Category Archives: News

Is Rishi Sunak really suggesting that it’s acceptable to be poorly paid if you’re adding social value? That does appear to be the case if you take his proposal to

take a tougher approach to university degrees that saddle students with debt, without improving their earning potential

So, presumably, a degree in nursing, which the market suggests is underpaid, would be acceptable to Mr Sunak.

The problem is that, whilst in the private sector, the market requires businesses to compete with each other for staff, the public sector is distorted by government decisions to “set an example”. Thus, increasingly, there are areas of state activity where the rate for the job isn’t high enough to attract and retain the sort of people you want running your services.

And, with Liz Truss either lying about her intentions for public sector pay or being too lazy to read past the headlines of her proposals, it’s clear that there’ll be no effective solutions for public sector employment coming from the Conservative Party anytime soon.

Greetings from Maine, where your Day Editor is recovering from the excitement of watching an England football team actually go all the way. Congratulations to the Lionesses, who’ve brought a bit of joy into our lives at a time when joy isn’t available in abundance. Made us sweat a little though…

Meanwhile, the other big final grinds on, with Rishi Sunak making ever more unlikely promises and Liz Truss attracting key supporters. You’d think that it looks increasingly good for the latter but there’s always the question of whose team is better organised and able to reach ordinary Conservative members more effectively. But given that key media appear to have opted for Truss, I’d expect a few “knocking stories” against Sunak to appear this week, just in time for ballots to hit doorsteps.

I know that at least one reader has wondered why we’ve spent some time looking back to Liz Truss’s Liberal Democrat past. From my perspective, it’s because it offers a glimpse into her backstory and, in some cases, because it’s rather funny. And Liberal Democrats don’t always do dull respectfulness – authority figures are there to be challenged through humour and satire.

I guess that I was never going to evade COVID indefinitely, and thus Liberal Democrat Voice is brought to you from Day 4 of my home isolation. Luckily, I seem, so far, to have gotten off pretty lightly, and I can isolate in our home office, which has its compensations.

The past week has been a descent into fantasy politics, as five Conservative MPs vie to cut taxes, increase spending, level up and crack down, all at the same time. At least Nadhim Zahawi’s notion of cutting 20% of the headcount in all Government departments has bitten the dust, allowing him to spend time with his accountants. Given what is being suggested, he might need quite a lot of time with them…

But what is clear is that, between the five candidates that remain, there is little clue as to how government works, or how things interrelate. In the modern world, decision-making is made complex by international agreements, interaction between pieces of legislation and trade arrangements. And you can’t just go around abolishing statute without consequences. It’s not as though that message hasn’t been relayed to them. Previous attempts to “cut red tape” have faltered when it is discovered that the regulations were put in place for a good reason – customer protection, access to major trading markets, that sort of thing. So, you can cut the regulation on cooked meats, for example, but the producers may then find they can’t sell it into their major export markets. Effectively, they are bound by the regulations of their export markets.