Few people like to criticise their own profession, so it goes against the grain for me – as a journalist – to conclude that the media has behaved pretty despicably over its reporting of the tuition fees issue. But I feel no other conclusion is possible.
OK, so we as a political party haven’t covered ourselves in glory over this one either, but the blatant misinformation emanating from even some of the more respected political reporters doesn’t reflect well on them.
Too many have delighted in talking about the Lib Dems’ ‘U-turn’ (or ‘dramatic U-turn’ or ‘spectacular U-turn’ – why be happy with a slight misrepresentation when a melodramatic one will do?). A U-turn is when you change your mind, which to me isn’t a crime, but that’s beside the point because it’s not the case here – this is a concession to enable a coalition to be formed, but of course that doesn’t make for such a good story.
It’s all part of a vicious learning curve for us Lib Dems, who have enjoyed – in the words of our ex-cabinet minister David Laws – ‘the joys of easy opposition’ for too long. We’ve been in power at council level, much of it in coalition with Labour and the Conservatives, but now we’re in power (jointly) at national level, and taking all the flak for it.
The result is that people who voted Lib Dem at the general election because of our tuition fees stance feel betrayed by us, when actually they have achieved something with their vote.
Both Labour and the Tories went into the election advocating a fee-based university funding model, while we fought for the principle of no tuition fees for first degrees. Realistically, we were always going to have to compromise on that with just 23% of the vote, but we have used what leverage we got from our voters to argue for university education to remain free at the point of learning, and for the payback mechanism to kick in only at a graduate's salary of £21,000. That’s a major concession that wouldn’t have happened if the Conservatives (or Labour for that matter) had been governing on their own.
But that has barely been reported, with the result that children from lower-income families could be scared off from going to university. Don’t blame us for that – blame the media for a scare campaign perpetrated because they were happier taking cheap shots at the coalition than in reporting the issue accurately.
But by far the biggest omission from the media reporting is one that goes to the heart of why we are a progressive party.
When money is tight, you have to decide where to spend it and where not to. The same government department that deals with higher (university) education deals with further education, and there are a lot more of our youngsters who need help at 16 than at 18. Many who leave school at 16 have a reading age of 11, so further education is something of a safety net for them. The further education sector also embraces a lot more children from lower income families than the higher education sector.
So, after 13 years of watching the party that supposedly represents the least affluent presiding over the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, we now have a Liberal Democrat business secretary, Vince Cable, who has decided to put what little money he has for post-16 education into those who, by and large, need it more, and to ask those who, by and large, need it less to pay something back when they’re earning enough to do so.
Yet we’re taking stick for this, not just because of the media, but because the student body is eloquent and loud enough to make its case more powerfully than those who stand to benefit from further education at age 16. But that doesn’t mean what we’re doing is wrong.
I don’t like the package of higher education funding that was agreed in the fractious Commons vote, even though I’d have voted for it if I’d been an MP. I hate the way higher education is going to be ‘marketised’. But faced with the choices, I think the Lib Dems have pushed the government in a socially progressive direction, which is what our role in government should be.
Sunday, 12 December 2010
Monday, 15 November 2010
THIS IS NOT A BETRAYAL – IT IS A REWARD FOR STUDENTS WHO VOTED LIB DEM
You may have difficulty believing this, but I was actually pleased to see the students demonstrating on the streets of London. No, really. I wish they had been demonstrating about something slightly more altruistic, but it was encouraging to see them.
Call me a 1970s romantic, but to me the student generation needs to be on the streets more often. When I was at university, there were demonstrations every month, some of them quite small, but some massive – I was among 300,000 who turned out in Bonn in October 1981 to protest against the threat of nuclear missiles, and a similar number turned out in London two weeks later.
I said in the general election campaign that we must stop being a society that only values adults of working age. We dismiss the fresh ideas of children as much as writing off the wisdom of the grey-haired generation. And the student generation has a role to play in challenging the orthodoxy of the establishment – you can’t take everything the students say at face value, but if students aren’t challenging those with mortgages and those in power, who is going to? It’s a measure of a vibrant society.
