Video also available on YouTube here.
Nick Clegg has released his New Year message to Lib Dem members, a simple and positive riff on the party’s four key manifesto commitments from the 2010 General Election.
In fact, for a New Year’s message, it’s very much about continuity; there are no fireworks or surprises, as I found when I played a little game earlier with a couple of colleagues – “Guess what’s in Nick’s New Year message?”
And we guessed correctly, almost to the word: a reiteration of the party’s “big four” commitments, with examples of where we’ve delivered (more examples here); a quick mention of coalition politics, without dwelling overly on “incredibly difficult decisions”; a look towards three themes for 2011: political reform, social mobility and economic recovery – each with a helpful, yet sparing definition in plain language. (AV, after all, is best presented as a fairer system which makes MPs work harder for your vote, rather than a mathematical conundrum.)
Nick rounds off with a rallying cry, to prove the naysayers wrong, and “continue to build the Liberal fairer, greener Britain that we all believe in.”
Here’s Nick’s message in full:
Well what a year! A white-knuckle election; a new coalition government; Liberals in power for the first time in 70 years.
Just eight months ago we were campaigning on our four big manifesto priorities – fairer taxes; extra money for disadvantaged children in schools; a green, rebalanced economy; a new, open politics.
And now we are delivering on every single one, and more.
From taking over 800,000 people on low pay out of paying income tax altogether, to restoring the earnings link for pensioners, from delivering the pupil premium in full by the end of this parliament to scrapping ID cards, from stopping the new runway at Heathrow to clamping down on industrial scale tax avoidance, and ending child detention, Liberal Democrats are making the difference for the people of Britain.
I don’t want to pretend it has all been easy. These are testing times for the country and for our Party too. Action to tackle the deficit, and the need to reform higher education, have forced us to take some incredibly difficult decisions.
But that is Government. And when we promised people that we were ready to govern, that is the commitment we made.
I genuinely believe that the choices we are making will stand the test of time.
By dealing with the deficit, we’ll make sure future generations are not saddled with the burden of our debt.
By changing the way universities are funded we are keeping them world class while at the same time giving disadvantaged young people more opportunity to go into university, not less.
And by showing people that coalition can work, we can prove that plural, liberal politics is best for Britain.
In the New Year I’ll be concentrating on three big changes: radical reform of our political system and restoring our hard-won civil liberties; boosting social mobility so that no child is held back by the circumstances of his or her birth; and making sure the economic recovery is green and balanced, with opportunities spread across the whole country.
And I, like you, will be out campaigning for a fairer voting system to make MPs work harder for your vote.
All of us are going to hear some people predict the worst for our Party. The same people who have been underestimating the Liberal Democrats for as long as we have existed.
But we prove them wrong at every single turn. The next twelve months will be no different, because we will continue to build the Liberal, fairer, greener Britain that we all believe in.
Happy New Year!
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
A perpetual pirouette of prevarication?
Michael Meadowcroft: A Liberal of Intellectual Rigour and Uncommon Integrity
Debt-ridden graduates claim they are seen as cash cows
Why non-fiction books need their indexes
Changes in status: Local Elections wrap up
David Raw
Jenny Barnes
Tom Bailey
Gill Travers
Alison Howarth
42 Comments
“we’ll make sure future generations are not saddled with the burden of our debt.”
Ho ho very satirical.
“we’ll make sure future generations are not saddled with the burden of our debt”
Unless of course they are moderately well paid graduates when we fully expect to saddle them with additional debt.
“from delivering the pupil premium in full by the end of this parliament”
By taking money from other children, perhaps they can spend the premium on the books they will no longer get and share them with those who won’t get the premium.
“And by showing people that coalition can work, we can prove that plural, liberal politics is best for Britain.”
And this is the biggest sin. Because his obsessional requirement to hide disagreement and gag his ministers means there is nothing plural about this coalition. Even where opt outs were specifically built into the agreement ministers were coerced to vote for Tuition fees rises rather than abstain. How many times do we have to hear two parties one policy when in most cases there should be acceptance of at least one party compromising as the cost of coalition, as the reality of plurality. Without this people feelt hey may as well have voted Tory.
