Nick Clegg used a prime-time slot on this morning’s Today Programme to make clear his view that the public will take a “more rounded view” of the Lib Dems’ achievements in government by the next election. As BBC News reports:
[Mr Clegg] said the effect of the spending cuts would be “difficult”, adding: “But I think at the same time there are signs that the repair job we are doing on the government finances and the general creation of greater confidence in the economy might also start showing itself as well.
“I think it will be a crucial year – a crucial year, yes, of some very challenging circumstances for millions of people in this country, but I hope the beginning of a real turnaround as we move forward and as we successfully implement the repair job on the economy.” …
Asked whether the Lib Dems had been unsuccessful in implementing their manifesto commitments since forming the coalition, he replied that they had gone into the arrangement with the Conservatives “with our eyes wide open”. He said policies such as electoral reform, raising the point at which people pay basic-rate income tax and introducing a “pupil premium” to help children from the worst-off families had been largely due to his party’s efforts. Mr Clegg added: “I think this shows a clear liberal direction to this government, on the whole.”
He said: “These are the big benefits in British life which I acknowledge in a sense don’t present themselves immediately to people. Over the course of this parliament I believe people will take a more rounded view of what this government is doing.”
You can listen to a brief excerpt from Nick’s interview here:
Lib Dem MPs attack Labour’s financial legacy: they “left the country in an economic shambles”
Nick’s party colleagues have also mounted a staunch defence of the Lib Dems role in the Coalition, and in particular attacking Labour’s shadow chancellor Alan Johnson for his embarrassing failure to know the rate of employer’s National Insurance contributions.
Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Treasury Committee, Stephen Williams MP noted acerbically:
“For Alan Johnson, the man who Labour wants to run Britain’s economy to be plucking the rate of employers’ National Insurance contributions out of thin air is utterly incredible. Britain is facing the highest debt levels in peacetime history, yet we have a Labour party that’s completely clueless on basic economics. Jobs will not be created by the fantasy economics conjured up on Alan Johnson’s abacus. Labour left the country in an economic shambles. They have made no apology, they have no regrets and with a self-proclaimed novice at their economic helm, it’s little wonder they still offer no alternative.”
At the same time, the party also pointed out that it would require an increase of over 3% in employers’ National Insurance Contributions — from 12.8% to almost 16% — to generate the same amount of revenue as the Coalition’s 2.5% VAT rise (£11.9 billion). Labour have said they would raise employers’ NICs by 1% as an alternative to increasing VAT, even though this would generate just £3.8 bn revenue.
With Ed Miliband today trying to sweep Mr Johnson’s gaffe under the carpet — labelling his shadow chancellor’s ignorance of tax-rates as a ‘Westminster game’ — Mr Williams added: “To dismiss a massive misunderstanding of how much employers have to pay as a parlour game is not only worrying, it is also a shameful indication of how Labour’s economic strategy for Britain is based on finger-counting and guess work.”
Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Business Innovations and Skills Committee, Lorely Burt MP, also highlighted Labour’s failure to get to grips with the financial crisis they presided over:
“When Labour was in government they lost control of the country’s finances and refused to do anything that would upset the City. The Coalition is making sure that bankers recognise their obligation to the taxpayers who helped bail the banks out. That’s why this Government has introduced a permanent tax – not just a one off – which will raise £2.5bn a year.
“Until Ed Miliband ditches his brand of ostrich economics and faces up to the role his party played in getting the country into a financial crisis he does not deserve to be listened to.”
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21 Comments
OK I’m probably biased but I watched the Milliband press conference this morning and he did well because he actually answered the questions asked. Unlike Cameron on the Marr Show on Sunday which was a straight Tory Party Political Broadcast. I’ve always had a lot of respect for Marr and maybe he was just having an off-day but he let Cameron run right over him and answered nothing.
I don’t think the public are really listening anymore to the blame game coming from the Coalition – a helluva lot of people did well under Labour and that is what they are slowly starting to remember under the current regime.
People can be really strange and they might accept that Labour was culpable but they are quite capable of deciding that the current ‘medicine’ is a far worse experience.
