Oh dear. Not really the best of starts to the Henley Conservative campaign. First there was David Cameron having to tell the local party what to do regarding selections after the pleas of John Maples were rebuffed. Then the BBC reported how the local Conservative Party was split over their Henley selection.
And now: Conservative Shadow Business Secretary Alan Duncan has contradicated what the Conservatives are telling people locally.
You see, one of their local messages is, “Local Conservatives have called for Gordon Brown to perform another Budget U-turn, by ditching his planned road tax increases” (source: Henley Conservatives website), but this morning Alan Duncan told Sky TV something rather different:
Alan Duncan said the Tories would not be in a position to reverse the road tax because Mr Brown has left no money in the kitty. “We ought to be in a position where there is a lot of money in the kitty, but we are not.
“We are in a position where we have no power to alleviate the pain because there is nothing in the kitty. Gordon Brown has over spent and borrowed and he is highly culpable for that. (Source: Politics Home).
And indeed Conservative Home has headlined this story, “Alan Duncan says there’s no money in the kitty to reverse the road tax.”
Not a happy start to a campaign really having a senior MP going on TV and contradicting one of your key local campaign messages is it? (And imagine quite how some Conservative bloggers would react if the roles were reversed…)
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Changes in status: Local Elections wrap up
What should the Liberal Democrats stand for?
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15 Comments
Meanwhile Lib Dems are saying nothing on either reversing, continuing with, escalating green taxes. Weak Mark.
Which part of “LOCAL Conservatives” do you have trouble with understanding?
Isn’t it a widely held LibDem principle that LOCAL parties can hold policy positions that go further than the national policy?
Or is this another example of LibDem hypocrisy as they panis in the face of a resurgent Conservative party?
And with your over emphasis on the Conservatives Mark you just provide the ammunition to tell voters that the LibDems are ambivalent about Labour and would help keep them in power.
Just the tonic for a Winchester by-election. 🙂
Oddly I find myself in agreement with Chris Paul on how the LibDems obsession with negative politics just exposes their policy vacumn.
Chris: nice try, but once again you’ve got your facts wrong. Nick Clegg spoke about this very topic only a couple of days ago: http://www.politicshome.com/Landing.aspx?Blog=1093&perma=link#1094
Brilliant. “Say No to the LibDems Toll Tax”.
Coming to a leaflet near you in Henley. Sequel also planned for Winchester.
Byeee.
Personally, I would be careful about criticising one part of a party saying something different from another. Here in Oxfordshire I know Tories who are delighted that the Lib Dems take different positions based on local circumstances, which is only right – it’s what they want in local representatives – not inflexible “party clones”.
One of the biggest issues in Henley constituency is whether to concede to the idea of building 4-8000 new homes in Henley constituency on the outskirts of Oxford. Steve has already spoken of his wish to fight such proposals, but Oxford city Lib Dems have endorsed it, and I can give Steve ammunition if necessary to help do so.
I know plenty of people in south Oxfordshire, including our council group in Thame itself, who are desperate to see some progress on affordable housing – South Oxfordshire is by quite a way the least affordable part even of Oxfordshire, and would probably react quite well to strong support for our Community Land Trust policy in Henley constituency.
Having said all that, the road fund license will no doubt affect Henley constituency more than most owing to the prepondrance of ridiculously inefficient and unnecessary private vehicles on the road in this affluent constituency (4x4s are essential of course for enabling drivers to see over the hedgerows as they travel down narrow country lanes!), and a general shortage of decent public transport services unless you are trying to get to London.
Nevertheless, we have an advantage with our “green tax” proposals in that we would be using them to reduce other taxes on activities and wealth that are not harming the environment. Higher green taxes from us mean lower taxes elsewhere.
“I want to see the environmental cost of fuel to be [sic] reflected at the pump – we have to see if this is a sustainable way of getting people out of their cars and on to public transport.”
Wouldn’t it be better to see if it is a sustainable way [etc] before saying you want to do it? Sometimes it’s very difficult to see the logic of Clegg’s pronouncements.
Has it struck anyone that just driving up the cost of petrol is going to hit poor people in rural areas very hard? No doubt the response of many of them to Clegg would be “what public transport?”
Trying to compensate them by reducing the basic rate of income tax seems to be falling into the same mistake that Brown and Darling have made over the abolition of the 10p band. Wouldn’t it be better if the money went into improving public transport?
There is a difference between having local variations in policy based upon local circumstances, but road tax is a national tax.
Unless of course, Henley Tories are proposing to have locally variable road taxes, now that would be interesting to administer.
Trouble is with the Nu-Tories is no one knows what they stand for.
Whatever hapopened to ‘vote blue, go green’?
Readers with long memories will recall that in the mid 1980s the then Conservative Government toyed with relaxing the Green Belt. This would have facilitated the creation of a number of new commuter towns along the M40 just outisde Oxford (and quite a few equally nasty developments elsewhere in the Home Counties). The offence this caused to Tory voters (including a lot of rich ones) ensured that the policy never got off the ground.
Then there was the 1970s proposal to extend the M40 across Ot Moor (a rare piece of fen that the Anglo-Saxons never got round to draining). Not only that, but it would have gone straight through semi-natural ancient oak and hazel woodland near Stanton St John, and would have obliterated the Grade 1 listed Beckley Hall. A public inquiry stopped this environmental and cultural horror. Unchecked, the Heath government would simply have waved it through.
BTW, Clifton Hampden really is built on a “cliff”!
Funny, I was just retelling the story of the M40 and Otmoor the other day. It seems to me that the thing that really stymied it all was the Friends of the Earth purchasing a field along the route and selling one foot squares of it to thousands of members around the globe which made it too difficult to contemplate a CPO!
And my car was nearly totalled the other day by what looked like it could only be a red deer stag the other day coming through Bernwood.
and what if the Libdems are criticising another party? Do they not do the same? Am I dreaming when I get press releases every day from Labour and the Tories criticising each other?
Mount of the high horses please 🙂
If you approach Ewelme by car from Watlington you will see some of our political opponents campaigning on either side fo the road. (joke)
There’s no contradiction in saying that these tax rises should not go ahead but that – two years down the line when the money has already been committed and spent – that it would be very difficult to reverse them
“I want to see the environmental cost of fuel to be [sic] reflected at the pump – we have to see if this is a sustainable way of getting people out of their cars and on to public transport.”
Apparently the Lib Dems have unveiled a new transport policy document today, based on road pricing:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/jun/03/liberaldemocrats.transport
It seems the plan is to cut fuel duty, so I don’t know what on earth that was about environmental cost being reflected “at the pump”. Did Clegg “misspeak” again?