All he needs to do to prove the naysayers wrong is to start delivering a true coalition instead of a love in, and to remember that when principles have to be broken for the sake of coalition make sure that the country knows it. Otherwise he’ll get a right royal spanking in May.
To clarify for the excitable Tories that visit here, that’s in May not from May.
No, future generations are under no obligation to enter into those debts. If they can find a way to afford it, they are welcome (and encouraged) to scrap tuition fees – it’s still a Lib Dem policy to scrap them when possible.
Labour’s debts, on the other hand, cannot be discarded. Future generations must pay for the excesses of the last 13 years.
I agree with Steve Way.
Andrew Suffield
Coalition supporters are still attempting to justify the direction of the Nick Clegg’s Tory-led government with anti-Labour deficit mentioning pieces.
Can you explain why the deficit is rising so much so quickly under Gideon Osborne’s brief stewardship?
And how:
– Rising unemployment
– Projected trebling of interest rates within 6 months
– Stagnant private job creation
– Falling consumer spending + confidence
– Dramatically re-adjusted downwards growth forecasts
will all help Nick Clegg rectify the situation?
Oh dear Andrew Suffield
Labour’s ‘debts’ are due to it preventing a depression.
Lib Dem policies (tripling tuition fees) will cacade debt down the generations and all for the egos of a few MPs who will be out next time.
The country worked under Labour.
Sadly the treacherous Lib dems will make sure many don’t work at all next year.
Happy New Year
Andrew Suffield
Not to mention that monster coming over the hill.
Inflation
@Andrew Suffield
Can I just clarify my comments were not meant to support Labour but to highlight the current leaderships hypocrisy. I supported the Lib Dem’s at the election because I wanted them to follow their stated principles and keep the pledges they made the electorate. That’s what democracy should be about. If not cancel elections as another efficieny saving.
Labour did achieve a lot in their time in office but also made many mistakes. The constant litany decrying of Labour’s deficit does the Lib dems no good anymore. If you look at the both parties of Government’s responses to Labour’s budgets, and PBR’s it can easily be seen that whoever was in power there would still be a large defecit. Labour’s main sin was wastefulness, but looking at the improvements in the NHS and education that are about to be reversed it may be seen by the country to be a lesser evil than the coalitions policies.
The economic betrayal is in the speed of paying off the debt. Can you not see the hypocrisy when you campaign on a ticket of reducing the debt over 2 parliaments and then double the speed of repayment (with the accompanying increase in cuts) ? The majority of the country supported slower reduction at the general election, they have been ignored.
As for your method of avoiding the student debt, this will be a poorer country if we have no graduates. They benefit the country and pay more taxes as they earn more. Not to mention the fact that it was a blatant betrayal of future students and their parents that is now justified by telling them they don’t have to go to University if they don’t wnat the debt….
What next for justification, reverse the ban on fox hunting with the reasoning that the foxes wouldn’t take part if they didn’t want to?
“All of us are going to hear some people predict the worst for our Party.”
He must be deaf because many were predicting it long ago, before Nick’s catastrophic personal ratings and the Party’s.
They were right.
Unlike the Thatcherite orange bookers round Nick who think everything will turn out nice in a few years because… ? well they don’t actually have a reason or strategy other than clinging on to Cameron and their nice ministrerial jobs and offices, but they think if they wish hard enough everything will be fine.
Steve, you are right I think that the problem is agreeing to remove the structural deficit in 4 years rather that twice that time and then appearing surprised when cuts are deeper than you said they would be.
This is also the problem with arguments that the deficit caused the tuition fees “betrayal”.
The deficit has not caused the Tories to cut the NHS or to make changes adverse to their older voter support base. The Tories have indeed made clear that they are honouring commitments to both (which surely makes Nick Clegg wince).
That is why we have a new political equation: the unexpected level of the deficit > the price of Lib Dem credibility but < the price of Tory credibility.
Since Robert has asked me, impliedly, to be more positive there are 3 or 4 changes to the tuition fees policy that would at least soften it at the edges and we must hope that Simon Hughes (what is it about our senior members and their willingness to tie their name to this policy) can take them forward.
“Boosting social mobility so that no child is held back by the circumstances of his or her birth”. What are LibDems going to do about the circumstances of his or her birth – the circumstances that mean that some people inherit billions and others inherit nothing during their lives?