But I note that the attack on workers continues with Cameron being reported as planning to extend the period before workers have employment protection from the current one year to two years before they can go to an employment tribunal with an unfair dismissal claim.
I have no doubt that the LibDems will have no problem in backing the Tory Government on this one as well.
There seems to be some doubt as to what the Tory Government bank tax will bring in as some estimate it as low as £1.25 billion. Should be remembered that Darling’s one-off tax was ‘one-off’ simply because he knew that the banks would find ways of circumventing it if it was permanent.
Having watched how the rish including leading cabinet members managed their financial affairs with the assistance of offshore tax havens I have no problem in accepting Darling’s proposition.
I wonder if anyone actually has a figure that the banks have saved with the cut in Corporation Tax which has to be set against the revenue raised by the bank tax.
And I wonder when we are actually going to get the long-promised info on the numbers of bank employees being paid these disgraceful bonuses and the amounts involved. You aren’t even going to name them anymore but they still get protected.
If you’re on the dole and fiddle a few quid benefit to keep your children warm in the winter you’ll be splattered all over the papers and possibly prosecuted but if you’re a banker you get handed millions in secret from the taxpayers who own the banks.
And you wonder how the public have seen through your charade so easily.
Lorely Burt seems to finished halfway through a sentence. Surely she meant to say, “That’s why this Government has introduced a permanent tax – not just a one off – which will raise £2.5bn a year, while introducing a corporation tax cut which more than nullifies any effect and actually leaves banks better off,”
@EcoJon
“But I note that the attack on workers continues with Cameron being reported as planning to extend the period before workers have employment protection from the current one year to two years before they can go to an employment tribunal with an unfair dismissal claim”
I read that story also with great alarm, and not only are workers losing protection from 1 year to 2 years before they can go to an employment tribunal, but also Legal Aid for for Employment is being cut.
This really seems like a ridiculous idea to me.
You really can not blame trade unionists for there actions to strikes and demonstrations, when the Government is going to impose these kind of assaults on the workers.
It is utter madness that over the next couple of years we are going to see 500’000 public sector workers lose their jobs, and 700’000 + Private sector workers losing Jobs, Not only is that a big enough blow for them, They will now be faced with the uncertainty of Job security for 2 years in their new employment {if they are fortunate to find another job that is} Madness, utter madness.
Can anyone explain the idea behind this Tory policy?
I laughed at the Cameron Growth Conference today with the announcement of new jobs which mainly seem to be in the retail sector.
I wonder if we got the full time equivalent figures or the usual retail scam of saying they are going to employ hundreds at a new store and when you analyse the figure your find a few dozen full-timers – usually transferred from other branches – and the rest part-time with some only being able to get 5/7 hours a week.
Obviously the jobs are on minimum wages with minimal benefits – I’m not knocking minimum wages which was a great victory for the LP but I hardly see it being enough for all the civil servants about to be dumped or is it only the lowest grades of civil servants that are for the boot?
Clegg is wasting his time courting the alarm-clock generation as he has dismissively described hard-working people because the way things are going they’ll all be having a long lie-in as they won’t have a job to go to or it will be stacking supermarket shelves on the nightshift.
Seems the LibDems have totally lost touch with the working class let alone those on benefits – they have become detached from reality.
@matt
It’s not an idea Matt – it’s an ideology. The one thing I respect about the Tories is that you know exactly where you are with them because they don’t hide what they are about and who they are out to make richer and who they are out to grind into the dust.
Decent LibDems are just waking up to the monster they so eagerly jumped into bed with. They will pay the consequences while the Clegg clique will jump ship – guess where?
I actually and very honestly feel physically sick by this.
“Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to establish the “most pro-business, pro-growth, pro-jobs agenda ever unleashed by a government”.
After a meeting with business leaders in Downing Street he said thousands of new posts would be created, as a result of a “strong, confident” economy.
Firms including Microsoft, McDonalds, John Lewis and the major supermarkets have pledged to boost employment”
And yet in the same Article we hear
“The Government is expected to launch a consultation later this week to consider a range of reforms.
