Good coverage for Ed Davey on the BBC as he launched our local elections campaign in Hertfordshire this morning. Our campaign geniuses came up trumps again with an hourglass which revealed a message for Rishi Sunak.
Ed said:
Time’s running out for Rishi Sunak.
He might have bottled a May General Election
He might hope the tide will turn, squatting in Downing Street for a few more months
But even the Prime Minister can’t deny people across England the chance to have their say in local elections on the Second of May.
When I speak to lifelong Conservative voters, they tell me that the party no longer speaks for them. Time and time again, they are being failed by this appalling Conservative Government.
This Government has plunged our NHS into crisis. Left vulnerable people waiting hours for an ambulance, weeks to see a GP or a dentist, and months to start treatment for cancer.
They’ve made the cost-of-living crisis so much worse.
Sending mortgage rates soaring.
Hitting families with unfair tax rises.
And leaving out pensioners altogether in their Budget this month.
They’ve trashed our precious natural environment, letting water companies get away scot-free, as they dump millions of tonnes of raw sewage into our rivers and onto our beaches.
Rishi Sunak’s government is running out of road because people know it is time for change.
And people are voting for us because it is time for the Liberal Democrats.
We are listening.
This year we’ve already knocked on more than a million doors –
We’ve heard from you about all the things that are broken in our country right now.
We’re ready to get to work and fix them.
And we’re hearing too that so many people, in all parts of the country, are switching to the Liberal Democrats.
People who have voted Conservative all their lives – fed up with this Government and choosing the Liberal Democrats to stand up for them.
People who usually vote Labour but feel let down and taken for granted by Labour locally – backing Liberal Democrats to be their local champions.
That’s how we secured four record breaking historic by-election victories.
It’s how we secured such fantastic local election results over the past two years.
And it’s how I know we’ll get many more brilliant Liberal Democrat councillors elected in May too.
Strong local champions to fight for their communities –
To work hard for you, all year round – to never ever take you for granted
It is time to get this Conservative government out of power and to deliver a fair deal.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Knaptoft: The very heart of England
We do have a two-tier policing system but it is not what our homegrown racists think it is.
From Norman settlement to a civic square
Tom Arms
Ruth Bright
Tom Bailey
Alex Macfie
9 Comments
Whoever comes up with these stunts deserves a special Party award.
They are worth their weight in gold given the media coverage achieved.
Technically you can’t blame the govt for higher interest rates because monetary policy was devolved to the unelected BoE in 1997 . A move which was originally proposed by the Lib Dems, I believe.
Some of us always thought that it was a bad move to allow unelected bankers to set interest rates. If bankers are going to be allowed to make such important decisions they should be elected by the rest of us.
Not just lefties like myself incidentally. Mrs Thatcher was against it too.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/central-bank-independence-and-taking-monetary-policy-to-the-people/
Can we take it then, that Peter Martin trusts an elected Tory Prime Minister (or his bete noir, Keir Starmer) to disinterestedly set UK interests rates when a general election is due ?
I’m old enough to remember Harold MacMillan indulging in just such an exercise – and Supermac wasn’t the only one.
Gordon Brown granted the Bank of England operational independence over monetary policy in 1997. I think it was the right decision. Bankers take advice from the government anyway on interest rates. Better regulation of banks is a different issue to Bankers using their knowledge to set interest rates.
@ David Raw
If we can’t trust our elected representatives on monetary policy why do you think we can trust them on fiscal policy?
Are you suggesting we abolish whatever democracy we might have left? What else is there to keep the b*st*rds honest?
I know that we hope to mop up votes from disaffected Tories in blue wall seats, but are we being a little disingenuous towards them. These people are not “progressive” and they would be alarmed by some of the small print of our policies. Would we be relaxed if they got carried away and actually joined the party and moved us to the right, into centrist One Nation Tory territory? I suspect the resignations would start flooding into HQ.
You can blame the Government. They have the ability to change the BOE’s goals. The fact that none has attempted to do so is because they don’t actually know what they wan’t the bank to achieve. That doesn’t seem like a good reason for their taking back day-to-day responsibility. You can also blame them because they also have some degree of control over the factors the bank takes into account in setting rates and they should know what those are. Liz Truss and Kwazi Kwarteng were in a position to know that their budget would require the BOE under existing rules to raise the rate.
@ Peter Davies,
“You can blame the Government.”
This is true to the extent that the Govt has the power to take back control from the BoE but chooses not to.
“…. they don’t actually know what they want the bank to achieve.”
They do if we take them at their word. It is to adjust monetary policy to hit a 2% inflation target. Not an upper limit incidentally.
So what happens when something like Covid hits and the government has to spend big time to keep the economy moving? Production falls. Extra spending puts more money into people’s pockets which is bound to lead to inflation as soon as the chance to start spending again arises. Add in a foreign war which causes an oil and gas supply issue and prices will rise some more.
So the BoE has no other option to raise interest rates even though the problem wasn’t caused monetarily in the first place. The government s forcing the BoE to apply a monetary solution to a fiscally created problem.
It’s not good economics. It’s not fair politics. The burden for paying for the Covid crisis has been heaped on to young borrowers in the housing market. This effects the rental sector too. It should have been shared amongst the population as a whole, and through higher taxes if demand needed to be curtailed.
“It should have been shared amongst the population as a whole, and through higher taxes if demand needed to be curtailed.”
It should indeed. and had they chosen to do so the bank would not have had to raise interest rates. The government chose not to take that option. They preferred the option of blaming the BOE.