Over at The Independent yesterday, the secretary of state for energy and climate change, Chris Huhne, argued that a half-hearted deal between the Lib Dems and Tories would have appeared fragile and short-term. Our economic problems, he argues, call for tough decisions and certainty. And the constituional changes the Lib Dems have negotiated will endure:
… we face a prolonged period when we will be relying on the financial markets to lend the Government the money to bridge the largest peacetime gap between taxes and spending in our history. A fiscal problem of this scale is not resolved overnight. Indeed, no fiscal problem of our magnitude has ever been resolved in less than four years, and sometimes much more. If we fail to maintain the momentum of improvement, the markets could lose confidence in progress at any time. The price in higher interest rates could destroy the recovery.
That is why the Lib Dem MPs concluded that there was no point in a half-hearted deal where we would undertake to vote for budgets and confidence motions, but not participate. It would have been seen by the markets as a low-trust arrangement heading for early breakdown, and in turn the parties would have dodged the tough decisions because they expected another election and feared voter retribution. Only a coalition can deliver certainty for the prolonged period we need. …
Our Lords and Commons parliamentary party approved this deal without a single vote against, precisely because it offers a vision of a better society towards which so many of us have striven for so long. The programme of constitutional change is the most important since 1911. We have an exciting route map to a fairer, greener and more liberal society. Our successors in the Liberal tradition will never understand if we fail today to rise to the challenge, for the first time in a generation, of putting our principles into power.
You can read Chris’s article in full here.
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6 Comments
Such as doing away with the illiberal and undemocratic House of Lords.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7128387.ece
It is all rather different to what we were saying a couple of weeks ago, see http://www.libdems.org.uk/press_releases_detail.aspx?title=Tory_%E2%80%98efficiency_savings%E2%80%99_a_smokescreen_for_job_cuts_says_Vince_Cable&pPK=3c827c72-ba2a-4da5-aed9-aecda337c8e5
At that time our views more more in line with this;
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/the-money-man-supereconomist-joseph-stiglitz-on-how-to-fix-the-recession-1893271.html
I have had some online discussions on this matter and I am amazed at how easily some people appear to change their minds when it is politically expedient to do so (or they kept quiet when they didn’t agree with Vince Cable before).
The Liberal Democrats are under attack from the Labour party on this, and I am not seeing a convincing response from the party establishment. If we were right in what we were saying 2 weeks ago, then the policies we are now pursuing will surely lead to a double dip recession?
I am also amazed that although we had a four hour debate yesterday in Birmingham about whether to go ahead with this coalition, only 1 delegate raised this issue, and no-one replied.
“Our successors in the Liberal tradition will never understand if we fail today to rise to the challenge, for the first time in a generation, of putting our principles into power”
I think in Chris Huhne’s case that will selling your principles and putting it into nuclear power.
You can read pretty much anything you like into the sketchy details about economic policy that have been released so far, precisely because they are sketchy – there hasn’t been time to work out exactly what to do yet.
Nothing I’ve seen so far contradicts what was said a couple of weeks ago. There won’t be any more of the “attacking for electoral advantage” part, but the rest is going to be up in the air for a while. We aren’t going to have a good idea how this will play out until the emergency budget is ready.
Did you read the link? 2 weeks ago our position was that it is too early to cut the budget deficit because of the risk of a double dip recession. Now George Osborne is doing just that. The link to the Stiglitz article shows the consequences of doing this.
It was something we were supposed to feel strongly about not long ago.
So we joined the coalition because we were scared of the markets. Sigh. I suppose it’s symmentry, once we defended and nurtured the free market from out-of-control protectionism, now we are apparently controlled by it.
The income tax threshold change was only one part of the fairer taxes (however good). How is it going to be paid for without the mansion tax and pension tax changes?