There’s an in-depth interview with LibDem party President Tim Farron on the Guardian website. Conducted by Andrew Sparrow, much of the dialogue is published verbatim.
As we have come to expect, Tim is up-beat and, at times, outspoken.
Some highlights from the interview are:
-Tim Farron says Miliband is “ineffective” and that the Labour five-point plan is “absolute rubbish”.
-He says we are picking up votes from the other parties, even from students, who have nowhere else to go in search of a progressive party.
-“Swivel-eyed” right-wing Tories have been prevented from running the country by the LibDems.
-The plan for elected police commissioners is “daft”.
-There should be a Scottish-style constitutional convention.
-LibDems will insist on elections for a reformed House of Lords in 2015.
-The abolition of tuition fees could still feature in the next LibDem manifesto.
-And finally: “YouGov always give us crap ratings.”
You can read the interview write-up in full here.
Paul Walter blogs at Liberal Burblings
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49 Comments
I read the interview. However, more to the point, I also read the pages and pages of comments…..
-And finally: “YouGov always give us crap ratings.”
But they don’t – they tracked us up to 28-30% during the General Election Cleggmania bubble which was above what many other companies were giving us. And YouGov had us on 20%+ in May and June post coalition formation.
What they are is volatile (and hence inaccurate) which is a different thing.
-“The abolition of tuition fees could still feature in the next LibDem manifesto.”
Well, I’m sure that you can safely promise that in your manifesto in the certain knowledge that after the next general election you won’t be accused of reneging on your promise because you’ll never be given the opportunity to implement it. You are so indistinguishable from the Tories you’ll never get anywhere near power again.
Mostly good stuff. But why does he say things like this:
“OK. Why did we get into this mess? Bloated public sector, government overspending, blah, blah, blah. No. I don’t believe that for a minute. We got into this mess because of the letting off the leash of the financial markets, the Thatcher/Reagan experiment of the early 1980s, and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown then letting the banks off the leash in 1997.”
Does he not thing a real increase in Government spending by 50% had something to do with the crisis. Does he really believe that the state spending half our national income is a problem. ?
Yes because the public sector created the banking crash didnt they. I agree we need to help certain areas away from dependence from the public sector but Tims analysis is correct
The Scottish Lib Dems stood on a manifesto containing much of Farron’s points, that didn’t work out well at all, worse than Yougov predicted, and rather belies Farron’s claims that you are picking up votes from other parties, at least in Scotland.
The Lib Dems have lost the trust of all but their core vote and if they can’t recover that in the next few years then they are finished as a party.
@jason “I also read the pages and pages of comments…..”
Yes I see the Libdems have already been compared to the Vichy French who sided with the Nazis in the war.
Godwin’s Law gets everywhere doesn’t it?
Paul Walter…. Posted 19th November 2011 at 1:08 pm….
Yes I see the Libdems have already been compared to the Vichy French who sided with the Nazis in the war.
Godwin’s Law gets everywhere doesn’t it?………………….
Paul, instead of looking for ‘one liners’ perhaps you should accept the fact that although the interview was in the ‘Guardian’ (a newspaper whose readership has always been far more sympathetic to LibDem views than any other ) the overwhelming response from those same readers was utterly negative and derisory. These are the voters that LibDems need. Time Farron’s words came across as a ‘wish list’ of meaningless platitudes.
As far as one liners go, “Singing in the dark to keep up one’s spirits” comes to mind
Effective? Remember Cable saying a few weeks back he would stop the Tories removing the link to inflation in benefits and that LibDems would “not allow” the poorest to take yet another hit? Well, the link is being removed like the Tories wanted.
Yeah, the Tories got their way, again. And the deficit is being reduced by hitting the poorest the hardest. Again.
Maybe I have read too many Guardian comments pages….
@Paul Walter
What has Godwin’s Law got to do with it? Do you think that invoking it invalidates the comparison?
I’m really sorry. Have I missed the breaking news? Have we been invaded by a mass murdering tyrant and are the Liberal Democrats collaborating with him to administrate half the country?
Paul Walter……. Posted 19th November 2011 at 3:29 pm….I’m really sorry. Have I missed the breaking news? Have we been invaded by a mass murdering tyrant and are the Liberal Democrats collaborating with him to administrate half the country?…..
Er, no. …..But this is your thread and retreating behind hyperbole, when some responses are unfavourable, is a poor argument.