The LibDem taboo, not to mention the Coalition taboo, on even mentioning the redistribution of the receipt of gifted and inherited capital in each new generation appears to be intact. Shame on the Liberal Democrats, who dropped the Liberal Party consitututional call for Liberty, PROPERTY and security for all when joined by the EU-fanatic inegalitarian Social Democrats from the right wing of the Labour Party.
At least there is still a Liberal Party which has no such taboo and which calls for UK Universal Inheritance for all young UK-born UK citizens at 25, financed by radical reform of the currently scandalously exemption-ridden 40 per cent so-called Inheritance Tax on giving and bequeathing capital.
“In fact, for a New Year’s message, it’s very much about continuity…”
Oh no, I hope not. Not more U-turns.
I notice Nick Clegg is making speeches to pro-Israeli groups suggesting he got it wrong on Israel. He’ll be supporting apartheid next and recommending a change in the Universal Jurisdiction law to help people avoid charges of war crimes.
http://www.ldfp.eu/2010/11/15/mr-clegg-the-lib-dems-and-the-small-case-of-international-law/
“No, future generations are under no obligation to enter into those debts.”
The government’s still going to owe all that money it’s borrowing to pay the increased student fees, you muppet!
“RichardSM”
How terrible if Nick Clegg is now going to start supporting Apartheid!
Liberals ought to be calling for boycott, disinvestment and sanctions to help bring about an Apartheid-free, non-racist, tolerant Arab Israeli Palestine.
Two states could only be a temporary solution to this problem that blights us all, as much, if not more, than South African Apartheid did in the 1970’s. The solution to Apartheid in South Africa was unexpected. So, of course, will be the solution to Apartheid in Arab Israeli Palestine.
I wonder how long Party members will accept this unwarranted optimism. Until UKIP are showing greater support in the polls?
Perhaps it would help if the old tuition fees system were restored, but the numbers attending university restricted to just the brightest to avoid cruelly raising expectations of our young.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12086055
@Dane Clouston
Hi Dane – Seasons Greetings to you.
I agree. Something has got to be done now that Obama has given up. With no prospect of a solution now, what is the ordinary Palestinian to do? If it were me in the same position, I would take up arms.
How did you get on with the ‘Anatomy of Economic Inequality’ study / book? It’s a useful source for data, but at nearly 500 pages, it’s a bit of a pain to wade through.
Let me clarify that – before I get removed / reported.
With no prospect of a solution now, what is the ordinary Palestinian to do? If it were me in the same position, I would take up arms – just like the French Resistance did in WWII when they were occupied – just like the Americans did to oust the Brits – just like most peoples have done when they are occupied by foreign forces.
@ Richard SM
The US was not “occupied by foreign forces”. Most people in the colonies at that time were British or of British descent. It was a (justified) rebellion within the colonial states about taxation and principles of government – “no taxation without representation”. However, plenty of British people did not agree with the rebellion and were forced to flee to Canada.
You clearly don’t know much about history.
Anyway, I agree we need to start imposing our own common European will in our own backyard. Most European nations are agreed that an effective two state solution needs to be pursued vigorously and against the evident wishes of Israel. Obama’s ability to find a solution to the Middle East’s problems is clearly now hamstrung. If it is worth having any kind of common European approach to foreign policy, the Middle East will prove the acid test.
@ Robert C
I didn’t say they were – you clearly can’t read.
@Cuse
Posted 29th December 2010 at 8:58 am | Permalink
Andrew Suffield
Not to mention that monster coming over the hill.
Inflation
And how will The Coalition and the BOE deal with inflation?
By raising Interest Rates of course which will hit millions of home owners.
As soon as the Tories came back into power, they Halved the Income support for Mortgage interest Payments from 6% to 3% causing hundreds of thousands of people too fall short on their mortgage payments or struggle to try and find the difference.
The Mortgage Companies refused to adjust their SVR {Standard Variable Rate} just because the Government reduced support, and they fully expect customers to find the difference.
As the BOE base rates rises from 0.5% to the projected 5%, will the coalition raise it’s support for Mortgage Interest Payments? I very much doubt it considering their general attitude towards those on state benefits.
