Paul Walter has picked up on some less than flattering comments, including from an anonymous Liberal Democrat “grandee”, about Danny Alexander:
Danny has gone completely native…He should be the Lib Dem man in the Treasury. But he has turned into the Treasury man in the Lib Dems. Perhaps Danny could look slightly less pleased with himself and wipe that smile off his face.
Paul’s full post is here but some better news is over in The Mirror, echoing a point also made in the report Paul quotes:
Cold weather payments to the elderly and the poor were saved yesterday in a dramatic ConDem U-turn.
There was shock earlier in the week when David Cameron said the cash, available to four million on pension credit or income support, was “not guaranteed”.
Parliamentary regulations were put down to cut it from £25 a week to £8.50.
But senior sources told the Mirror there had been a rethink after Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander intervened. The source added: “Payments will be guaranteed at £25 for the next four years.”
Smiling too much or protecting payments for the least well off? I know which one is the most important by far.
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10 Comments
I have to agree with the Party grandee. Danny Alexander – from an ex-party member’s point of view – is the most obvious case.
The decimation in LD support is not down to you being in Coalition and taking “difficult choices”. Its because Danny Alexander, Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, Chris Huhne et al look to have all eagerly crossed the floor to the Tories – and look to be exceptionally pleased with themselves for doing so.
There is no separate Party identity – there is no reason to vote LD.
Isn’t saying Danny smiles a lot a bit like saying Vince looks glum?
I hear Max Hastings is a big fan, though.
Yet another reason why I let my membership lapse last month after being in the Liberals and Liberal democrats since the early 1970s, a PPC once and council candidate several times. The Lib Dems have now become Tory lite, and are heading to be Liberal Nationals all over again.
You quit because Danny Alexander smiles a lot?
I think Danny is making a decent fist of a very tough task, and seems to be growing into the job after a hesitant start.
But we need to start seeing the test of Lib Dem influence not only in terms of which benefits we step in to protect, but which ones we demand are cut or dropped as part of a fair austerity programme.
It looks like the coalition has backed away from reforms to the ill-targeted and wasteful winter fuel allowance and will protect it as a universal benefit. Exactly the same arguments, indeed arguably more compelling ones, apply to this as to child benefit.
It’s clear that Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne and others share this view, but it looks like David Cameron will be spared the kind of humiliating U-turn that we have (rightly) had to make on tuition fees.
I fear the government is ring-fencing too many areas of spending, distorting the composition of the cuts in undesirable ways.
@Cuse: Can we take it fro granted that you will post the same tosh on every single article here? That way you only need to post on the rare occasions you actually say something interesting.
Cuse’s opinion that “There is no separate Party identity – there is no reason to vote LD” just doesn’t survive scrutiny – it’s based on a political assumption from a bygone age of oppositional politics where confrontation not compromise is the method of success.
I’m happy to see that the old politics represented by a morally and financially bankrupt Labour party is on its last legs and shall point commenters like @Cuse to the experiences gained in institutions like the EU to disprove the old axiomatic view, where cooperation has made for far greater advances in a far shorter period of time to the benefit of far more people.
Danny is one of the MPs I trust most to stand by Liberal principles. He may not be able to convince our majority coalition partners about every policy, but then, who could?
And he smiles because he is personable – we had an angry Chancellor and PM previously and that didn’t do us any good. Can’t we have a shot at a top team who smiles?
Don’t judge a man from the way he looks. From what we’ve seen so far
the whole parliamentary team appears to have gone native