@Paul Walter
Posted 19th November 2011 at 3:29 pm | Permalink
“I’m really sorry. Have I missed the breaking news? Have we been invaded by a mass murdering tyrant and are the Liberal Democrats collaborating with him to administrate half the country?”
No. But your problem is that having entered your Molotov/Ribbentrop pact with the Tories many of those who previously supported you, or, at least, bore you no no animus, can now no longer be certain that you wouldn’t collaborate in the circumstances you describe above.
It’s a ludicrous comparison. I’m not retreating anywhere.
@Paul Walter
Paul, When I said “your problem” I was referring to the Liberal Democrat party as a whole and the public’s perception of it, not you personally. As a matter of fact, from some of the comments you have made in the past I I have suspected you might be a member of “the resistance”.
The comments are depressing in a way. But most of these people would never have voted for us anyway. (and a significant % seem to have serious problems of one sort of another)
@MacK
“As a matter of fact, from some of the comments you have made in the past I I have suspected you might be a member of “the resistance”.”
thanks! That’s made my day!
Surely the hyperbole wasn’t started in this thread, but by the ridiculous comments on the guardian thread? Hardly lib dems hiding away when pointing out how stupid many of the responses are. Many of the responses are completely divorced from reality, attacking the Lib Dems on areas where we’ve actually succeeded. It doesn’t matter what we actually manage to most of the people posting on CiF. We didn’t do what they wanted us to do in their heads (which has almost nothing to do with what we campaigned on).
Well we’re stuck with first past the post.
So all those moaning now that we’ve sold out etc but live in Lib Dem/Tory marginals where no other party stands a snowball’s will have to hold their noses next general election. Or risk handing the Tories a bigger majority than they have now.
Anyone who voted against AV to ‘punish’ the Lib Dems might then realise perhaps they were cutting their nose off to spite their face. No consolation to those of us who hoped desperately to see the back of FPTP.
@Rich:
We didn’t do what they wanted us to do in their heads (which has almost nothing to do with what we campaigned on).
—
Let’s see. I voted LibDem in 2010 for these reasons: a slower deficit reduction, protecting the sick/disabled, no top-down reorganisations of the NHS, abolishing tuition fees, not balancing the budget on the backs of the weakest, effective reform of the City and banks, and proper moves to stem global warming.
What you campaigned on in 2010 was to the left of Labour in many areas. The Tories and Labour were closer together on policy than LibDems and Tory. Your party had a choice and it chose entering into a coalition with a party who is basically diametrically opposed to you on many fundamental levels. The choice to enter coalition with the Tories, instead of confidence & supply, and then back down on the main issues you campaigned on may not seem like a betrayal to you, but to many of us it certainly feels that way. For every time you say “pupil premium”, we can list twice as many letdowns.
What you are helping the Tories enact is mainly the opposite of what I and most other (now ex) LibDem voters I know voted for. You did a 180 on the subject of the deficit. You’re going through with a top-down reorganisation of the NHS which both the public and the medical profession are by and large against. You are cutting the most from the sick and disabled, which has lead to deaths and suicides. You’re removing the link between inflation and disability benefits. The bankers are still taking the piss. Tuition fees have trebled and this is most certainly not the “greenest government ever”.
You did not have to enter coalition with a party that stands for the opposite of almost everything you fought for in the election. I’m told “the markets” would have acted badly had you not provided a stable government. Which then begs the question, why do the needs of the markets come before the needs of the people? Why are governments formed to placate the markets when it is the people, not those who run said markets, who will suffer?
I think the Vichy comparison is only apposite in so far as the French collaborators maintained that their motivation for collaborating was to make the impact of the German occupation on the French people less severe than it otherwise might have been. It falls down, obviously, in that the UK Tories have little in common with the Nazis (their economic policy is way to the right, for one thing).
Speaking as a founding and existing member (and an SDP member since 1982), I do regard the propping up of Cameron’s terrible government as a “betrayal”, in an extended sense, in that the party to which I still belong is supporting a deficit reduction strategy that it had once called “irrational” and has allowed unemployment to rise to 2.6 million, and has allowed Cameron and his sidekick, Lansley, to embark upon the stealth privatisation of the NHS. Not to mention more than half our MPs reneging on their personal pledges not to vote to increase student tuition fees, and the failure to do anything other than mutter faint words to prevent Cameron and his cronies target and scapegoat the poor and vulnerable. Etc, etc.
