tragedy that’s being fed by Ed Miliband’s cavalier attitude, just because it suits his purpose to attack the coalition for doing the dirty work it has to do.

There could be a second ulterior motive to Miliband’s skulduggery. Next May’s council elections will probably feature another vote, the eagerly awaited referendum on changing our voting system.

Could it be that Miliband the Younger is trying to get people to protest about the coalition through voting against the move to a fairer voting system? After all, the chances of his party getting an overall majority would be somewhat reduced under the Alternative Vote system, but deep down he – like every other Labour and Tory politician – knows there is no moral defence of the current first-past-the-post method.

Any government formed after the 6 May election would have had to take the harsh decisions the coalition is taking. And yes, it will be unpopular for a time. But if anyone uses that as an excuse to sacrifice hard-working local councillors working on local issues, and a long overdue tentative first step at reforming the voting system, they will be guilty of the most disgraceful opportunism.

PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS ARE ESSENTIAL TO GOOD GOVERNMENT – AND MUST REMAIN PRIVATE

It was a relief to find that the ‘new coalition’ was eventually supplanted by other stories at the top of news bulletins. I wish it hadn’t been the violence in Thailand, as that’s a truly awful situation which is tearing apart a wonderful country, but that then made way for Lord Triesman’s demise at the Football Association.

Some people laugh at the Triesman fiasco, but I don’t, and it has nothing to do with football. In fact it has a lot to do with the coalition.

There was a lot of talk at the election (much of it from me!) about the need for a new politics. And I find it great that we have a form of government that no-one had thought would come about. But for it to work, you need some valves in the system that release the pressure, as well as space to think creatively.

Much releasing of pent-up tension and resentment, and much creative thinking, come in quiet discussions where you can think the unthinkable and speak the unspeakable. Some know it as brainstorming, but the name isn’t important. What’s important is that you can say what you want, so that what you eventually say in public is measured and reasonable.

We’ve all done it. We’ve let off steam privately about a boss or colleague, even a member of our family with whom we have to get on but who privately drives us up the wall, only to moderate our stance in public. Or we’ve said to a friend or relation ‘This is probably a mad idea, but …’ And it often is a mad idea, but occasionally it proves to be inspired.

All this is fine and dandy as long as these conversations remain private. But what happens when they become public? There are two ways to go – either you clam up and say nothing to anyone, or you get the world to recognise that the conversation was private and don’t give the person who has made it public the satisfaction of having embarrassed you.

This is why I’m worried that David Triesman had to resign after being betrayed (there really is no other word for it) by his dinner companion. I have never met the man and have no idea whether he holds some weird views or has alienated people in his entourage, so I don’t know about any underlying motives.

But what I do know is that his conversation with Melissa Jacobs was private and should have remained so. As head of the FA’s bid to bring the 2018 world cup to England, Triesman had to think around all elements of the bid, including elements he would never have dreamed of expressing publicly. If he hadn’t wondered about vote trading or even influencing referees, he wouldn’t have been the right man for the job.

That’s why the Mail on Sunday should never have published the story. Once it had, the FA was in an awful position – it should really have stood by its man, but it knew that would have virtually killed off England’s bid.

You can be sure that there are conversations going on now in Lib Dem and Tory circles which involve a lot of letting-off of steam and thinking the unthinkable. These conversations really are vital, and if we make them impossible to have because of the fear that they will get out, then we really will make this country ungovernable.

LIFE FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS – AND POSSIBLY THE COUNTRY – WILL NEVER BE THE SAME

It became clear on Saturday that the result of Thursday’s general election had changed the nature of the Liberal Democrats for good.

For years we have struggled to gain a degree of influence, developing policies that we felt were right for Britain – in the sense of being socially just and environmentally geared to the future. And we knew that when we got a hung parliament, that would be our chance.

To build up to that, we developed a broad voter base, effectively made up of three groups of people: pure Lib Dems who support us for what we stand for, Tory sympathisers who will vote Lib Dem but never Labour, and Labour supporters who will vote Lib Dem but never Conservative.

From the moment we got into the situation where we had to choose between a deal with the Conservatives, a deal with Labour, or remaining in opposition – a situation we had longed for – one of those three groups was going to be seriously cheesed off.

Over the weekend I got lots of emails from Labour supporters saying ‘Don’t do it’. On Monday night when we heard the Lib Dems were talking to Labour, I got some from Conservative supporters saying ‘Don’t do it’. And yes, I got one from a lifelong Liberal saying we should remain in opposition – I guess that confirms the view of some historians that liberalism is a movement rooted in opposition that finds government difficult.

