There is a case for the kind of leader who goes out on a limb, makes a big bold move, and then says “back me or sack me”. Another example would be Blair’s internal party referendum on abolishing Clause Four. That was a perfectly fair balance between leadership and democracy (and a rare example of Tony being a pretty straight guy!). Blair didn’t try to get rid of Clause Four one word at a time, or pretend that it wasn’t a big thing, or pre-empt the party’s decision in an interview with the Daily Torygraph.

Whereas Nick….

Read his diaries – that pretty much was what he tried to do!

But at least there was never any doubt Paddy had a strategy and an agenda that he was trying to deliver. I’m not sure that’s true of Nick.

We want to end Tory sleaze; ergo Let’s sacrifice Liberal Democracy!! Yippee.

Don’t get me wrong. Paddy was a superb leader. It just serves to reinforce my dad’s old adage about leaders, “He came to the rescue just in time, but he stayed on just too long.”

An Aged Lordship Type Person

Have I been censored????

If so who by? If not where do I now find it all? (And what I posted to remind myself)? !!

Tony Greaves

Things are different now. If your leader tries to reposition the Party firmly to the right of the Tories, it is rather difficult to justify being sceptical but willing to postpone judgment. It hardly seems adequate just to try to tinker with his words, or seek some sort of consolation concession.

Have we had two leaders called Ashdown? My memory is that his big idea (The Project) was pretty widely challenged!

It’s true, Captain Ashdown did face rebellion from below decks. The steerage passengers demanded that “pot” should be served alongside the rum ration, and they got it. However, they didn’t demand that the Great Helmsman should relinquish the tiller, or that he should steer to a different economic destination. What they challenged wasn’t his Big Idea or his fundamental principles. So their rebellion didn’t amount to a full-blown mutiny, and our Captain survived, to fight on with distinction.

It is different now. These are murky waters we are entering. The stakes have been raised, and not by the lower ranks. Old China hands can tell the tale of another rogue captain from long ago, one captain Owen, whose brains were likewise addled with the dreaded Orange disease. The damage he wreaked was fearful. But, praise be, we finally saw him off!

Geoffrey, I came to that conclusion a long time ago. Consequently, I’ve not been to conference since Llandudno in 1976.

“We” refers, as far as I can tell, to Nick. When Osborne supports Cameron on tax, he does it by opening his own mouth. Vince is not exactly short on eloquence and good ideas, but we haven’t heard much from him about tax cuts. When Nick co-opts Vince in his announcement, but only to point to his work on the search for expenditure savings, what exactly is going on?

Further to that is additional spending that wasn’t around in 2006 – like a new high speed rail network and and “Apollo project” for renewable energy.

Indeed if our 2006 tax plans added up to be revenue neutral then logically that 3% already had a new home.

At the very least then only a small portion of that 3% could be available for reallocation to net tax cuts. (the 2006 plans had proposals for reductions for many people but weren’t about a net reduction in the total tax take).

So in short, if we are going to go beyond those tax cut plans we’d need to identify further savings.

There must also be problems about the savings from ID cards and new nuclear as the programs will be partly underway by a 2010 election so some of the money will have been spent and more will be a contractual commitment.

The big elephant in the room is if these 3% savings are so easy to find why, 2 years on has nothing else been identified and why did the Tories (who didn’t have our spending commitments) find it so hard to identify them at the last election.

Ideologically I’m pretty neutral on whether we are a tax cutting or tax raising party. But if we’re going to be tax cutting we can’t do that just be hoping for it.

Thank you for clarifying this. I have been puzzled for some time by the relationship between the £15bn savings proposed two years ago and the £20bn savings proposed earlier this year. So apparently it really is the same money.

One obvious question is whether the 2006 “spending review” ever did identify the 3% savings, and if so why Clegg and Cable have had to spend their summer repeating the process.

But obviously the big difference is that in 2006 the intention was to save money so that it could be “spent more effectively, on our priorities”, whereas now “the vast bulk of it [is to be] given back through tax cuts”. Specifically, tax cuts “for people on middle incomes”.

Logically, that means that of the 3% extra we were planning to divert to spending on our priorities, the “vast bulk” is going to fund tax cuts instead. So in today’s terms we have to cut back that intended spending on our priorities by maybe £10-15bn.

That follows, doesn’t it?