My problem with the recent demonstrations is not just the violence (that cannot be condoned, however much it generates news coverage), but the failure of the protesters to see the big picture. They are taking refuge in saying the Lib Dems have sold out on higher education, that they feel betrayed to have voted for us and now face higher tuition fees, and there is now an official NUS campaign aimed at ousting certain Lib Dem MPs.
When Lib Dem MPs vote for the package of measures that will see tuition fees remain in operation and at a potentially higher level than they are now, this will not be a betrayal. To see it as such is to fundamentally misunderstand coalition government.
Yes, the Lib Dems campaigned for the abolition of tuition fees for first degrees, to be brought in over six years. We did so because we believe strongly in the need for society to support a certain amount of learning beyond the age of 18. The problem was that we got 23% of the votes, so we couldn’t form a government.
Fortunately, neither of the other two parties – who said nothing about abolishing tuition fees – could form a government on their own. So we have gone into coalition with a party that got 37% of the votes. It wants to keep tuition fees and would have done so big-time if it had been in government on its own (as would Labour).
What we did was negotiate to take the edges off the package. Bolstered by the fact that lots of students voted for us, we secured three important concessions: a cap on tuition fees that was not recommended in Lord Browne’s report, a payback scheme that isn’t just a tax but goes to the university that did the student’s teaching, and a starting threshold for that payback scheme of £21,000 a year.
That is the reward for all those students who voted Lib Dem because of our promise to abolish tuition fees. With 23% of the votes, that’s quite an achievement, and it wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t in government.
The waters have been slightly muddied by the fact that most Lib Dem candidates, me included, signed the NUS pledge saying we wouldn’t vote for tuition fees. The fact that those elected to parliament will now vote for the package that includes tuition fees has fuelled the ‘spectacular U-turn’ hyperbole of some journalists. But this isn’t fair.
In a mature democracy, you campaign on what you will do, and if you don’t get a majority, you form a coalition based on certain compromises. Voting for tuition fees is a Lib Dem compromise in the current coalition (and whether the Lib Dem leadership anticipated using this issue as a bargaining counter before the election is immaterial). Yes, Lib Dem MPs will hold their noses when they vote for tuition fees, but Tory MPs will hold their noses when they vote for the referendum on electoral reform. It’s all part of coalition government.
The problem is that we don’t exactly know what a majority Conservative or Labour government would have done, not just on tuition fees but on a range of other issues. That’s what people need to remember when they start blaming the Lib Dems for a whole load of things that weren’t in our manifesto.
Call me a 1970s romantic, but to me the student generation needs to be on the streets more often. When I was at university, there were demonstrations every month, some of them quite small, but some massive – I was among 300,000 who turned out in Bonn in October 1981 to protest against the threat of nuclear missiles, and a similar number turned out in London two weeks later.
I said in the general election campaign that we must stop being a society that only values adults of working age. We dismiss the fresh ideas of children as much as writing off the wisdom of the grey-haired generation. And the student generation has a role to play in challenging the orthodoxy of the establishment – you can’t take everything the students say at face value, but if students aren’t challenging those with mortgages and those in power, who is going to? It’s a measure of a vibrant society.
My problem with the recent demonstrations is not just the violence (that cannot be condoned, however much it generates news coverage), but the failure of the protesters to see the big picture. They are taking refuge in saying the Lib Dems have sold out on higher education, that they feel betrayed to have voted for us and now face higher tuition fees, and there is now an official NUS campaign aimed at ousting certain Lib Dem MPs.
When Lib Dem MPs vote for the package of measures that will see tuition fees remain in operation and at a potentially higher level than they are now, this will not be a betrayal. To see it as such is to fundamentally misunderstand coalition government.
Yes, the Lib Dems campaigned for the abolition of tuition fees for first degrees, to be brought in over six years. We did so because we believe strongly in the need for society to support a certain amount of learning beyond the age of 18. The problem was that we got 23% of the votes, so we couldn’t form a government.
