It seems very strange to have watched three leaders’ speeches before our own Conference has started. We normally go first in the Conference season but thanks to Mr Alex Salmond and his choice of referendum date, we are bringing this conference season to an end. For once, Nick Clegg gets the chance to have the last word.
Farage, with his dodgy wireless microphone, was as full of himself as ever, even more so when he had a defecting Tory MP to brandish. This was in sharp contrast to Ed Miliband’s clumsy performance. And then we had Cameron. Standing in front of a dark backdrop, looking at his most charming, delivering a speech that had passion and promise. It didn’t just have a melody. It had the whole darned symphony. But he and his ministers have this week painted a picture of a Britain that I really don’t fancy living in, a country where government by Daily Mail values is the norm.
Nobody doubts the authenticity of Cameron’s appreciation for the NHS given his own family experience, so we’ll put that bit to one side. Everything else in that speech was very carefully choreographed. The shameless, brazen appropriation of not just our tax cut, but our new policy to extend it was quite breathtaking. For us, who know the story, it’s galling. To the voter who might not know that story, Cameron looks a bit more like he understands them. Then another tax cut for his voters, the better-off professionals, who will be unencumbered by 40p tax before they earn £50,000. So a couple of lawyers, or doctors will be quids in. Andrew Neil reckoned that it would cost £3.5 billion. Michael Gove reckoned nearer £2 billion. Whatever the real figure is, it’s not far off the amount that will be being cut off the welfare budget for the people who are struggling most. While those who earn a good wage get to keep more of it, those with nothing will have their meagre income frozen. Well, I suppose they never claimed to be fair. It makes you think, though, that we really should go back to thinking about Capital Gains Tax. The Coalition put it up in 2010 but it’s not been touched since. If we really believe in a fairer society, we need to show it.
And then there’s Cameron’s and May’s ugly stuff on civil liberties and human rights. A decades old international convention, which was put together by British people, trashed by the Tories in 2014. Human rights, health and safety, decent employment, brought in as a result of brutal slaughter, horrendous and avoidable workplace accidents and mistreatment of workers, all stand to be swept away if this lot are allowed an overall majority. Our job is to stop that happening. We need to show people why this is relevant to them. After all, if you can make one person’s trial a little bit unfair, you can do it to me too. If you can decide to ban certain legal activities for Terrorists, and the National Front, then why not for Greenpeace or animal rights groups, or the Stop the War Coalition. This could all end in a very bad place. Best to keep the gate to the slippery slope firmly locked.
Earlier I was slightly perturbed because I was thinking that the Tories nicked our tax cut for low and middle income earners and Labour nicked our Mansion Tax. Two of our flagship policies. We’ll find it hard to get them back. We’re starting to look a little naked. You would hope that there are a couple of sassy little numbers in the pre-manifesto wardrobe to wow the public and the party, but if they are there, they are keeping themselves well hidden. Worthy and earnest won’t cut it. We need something truly radical.
So, Nick, when he has the last word in just under a week’s time, has the chance to come out there and ride a coach and horses through the illiberal, unfair, irresponsible Tory and Labour agendas. He can be every bit as passionate as Cameron was today – and he can do it with more authenticity. We as a party are looking for him to lay down the liberal law, in no uncertain terms and with style. No, pressure, then.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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23 Comments
The Guardian is quoting a figure of £5.6bn as the cost of raising the threshold and the cost overall of the tax cuts as £7.2bn- http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/01/david-cameron-promises-tax-cuts-human-rights-act – although it’s not totally clear when the changes would come into effect.
That obviously is a very large sum and I’d be very interested to get some idea of how that squares with the priority of deficit reduction (assuming it is still the priority of course). Osborne talked about a ratio of cuts to tax rises of 80:20 for the fiscal consolidation in this Parliament, I wonder what ratio he has in mind to 2020. With a ringfenced NHS and ringfenced triple locked pension and the tax cuts, the suggestion here is an enormous cut to anything not in the ringfences.
What with Labour and the mansion tax and the Tories raising the personal allowance it seems like it is “I agree with Nick” all over again.
We have to pin the Tories down for an implementation date for their tax cuts. Is this just an aspiration, is it conditional on the the state of the economy, or is it something that they undertake to do at the 2015 Budget? The electorate must not be fobbed off with a weasel answer.
Sorry, Caron. Whatever Nick Clegg chooses to say next week will be ignored, disdained, ridiculed, adopted as a swear word. People simply refuse to listen to him. End of.
@ Little Jackie Paper
By breathtaking cuts to public services and welfare I would imagine. It was an excellent speech though, very well delivered. That higher rate threshold will be VERY appealing to many, even though the thought of doing something like that in this climate brings a whole new level of ridicule to ‘all in it together’
“With a ringfenced NHS and ringfenced triple locked pension and the tax cuts, the suggestion here is an enormous cut to anything not in the ringfences.”
I note with considerable worry that Fallon’s speech contained a commitment to meet the NATO 2.0% threshold for Defence spending only for the period of the current spending review.
“We need something radical” Local Income Tax / LVT perhaps? (sorry, agreeing with Nick is never likely to involve anything that radical – stick to Cameron and Miliband and “Centrism” – sorry, “the politics of government”)
Tim13, can you explain to me why a Land value tax is fairer than a net asset tax? To me the LDV just looks like the politics of grandstanding.
LVT, sorry, not LDV.
Jedibeeftrix – I saw that and on the face of it defence looks seriously vulnerable, possibly even to the point of trident being on the table. My impression of this conference basically is that if it is not in a ringfence or its not already guaranteed to some point in time then it’s getting cut.
