Here are my must-read stories from today’s press about Liberal Democrat Conference. You wouldn’t expect anything else from a Guardian editorial than to emphasise our shortcomings and the electoral challenges we face. And this one certainly does that. It notices with curiosity the results of yesterday’s survey which show that 80% of respondents to our survey support the Coalition. However, it recognises that we are unique in one respect and are needed on the political scene:
In the Guardian’s view, British politics needs the Liberal Democrats for one thing above all. It needs them to provide the parliamentary nerve of outrage against an unreformed political system and against encroachments on civil liberties which is so often dulled in the other major parties.
It follows, especially in a week when the Tories have signalled more anti-terror powers and neutering the European human rights court, that the Lib Dems must make a virtue at every turn of their principled liberal view of justice and human rights. They may wish to claim to have done good work in government on pensions, school finance, bank reform and increasing personal allowances — and some bits, perhaps even all, of that may be true in some ways. But the party’s uniqueness remains its commitment to the rule of law, to human rights, to empowering the individual against an over-mighty state, to reforming and devolving politics and government, and to insistent internationalism. It matters that a party that stood up for proper press reform, against the snoopers’ charter and asked some of the questions others have feared to ask about the Edward Snowden revelations should survive.
The same paper has an interview with Ed Davey, who says that we might not see a return to Clegg-mania, but we might see new respect for Nick Clegg;
Yes, he’s taken brickbats but he has delivered more Liberal Democrat policies to make us a stronger and fairer society than any previous Liberal leader for several generations.
At the moment, at this time in the electoral cycle, people are not quite focusing yet on the actual issue, the question in front of them. They are not quite focused on the leaders, they have images in front of them and so on but during general election campaigns people tend to start looking at parties and leaders rather more closely.
They hear what they’re saying, we get more air time under the Representation of the People’s Act, our vote tends to go up during general election campaigns and I think people will look at Nick afresh.
The Times (£) runs a “Clegg defies party” story not he issue of runway expansion. It doesn’t seem to me that it’s just Clegg who is raising concerns about the blanket ban on runway expansion in the pre-manifesto, as Christine Jardine wrote here yesterday. That’s part of a big interview Nick has done with the paper. He pretty much savages the Tories after their Conference, calling George Osborne’s plans both economically illiterate and socially unsustainable, but I thought I’d give you his thinking on the English Votes for English Laws issue. It’s what you’d expect from a Liberal Democrat:
It mustn’t be Tory votes on English matters. So far, no one’s challenged them on what they’ve got up their sleeve, which is the idea that with getting 38 per cent of the English vote they basically tie up all the votes for ever in Westminster, and that’s totally unacceptable and it’s not democratic and it’s not going to happen.”
He wants a grand committee of English and Welsh MPs, with the numbers determined by votes cast rather than seats won. “Every act of devolution that the British government has done over the last several years, whether it’s devolution to Holyrood, to the Welsh assembly, to the London assembly, all of them have been done in a way that builds proportionality into those systems . . . it’s going to be a fairer reflection of how people vote in England, not a Tory stitch-up.
In the Telegraph, Iain Martin writes an entirely predictable and rather gleeful obituary for the party, but rather grudgingly adds a caveat:
In coalition since 2010 they have been extremely annoying at points but they have demonstrated that the world will not end – as some of us feared – if parties have to cooperate.
The Independent has been speaking to Gareth Epps who sounds approving of Danny Alexander’s plans to raise money for the NHS by raising taxes or reducing tax relief on the wealthy. Gareth told them:
We need to go into the election with a fiscal package that is clearly our own. We know there will have to be cuts but we need to do more to ensure the very wealthy pay their share.
Andrew Grice in the Independent thinks that Clegg could, in the words of that awful phrase, appeal to the centre ground as the Tories and Labour rely on core vote strategies:
Mr Clegg has the right message for these voters. His challenge is now to ensure they hear it. He will speak less about the nasty things the Lib Dems have stopped the “nasty party” doing inside the Coalition, which dominated his party conference speech a year ago. Instead, he will accentuate the Lib Dems’ positive achievements in Government, and try to dispel the view that they are clinging on to power for its own sake, which has taken hold since 2010 even though the party had been out of office for 65 years.