Fortunately, neither of the other two parties – who said nothing about abolishing tuition fees – could form a government on their own. So we have gone into coalition with a party that got 37% of the votes. It wants to keep tuition fees and would have done so big-time if it had been in government on its own (as would Labour).
What we did was negotiate to take the edges off the package. Bolstered by the fact that lots of students voted for us, we secured three important concessions: a cap on tuition fees that was not recommended in Lord Browne’s report, a payback scheme that isn’t just a tax but goes to the university that did the student’s teaching, and a starting threshold for that payback scheme of £21,000 a year.
That is the reward for all those students who voted Lib Dem because of our promise to abolish tuition fees. With 23% of the votes, that’s quite an achievement, and it wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t in government.
The waters have been slightly muddied by the fact that most Lib Dem candidates, me included, signed the NUS pledge saying we wouldn’t vote for tuition fees. The fact that those elected to parliament will now vote for the package that includes tuition fees has fuelled the ‘spectacular U-turn’ hyperbole of some journalists. But this isn’t fair.
In a mature democracy, you campaign on what you will do, and if you don’t get a majority, you form a coalition based on certain compromises. Voting for tuition fees is a Lib Dem compromise in the current coalition (and whether the Lib Dem leadership anticipated using this issue as a bargaining counter before the election is immaterial). Yes, Lib Dem MPs will hold their noses when they vote for tuition fees, but Tory MPs will hold their noses when they vote for the referendum on electoral reform. It’s all part of coalition government.
The problem is that we don’t exactly know what a majority Conservative or Labour government would have done, not just on tuition fees but on a range of other issues. That’s what people need to remember when they start blaming the Lib Dems for a whole load of things that weren’t in our manifesto.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
A LITTLE LATERAL THINKING ON THE HORRENDOUS CUTS
This has been a truly horrible week. Even those of us as fortunate as me, who are in a comfortable enough position to soak up much of the impact of the cuts, recognise the hardship that this week’s Spending Review will cause and the potential damage to the fabric of British society.
But rather than give another critique of the review (there are enough in circulation already), here instead are a few thoughts that go beyond the graphs, tables, claims and sound bites that have dominated this week’s crushing set of spending cuts.
• Every now and again I wonder ‘Are such deep cuts really necessary?’ And then something strikes me to hammer home that they are, such as the fact that the government has had to borrow an extra £400 million every day since May, because for every £300 coming in we are spending £400; or the fact that we’re spending £120 million a day on debt interest payments that could be used to build a school every hour or triple the number of doctors. We just can’t go on like this.
• When the Daily Mail goes on a rant, as it did the day after the Spending Review – lamenting the regional growth fund as ‘a sop to Vince Cable’, the national scholarship fund as ‘a blatant bribe to Liberal Democrat MPs not to cause trouble over university funding’, and blaming us for the rise in international development aid and the Green Bank – you know we’re acting as a useful counterbalance to Tory instincts.
• Has any think tank or other institution done a proposal for taxation and services based on starting from scratch? I mean, like saying ‘Right folks, we have 60 million people on this north-west European island, what services are we going to provide and how should we pay for them through taxes and charges?’ Might be a useful point of reference.
• Why do we continue to have such difficulty taking relatively small sums off the truly stinking rich and diverting them to socially justified projects? Given that a drop in the ocean for some of our wealthiest citizens would make a massive difference to some social initiatives, we must be missing a trick somewhere.
• At risk of criticising my party’s part in the coalition (I), I wish we would stop blaming Labour for the mess. Yes, Labour did make a mess of things (Gordon Brown will go down as a truly disastrous chancellor), but it wasn’t just Labour. The banks had a big part to play, and let’s face it, so did the rest of us by building up massive debts on credit cards because we wanted things we simply couldn’t afford.
• At risk of criticising my party’s part in the coalition (II), I wish rail travel hadn’t been made even more expensive compared with car driving than it is already. Fair taxes on motorists should be based on urban congestion charging (where there's some reasonable revenue to be earned), because that way the people you make pay are those who have the best alternatives to driving, and you respect the lack of choices for those in rural areas. But that option has been spurned in favour of further cuts to rail subsidies.