Just as a point of comparison I think we’ve just borrowed about £2.5bn for this year’s fuel payment cheques.
i’m not a fan of ring-fences, but i’d sell the idea of 0.7% of GDP on foreign aid if it was part of a deal that put 2.1% of GDP on defence. 🙁
It makes you wonder how we ever got into bed with them
jedibeeftrix – I also don’t like ringfences. Suppose we reduced our foreign aid spend – would you idea also see a reduction in defence?
Defence is a really good illustration of the problem. It’s been clobbered. Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m a butter not guns man – but then there seems something seriously wrong about making people redundant who have just spent the best part of a decade in some desert rat hole on behalf of the country.
But then in protecting the NHS and pensioners the implication has been that all other areas have taken a far deeper cut than is otherwise necessary. I am yet to hear any compelling argument about why pensioners and the NHS are sacred cows at the expense of all others. At least not any economic argument.
At the moment I seriously have no idea why anyone under 60 would vote Conservative.
Someone is going to have to make the point that there needs to be more in the picture than protecting the two sacred cows. Ed M and Ed Balls failed – over to you Mr Clegg?
“Suppose we reduced our foreign aid spend – would you idea also see a reduction in defence?”
No.
2.0% meets our obligations (just).
2.0% permits our interventionist foreign policy (just).
There is no room to maneuver.
Little Jackie Paper
“At the moment I seriously have no idea why anyone under 60 would vote Conservative”
Many younger people still earn a good wage and like low taxes, they have nice houses which they have worked hard for and would like to leave to their children without paying a fortune in tax. Others don’t like the idea of “wealth taxes” or “mansion taxes” they feel they have paid more than their fair share on their earnings. Some resent paying for others who they consider to lazy to get off their backsides and find a job. The EU is unpopular with many – especially the freedom of movement – and they want major changes or to get out. There are many reasons why people under 60 vote Tory, just as there are many reasons why people vote Labour or UKIP. The problem for the LibDems seems to be there is no obvious reason to vote for them. At the last GE they had a policy that was really popular, far more popular than anything Labour or the Tories had – tuition fees – but they blew it and the voters have never forgiven them.
The UK has the fourth largest defence budget in the world, yet some people are for ever complaining our troops are ill-equipped and no expense should be spared. A much better approach would be to cut defence spending in half to include only defence and double the overseas aid budget to 1.4% GDP.
We don’t pay our combat soldiers enough anyway, it’s one reason why there’s a bit of a recruitment crisis going on, so there’s no room for big cuts in the defence budget.
Why are bus tickets for young people being prioritised? At the last conference Nick announced free school meals and 5p plastic bags, this is the last chance to get it right.
@A Social Liberal – “it makes you wonder how we ever got into bed with them”. Dick Tuck can supply the answer.
“The UK has the fourth largest defence budget in the world, yet some people are for ever complaining our troops are ill-equipped and no expense should be spared. A much better approach would be to cut defence spending in half to include only defence and double the overseas aid budget to 1.4% GDP.”
^ A very good reason why I am extremely pleased that [you] exist in a marginal party of little influence and vanishingly unlikely ever to hold the portfolios of defence in foriegn policy in this country. ^
I want the lib-dem’s to succeed, but not before views like this have been expunged in the name electability.
Sorry, but why attack Tory Tax/Spend/Borrowing plans?
Why not come forward with a Liberal Plan to spend a similar amount NOT on tax cuts but on a Programme for Renewal?
Again as in Scotkand we are playing the ‘man’ not the ball.
As Faisal Islam @faisalislam tweeted last night, “But basically fiscal credibility is earned in order, from time to time that it be spent. not a fixed stock. That’s whats happened here.”
Quite.
£7 billion used to pay interest on borrowing would finance an inspiring infrastructure investment plan, work within our own published fiscal rules, give the activists something to campaign on and provide the people of our nations with (to borrow from Llloyd George, Keynes and Beveridge in 1929), “schemes of work which we can put immediately into operation, work of a kind which is not merely useful in itself but essential to the well-being of the nation.”
Caracatus 2nd Oct ’14 – 3:02am
“The UK has the fourth largest defence budget in the world, ”
The planned expenditure on defence is indeed a huge proportion of government spending.
The MoD also has enormous land holdings, much of which was “stolen” to deal with the emergency of the second world war.
It would make sense for thr MoD to realise this capital asset rather than just sit on it for another seventy years.
The MoD has a Dad’s Army approach to spending our money, but whilst politicians of all three parties behave as they did a week ago and line up to vote for yet another war nothing will change.
Why is the language of public expenditure cuts always aimed at the poor ???
An excellent article. My worry is that Nick will deliver an excellent speech but it will get barely reported, as usual.
It’s especially bad when you consider that pensions and the nhs are not going to be subject to these cuts – it will therefore be the benefits and services that the poorest and most vulnerable in our society rely on that have a flame thrower taken to them. Disgusting party the Tories. This coalition is not like your previous coalitions with labour in scotland, the Tories had the lib dems compromise too much and take part In Things like the bedroom tax that are things the lib dems should never have been a part of. You should have just got a few things in exchange for not voting no confidence and allowing Cameron to have his minority government and vetoed all the nasty stuff. Things would look a lot better for the party now if you’d done that. Anyway, you did what you did and the consequences will be what they are.
Caron is right but thats not the whole truth, there were two speeches & two conferences : one for the Members/Core Vote & one for the wider public. There was alot of stuff that might appeal to a broad swathe of Voters. For an alternative take on what Camerons speech meant read Dan Hodges articles on it. You dont have to go via The Telegraph, they are on Total Politics as well.