I have little time for the Labour Party, but it is a fact that in 2010 our deficit reduction strategy was pretty close to theirs, and it is also a fact Labour’s last minute spending spree kept a lot of people in work (paying taxes and not collecting benefits).
There are those in the party who claim that Cameron’s government is doing a wonderful job, and this is because it has Liberal Democrat ministers in it. There are others (and this is perhaps a larger category) who maintain that refusing to go into “coalition” would have allowed Cameron to call a second election and win by a landslide, leading to nil Liberal Democrat influence. What I say to people who cling to that belief is that if it was true, why didn’t Cameron do it? Is it not possible that Cameron was advised that a second general election might not lead to a landslide, that it might, in fact, lead to another hung Parliament and, horror of horrors, a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition?
I don’t pretend the decision to go into “coalition” was easy, but it is one I cannot support.
BTW, can anyone tell me what Tim Farron is playing at? If he really hates the Tories that much (and I suspect he does), why does he continue to support the “coalition”? Or is he waiting for the “coalition” to fail, so he can emerge as the obvious and natural leader? I would have tons more confidence in the guy if he came out and called for the “coalition” to end RIGHT NOW.
Sorry, my penultimate paragraph doesn’t make sense. Perhaps I should rephrase it thus:
I do not pretend that the choices the party faced in the immediate aftermath of the 2010 general election were easy, but I am unable to support the choice the party took.
“Farron: There’s a steady awareness we’re an incredibly effective bar to “swivel-eyed” Tories”
Nope, the country sees you as weak and ineffective. The Lib Dems are no more than Tories 2.0, disagree. Well we are going to run an experiment, it is called an election. After you have lost all your MPs, you will realise just how unpopular you are. Actually it will be a fitting fate for your MPs, you have created mass unemployment, and destroyed the lives of a generation of young people. Your MPs deserve the dole.
@cassie, if I recall correctly the campaign to abolish FPTP got off to a bad start when the Lib Dems opted for, in Nick Clegg’s own words, ‘ a miserable little compromise’ of AV and not a form of PR that every voting reform organisation has wanted for years.
The cause of electoral reform was set back a generation thanks to a botched negotiation resulting in a very poor choice in the referendum and coupled with an abysmal campaign. Blaming the public for this is not helpful.
Adding to the hyperbole is not helpful; neither is telling disenchanted voters “how stupid many of the responses are”
Relying, as ‘cassie’ says, that “those moaning will have to hold their noses next general election” is not a sensible option.
In politics ‘perception is everything’. The LibDem leadership is perceived as having ‘sold out’ to Cameron. Such views are reinforced by the public ‘back-slapping’ and ‘front-bench smiles’. Telling the faithful that, “We’re making a difference” does nothing; it’s the disenchanted you have to convince.
Expecting the weakest in society to bear the brunt of every ‘austerity measure’ whilst those at the top see an increase of 50% in salary; preparing to implement tax reductions for the wealthiest whilst imposing ‘flexible employment conditions’ on the poorest; ‘conning’ the young unemployed into working for nothing for companies whose profits are astronomical, etc. these are the realities of the coalition and Tim Farron’s ‘wish list’ does nothing to offset them.
At the next election, a poster of a grinning Nick Clegg holding his “Tuition Fee Pledge” will form the core of Labour’s campaign. The LibDem’s surge in the polls prior to the 2010 election was due, in a major part, to Clegg’s TV performance in which he came across as offering an alternative with integrity…Next time what will he offer?
@Squeedle Falling markets lead to more people unemployed.
@Jason The back slapping and smiles/nods on the front bench from Clegg ended about a year ago, coinciding with a shift in strategy to make our relations with the Tories more businesslike. But I don’t disagree with your point about perception – in some quarters, but I think that is dissipating. I wouldn’t use CiF commenters too much as a yardstick of voter opinion, but I agree with your general drift. But many of things you say are rather inaccurately summarised. How can the coalition be preparing tax cuts for the rich – ie 50pence rate abolition – when Nick Clegg has ruled it out? OK, you’ll say they’ll do it whatever he says – fair enough. I just don’t agree with this jaundiced view, but I absolutely agree that there is a perception abroad as you describe, some of it based on substance, and we have to face that.
