CommentIsLinked@LDV: Vince Cable’s 2009 Almanac

Over at the Mail on Sunday, everyone’s fave Lib Dem (including the readers of Iain Dale’s Diary), has published his predictions for the year to come. As the Mail puts it, “He was right about 2008, so what does he think will happen next year?” You can read it in full here, but here’s an excerpt to tempt you:

… Pain will be concentrated on those whose businesses have gone to the wall, those with insecure jobs and those with excessively large mortgages and other debts. There is a danger of a big gulf opening up in society between those who are not touched by the recession and those who are seriously damaged by it.

The Government is getting credit for taking action, belatedly, but it must not throw around taxpayers’ money carelessly; ultimately we all pay in higher taxes or inflation or both. That is why the temporary VAT cut was a bad idea – it gave the impression that £12billion of revenue could be tossed away to pay for a Christmas binge.

That is why we also have to worry about Ministers waving a chequebook around when failing companies come visiting. It is easy to sympathise with those in the car and car component industry appealing for government help. But if cars, then why not cement or chemicals, or shops for that matter? Are Woolworths’ workers any less deserving? Governments simply cannot go down the road of propping up every industry in trouble. …

A better idea is carefully targeted public investment that creates a long-term asset for the taxpayer, generates employment and, hopefully, does something useful such as improving the environment. In America, President-elect Obama has shifted the balance of argument in favour of governments acting decisively rather than watching the crisis unfold. His ‘green New Deal’ has the right flavour and we should aim to do something similar here. There is plenty of scope for investing in the overcrowded rail system and alleviating the dreadful shortage of affordable housing for families on average incomes.

The absolutely central task for the New Year is restoring normal bank lending. I was one of the first people to identify and criticise greedy, foolish bankers, long before this crisis. But we are now well beyond the point where it is useful to lecture them further or lock them all up. David Cameron’s moral indignation is several years too late.

What is now needed is action to get the banks lending again, yet they are given contradictory signals by government: lend more to small companies and house buyers; lend less and build up reserves; cut your lending rates; repay taxpayers’ loans as quickly as possible. …

Beyond the narrow confines of party politics there will be, I believe, a change in public morality that may last for a long time: a strong reaction against the culture of gambling that has brought financial institutions to their knees; a renewed faith in manufacturers, engineers, scientists, inventors and genuine wealth creators rather than spivs playing the money markets and exploiting tax havens; a greater respect for personal self-reliance, whether it is prudent saving or growing our own food; a rejection of ostentatious unearned wealth of the kind flaunted by the Russian oligarchs and Arab sheikhs who treat Britain as their second home.

It will no longer be acceptable for Ministers and mandarins (or MPs and peers) to have a feather-bedded existence, with large, protected pension pots, like First World War generals enjoying the comforts of a chateau at the rear while their men are fighting in the trenches. Church leaders currently seem to grasp this new reality better than politicians.

There is a vacuum of leadership waiting to be filled by those who can translate a craving for fairness and the sharing of pain into the economics and politics of every day life.

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This entry was posted in LibLink and News.
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One Comment

  • David Allen 29th Dec '08 - 7:49pm

    A very good article, and I would pick out one crucial point:

    “There is a vacuum of leadership waiting to be filled by those who can translate a craving for fairness and the sharing of pain into the economics and politics of every day life.”

    Here we see Vince sounding a bit less like a neutral pundit, and a bit more like a leading political campaigner. A good direction to head in, I think.

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