I don’t subscribe to that view. I believe we are in this game to improve people’s lives, and this was our chance. Nick Clegg and the rest of us campaigned for a package of policies, highlighted by four headline aims (fairer taxes, ‘green’ jobs, more money for education, and cleaner politics), and was unremitting in his insistence that people should vote for what we stood for, not who our possible partners in government might be.

The Con-Lib deal that has been agreed as the basis for the new coalition has concessions on all four fronts. The biggest is a Conservative commitment to raising the income tax threshold to £10,000, albeit phased over the next few years. That is a genuinely Lib Dem initiative that would never have happened with a majority Tory government – nor even with a majority Labour government, despite it being something I believe Labour should have been advocating.

Other concessions include the ‘pupil premium’ we’ve been pushing for, and an environmental boost to the economy – for those of us dubious about David Cameron’s ‘green’ credentials and worried he might abandon the environment once in power, our presence could well mean something. And there will be political reform, even if it may not go as far as some of us in the Lib Dems want.

So am I happy with this deal? – not totally. Am I happy to accept it? – yes. Is that a contradiction? – I don’t think so.

As a child getting the hang of politics, I knew I was not a Conservative before I knew whether I was pro-Labour or pro-Liberal. I still feel that way, to the point where I am uncomfortable doing a deal with the Conservatives. I suspect Cameron is a moderately decent guy, but George Osborne leaves me cold, as do plenty of others in the Tory ranks, from grandees to young Turks. To that extent I fully understand the feelings of those who oscillate between Labour and Lib Dem who feel let down by this deal (even if I wish some of those who had written to me to express their views had been a little less abusive).

But what was the alternative? The parliamentary arithmetic meant a Lab-Lib deal could only happen as part of a ‘rainbow alliance’ that would have been messy and could have faltered the moment an MP or two fell ill. And would we have gained by staying in opposition under a minority government or a grand coalition? – people would have said we just couldn’t decide, and would have wondered what the point of the Lib Dems was.

There are those who have accused Nick Clegg of being duplicitous over the negotiations, most notably Malcolm Rifkind, who said Nick’s negotiating has been straight out of the Robert Mugabe school of government. I met Rifkind when he was transport secretary and found him a gentle and level-headed man, but he’s gone off the deep end here.

His remarks are grossly unfair. Nick always said the party with the biggest mandate had to have first go at forming a government, but once it became clear negotiations with us had got bogged down, he had to talk to Labour. Failure to do so would have led to a longer period of post-election instability that would have led to uncertainty on the currency and stock markets.

More importantly, the fact that the Lib Dems talked to Labour and found a deal couldn’t be done should make the coalition we’ve got more palatable for everyone. Of course some Labour spin doctors will try to say we’ve abandoned socially progressive politics, but that is just a self-serving way of trying to swell Labour ranks with disaffected Lib Dem supporters.

I don’t know how it’s going to end, and yes, I am apprehensive about it. But I entered politics in the hope of improving not just the society that has served me personally so well, but also the mechanisms by which we do business. That inevitably means cooperation, a word I used a lot in my election campaigning, and the Con-Lib deal is the first exercise in that cooperation.

No-one would bat an eyelid if we had a war on and formed a coalition. Because the threat is economic and environmental rather than military, the need for a coalition seems less clear-cut. But it’s a massive threat and, following Thursday’s vote, this seems the best and most optimistic way of proceeding.

All I would ask is that people who have been well-disposed towards the Lib Dems give it a chance before rushing to judgement.

WHAT CAN WE REALISTICALLY EXPECT FROM THE NEGOTIATIONS?

First up, a massive caveat: I know no more than anyone else about what’s going on in the Conservative/Lib Dem negotiations. I may be a candidate – or ex-candidate – but I have no more information than the 50 million other people who are following developments through the media.

What I can say is that I’ve had a number of comments from people who voted for me who are very angry about the possibility that the Lib Dems will do a deal with the Conservatives. As I have an email address for the specific purpose of passing on comments to the party’s high command, I have been able to report the broad sentiments, and I can say the Lib Dem negotiating team is well aware of the strength of feeling among party members and Lib Dem voters.

But like most things of political importance, it isn’t quite as simple as it may seem. And there are two things that are central to this.

Firstly, I hope people can now see why Nick Clegg and all of us who stood for the Lib Dems were so reluctant to answer the question “Which party will you side with in the event of a hung Parliament?”

The answer we gave constantly was “Please vote for our policies, not for a possible coalition.” I dressed this up differently. On several occasions I told people “It’s like meeting a new person and instead of saying ‘Who are you? – tell me something about yourself’ you say ‘Tell me who your friends are, or might be?’”

We stood on our four main platforms – fair taxes, a better deal for education, a boost to the economy through creating ‘green jobs’, and cleaning up politics – on the basis that, if there was a hung Parliament, we would use those four issues as our bargaining counters so Lib Dem votes turn into real action. That is what is happening in the current negotiations, and if people want politicians to do what they say they’d do, no-one can hold the current negotiations against us.

