In today’s Times, Nick Clegg relates the warning he gave to Osborne over Tory plans for welfare
Shortly before the election last year, I privately warned George Osborne that his ambition to cut £12 billion from the welfare budget whilst refusing any additional tax rises on the better-off was a strategic error.
Any further savings were bound to hit the working poor — strivers, not shirkers — and the vulnerable and sick. It would confirm the public’s worst suspicions about the Conservatives: they would be seen as the party of the rich.
The full article is behind a paywall, but we heard many of the details before, a month and a week before the election.
I share Danny’s intense frustration verging on anger that the Conservatives say it is okay a week before an election to say that they are going to take the equivalent of £1,500 off 8 million of the most vulnerable families in this country and they can’t even be bothered to spell out to the families – with folk who are disabled, with children, those who have fallen on hard times – they can’t even be bothered to spell out exactly what their plans involve.
It is deceitful of the Conservatives … It is wrong of the Conservatives to try and pull the wool over people’s eyes.
We didn’t know then the exact Tory plans for Personal Independence Payments for disabled people, but the warning has been proved good.
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25 Comments
“Shortly before the election last year, I privately warned George Osborne that his ambition to cut £12 billion from the welfare budget whilst refusing any additional tax rises on the better-off was a strategic error.”
Most previous Lib Dem leaders would have thought it disgraceful and morally wrong, but with Nick Clegg it was a “strategic error”.
malc, which argument do you think more likely to work with Osborne?
“Strategic Error” from the master stategist who failed to notice the strategy that was wiping us out!
Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake.
@malc; he was talking to a tory… although why he’s giving the enemy advise just before an election is a bit beyond me.
At least Nick Clegg has commented on the mess the Tories are in, but where is our leader.
Tories are in melt down, Corbyn failed to score a hit yesterday, the field is wide open for somebody showing leadership.
Where is our leader, where are his spokespersons, where are the articles on our Web Site, Voice and You Tube, where are the press releases copied to all local parties.
All we have seen from the leader is a naff statement telling Osbourne to resign.
Nationally our image has not risen since May, and here is another missed opportunity.
Come on leadership, you owe it to your members, old and new, to start making a noise, and a rousing speech at conference which does not get reported is not job done.
Not sure why anyone would take Cleggs advice after his performances in the past ?
Our lack of media coverage Alderman David Becket is nothing to do with a lack of effort by the current leadership or our hard working press office, HQ staff & ALDC but everything to do with those responsible for our catestrophic election result last May. You can help by 1) creating your own media if you haven’t already – using Focus, social media, letters to the paper, contacting phone-ins etc and 2) complaining to the media – BBC in particular – for failing to use Liberal Democrats in their political programmes where a liberal voice is missing. If we don’t work even harder and kick up a stink we will be overlooked and that then makes it even more difficult for our current leader to rebuild the trust we lost with the electorate under the previous one.
Excellent, another article hoping to convince the party that Nick Clegg, his strategy (and LDV’s unflinching support of him) were right all along.
Just as with Blair, too much strategy possessing too little connection to the party’s values, policies and voters. Result a parliamentary party of just 8 MPs at a time that would have been perfect for a major advance for the cause of social justice Liberal Democracy.
“Tories are in melt down, Corbyn failed to score a hit yesterday, the field is wide open for somebody showing leadership.”
I’m not sure what people aren’t getting but methinks Corbyn’s (and more importantly Tim’s) leadership is more about not “forgetting” that their are human beings who have to live with decisions made in parliament and less about “scoring hits”.
Time to tell the truth about the October 2013 fiscal plan that Clegg, Alexander and their spads, along with fellow Quad members Osborne and Cameron, had cooked up: “a balanced budget in the next cycle”.
This entailed at the time finding £30 billion of extra cuts, with earmarked as those cuts 12.5 billion on welfare in each of two years. + some odds and sods.
When taken to task on this by more knowledgeable and politically perceptive souls, Clegg is said to have replied that he “didn’t really understand the fuss, surely ‘balanced budgets’ are what we believe in”.
Of course sane counsel prevailed.
But the position the Party reached for its 2015 manifesto was not Clegg’s original position in October 2013 and his preference then was fiscal plans identical to those of Osborne and Cameron.
And did Mr Clegg warn Osborne off on the 2012 Welfare Reform Act which included the bedroom tax ?
‘strategic error’ – odd use of words, and suggests that the Quad (or at least half of it) went into the last election inyending fully to continue with the coalition. It makes sense – Cameron landed himself with crazy right-wing policies(and the eu referendum) in order to re-gain kipper votes, and expecting to ‘have’ to ditch them to govern with the liberals again…
The Conservatives must really miss a Danny Alexander type who would pop up and passionately defend the new cuts whilst destroying his party at the same time. The rotten mess left behind by Clegg and his team and the further pain coming in May and LDV still report on his latest words. Awful.
@Adrian Sanders
I have had about six letters in my local rag this year, my wife and myself have had one letter each in the guardian since last May. Where are the letters in the broadsheets from the spokespersons of our party? I appear to have missed them.