In fact we will probably be heading back to the same situation we had under the last Tory Government,
Interest Rates Rising, Repossessions Soaring, Property Value Falling.
And who benefits from it all?
Property Developers who snap up cheap repossessions at auction. Then rent the property out on the private market at extortionate rents.
And who Rents these properties?
Those that have become reliant on welfare due to massive redundancies in the public and private sector and have had their homes repossessed.
Shoving up the costs of the Welfare Bill and Housing Benefit, whilst Lining the pockets of Property Developers and Tory Fat Cats.
Well done to the Tories, your doing it again, only difference this time is you have Liberal Democrats to use as Canon Fodder.
Bring on the March the 26th The National Demonstration Day against the cuts.
RichardSM
And Seasons Greetings to you too, thank you. But I don’t know who you are!
I have not looked at the Anatomy of Economic Inequality until just now, I am ashamed to say, but will have more of a look later.
Where there is no democracy, people have a right to take up arms. Most Palestinians have no votes in the election of the government which controls the Israeli armed forces which effectively control them both in the West Bank and in Gaza. In the 1970s I supported the right of the ANC to take up arms against Apartheid in South Africa. I feel the same way about the Palestinian struggle against Apartheid in Arab Isreali Palestine.
“Robert C”
Would a two state solution have worked in South Africa? I cannot see how a geographically separated two state solution can work in Arab Israeli Palestine. Israel has to feel as isolated as South Africa once did, before there will be a one state solution.
But of course there are great differences. America was not the power house behind the Boers! And Palestinian workers are not essential to the operation of the Apartheid Israeli State as much, if at all, as Blacks were to the Apartheid White South African State.
So it is even harder to see how it will all work out without a bloodbath than it was in South Africa, where, however – thank goodness – it unexpectedly did.
@Dane Clouston
I quoted some figures 2-3 months ago (on income disparity, I think) and you asked me for a link – and later thanked me for a useful source of data.
Don’t worry, I have a good memory 😉
Mr Clegg is really a Tory in Lib Dem clothing. I look forward to the Oldham East and Saddleworth by election, where the Lib Dems are beaten into third place! If the Greens make some real progress, then maybe this may tell Mr Clegg that many of his voters do not agree with him.
Just in case my above post is considered abusive, when I state that “Mr Clegg is really a Tory in Lib Dem clothing,” I do not mean it literally, I mean that he acts like a Conservative, not willing to show any policy disagreements between them, and supporting Conservative policies like raising tuition fees. A little bit of public disagreement will really be something to make many think there is still a point in supporting the Lib Dems
Happy New Year Clegg.
My New Year’s resolution is to never again hang a Vote Lib Dem poster in my window.
It’ll take years of therapy to deal with my guilt feelings at encouraging people to vote Lib Dem.
Well that failed laughably, we had a recession and a record deficit.
Certainly, however this is pure fantasy. Here is what the Lib Dem manifesto had to say on the subject of scheduling:
So, the Lib Dems campaigned on a ticket of reducing the deficit by half by 2013-2014. The government’s plan is to reduce the deficit by two thirds by 2013-2014. I don’t think you can justifiably call this anything other than another manifesto promise delivered.
It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
Thomas Paine
“RichardSM”
And certainly better than mine! Time passes!
@Andrew Suffield
The Tories claim the deficit will be gone in this parliament. That is a big difference to cutting in half by 2014.
Halving the deficit would have been painful, extremely painful, but people voted for that. Greater reduction will be far more damaging.
A bit like Clegg calling the scrapping of the schools building projects “a bit silly” when proposed by the Tories. A bit like the Tory VAT bombshell, a bit like Tuition fees etc etc etc
Still it’s good to see some Lib Dems have learnt how to spin from the Blair years, he would have found no problem equating the 1/2 to 2/3’s just like when he lied over tuition fees he found no problem spinning that.
Come on chaps! It’s a New Year’s message: good will to all etc. I’ll wait a few days, therefore before saying that “I genuinely believe that the choices we are making will stand the test of time” sounds remarkably similar to Blair on Iraq!
@ Scott Walker
…. and the claim will prove to be just as accurate as Blair’s I suspect.