Of course the big question is: what can we reasonably get from the Conservatives? To me, and to many other Lib Dem voters, a fundamental issue is meaningful electoral reform, but can the Conservatives deliver it? I suspect David Cameron would be willing, as I sense he sees it as part of bringing his party into the 21st century. But could he take his party with him? Probably not.

Which could then throw us into discussions with Labour, and also the Scottish, Welsh and Ulster parties, given that ‘Lab + Lib Dem = minority’. After all, Gordon Brown is promising an immediate referendum on electoral reform, albeit with the discredited Alternative Vote system.

But – and this is my second central issue – could Labour deliver meaningful electoral reform? There are plenty of Labour MPs who are no keener on ditching the first-past-the-post voting system than the dinosaurs we know inhabit the Tory ranks. Given that a Lab/Lib/nationalists alliance would only just have a majority, it would only take a handful of rebel Labour MPs to kill off proportional representation.

I am desperate to see PR happen. I remember the discussions in the 1970s about it, and want Nick Clegg to use all his current power to get PR. But some of the media commentators are assuming his power is greater than it might be.

That’s why the best thing everyone – Lib Dem voters, sympathisers, and party members – can do is to be patient and trust the negotiating process. It’s not a nice feeling, but it’s the best and most respectful thing we can do in the circumstances.

[Written at 10.30am, Monday 10 May 2010]

IMMIGRATION – WE HAVE TO START FROM WHERE WE ARE, NOT WHERE WE’D LIKE TO BE

It’s fair game to have a go at politicians at present. You can criticise them for everything from MPs’ expenses to not giving full and honest answers. But there’s a missing element in all this.

The public needs to play its part too. If it wants honest politics, it must be willing to recognise it when it sees it, and give it its due.

Nowhere has this been more clearly on display than over the role immigration is playing in this election.

We in the Liberal Democrats have been aware for a long time about people’s concerns about immigration. I personally don’t feel it’s as much of a threat as others do, and I feel some of the sensationalist media have whipped up a frenzy about foreigners claiming excessive benefits that bears little relation to reality. But sometimes the perception is as important as the reality, so it was something that had to be tackled.

So we tackled it. We set out to assess the current situation, to find out what the extent of the black market – some of it controlled by extremely nasty gangs – really is, and to work out a policy that is fair and makes sense.

What we’ve come up with is a proposal to be stricter with our border controls, and to make permission to come to this country conditional on whether the skills an immigrant can offer are needed in the area he/she wants to work in.

That has gone down very well, but the message has been distorted by how another aspect of our policy has been hijacked by those looking to score cheap points and discredit our ideas. I’m talking about what’s become known as our proposed ‘amnesty’.

We recognise that there are several hundred thousand people in this country who arrived illegally and are working in a shady underworld, often being paid by gangs, frequently in poor and threatening conditions. We’re saying that any of those who have been here for 10 years, speak good English and have no criminal record can apply to become legalised. Even then they wouldn’t have access to benefits for two years. That would mean we find out who a lot of these people are, and they'd start paying tax and contributing to the community.

I share the reservations of many that we’re retrospectively condoning something that was illegal – yes, that goes against the grain. But we have to start from where we are, not where we’d like to be, and our proposals are fair, constructive and make sense.

But now we have people screaming it’s an ‘amnesty’, that it’ll increase our rate of immigration (this has happened in some countries where they have had similar ‘amnesties’ but wouldn’t happen here because of our stricter border controls), and that we’re not listening to people. Instead, people are falling for David Cameron’s unspecified and unrealistic ‘cap’ on immigration, and the threats by both parties to deport immigrants. How can they deport people when they don’t even know where many of them are!

People must make up their own minds about which party best reflects what they stand for. But anyone pining for a better politics must also be willing to accept common sense solutions when presented to them, and not take refuge in a few carefully crafted sound bites that appeal to the heart but have little or no bearing on reality.

WELL GARY, THERE'S NO TELLING WHICH WAY THIS CONTEST WILL END

It was Harold Wilson who said 'A week is a long time in politics'. How out of date that now sounds - 90 minutes is the new record after Nick Clegg's performance on Thursday night turned our traditional two-party democracy into a true three-party system.

In her analysis in the Sussex Express of 9 April, Susan King predicted that, of the six constituencies in the Express circulation area, five are likely to return an MP of the same party as last time, with only Eastbourne hanging in the balance. That was a reasonably fair assessment before last Thursday's first televised debate, but it's now looking a little less certain.

This was always a difficult election to call, because no-one could be quite sure how the MPs' expenses and cash for lobbying scandals would play out with the public. With the TV debate having firmly established three-party politics in this country, 'safe' seats are suddenly no longer so safe.