It will be horrendous to see the cuts become reality over the next few months, as we see things that have been built up over years struck down in months because the funding has run out. But failure to tackle the deficit won’t help our democracy in the long term, so reluctantly I have to accept that the cuts are necessary. I also believe they’re fair, though like everyone else, that hope will only be tested over time.
But rather than give another critique of the review (there are enough in circulation already), here instead are a few thoughts that go beyond the graphs, tables, claims and sound bites that have dominated this week’s crushing set of spending cuts.
• Every now and again I wonder ‘Are such deep cuts really necessary?’ And then something strikes me to hammer home that they are, such as the fact that the government has had to borrow an extra £400 million every day since May, because for every £300 coming in we are spending £400; or the fact that we’re spending £120 million a day on debt interest payments that could be used to build a school every hour or triple the number of doctors. We just can’t go on like this.
• When the Daily Mail goes on a rant, as it did the day after the Spending Review – lamenting the regional growth fund as ‘a sop to Vince Cable’, the national scholarship fund as ‘a blatant bribe to Liberal Democrat MPs not to cause trouble over university funding’, and blaming us for the rise in international development aid and the Green Bank – you know we’re acting as a useful counterbalance to Tory instincts.
• Has any think tank or other institution done a proposal for taxation and services based on starting from scratch? I mean, like saying ‘Right folks, we have 60 million people on this north-west European island, what services are we going to provide and how should we pay for them through taxes and charges?’ Might be a useful point of reference.
• Why do we continue to have such difficulty taking relatively small sums off the truly stinking rich and diverting them to socially justified projects? Given that a drop in the ocean for some of our wealthiest citizens would make a massive difference to some social initiatives, we must be missing a trick somewhere.
• At risk of criticising my party’s part in the coalition (I), I wish we would stop blaming Labour for the mess. Yes, Labour did make a mess of things (Gordon Brown will go down as a truly disastrous chancellor), but it wasn’t just Labour. The banks had a big part to play, and let’s face it, so did the rest of us by building up massive debts on credit cards because we wanted things we simply couldn’t afford.
• At risk of criticising my party’s part in the coalition (II), I wish rail travel hadn’t been made even more expensive compared with car driving than it is already. Fair taxes on motorists should be based on urban congestion charging (where there's some reasonable revenue to be earned), because that way the people you make pay are those who have the best alternatives to driving, and you respect the lack of choices for those in rural areas. But that option has been spurned in favour of further cuts to rail subsidies.
It will be horrendous to see the cuts become reality over the next few months, as we see things that have been built up over years struck down in months because the funding has run out. But failure to tackle the deficit won’t help our democracy in the long term, so reluctantly I have to accept that the cuts are necessary. I also believe they’re fair, though like everyone else, that hope will only be tested over time.
Thursday, 30 September 2010
HOW MODERN IS THE NEW LABOUR LEADER REALLY?
I was obviously pleased, but also relieved, to hear Ed Miliband say he personally would be voting ‘Yes’ in the fairer votes referendum in May.
You could say he could ill have afforded not to, after the way he was elected. If you’d been rescued off a mountain top by a helicopter, it wouldn’t look good if you then railed against helicopters in your first statement after being rescued, would it! Or if you railed against your country’s diplomats after they’d got you out of jail in a tin-pot dictatorship.
Ed Miliband came second in most rounds of the Labour leadership election, but when all the second preferences were counted, he won, because he had the greater all-round support of the three constituencies that make up the Labour party: members, MPs and trade unions.
What would now be appropriate is for the new Labour leader to go beyond what he would do ‘personally’ and recommend a ‘Yes’ vote to his party. He has clearly made certain noises that distance himself from the New Labour years – including recognising what we have said all along about the Iraq war – but how modern is he really?
Is he willing to take the plunge and say a modern Labour prime minister either has to be elected by an absolute majority of the voters, or has to govern in coalition with another party? Because that’s what a truly modern party leader must surely now recognise.