One would not have expected anything else of course; political expediency will dictate that Clegg is now stuck with the Coalition, even if he came to think it was a mistake (which I accept isn’t likely; I think he is quite sincere in his belief that he and his colleagues did the right thing). Now that the LD’s are effectively “locked-in” to the Coalition, I can see how the narrative that they have little choice but to stick it out and hope things improve works.
I think they are totally mistaken, but only time will tell. It is fervently to be hoped that, if nothing else, the AV referendum can be won, and that the policies of the Coalition don’t prove to be as damaging as many of us fear.
“My New Year’s resolution is to never again hang a Vote Lib Dem poster in my window.
It’ll take years of therapy to deal with my guilt feelings at encouraging people to vote Lib Dem.”
I went so far as to have two enormous orange LIB DEM triangles in my garden because I was so passionate that we mustnt have a conservative government!!!!!
Actually it isn’t. Particularly since you’re fiddling the dates there.
The manifest commitment was to reduce the deficit to half by the (start of the financial) year 2013-2014. This parliament will last until the (start of the financial) year 2015-2016. So, you’re comparing “cut in half in three years” to “cut to zero in five years”.
Do you see why these are approximately the same rate? If it is still unclear, look at this page: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/spend_sr2010_keyannouncements.htm
The fourth image down shows a graph. You’ll see that this government’s plans for the 2013-2014 mark are pretty close to where the Lib Dem manifesto aimed them.
Certainly the coalition plans are slightly faster – the Lib Dem proposal was to correct the deficit at about 5/6ths of this rate. But you can hardly call this “double the speed”, which is obviously isn’t, and it’s certainly a reasonable compromise between the Lib Dem and Tory proposals. This really is what people voted for.
@Steve Way
“The constant litany decrying of Labour’s deficit does the Lib dems no good anymore. If you look at the both parties of Government’s responses to Labour’s budgets, and PBR’s it can easily be seen that whoever was in power there would still be a large deficit. Labour’s main sin was wastefulness”
Happy New Year, Steve.
I take a different view. It’d be crazy not to talk about Labour’s deficit constantly. It’s going to dominate this parliament. My complaint is rather that the coalition oversells its policies. If the coalition tries to compete with the previous Labour government in largesse, it’ll lose, because Labour spent all the money.
You are right that both the Lib Dems and the Tories didn’t propose lower spending. For a while, Cameron even said he’d match Labour’s spending plans. How he must regret that! However, Vince Cable did talk a lot about the need to cool down the credit bubble, which is one of the reasons for the structural deficit.
But, while it’s regrettable that the opposition didn’t call for lower spending, I don’t think that gets Labour off the hook. With government comes respsonsibility, and Labour were the ones with access to the best advisors in the country. Eddie George warned that the stimulus used in 2001 to avert a recession had created problems which needed to be dealt with, but they ignored those warnings.
I agree that a different government would still have left a large deficit, but they’d not have thrown money around in the way Labour did between 2003 and 2007, and so it wouldn’t have been as large.
“The economic betrayal is in the speed of paying off the debt. Can you not see the hypocrisy when you campaign on a ticket of reducing the debt over 2 parliaments and then double the speed of repayment (with the accompanying increase in cuts)?”
I think too much is made of this. The Lib Dem manifesto was pretty vague about the speed of deficit reduction, Vince Cable did say that the Darling plan was a good starting point (implying he’d go further). Indeed, in an article in 2009, Vince suggested a plan very similar to what the coalition is implementing.
And as to how fast the deficit will be paid off, that’s a question of definitions. The deficit won’t be paid off by 2015, just the part of the deficit that is thought of as structural in 2010.
Then there are the two other factors: that this is a coalition, so the Lib Dems couldn’t dictate the exact timing, and the crisis in southern Europe, which led many in May to fear that the UK was at risk of losing its triple A credit rating.
This is going to be an incredibly painful year, probably the most painful of the parliament. And the coalition have certainly made mistakes. But much of the criticism is unwarranted.
“It’d be crazy not to talk about Labour’s deficit constantly. It’s going to dominate this parliament.”