Among them is a potential doubling – to two years – of the length of time someone must be employed before they can bring an unfair dismissal claim.
Another possibility would be to require anyone bringing a case to an employment tribunal to pay a fee, returnable if they win, in an effort to discourage spurious claims.”
I think from that we can draw a conclusion, of the real kind of deals that Cameron was striking today with these business leaders.
Well I am pretty hopeful the Liberals may fight the Tories on this one, but if not, I sure as hell am sure Labour and the trade unionists will,
The coalition can and will keep blaming Labour, they seem oblivious to who is going to get the blame if this all goes tits up, and it ain’t gonna be Labour.
The Alan Johnson comment was a gaffe, clearly one to make fun of but in no way a political coup.
The VAT rise is a gamble, if people cut back their spending, as some are advising them to do, then the VAT figures won’t be met.
The issues people are going to notice are income and employment, these are two huge fundamental issues for people, these are the important issues, if the coalition get this wrong then everything else is going to be ignored, they have to get the fundamentals right, they have to achieve growth.
Of course, Minibanjo’s right about “Westminster games”. It actually doesn’t matter whether Johnson knows exactly what a specific tax rate is: the economic and fiscal effect comes from the change you make in the rate.
Our party should be careful about mocking senior figures for not knowing the minutiae of precise rates of anything. Have we forgotten who thought the state pension was only £30 a week? 😀
I don’t think the argument is necessarily about Alan Johnson’s gaffes – it is about Labour’s utter denial to admit that they are responsible for the mess the country is in. Even if you accept that the deficit is all down to bailing out the banks (which it isn’t) then it happened on Brown’s watch – with little regulation and a culture of taking and rewarding unquantifiable risks – all of which could and should have been better regulated.
And despite identifiying £44 billion pounds of spending cuts in their manifesto we now have Labour spokespeople routinely refusing to say where they would cut spending.
And let’s be clear today’s extraordinary case of the police mole who switched sides in the power station protests is as much about the police having money to waste as it is about civil liberties as I’ve blogged here:
http://livingonwords.blogspot.com/2011/01/ratcliffe-on-soar-police-mole-shows-why.html
It seems Nick Cleggs liberal direction has come to mean restrictions on the rights of workers, but carte blanche for bankers to pay themselves what they like.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jan/10/banks-unlimited-bonuses-ministers
You’re tories now.
“And let’s be clear today’s extraordinary case of the police mole who switched sides in the power station protests is as much about the police having money to waste as it is about civil liberties”
Erm, no. It really isn’t.
The Alan Johnson gaffe smells of an ‘ambush’ to me as does the Milliband phone-in.
What is important about Johnson is what Milliband said when questioned about the gaffe which was he would have Johnson any day of the week rather than Osborne and I can’t think of anyone who would disagree with him. Ordinary voters want a Chancellor who cares about them and not one who might as well be Dracula with the amount of blood-letting that’s goin on.
I see the bankers are walking scot-free on their bonuses – now there’s a surprise. Another tragedy down to Vince who has had the fuse on his nuclear option well and truly pulled and left him as another Cameron lap dog – move over Cleggy.
The interesting thing about the police mole is what is going to happen to the earlier cases where the protesters were found guilty?
Dan Falchikov
Can you tell me, exactly, which Labour MP fits into your assertion that:
“it is about Labour’s utter denial to admit that they are responsible for the mess the country is in”
Yes, Milliband says it isn’t all Labour’s fault. Most serious economists agree with this, arguing that a mix of global and political mistakes led to the crisis.
And on another matter – at what point can you claim that your heroic Chancellor – a certain Mr Gideon Osborne – voted against Labour spending plans or indeed even spoke against them? In other words – if economists claim the world recession was a contributory factor, the present government voted with the Labour administration on spending and the Labour party admits it’s mistakes –
what is the truth behind your post?
The Sun Newspaper is really showing It’s true colours, in it’s support for the Conservatives.
In its Article entitled “Jobs Joy as PM vow to aid firms”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/money/3341813/Jobs-joy-after-Prime-Minister-vows-to-aid-firms.html
The article talks about all the “supposed” Jobs that will be created by big companies, reeling out figures after figures,and yet the article completely fails to report the main crux of the headline, The Promise made by Cameron to these Businesses.