This is why it doesn’t worry me whether Miliband takes Labour to the left or not (whatever ‘left’ means in this politically post-modern era). In fact I’d be quite happy if he did, and not for any reasons to do with electoral arithmetic.
To me – and I’m speaking more as a democrat than a Liberal Democrat here – a modern electoral system needs to have three main parties: a party fundamentally representing the haves, a party fighting for the have-nots, and a free-thinking party not beholden to any group of people which can bring ideas to the political table that the other two parties can’t. If there are a number of fringe parties contributing ideas (like the Greens and Ukip), fair enough, but the basic system revolves around those three entities.
It means the political system would always be open to Lab-Lib, Con-Lib and even Lab-Con coalitions (the latter a fairly unlikely scenario but the ultimate guard against the Lib Dems becoming too arrogant). It’s worked that way in numerous other developed nations, including some with economies much more successful than ours has been.
Will Ed Miliband be up to this modern role? His initial party conference speech suggests he might. His non-Labour political idols were all Liberals, and while he attacked the Lib Dems in the campaign, he declined to go for the cheap cheer of attacking us in his leader’s speech. It will be interesting to see how Labour develops under him.
On that subject, an afterthought. As the elder of two siblings, my heart genuinely feels for David Miliband, and I think he’s done the right thing by taking a break from front-line politics. But I don’t think he should go too far.
While I believe Labour has got the leader it really wanted (thanks to a voting system that allows for second preferences), I can’t help wondering whether, in 18 months, Ed will have run out of steam and become his party’s Iain Duncan Smith – a fundamentally decent and well motivated guy who just doesn’t connect with voters. It’s just a hunch, and I may be wrong, but we may not have seen the last of the elder Miliband in the Labour leadership.
You could say he could ill have afforded not to, after the way he was elected. If you’d been rescued off a mountain top by a helicopter, it wouldn’t look good if you then railed against helicopters in your first statement after being rescued, would it! Or if you railed against your country’s diplomats after they’d got you out of jail in a tin-pot dictatorship.
Ed Miliband came second in most rounds of the Labour leadership election, but when all the second preferences were counted, he won, because he had the greater all-round support of the three constituencies that make up the Labour party: members, MPs and trade unions.
What would now be appropriate is for the new Labour leader to go beyond what he would do ‘personally’ and recommend a ‘Yes’ vote to his party. He has clearly made certain noises that distance himself from the New Labour years – including recognising what we have said all along about the Iraq war – but how modern is he really?
Is he willing to take the plunge and say a modern Labour prime minister either has to be elected by an absolute majority of the voters, or has to govern in coalition with another party? Because that’s what a truly modern party leader must surely now recognise.
This is why it doesn’t worry me whether Miliband takes Labour to the left or not (whatever ‘left’ means in this politically post-modern era). In fact I’d be quite happy if he did, and not for any reasons to do with electoral arithmetic.
To me – and I’m speaking more as a democrat than a Liberal Democrat here – a modern electoral system needs to have three main parties: a party fundamentally representing the haves, a party fighting for the have-nots, and a free-thinking party not beholden to any group of people which can bring ideas to the political table that the other two parties can’t. If there are a number of fringe parties contributing ideas (like the Greens and Ukip), fair enough, but the basic system revolves around those three entities.
It means the political system would always be open to Lab-Lib, Con-Lib and even Lab-Con coalitions (the latter a fairly unlikely scenario but the ultimate guard against the Lib Dems becoming too arrogant). It’s worked that way in numerous other developed nations, including some with economies much more successful than ours has been.
Will Ed Miliband be up to this modern role? His initial party conference speech suggests he might. His non-Labour political idols were all Liberals, and while he attacked the Lib Dems in the campaign, he declined to go for the cheap cheer of attacking us in his leader’s speech. It will be interesting to see how Labour develops under him.
On that subject, an afterthought. As the elder of two siblings, my heart genuinely feels for David Miliband, and I think he’s done the right thing by taking a break from front-line politics. But I don’t think he should go too far.