Yes, sure. And George W Bush’s deficit (or should that be Obama’s?), and the Greek deficit, and the Irish deficit, and the Portuguese deficit, and the Spanish deficit, etc etc. Oh, and the bankers’ deficit.
The reason for talking incessantly about Labour as the cause of the deficit is much the same as the reason for bracketing Saddam Hussein with Al-Qaida, or for denying climate change. It’s the blame game. Let’s hope the voters see through it. It’s a dirty way to campaign and we should have none of it.
Instead of blaming Labour we should be sincerely thanking Gordon Brown for stopping Tony Blair, who was regrettably supported in that aim by the LibDems – something we must never forget – from taking us into the Euro.
That, in combination with the banking crisis, would have been a complete and utter disaster for our country..
@David Allen
Hi David. Happy New Year. 🙂
“Yes, sure. And George W Bush’s deficit (or should that be Obama’s?), and the Greek deficit, and the Irish deficit, and the Portuguese deficit, and the Spanish deficit, etc etc. Oh, and the bankers’ deficit.”
In the USA, a large part of the deficit is, unquestionably, George W Bush’s fault. He inherited a budget surplus from Clinton, and immediately, deliberately, used it up on tax cuts for the rich. I remember shortly after Obama was elected, commentators criticising Obama, that he was being too much of the gentleman with George W Bush, and not blaming him. At the time, they said, if Obama didn’t put the blame where it was due, on Bush, the republicans would put the blame on Obama. Eventually, Obama did start blaming Bush, but too late … and the Democrat rout in the mid-terms was the result.
Greece was the fault, not just of the outgoing government, but a long series of bad governments, who were notorious for short-term political decisions, rather than thinking of the long-term interests of the country.
Ireland is more complex. Their crash was the result of the mother of all burst bubbles, at the end of an extraordinarily prolonged boom. I don’t know enough about Ireland to critique government economic decisions in the last ten years.
If we compare the UK with other countries, it, of course, depends on what you are comparing, but I think the following from the IFS is pretty reasonable:
“On the eve of the financial crisis, the UK had one of the largest structural budget deficits among
either the G7 or the OECD countries and a higher level of public sector debt than most other OECD
countries, though lower than most other G7 countries. Most OECD governments did more to reduce
their structural deficit during the period from 1997 to 2007 than Labour did. This fiscal position
formed the backdrop to the financial crisis.”
If instead of £30-40bn of overspending prior to the crisis, we had had £0-10bn, it would have made a big difference. The recent comprehensive spending review would have cut around £50bn, not £80bn.
But part of the problem was the failure to take action to deal with the consumer boom created in 2001.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/exgovernor-george-says-bank-deliberately-fuelled-consumer-boom-441160.html
Eddie George warned that this was storing up problems in the future, and that the country needed to sort them out. His warnings were not heeded. Nor was action taken on the debt bubble following Vince Cable’s warnings about consumer debt.
It’s true that it was a worldwide crisis. But the governments of some countries were far more prudent than ours was. Compare our deficit of 11% with Germany’s of around 5.3%, Canada’s of 5.2% or Australia’s of 3.5%.
If Labour had reacted to this by accepting it had made mistakes, fine. We could avoid the blame game, and just discuss the very difficult decisions the country has to take.
But, instead, Labour is doing its utmost to blame the austerity that is partly a result of their serious mistakes on the coalition and on the Liberal Democrats. We’d be mad to let them get away with it.
Happy New Year, George,
“At the time, they said, if Obama didn’t put the blame where it was due, on Bush, the republicans would put the blame on Obama. Eventually, Obama did start blaming Bush, but too late … and the Democrat rout in the mid-terms was the result.”
In other words, if you don’t take care to stuff the other side and win the propaganda war, then the other side will stuff you. Some truth in that, I suppose.
“If Labour had reacted to this by accepting it had made mistakes, fine. We could avoid the blame game, and just discuss the very difficult decisions the country has to take.
But, instead, Labour is doing its utmost to blame the austerity that is partly a result of their serious mistakes on the coalition and on the Liberal Democrats.”
Oh, please! You can’t say that Labour must play it squeaky clean, while at the same time saying that the Lib Dems must play it dirty!
Hi David,
There’s more I could say on this, but not on the public web. If you want to discuss it, please do send me a private message in the members forum.