In fact the only acknowledgement in the article was
“The PM also vowed fresh help for firms, including an overhaul of workers’ rights to take some of the risk out of hiring staff.”
Nowhere in the article, do they mention the removal of those workers rights,which is to extend the period before workers have employment protection from the current one year to two years before they can go to an employment tribunal with an unfair dismissal claim.
It is shameful on the sun in my opinion, to have this selective reporting.
Labour are clearly in a mess in a range of areas (the economy, electoral reform, civil liberties etc) and are only being propped up by the opinion polls, so I agree with Clegg that an economic turnaround will be quickly followed by a turnaround in the polls for the party.
Clegg’s done much to help confidence among business leaders, so now he needs to bring back confidence among activists.
I’m glad that he is articulating more forcefully the connection between our liberal principles and the policies of the coalition, but I also agree much more can be done. A bit more on the democracy front wouldn’t help either.
In talking about ‘rebalancing’ the economy we can stress the opportunity this provides for enhancing equality and fairness in society, improving the environment and suchlike (whatever happened to the ‘tax switch’?). Then there’s the referendum on AV – this is his baby, the ‘gamechanger’, so he has to lead from the front on it.
If we continue and the tuition fees protests start to be seen as the worst it can get, then commentators will soon be speculating less about potential electoral pacts and splits in the party with some LibDems joining the tories and Labour, but quite possibly the reverse!
And with 3 by-elections for Labour’s corrupt MPs after Oldham & Saddleworth there’s much to look forward to!
oh i think on march the 26 th you will see how bad things get, the tuition fees worse nothing, compared to what heading to london and party HQ
I think only one likely byelection, Oranjepan. Assuming Eric Illsley (convicted yesterday) is either sentenced for a year or longer, resigns under pressure, or is kicked out by a vote of MPs, there will be an election at Barnsley Central. David Chaytor convicted last week, and Eliot Morley, still to come to court, both stood down at the GE.
Clegg wrote an article for the sun today.
Seems as though he also supports Cameron’s Idea to scrap workers rights. removing the right to claim unfair dismissal from 1 year to 2 years.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3341539/Well-help-the-Alarm-Clock-heroes-keep-Britain-ticking.html
The Sun, starts the article with the subtext
“Ordinary, willing folk – dubbed Alarm Clock Britain because they snub the benefits culture and get up early to go to work”
Then Nick Clegg goes on to write the article. which includes
“We are protecting jobs by cutting red tape for employers”
He also in my opinion, Falls into the same old nasty right wing politics and media, by vilifying those on welfare
“In Alarm Clock Britain, people don’t want a handout but they appreciate a helping hand”
“This Government is formed by a coalition of two parties and we want to join the people of Alarm Clock Britain in another coalition. A coalition of people prepared to roll up their sleeves and get the nation back on its feet.”
{if that’s not segregating those reliant on benefits, I don’t know what is}
If Nick Clegg is going to write an article for the sun, that is insistent on vilifying those on welfare, in my opinion, he should have included in his article, some kind of defence for those on welfare, who are genuinely in need of support and are not all scroungers.
It is disgusting in my opinion.
Clegg states: “We are protecting jobs by cutting red tape for employers”
Well, in my experience Tories cutting red tape for employers often means a dimunitioin in the statutory rights of workers.
This latest move apparently involves the length of service before a worker has any legal recourse to an Employment Tribunal for unfair dismissal being raised from 12 months to 24 months.
A crushing attack on the current statutory rights of every worker in Britain and a real blow to Civil Liberties and Human Rights by creating fear and worry in workers who know an employer can get rid of them at any time for no reason and there is nothing the employee can do to complain legally if they haven’t been employed for over two years.
It’s quite possible there may even be sanctions applied even beyond 24 months but we have to wait for the details.
Clegg is now going show yellow water between the policies he bklieves in and those the Tories support. Looks from the Sun article that he has already embarced deep Tory blue water on this one although most workers will see it as pure yellow.