While I believe Labour has got the leader it really wanted (thanks to a voting system that allows for second preferences), I can’t help wondering whether, in 18 months, Ed will have run out of steam and become his party’s Iain Duncan Smith – a fundamentally decent and well motivated guy who just doesn’t connect with voters. It’s just a hunch, and I may be wrong, but we may not have seen the last of the elder Miliband in the Labour leadership.
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
TRUE PROGRESSIVES MUST BE HAPPY THAT THE LIB DEMS ARE IN GOVERNMENT
Labour supporters have a lot to think about at the moment, what with electing a new leader and trying to work out what their party stands for. Well, I’d like to give them something else to think about – what type of Labour supporter are they really?
To me there are two types of Labour supporters in the current British political landscape.
One is the ‘win at all costs’ person who wants to see Labour re-elected with a massive majority and doesn’t really care who gets trampled underfoot in the process. The other is a truly progressive person who is in it because they care about those members of society and the wider world who can least look after themselves.
Of course, those in the first category will lay claim to the motivation of the second category, but the distinction is important because it indicates how they view the Liberal Democrats and our role in the coalition government.
To the ‘win at all costs’ Labour supporter, our presence in government is a massive irritant. Without us, a pure Tory government would be much worse than the current government is, so the chances of its being so unpopular in 2015 that Labour gets back with a thumping majority are great.
To the genuinely progressive Labour supporter, having the Lib Dems in government is a good thing, because it means that Labour’s years in opposition – at least the first five of them – are spent without the extremes of Thatcherism that happened in the 1980s, which did so much to limit Labour’s room for manoeuvre when it finally got back in 1997.
A lot of people have made the point that the Lib Dems are much closer to Labour than the Conservatives, so a red-yellow coalition would have made more sense than the blue-yellow one we have now. Assuming we are indeed closer to Labour (and it is only an assumption, though probably largely correct), does it really mean a red-yellow coalition would be better?
Surely it is a lot more use to the progressive cause for the Lib Dems to act as a brake on a Conservative government than for us to coalesce with Labour? If we were in coalition with Labour, there would be a risk that we’d be seen as just another sub-section of the Labour party, a bit like the Fabians, or the Christian Socialists. I’m not saying we shouldn’t one day work with Labour, but there would be bigger issues of protecting our distinctive identity.
This is something that all people from the progressive wing of British politics should recognise. It’s why the truly progressive Labour supporter, who would rather we were in coalition with Labour than the Tories, needs to feel quietly grateful that there are Lib Dems in government. And why Labour-leaning Lib Dems should recognise that we are probably doing a more effective job pulling the Tories back from the right than if we were in coalition with ideologically more like-minded people.
For make no mistake, we are restraining the Conservatives from their natural instincts. There are plenty of Tories who loathe David Cameron because they see his deal with the Lib Dems as holding back pure Conservatism.
True, we’re having difficulty getting that message across, and in that respect it is an uncomfortable time to be a Lib Dem. But it doesn’t mean what we’re doing is wrong, or that we should allow our restraining influence to be belittled just because we’re the junior partners and therefore have to accept things we didn’t campaign for (many people forget that the Tories polled 37% while we polled 23%, so the Tory agenda will dominate).
No-one likes the cuts we’re seeing now, and it’s worrying to see certain aspects of them, especially those that hit poor people very hard. But the true progressives will recognise that having Lib Dems in government is of benefit to the country, and that doing the right thing is justified, even if there is an electoral price to pay. And it could be that doing the right thing means the electoral price won’t be as high as many fear at present.
To me there are two types of Labour supporters in the current British political landscape.
One is the ‘win at all costs’ person who wants to see Labour re-elected with a massive majority and doesn’t really care who gets trampled underfoot in the process. The other is a truly progressive person who is in it because they care about those members of society and the wider world who can least look after themselves.
Of course, those in the first category will lay claim to the motivation of the second category, but the distinction is important because it indicates how they view the Liberal Democrats and our role in the coalition government.
