Author Archives: Steve Wotton

Last year, I wrote about the lack of a Lib Dem vision for economic growth here.

Since then, we have started to sketch out some ideas. Last month, in a speech encouragingly entitled “Get Britain Growing Again” Daisy Cooper, our Treasury Spokesperson, announced a new policy to establish a Department for Growth that would seek to de-fang the “anti-growth” Treasury. While this headline (and a move to Birmingham) got most of the attention, Daisy also clearly stated that “Getting Britain Growing Again must be any government’s number one goal”.

I agree with this and, in my earlier article, I rather unabashedly declared that “fixing the UK’s growth problem underpins EVERYTHING”. Without growth, we cannot fix the issues we campaign on and care about, whether that is adult social care, SEND, the NHS, defence and inequality. Many commentators on LDV disagreed with my point at the time, but it seems Daisy, at least, agrees.

The policy announcement on reforms to the Treasury were a welcome acknowledgement that the UK has a wildly over-powered and centralised department that focuses, above all else, on short term spending control and arbitrary targets. Reforming the Treasury will be difficult. If we are to succeed, then I think local authorities and mayoralties need to be set free. We need meaningful fiscal devolution to allow local government to invest and build infrastructure – a tram for Leeds anyone?

While a welcome announcement, I feel that we need to go further to have a meaningful and eye catching vision for growth for the UK. I am hopeful that the Thriving Economy working group can help build out such a vision. They have published a consultation paper ahead of Spring Conference and are due to host a session on their paper on Friday.

Crucially, a meaningful vision for growth has the power to really set the Liberal Democrat message apart. Right now, the electorate has a choice of a lacklustre government that, notwithstanding their intermittent references to growth being their “number one mission”, they just appear to be a continuation of the incompetence of the previous Conservative administration. Reform are a grab bag of scape-goating, wild promises of tax cuts with a dose of quasi-Thatcherism. The resurgent Greens appear to be re-inventing themselves as Momentum style left populists.