Nick Clegg’s advice is worth listening to.
I have to say (sorrowfully) that Tim Farron is an ineffectual Leader. The Prime Minister made mincemeat of him during the European Council Statement. The Chancellor (rather rudely I thought) said that he had abolished the Liberal Democrats.
It is a fact however that the public have stopped noticing the Liberal Democrats.
Should Mr Clegg come back as Leader? Is anyone listening?
Alderman David Becket I can’t answer your question but suspect 8 MPs having to do the work over 50 have done during the previous three decades might be a clue. However, well done on getting some coverage for the Party – if everyone did as you we might get a little more notice.
Grahame Lamb is wrong to blame Tim for anything that happens in the Commons. Everything is now stacked against whoever leads our Party. Thanks to Clegg we are not even the third largest party and so we no longer have a weekly Leaders’ PMQ. Our MPs have to wait ages to get called after three Party Leaders/Spokespeople and then senior MPs have had their say before we get to make our statements. Tim and all our Spokespeople will rarely get the oppotunity to speak to a full house when the media are paying attention. When he does he will have hundreds of MPs wishing him to fail and barracking to trip him up. He, and all our spokespeople, will have limited time to make their point with the rest of House impatient and aggresive. It is a dredful position to be in and a consequence of the previous leadership not the current one. What Tim needs is support in the country campaigning in communities to rebuild trust with the electorate, encouraging people to take and use power over their own lives – that requires a great deal more effort than whinging on here about circumstances not of Tim’s making.
@ Grahame Lamb
Don’t underestimate the difficulty of speaking from the third row up instead of from the despatch box and having to face three hundred baying Tories out to unsettle you.
It would help Tim if all his colleagues turned up whenever he speaks, but the truth is he would be better employed getting out and about and into broadcasting studios in the way Charles Kennedy used to do.
I don’t doubt Mr Clegg could give good advice – but I’m afraid he’s yesterday’s man with the electorate – and many of us who returned post 2015 could not accept his brand of Liberalism.
Sadly opposition is going through a barren time with Corbyn and McDonnell giving ponderous and humourless performances. The only comfort is that the Tories are not exactly a happy band of brothers and sisters.
Tim comes across as honest, decent and (this is a positive) “ordinary”. He may not be Martin Luther King but we do not need that now. He is absolutely fine and we should rally 100% around him. He speaks well with sympathy and understanding for those we are devoted to protect.
We aren’t even at the first anniversary of the massacre of the innocents but I do detect that the period of name calling and acrimony is drawing to a close. It’s time for a wide debate on what the LibDems can offer the voters in 2020 that’s a little more than “We are liberals who will be liberalistic and bring lots of liberalism to government”.
Much of what I read combines motherhood and apple pie with complete unaffordability.
Who has ideas for the housing crisis that don’t just make green belt landowners and the developers even richer than they are now? Could we demand that new developments include a proportion of properties only sell-able on a ‘closed’ market to those who have employment in the area – a la Channel Islands? Could all ex-authority ‘right to buy’ have to be in this category?
What ideas do we have for improved energy efficiency and recycling features for new builds that could be mandatory?
Economic policy – of most parties – seems to be some combination of borrow-and-squander, print money or raise taxes until the last spark of ambition has been extinguished. Can we come up with better?
Now we should be in the phase of maximum creative energy and idea generation then will come the phase of winnowing down to inspirational and radical ideas for an electorate which will be truly sick to death of the Tories and Labour by 2020.
Well said Barry Snelson. I hope the movers and shakers in the party have got that message
Agree with Barry Snelson.
Tim could do with checking out the Bernie Sanders campaign for ideas and policies. For an outsider he’s giving the establishment a run for their money and he seems able to inspire the best sort of American liberals.
Silvio, I was one of those who forecast the disaster of the General Election, but judging from local by elections since the turn of the year I suspect we will do quite well, maybe net gains in region of 50 -100.
Getting coverage in the media is very difficult, we are not part of their agenda, that may change after May.
WE need finally to forget the coalition, the public are gradually doing so and that can only work to our benefit.
“Any further savings were bound to hit the working poor — strivers, not shirkers — and the vulnerable and sick.”
The implication being that the existing cuts hadn’t done those things and had only hit “shirkers” rather than “strivers”. If that’s what Mr Clegg thinks after the horrendous impact of the welfare cuts he supported (especially to disability benefits), against party policy then thank goodness he is no longer leader – as he is clearly unfit to lead a Lib Dem parish council, let alone the party, with that absence of basic moral judgement.
@Jenny barnes:
“Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake.”
Who says they were opponents? George Osborne (with what authority or deliverability?) apparently offered the Lib Dem Leader a coupon election and Nick Clegg spent 90 per cent of the Coalition years behaving as if the members of ‘the Quad’ were joined at the hip. Hence the free-fall of the Liberal Democrats everywhere in the country except where there were special circumstances.
Incidentally, once Nick and Danny were no longer there, the ‘Quad’ became the ‘Dud’ of Cam-borne – one of the issues which has made IDS so angry. The Tory Cabinet are just an audience for George and Dave.