The Deputy Prime Minister’s task got even harder this week. The Tories showed their ruthless side by stealing the Lib Dems’ flagship policy of raising the personal tax allowance to £12,500 by 2020. A shameless move from a party which in 2010 attacked the Lib Dem plan for a £10,000 allowance as unaffordable in tough times, and then implemented it as the price of Lib Dems joining the Coalition. As the Tories now claim the credit for it, we should remember that it wouldn’t have happened without the Lib Dems.
Add any reports you have found in the comments.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Violent Bonham Carter features on Fake or Fortune?
Have resignations led to a rethink?
High Fell leaflet watch (2)
Two new Makerfield by-election polls gives Burnham 5 and 12 point leads
GWYN WILLIAMS
Alex Macfie
Peter Martin
John Smith
Nick Baird
21 Comments
I don’t agree with David Laws that we have big differences with Labour on the economy. Balls and Umunna have basically succeeded in a centrist coup on Labour economic policy and our analysis needs to move with events.
If the Lib Dems have a good conference and stake themselves out as pragmatic liberals without adjectives then I would put small differences a side and largely get behind the party.
Labour are deeply divided between the right and the left, more so than the Lib Dems. They are just trying to keep a lid on it until after the election.
I believe the only fair way that we can have EVEL is by a grand committee elected through Proportional Representation.
Liberal democrats and Labour need to unite together to make sure that this happens.
When it comes to voting on English Only Law it can only be right if this is done by PR where everyone gets a say through their elected representatives.
It would not be democratic to have one party i.e the Tories with 34% of the vote and tie up all the votes.
I really hope the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats can work together on this. We can not allow another Tory stitch up
“When it comes to voting on English Only Law it can only be right if this is done by PR”
Why?
What difference does PR make to the principle of the West Lothian question?
I wasn’t agreeing with Danny. The point I was making was about the balance of cuts versus tax increases for the wealthy. The balance is at the moment in my view too skewed towards the former. I submitted an amendment to the pre-manifesto on this subject but it was not taken for debate.
I particularly liked the balance struck by Norman Baker in his interview in the Independent regarding suppressed drug reports:
He said: “We have had to deal with the deficit we have inherited from Labour, which was a genuine problem, and by working together in the Coalition we have made really good progress on that and it’s been a success story.
“But if you are going to make difficult decisions which affect people’s lives there is an even greater need to be caring and compassionate than you would otherwise be. You can’t afford to be careless.
“Unfortunately what we’re seeing coming out of the Conservatives now is not care and compassion but something close to vindictiveness.”
He added: “Where were the announcements on dealing with those people who are very well off who can afford to take some of the strain? We didn’t hear anything, for example, about very rich pensioners.”
The MP for Lewes said his party’s conference would focus on sound economics and social justice and insisted he was “more optimistic than some people” over its election prospects despite polls showing it languishing on six or seven per cent support.
“We have been written off more times than a dodgy second-hand car, but we are still here because liberalism doesn’t die,” he said.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tories-suppressed-vital-reports-on-drug-abuse-says-home-office-minister-9773938.html
As is to be expected the sad and brutal death of Alan Henning has led the news in the MSM – and is likely to do so for the next few days.
The BBC correspondent at Glasgow spoke more on this matter than of the conference itself in the 10am news.
Whether this is a good or bad thing for the Party remains to be seen. If it is is hoped that the conference is largely ignored because most news items recently have ridiculed the Party – then good. However, if the hope was for as much coverage as possible – then there are going to have to be well delivered, newsworthy policies and aims announced.
I’m considering changing my underwear after reading in “The Times” that Clegg favours boxer shorts over paisley pajamas: not that I would wear the latter either as underwear or to sleep in.
Interesting that Davey should use the word “respect” when talking of Clegg. Is he contemplating a pact with George Galloway?
@ Nick Collins
Enough already.
“The Independent has been speaking to Gareth Epps who sounds approving of Danny Alexander’s plans to raise money for the NHS by raising taxes or reducing tax relief on the wealthy. ”
Really!
Gareth pretty much lays into this elsewhere (and in his own unedited words!)
http://www.garethepps.org.uk/2014/10/04/danny-alexanders-nhs-amendment-grounds-for-suspicion/
The Guardian thinks the Lib Dems should survive in order to preserve civil liberties. The problem is that on its own, civil liberties won’t win many votes. The slogan “stronger economy, fairer society”, which avoids any reference to civil liberties, acknowledges that point.