To the ‘win at all costs’ Labour supporter, our presence in government is a massive irritant. Without us, a pure Tory government would be much worse than the current government is, so the chances of its being so unpopular in 2015 that Labour gets back with a thumping majority are great.
To the genuinely progressive Labour supporter, having the Lib Dems in government is a good thing, because it means that Labour’s years in opposition – at least the first five of them – are spent without the extremes of Thatcherism that happened in the 1980s, which did so much to limit Labour’s room for manoeuvre when it finally got back in 1997.
A lot of people have made the point that the Lib Dems are much closer to Labour than the Conservatives, so a red-yellow coalition would have made more sense than the blue-yellow one we have now. Assuming we are indeed closer to Labour (and it is only an assumption, though probably largely correct), does it really mean a red-yellow coalition would be better?
Surely it is a lot more use to the progressive cause for the Lib Dems to act as a brake on a Conservative government than for us to coalesce with Labour? If we were in coalition with Labour, there would be a risk that we’d be seen as just another sub-section of the Labour party, a bit like the Fabians, or the Christian Socialists. I’m not saying we shouldn’t one day work with Labour, but there would be bigger issues of protecting our distinctive identity.
This is something that all people from the progressive wing of British politics should recognise. It’s why the truly progressive Labour supporter, who would rather we were in coalition with Labour than the Tories, needs to feel quietly grateful that there are Lib Dems in government. And why Labour-leaning Lib Dems should recognise that we are probably doing a more effective job pulling the Tories back from the right than if we were in coalition with ideologically more like-minded people.
For make no mistake, we are restraining the Conservatives from their natural instincts. There are plenty of Tories who loathe David Cameron because they see his deal with the Lib Dems as holding back pure Conservatism.
True, we’re having difficulty getting that message across, and in that respect it is an uncomfortable time to be a Lib Dem. But it doesn’t mean what we’re doing is wrong, or that we should allow our restraining influence to be belittled just because we’re the junior partners and therefore have to accept things we didn’t campaign for (many people forget that the Tories polled 37% while we polled 23%, so the Tory agenda will dominate).
No-one likes the cuts we’re seeing now, and it’s worrying to see certain aspects of them, especially those that hit poor people very hard. But the true progressives will recognise that having Lib Dems in government is of benefit to the country, and that doing the right thing is justified, even if there is an electoral price to pay. And it could be that doing the right thing means the electoral price won’t be as high as many fear at present.
Friday, 30 July 2010
OK, TIME FOR A REALITY CHECK
There are a lot of stories doing the rounds about disquiet within the Liberal Democrats over the state of the coalition. The disquiet exists, but runs nowhere near as deep as is sometimes played up in the media. And it has to be set against some clear realities.
Reality check 1 – there was no choice for the Lib Dems after the general election
With the arithmetic produced by our crazy electoral system, there was really no choice but to accept David Cameron’s offer of a coalition. The maths wouldn’t have made a deal with Labour work (Labour didn’t want it anyway, whatever Gordon Brown may say), and if we’d sat tight in splendid opposition and let the Conservatives form a minority government, we’d be facing a second election this autumn which would almost certainly have delivered an overall Tory majority. Then we’d be no better off, and people would be wondering what the Lib Dems were for.
Reality check 2 – things would have been equally bad under a Labour government
Despite the collective amnesia engulfing Labour which convinces them that nothing bad happened before 7 May, Labour would have faced the same economic situation and would have had to take equally brutal measures. Ed Balls has even admitted that Labour’s election pledge to halve the national deficit in four years was unachievable. Any current boost to Labour is simply down to it not being the party that’s doing the dirty work.
Reality check 3 – the current government would have been a lot nastier without the Lib Dems as part of it
To Lib Dems, the government seems a Tory one that’s using our support and doing its own thing anyway. But many Conservatives feel the opposite – that the Lib Dems have too much influence. The reality is that it is a Tory-led government with Lib Dem influence, and that influence is measurable in several ways. We will achieve our aim of a £10,000 income tax threshold by 2015, we will get a referendum on a step towards a fairer voting system, we will get our ‘pupil premium’. There are fringe benefits too, like the renewal of Trident not being funded from general taxation, and the flowering of moderate Tories like Ken Clarke, whose liberal slant to his work as justice minister could never have happened if the Tories ruled alone.
