This morning Nick Clegg launched the Party’s new booklet: “A Record of Delivery: What the Liberal Democrats have achieved in Government.”
As Nick says in his foreword to the booklet,
The Liberal Democrats have always been able to campaign on a strong record of local delivery. Now – for the first time in our party’s history – we can combine that with our record in national government too.
That’s what we did in the Eastleigh by-election – and it works. But no one is going to tell our story for us. We need to use every opportunity between now and the General Election to spread our message.
The Tories won’t deliver a fairer society. Labour can’t deliver a stronger economy. Only the Liberal Democrats can build a stronger economy and a fairer society, enabling everyone to get on in life.
Across these pages is all the proof you need:
All Liberal Democrat members will shortly be getting a paper copy in the post. Meanwhile, you can also read it here.
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16 Comments
I see one of the achievements Nick Clegg is highlighting is that the LIb Dems have cut immigration by a third.
Another ‘achievement’ is “No Trident replacement”!
Guess what the small print says on that one …
A few criticisms (ignoring all the good bits!):
– The science budget has not been protected
– Are we really happy with the benefits cap?
– Trident renewal getting the final go ahead in the next parliament rather than this one is not a great achievement
– The figure at the end about how Labour would add an extra £201bn is nonsense in all sorts of ways, taken (literally) straight from a Tory press release.
Are Lib Dems going to wave the Little Book of Lib Dem Achievements around like the Maoists used to the Little Red Book ? Raise it in the air when canvassing voters ?
Seriously, who is it going to be for ?
To try and persuade the voters [who seem very unpersuadable so far] ?
To help boost the sagging spirits of remaining activists ?
For Nick Clegg, to make him feel he’s making a difference ?
Less gimmicks needed, or else the reek of desperation will lose even more votes.
BBC’s Norman Smith has tweeted-
”Labour to make official complaint over Nick Clegg’s use of Govt press conference to launch Lib Dem “pocket guide” to achievements in Govt”
p6: “Under this Coalition, someone earning £1m will pay £381,000 more tax than under Labour.”
I take that to mean that, on average, someone earning £1m per year will pay £76,000 more each year for the 5 years of the present Coalition Government than they would have done under Labour.
That’s an extra tax take of over 7.5% compared to Labour, which is a really massive increase.
Does anyone know where to find chapter and verse explaining how that is arrived at?
And of course not only are the Lib Dems proudly cutting immigration, but “we are ensuring we get the best and brightest migrants, like scientists and engineers, to help us build a stronger economy.”
Yes – let’s suck as much talent as we can out of the developing world, and use it to our own advantage, while keeping as many of the undesirable foreigners as possible out of this country.
Top marks for candour, if nothing else.
This won’t ring true until people’s standards of living are rising. Most people vote on gut feeling, not the facts, however much we might like them to. And at the moment, the gut feeling is (totally unfairly) one of disappointment and betrayal. We have a vast army of 2010 Lib Dem voters who are now Don’t Knows in the polls (around a quarter). Thankfully they haven’t gone to Labour, but they’re not turning out to vote for us either. We need to find ways to bring them back into the fold.
We need to go big on things like the pupil premium and next year’s £10,000 personal allowance should really be shouted about when it comes into effect.
‘A record of delivery’ – who writes this stuff? ‘Delivery of a record’ might have made some sense, if Amazon had been around before CDs …
A record of delivery? I thought only pizzas were delivered? https://www.libdemvoice.org/no-more-leverage-or-transformation-35513.html
What a stupid booklet everything the government has done is because of the Liberal Democrats. Back to madness were the Liberal Democrats try to take credit for everything the government has done. It could have set out the Liberal Democrat policies from our manifesto that the coalition have implemented and referring back to what we said in the manifesto. It also makes wild claims with no mention of how. For example there is an unnamed £10bn scheme to help builders build an unstated number of homes plus 100,000 affordable homes (p19). There is no context (therefore half-truths) so how many more houses are being funded a year? Is it 20,000? Without understanding how we are doing these things I would not tell anyone we were doing them in case they asked me how we are doing them.
I assume the party is paying for this so I assume our Federal Executive signed this off. If these assumptions are wrong then someone should be held to account.
P24 “Stood up for Workers rights” really??
Described by Prospect Union as “Appalling new cuts to workers ‘rights” These include reduced compensation for unfair dismissal, ‘protected conversations ‘which can’t be quoted in any unfair dismissal claim, introduction of fees to take a case to the employment tribunal and there is more.
‘most people vote on gut feeling’ – yes, a gut feeling fed by tribal instincts. Unless we can get at least one daily newspaper to speak up for our tribe we are going to struggle to increase to 100 MPs in 2015… either that or we need to implement Leveson in full AND remove the press right to be partisan.
Perhaps we should develop our own newspaper, maybe start with a weekly paper…
Maybe we could start our own TV channel.?
peter.tyzack
I hear this a lot about the press – the press is partisan in one direction only – the Right! The Guardian is also a Lib Dem paper – I know noone on here believes this but as a long time reader I can tell you it is very sympathetic.
The coverage that Clegg gets is very positive and in the last few weeks we have seen a lot of space given to the Coalition (from both sides). Whatever it is, the paper does not support Labour at the moment
Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the King’s new set of clothes applies here. We need a different credible Party Leader. Decent, clever & hard working isn’t enough. Sorry Nick it’s about judgement.
Glad I’m not the only one who finds some of the “achievements in Government” lines a bit nauseous; yes some good lib dem policies have been achieved, but they must be seen in context – and part of that context is that the Tories have pushed through far more radical policies that we have…. so whilst there have been good LD policy wins but they have been modest ones (esp in comparison to our partners); and we need to distance and differentiate ourselves from the Tories now – simply crowing about everything the Government have done over the last few years, and spinning it, doesn’t achieve that.