@Paul Walter:
Falling markets lead to more people unemployed.
—
The markets have demanded Italy & Greece install appointed leaders. The markets demanded Greece *not* hold a referendum on their bailout. The markets have demanded millions of peoples’ jobs across Europe are lost. The markets demand massive cuts to services such as health care and welfare which often mean life or death for average citizens, which have pushed people to suicide. When it comes to “the markets”, democracy is a distraction.
It seems that the West is now completely in thrall to “the markets”. What the markets want, they get. Are we not seeing an emerging “dictatorship of the markets”?
Yes. The Coalition is supporting wars and uprisings all over the Middle East to achieve “democracy” whilst in certain European countries suffrage has been suspended and puppets installed simply to placate the bond markets. Here we are told to rejoice at the low rates of interest we are charged by the bond markets and yet the coalition refuses to use those borrowings to promote growth. Paying off the deficit has become a fetish. The country will be cut to the bone and then those same bond markets will decide we are a bad risk and hike up our interest rates. Who will Cameron, Clegg and Farron blame for the state of the economy then?
Whenever I’m depressed about the actuality of being in coalition with the Tory fools, I have to cheer myself up with the thought that at least we don’t have Balls running our economy. He’d probably have been replaced with a Goldman Sachs stooge, Italian/Greek style by now.
@Alistair, Ed Balls has called the effects of Osborne’s policies right every time. Despite the best efforts of the right wing press and bloggers to smear him at every opportunity he remains a very clever and capable politician.
@Alistair
” I have to cheer myself up with the thought that at least we don’t have Balls running our economy. He’d probably have been replaced with a Goldman Sachs stooge, Italian/Greek style by now”
Never! That couldn’t possibly happen because we are not in the Eurozone. Gordon Brown and Ed Balls wisely kept us out of it despite the determination of Heseltine, Ken Clarke, Tony Blair, and all of the the Liberal Democrats to take us into that completely unworkable single currency.
@g
Absolutely agree with you. Unlike Osborne, Ed Balls is an economist. He predicted that the coalition’s economic policies would produce low or no growth, huge unemployment, a slump in confidence and demand and a huge increase in debt to service the hike in the resulting numbers of people needing benefits. He has constantly warned that the Liberal Democratsand the Tories are cutting too far, too fast. Far from being “rubbish” in the eloquent words of Farron, the five point plan is a sensible attempt to get people to appreciate the need for stimulating demand. It is the start of the project not the complete article. If Banks won’t lend and Companies are afraid to invest the only agency which can kick start the economy is government. But I wouldn’t expect Farron to understand that.
I have to take my hat off to whoever organises the rota of Labour spokespeople for this site.
MacK wrote:
“He (Ed Balls) predicted that the coalition’s economic policies would produce low or no growth, huge unemployment, a slump in confidence and demand and a huge increase in debt to service the hike in the resulting numbers of people needing benefits.”
So did Nick Clegg.
@ Paul Walter
Sorry to disappoint you but no-one has “pressed” or co-erced me. I am on no rota, I assure you. I am a free agent, responding spontaneously to the threads.
@MacK Sorry I wasn’t responding to you, but perhaps some further up the thread and in other threads…
Paul Walter…… Posted 21st November 2011 at 10:06 am …I have to take my hat off to whoever organises the rota of Labour spokespeople for this site…….
Such a remark deserves the ‘Brian Redhead’ response….(During his time on the Today programme, Redhead was accused of political bias by Conservative Chancellor Nigel Lawson, and in reply enquired “Do you think we should have a one minute silence now in this interview, one for you to apologise for daring to suggest that you know how I vote)
@Paul Walter, talking about me? FWIW I’m not a member of any political party and in the past I’ve voted Lib Dem, Labour, Green and once, owing to a paucity of other credible candidates, the SNP. I’m a bit of a floating centre-left voter who makes tactical decisions once in a while, not a Labour party stooge.
@MacK
“we don’t have Balls running our economy. He’d probably have been replaced with a Goldman Sachs stooge, Italian/Greek style by now”
Never! That couldn’t possibly happen because we are not in the Eurozone.”
