Over at the Sunday Telegraph, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have jointly penned an article marking the start of the new political year by re-asserting the Coalition’s determination to reform British politics. Here’s an excerpt:
We came together to change our country for the better in every way. And as we go about fixing our economy, society and political system, our government’s purpose will be to make two major shifts in our national life.
First, our decisions will be taken with eyes fixed firmly on the long-term. This is a horizon shift for government, moving away from short-term obsessions towards investment in the future.
Both of us recognise that, frankly, this generation has messed things up. We’ve overspent and over-borrowed, and we haven’t planned for our children’s future – in the economy, in our society, or the environment.
So we’re going to bring long-term thinking in government, doing the things we have to do to equip this country for long term success.
Our second animating purpose is putting power in people’s hands. There needs to be a power shift, moving power from Whitehall and the state to people and their communities.
This power shift is visible in our plans for local government, public service reform, and crucially political reform.
You can read their article in full here.
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10 Comments
OO, OOW STV! STV!!!
Save the party – get out of the coalition with the Tories – no more Liberal Nationals!!!
AV is not PR – it will help the Tories ands kill the Lib Dems!
Ahh Felix! We’d really like to but, ya see, that would just leave a Tory government and that’s not what we need right now. Why choose impotent opposition when we can have a significant impact in coalition? Alternative? Labour? No! Maybe in 10 years – a different Labour Party.
“LibLink: Nick Clegg & David Cameron – We will not budge on voting reforms”
That’s ironic, i have just been questioning whether clegg has any intention of fighting for AV at all.
http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/the-av-referendum-%E2%80%93-what-does-clegg-really-want/
He budged all the way from STV to that “miserable little compromise” AV, so he’s probably not above a little more budging.
From the article:
It is also said that Coalitions are wracked by in-fighting. That has not been our experience. Of course there are differences of opinion within the government, not least between the two of us.
But recognising them can be a sign of strength rather than weakness. This is modern, responsible politics.
By contrast, a spate of recent memoirs has shown how a single party Government under Labour was paralysed by factionalism and backbiting.
Ouch. But it’s a point that needs making – single-party government by a sprawling party with many different policy factions and personality clashes is always going to involve lots of internal disagreement. The difference between that and disagreements in a coalition is that the voters can actually choose which side to vote for at the next election! Sometimes I get the impression that the ideal government for those Labour and Conservative MPs who hate coalitions is something like the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (no relation to the Lib Dems!), which until recently dominated Japanese politics but was riven by more or less formalised internal factions that the voters had no control over.
“Sometimes I get the impression that the ideal government for those Labour and Conservative MPs who hate coalitions is something like the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan”
There are plenty of principled people who both support FPTP and a functioning alternative not relegated to perpetual opposition.
Your casual assertion that people to hold views divergent from your own also support single party ‘dictatorship’ is nonsense.
Our second animating purpose is putting power in people’s hands. There needs to be a power shift, moving power from Whitehall and the state to people and their communities.
But power isn’t in Whitehall, it’s in globalised big business. Previous governments since 1979 have already given it away, the state now only has the grotty jobs filling in the gaps. We have seen just recently how the bankers get what they want, and if we dare threaten them, they say “Do that, and we’ll pull out”, and governments have to kow-tow to these, our new lords and masters. What is written here by Clegg and Cameron shows a ridiculous lack of understanding of the world as it is now and the challenges facing our nation. This is the sort of stuff you’d expect from a public schoolboy who in his naivety thinks the world is as The Times tells him it is, and who has no contact with the world as people on anything below the first quartile of incomes in this country experiences it.
http://twitter.com/IanMurrayMP/statuses/23154732850
Labour MP just twittered: “clegg says, “a multi question referendum is too complicated for public .” For a referendum to introduce multi choice av? Confused?”
Clegg arguing against including PR in the referendum!
Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas or do they? If its get through the house and that a big if, if you listen to the ‘real’ tories it may well not get past the country.