What irritated me about Susan King's otherwise fair analysis of the likely outcomes is that it carried an implicit overtone that it’s not worth voting unless you live in Eastbourne. (Credit incidentally to the Express for printing my complaint in this week's paper when they could have hidden behind a pre-election curfew on candidates' letters.)

But that's missing a very obvious point. Just as Manchester United would start at 0-0 in a cup tie against lowly opposition, so all the candidates in all the constituencies start at zero votes, and a rush of apathy or a last-minute reason to switch allegiance could yet produce some shock results.

With Nick Clegg's performance in the TV debate having changed the nature of the whole campaign, that indicates that, even if Charles Hendry represents Manchester United in our analogy of the Wealden constituency, the Lib Dems aren't a League Two side but from the Championship or even Premier League. And the thought of Wealden having a Lib Dem MP isn't quite so far-fetched as it was at 8.30pm last Thursday.

It would still be a major shock if we won this seat, but the Conservatives are no longer a shoo-in for victory. I have met people who have been very impressed with Nick's performance and who are voting Lib Dem having not originally expected to be. A few thousand of those and we really will have a shock result.

I'm also encouraged by Charles Hendry's own slogan 'Vote for Change'. I hope the Wealden voters take him literally, and vote to change the Wealden MP!

But even for those who believe Wealden won't change this time, there is more reason to vote Lib Dem than normal. The overall popular vote – the total votes cast for each party nationally – could have a strong moral role to play if no single party has an overall majority, so even in the supposedly ‘safe’ seats, there is more reason than usual to vote.

And after all, it’s only our corrupt voting system that renders so many votes apparently worthless in the first place. Hopefully this will be the last general election at which we use this discredited system, so there can never be an excuse again that voting Lib Dem - or any other party for that matter - is a wasted vote.

A TAWDRY ROUND OF BITCHING OVER EMPTY PROMISES AND SHABBY TACTICS

This business about Labour’s proposed increase in national insurance contributions, the Conservatives’ ‘promise’ to abolish it, and the ‘support’ of a couple of dozen business leaders for the Tory position is really doing my head in.

And if this is a sign of how the election is going to be fought, then one of the most exciting elections in living memory will soon turn into a tawdry round of bitching over empty promises and shabby tactics.

Let’s get one thing absolutely clear: the Conservatives’ sums don’t add up. All the political commentators agree this, it’s why Vince Cable was able to land that powerful blow on George Osborne in the ‘Ask the Chancellors’ debate last week, and even Tories themselves don’t believe it.

Look back through the records and they’re doing exactly what they said they’d never do – making promises they couldn’t keep. How do they hope to fund the abolition of the rise in national insurance? Through ‘efficiency savings’. But they haven’t identified these savings – it’s just a case of relying on the moanings of a couple of retired civil servants, who say there are various ways of cutting costs. Well there may be, but no-one has worked out how much.

It’s absolutely clear what’s going on. The Conservatives are making a mad dash for a policy that they hope people won’t see through in the four weeks left before the election.

But if that’s shoddy enough, what’s even shoddier is the way a couple of dozen chief executives and a handful of leaders of business associations jumped on a carefully staged bandwagon to ‘support’ the Conservatives’ plans to avoid the NI 1% rise.

It’s clear what happened. They decided they wanted to see a Tory government, and worked out a cunning plan for how to help sway the opinion polls. They waited for Alistair Darling’s budget, picked on something that would make a few headlines, and coordinated their attack to follow on the heels of the Conservatives’ absurd finance.

Frankly it’s gutter politics, and in the days since then, I have looked at the likes of Sainsbury’s, M&S and other names whose chief executives signed up to the letter to The Times in a different light. I’m not sure how quickly I’ll be through the door of those shops in future.

As it happens, my view is to oppose the national insurance increase, but for totally different reasons than any so far cited.

My years of experience in the environmental movement have told me that the best way to attack pollution, climate change and general wastage of resources is to tax those activities and lower the cost of employing people. In other words, you put the tax on polluting transport and unrenewable energy, and reduce employers’ national insurance contributions.

You’d have thought at least one of the chief executives might have seen that, wouldn’t you! They could then have claimed the moral high ground, bolstered David Cameron’s fragile, skin-deep claim to be ‘green’, and looked a little statesmanlike. But that’s the problem with dirty tricks – they get so dirty that you lose sight of what you’re working for, which ought to be a better society.

One of the Liberal Democrats’ four central policies at this election is a revived economy based on taxing the worst activity and releasing the constraints on employment. It’s known in modern shorthand as ‘green jobs’. That’s the reason why the national insurance rise is misguided, and it’s miles removed from George Osborne’s risible faux finances.