But Jennie’s right, the amount taken as a %age of GDP (which is the only sane measure) has creeped up slightly under Labour but not that much, its remained in the low 40% range for ages.

Laurence is right, ideally we’d have a small state without a large tax burden, and tere are undoubtedly savings that could be made. But Thatcher didn’t manage it, Major didn’t manage it and Blair didn’t manage it. Brown isn’t bothering from what I can see.

It’s who, how and what is taxed that really matters, combined with making sure money isn’t being wasted. Once you’ve got that right, then you can look to reduce the burden, the current centralised system is undoubtedly horribly wrong, so that would need to be the top priority. In my oh-so-very-humble opinion, anyway.

That would be wonderful: a truly different political party. I’m not holding my breath for it to happen, though

There are a number of ways of defining left and right, the overall concept being a summation of them all I suppose. But the economic dimension remains key, and always will in my view. So the simplest and crudest scheme would be to define the economic left-right spectrum in terms of tax levied as a percentage of GDP. I am fairly clear in my mind that as a party we should be indicating a direction of travel along this line to the right. We should be clearly stating that the destination point for Liberal Democrats should be a low tax, small state, economy.

But it can’t be accomplished overnight. This is what ought to distinguish us from the Conservatives. There are plenty in that party who wish to slash taxation to a bare minimum straight away. The result is that many would find themselves in the deep end, and some would drown. That’s why they’re called the nasty party. By contrast, we should not be forcing the pace of change unduly. Broadly speaking, we will move gradually towards a low tax economy, as and when the country is ready for it.

We will, of course, reject social conservatism utterly. Why anyone in their right mind would want to set money free, but not people free . . .

Left and Right in economic terms is a fairly meaningless and amorphous concept anyway, especially in todays world, much better to talk about liberal policies around choice, freedom and markets and let people accept the policies for what they are.

It will be interesting to see if the makeup of the panel and the audience reflects the political strength of Lib Dems in Watford. The purpose of moving QT around is to reflect different views in different areas, after all.

It didn’t when they went to Oxford… http://bridgetfox.wordpress.com/2007/10/25/question-time/

I would have thought you would be in favour of this ?

I’d quite happily never see Baroness Williams on the box again, following her disgraceful opening remarks last time around.

That does quite nicely illustrate the problem though. For example David Starkey might hit some of the libertarian buttons but isn’t really a liberal (though he is very informed, entertaining and would make a superb QT panelist IMO).

It is pretty easy to characterise people as left & right. Less easy to characterise them as liberal/authoritarian.