@ Hywel
I presume the intention is to find a rallying point for the Party leading up to the GE – so that prior conflicts can be mostly forgotten.
Spending on the NHS will always be popular, but whether the Party’s support for unpopular measures, because of the financial crisis, are now a thing of the past and the Party will return to traditional party values as Norman Baker offers [above] must be the big question.
Presumably NC’s speech will provide the answer. However, if another coalition with the Tories – at almost any cost – continues to be his primary aim – it will be an unpopular and conflict riven Party that takes on the challenge of the GE.
Nice summary Caron. Thanks for that. Saves me buying or scanning through lots of papers, which appeals to the green in me, saving either paper or computer energy time.
Good job – efficient and effective 🙂 More of this please! 😉
“liberalism doesn’t die,”
But support for the Liberal Democrats simply fades away.
@ Nick Collins
“liberalism doesn’t die,”
“But support for the Liberal Democrats simply fades away.”
I watched a clip of Danny Alexander on lunchtime Sky News – certainly no apparent change in direction for the Party of continued coalition.
If that is the case, continued ‘fading away’ of support for the Party does now seems certain.
Liberal Democrats should do the right thing for the country by staying in a strong coalition regardless of the polls.
In fact Lib Dem policy should be based on our values and beliefs and then we should try to pursuade people of these policies.
We should not adopt the Tony Blair approach of checking what the latest focus group says and then pretending that focus group’s view is now the party’s policy.
“the Sunday papers also have the first poll of the Rochester and Strood by-election, conducted by Survation for the Mail on Sunday. Topline figures there are CON 31%(-18), LAB 25%(-3), LDEM 2%(-14), UKIP 40%(n/a), Other 1%(-5).”
I know it’s unlikely the LibDems could ever take Rochester and Strood, but really 2%!
The endeavour by all three significant parties to remove the deficit by the end of the next Parliament require £37 billion of cuts across a narrow spectrum of government spending, viz welfare and local government services, is fools gold or electoral chicanery. It won’t happened. It is beyond delivery. It can only be advocated from the safety of now, two, three, four, five years from the impact of those cuts.
And the attempt to do it will result in a weaker economy and a less fair society.
The principled stand in this election would be to warn the British public that they are being duped by conservatives, Labour and UKIP. To have the guts to stand alone against this conspiracy.
Our policy should be to managed spending and tax over the 2015/20 Parliament so as to reduce the deficit to 2% by the end of the next Parliament. And to fight a detailed campaign exposing the potential Tax increases … VAT at 25% – and cuts in pensioner benefits as part of a £35 billion assault on the welfare of the most vulnerable.
This would be to talk truth to those who plan to deceive our nations.
Those who doubt what I say above or wish to parrot ‘there is no alternative’ might care to read this frrom Prof Wren-Lewis: http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/uk-fiscal-policy-from-2015.html
Surely the parties are not serious about the actual numbers (amount/time) they are quoting on deficit reduction? They will all be “plucked out of my arse” as the guy from Allied-Irish Bank famously said of how much money his bank claimed they needed for their bail-out. Isn’t it all about the relative numbers sending a message to the voters about the broad position of each party?
If the Lib Dems really want to be daring we could frankly admit that setting an exact target is a mugs game (look at how well Osborne’s 2010 plans worked out – we have borrowed £190 billion more than he forecast then) because so many factors are beyond the control of the UK government.
You can talk of an “ethos” of aggressive/moderate/slow deficit reduction, and you must certainly be very clear about how you propose to achieve that (i.e. exactly where the axe will fall and the tax will rise), but to talk exact numbers is to set yourself up for failure.
Sorry, that should have been Anglo Irish, not Allied Irish. Brain says one thing, fingers type another.
Polling for Rochester. UKIP 40% , CON 31%, LAB 25%, LDEM 2%
Another triumph for Clegg. I hope all the sheep in the conference bubble will cheer him to the rafters for this success.
Indeed they could carry him shoulder high down Sauchihull Street and demand an apology from the majority of Glaswegians who voted YES.
2%. A rating that before Clegg became leader we would not even have dreamed of.