One of the best speeches given by a Liberal Democrat Cabinet Member in the last year was Danny Alexander’s to the GMB conference. It was not only a good speech, it went down well with a tough audience that disagrees strongly with many things the government is doing.
As I wrote at the time:
There is a touch of irony about that as the speech came from someone who has attracted rather a reputation amongst some party members for sounding much too keen much too often on Conservative policies in media interviews. This was instead the Danny Alexander who won plaudits from across the Liberal Democrats during his time chairing the Federal Policy Committee (FPC) for successfully bringing together rather than driving apart different outlooks.
What then to expect from his next big speech, to the Liberal Democrat conference in the autumn? So far, his conference speeches have gone down pretty well, particularly for their tough line on tax evasion and avoidance (an approach that is paying dividends).
This time there is likely to be an extra twist, as the Financial Times reports:
At next month’s gathering of his party Mr Alexander will make an outspoken criticism of the Tories for blocking green policies and trying to make changes to employment law “without clear, robust evidence”, according to a policy paper seen by the Financial Times…
Mr Alexander will say he is concerned by issues such as the lack of competition in the banking sector and the failure of “successive governments” to sort out the housing crisis.
The reference to housing is an intriguing one as it would mean Danny Alexander joining the ranks of Nick Clegg and Vince Cable in seriously upping the rhetoric over housing. To recap what I said when they did this:
The level of importance that senior figures such as Clegg and Cable are giving to housing is unprecedented in the party’s history. The real test, however, comes from counting the number of homes that get built.
Talk of major housing policy announcements pre-August have come to nothing. A lot now therefore rests on there being substantive and major announcements in the autumn.
* Mark Pack is Party President and Co-leader of the party. He is editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire.
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3 Comments
“The real test, however, comes from counting the number of homes that get built.”
OK, I’ll judge the coalition by its record on housing building, which is atrocious. Highlighting something you’re really very bad at isn’t exactly smart. Next please.
Is this the same Danny Alexander who before the Genaral election said how unfair the ATOS test was for the disabled,? and once in government with the Tories agrees with the ATOS test, Danny Alexander and Nick Clegg are everything thats wrong about the Lib-Dem party,
The Lib Dems are right to focus on housing, supply of which has fallen significantly behind demand in every year for at least the last three decades. The result is high levels of homelessness, high prices/rents, low quality and an inability to escape slum landlords.
In addition, housing is very labour-intensive – and, crucially, intensively uses low- and medium-skilled labour, thus providing a lot of well-paying jobs for people who did not do very well at school. With 2.5 million unemployed, this should be an obvious solution.
However, it depends how the Lib Dems promote housing. If they subsidise developers it will merely represent passing taxpayers money to vested interest groups. If they impose housebuilding from on high, it will fly in the face of their commitment to localism. Neither central targets nor the current level of local-authority subsidy will overcome inherent nimbyism (the New Homes Bonus is too low). Public Sector housebuilding is likely to lead to the creation of sink estates in places where local authorities, rather than would-be owners/tenants, want them.
The Lib Dems should reform the land-use planning system to strip away what are some of the most extreme controls on development in the developed (or, in the case of the UK, underdeveloped) world. But they should also devolve planning decisions to levels far below that of borough and county councils to bodies that are purely focussed on planning and can capture the windfall planning gain for the immediately effected community. This will incentivise sustainable development, encouraging communities to allow building on the least environmentally valuable land.