Reality check 4 – all parties lose support when in government and gain it when in opposition
We have been in opposition for 65 years, during which time you pick up a number of supporters. But opposition is a lot easier than government, and when you’re responsible for issues rather than just commenting on them, you lose some of the people you picked up in opposition.
Reality check 5 – the Lib Dems (and previous incarnations) have been unpopular before and have always bounced back
We were unpopular during the Lib-Lab pact of 1977-78, we were hammered by the Greens in the 1989 European elections, and we were down to 11 per cent in the opinion polls three years ago. We always bounce back because there is always a place for a third force alongside the parties representing the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ – a place for imaginative ideas that aren’t beholden to an orthodox or proletarian ideology.
The next couple of years won’t be easy for the Liberal Democrats. I fear we’ll lose some very good councillors next year because of a backlash against our role in tackling the deficit.
But I went into politics to try to change things for the better. At the election we got 23 per cent and the Tories 37 per cent. If we go into government with them, we have to play the junior role, but we’re still achieving things. That’s why we need to hold our nerve – and leave a dignified return open for those people who are leaving us now.
Reality check 1 – there was no choice for the Lib Dems after the general election
With the arithmetic produced by our crazy electoral system, there was really no choice but to accept David Cameron’s offer of a coalition. The maths wouldn’t have made a deal with Labour work (Labour didn’t want it anyway, whatever Gordon Brown may say), and if we’d sat tight in splendid opposition and let the Conservatives form a minority government, we’d be facing a second election this autumn which would almost certainly have delivered an overall Tory majority. Then we’d be no better off, and people would be wondering what the Lib Dems were for.
Reality check 2 – things would have been equally bad under a Labour government
Despite the collective amnesia engulfing Labour which convinces them that nothing bad happened before 7 May, Labour would have faced the same economic situation and would have had to take equally brutal measures. Ed Balls has even admitted that Labour’s election pledge to halve the national deficit in four years was unachievable. Any current boost to Labour is simply down to it not being the party that’s doing the dirty work.
Reality check 3 – the current government would have been a lot nastier without the Lib Dems as part of it
To Lib Dems, the government seems a Tory one that’s using our support and doing its own thing anyway. But many Conservatives feel the opposite – that the Lib Dems have too much influence. The reality is that it is a Tory-led government with Lib Dem influence, and that influence is measurable in several ways. We will achieve our aim of a £10,000 income tax threshold by 2015, we will get a referendum on a step towards a fairer voting system, we will get our ‘pupil premium’. There are fringe benefits too, like the renewal of Trident not being funded from general taxation, and the flowering of moderate Tories like Ken Clarke, whose liberal slant to his work as justice minister could never have happened if the Tories ruled alone.
Reality check 4 – all parties lose support when in government and gain it when in opposition
We have been in opposition for 65 years, during which time you pick up a number of supporters. But opposition is a lot easier than government, and when you’re responsible for issues rather than just commenting on them, you lose some of the people you picked up in opposition.
Reality check 5 – the Lib Dems (and previous incarnations) have been unpopular before and have always bounced back
We were unpopular during the Lib-Lab pact of 1977-78, we were hammered by the Greens in the 1989 European elections, and we were down to 11 per cent in the opinion polls three years ago. We always bounce back because there is always a place for a third force alongside the parties representing the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ – a place for imaginative ideas that aren’t beholden to an orthodox or proletarian ideology.
The next couple of years won’t be easy for the Liberal Democrats. I fear we’ll lose some very good councillors next year because of a backlash against our role in tackling the deficit.
But I went into politics to try to change things for the better. At the election we got 23 per cent and the Tories 37 per cent. If we go into government with them, we have to play the junior role, but we’re still achieving things. That’s why we need to hold our nerve – and leave a dignified return open for those people who are leaving us now.
Wednesday, 14 July 2010
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.
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.
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