You really don’t seem to understand. Balls, like Brown would, if you believe him (which I don’t) have got Britain into a much worse situation than the Euro is in. Massive interst rate rises and no Germany and Holland to bale us out. But why anyone should believe Balls is totally beyond me. What Osborne & co are doing at the moment is only FRACTIONALLY different than Darling and Balls have admitted Labour would have done. They chooses to pretend otherwise for cheap electoral advantage. The bottom line, though, is that without serious stabilisation of the economy (which required a coalition with a clear commitment to deficit reduction), Britain would be paying such a mass of interest charges on our debt that there would be bigger cutbacks and bigger losses of employment and public services than we have now.
I have a lot of sympathy for ‘squeedle’, above, with respect to the Lib Dems 2011 campaigning stance. Unfortunately, the power of the markets is not really anything to do with the present government but mostly the responsibility of the last one. When you have been putting off the Bailiffs for years by saying ‘just lend us a bit more and we’ll pay you back next time, honest (sic)’, you don’t exactly have much power when they show up at your door in force.
@Paul Waller:
I stopped voting Labour after Iraq. Voted LibDem in 2005 & 2010. I’m just horribly let down and feel betrayed by the way the LibDems went into coalition with the Tories and the way they’ve behaved since.
Try again.
@ Tony Dawson
I assure you, I understand very well. We can’t have a puppet technocrat or Goldman Sachs stooge imposed on us as Prime Minister or Chanceller because thanks to Ed Balls and Gordon Brown we are not in the Eurozone. As a prelude to their fiscal and political union the Eurozone led by France and Germany has treated Italy and Greece as troublesome branches of a multinational and replaced the branch chief executive in each case. That can’t happen here because we are outside the Eurozone (no thanks to the Lib Dems) and our governments can only be elected with the consent of the people. Even if Labour had been returned to power and made a hash of it, which of course I would dispute, Europe would not have been able to replace a Labour prime minister with a Brussels puppet without precipitating a massive constitutional crisis.That was my specific (and narrow) point. I have, at best, been only a lukewarm supporter of the EEC. These latest undemocratic developments in Greece and Italy are deeply disturbing. I think it is time we had a referendum to decide if we wish to remain in this increasingly undemocratic project. And by the way, before the General Election there was hardly a fag paper between the Lib Dems and Labour over steady as she goes, easy does it, deficit reduction strategies.
@ Sesenco
I wrote:
“He (Ed Balls) predicted that the coalition’s economic policies would produce low or no growth, huge unemployment, a slump in confidence and demand and a huge increase in debt to service the hike in the resulting numbers of people needing benefits.”
Sesenco wrote:
“So did Nick Clegg.”
So why did he agree to the policies then?
………………….You really don’t seem to understand. Balls, like Brown would, if you believe him (which I don’t) have got Britain into a much worse situation than the Euro is in. Massive interst rate rises and no Germany and Holland to bale us out. But why anyone should believe Balls is totally beyond me. What Osborne & co are doing at the moment is only FRACTIONALLY different than Darling and Balls have admitted Labour would have done…………
Rather muddled thinking. If, in your words, Darling/Balls would have taken almost the same actions as Osborne how would they have created a much worse situation than the Euro problems?
I wasn’t thinking about you either, Squeedle.
@jason I wasn’t thinking of you either. I am sorry to have stimulated such a high level of denial.
MacK wrote:
“Sesenco wrote:
“So did Nick Clegg.”
So why did he agree to the policies then?”
Nick Clegg’s answer is on record. Whether or not one finds it credible is a matter of personal predeliction.
Now for the really interesting question. Would Ed Balls have been any more faithful to his pre-election rhetoric than Nick Clegg? Would Chancellor Balls have had the guts to tell the bond traders, bankers, Americans, etc, to get knotted in the way poor Mr Papandreou was about to? One can only wonder.
@Paul Waller: Thank you for at least acknowledging that there actually are LibDem voters such as myself who are disappointed! It’s nice to not be called a “Labour Troll” like I have been continuously on this site since the coalition formed.
“What Osborne & co are doing at the moment is only FRACTIONALLY different than Darling and Balls have admitted Labour would have done. They choose to pretend otherwise for cheap electoral advantage.”
I agree the differences are not very great. I agree that they are being exaggerated by politicians to seek cheap electoral advantage. However, both sides are doing it! For Labour it’s the cheap and tawdry appeal of the unrealistic sugar-coated solution. For the Coalition it’s the equally tawdry appeal of hair-shirted masochism and the opportunity to kick the “undeserving” poor whilst wearing a bogus cloak of virtue.