LibLink: Paris Gourtsoyannis – Why I still agree with Nick… sort of

Paris Gourtsoyannis was editor of the Journal, a newspaper serving Edinburgh’s higher education institutions, last year, and is a Lib Dem supporter. In an article for the paper, Paris sets out reasons for continuing to back Nick Clegg and his party — here’s an excerpt:

You only have to listen to the chatter from the right of the Conservative party to understand the effect that the Liberal Democrats are having on the government. Crusty relics like Norman Tebbit and John Redwood speak for the silent majority in rural Conservative safe seats, and they’re aren’t happy. That makes me happy: it’s one of the ways I know that Liberal Democrat policies on taxation, Europe and higher education are making it into the discussion at the highest level.

That’s not to say I haven’t felt the odd frisson of discomfort, not least when the Institute of Fiscal Studies labelled the budget “very clearly regressive”. At times like that, I’ve questioned whether I was on the right side. The experience has forced me to dig for my beliefs, rather than wearing lightly the moral superiority of third party opposition, free beyond hope of power or responsibility.

Am I proud that poorest will, insomuch as they are directly affected by cuts to government benefits and services, be worse off under this government? Absolutely not. I’ve had to accept the universal truth that the British media have avoided in swallowing the IFS report whole: when the country does badly, the poor do worst. The failure of the society we’ve constructed in the past 60 years is that only the poor really have a stake in state, while only the rich really have a place in the economy.

I’m still a Liberal Democrat because I find that inequality to be greater than the £20-a-year more in terms of the burden of government cuts that the least well-off will be shouldering. I’m holding out for a state that implicates all its citizens in prosperity, rather than giving handouts to some and ignoring the rest. In the meantime, I’ve got an end to child detention, a higher income tax threshold, a green investment bank, and an unravelling of the database state.

I’ve taken the hits thus far; that lot should keep me going until the bell rings for round two.

You can read Paris’s article in full here.

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6 Comments

  • John Fraser 17th Sep '10 - 9:04pm

    @ Paris
    “I’ve had to accept the universal truth that the British media have avoided in swallowing the IFS report whole: when the country does badly, the poor do worst. The failure of the society we’ve constructed in the past 60 years is that only the poor really have a stake in state, while only the rich really have a place in the economy. ”

    Why is it inevitable Paris that the Poor must do worst is that not just a lack of imagination and backbone by our members in the government that should know better ? there is no universal truth that the porr should be treated like dirt ? (Unles you know a universla rule that I don’t ) ?

  • Sunder Katwala 17th Sep '10 - 9:35pm

    There is no reason at all why the Coalition could not come up with tax and benefit changes which are progressive, rather than regressive, given that Cameron and Osborne, as well as LibDems, have said that is a central policy driver. That is well within the powers of government policy-makers: there is simply no “way of the world” excuse about that. The constraints are political ones.

    But it is important to remember that the tax/benefit changes to people’s incomes (which the IFS reports on) are only part of the equation when it comes to deficit reduction.

    The IFS budget analysis does not look at the distributional impact of changes in public spending on the distribution of public services themselves. The most detailed study to date is the new model from Howard Reed and Tim Horton, summarised in the research report “Where the Money Goes” published by the TUC this week.
    http://www.fabians.org.uk/publications/extracts/wherethemoneygoestext

    If the “fairness test” is being taken seriously, LibDems should be making sure that the government’s commitment to transparency about spending means providing distributional analysis at this level of detail and better about the CSR on a department by department basis, and to show that this has been part of the decision-making process.

    Here a way of the world observation about the difficulty of progressive austerity is more valid. It is very difficult to make deep spending cuts without having a disproportionate impact on the poor when it comes to the distribution of services and cuts, because the distribution of most (but not all) spending is pro-poor. (Exceptions include road and rail transport, higher education, culture and arts).

    This raises three political questions:
    (1) is the distributional impact central to the decisionmaking process about deficit reduction and spending cuts, across government and within departments?

    (2) any discretionary decisions to deepen public spending cuts beyond what is necessary will very likely have regressive consequences: for example, the very important political choice to eliminate the structural deficit in one Parliament. Deeper cuts and progressive austerity are sharply in tension.

    (3) If regressive impacts are very likely in the distribution of services, it becomes ever more important to meet and not fail the IFS test on the distribution of taxation and benefits, and to try to do so strongly. It is clear that, in the budget process, the distributional graph was a constraint on policy, rather than a driver of policy, with some reverse engineering (the tax credit change) to try to just about end up level. A (flawed) attempt was made to claim the budget had met the progressive test in these terms, but it is clear the aim was to try to just about get an overall “neutral/not-regressive” impact (mainly by relying on leaving the outgoing government’s proposals in place) rather than to look to make strongly progressive new decisions.

    LibDems will need to push for progressive motivations to be a much stronger driver of decisions made by George Osborne than was the case this year.

  • David Hendry 17th Sep '10 - 9:55pm

    Have a look at the press reports today in the Independent and the Mail, where you can read about how hard-line right wingers in the Conservative party are foaming at the mouth because it looks like plans to replace Trident nuclear weapons will be delayed. I think this is a good example of what Paris is saying about how Liberal Democrat in government can fend off the worst excesses of the Conservative right.

    At the risk of undermining my own argument, however, I must say that there is also a distinct possibility that all the leaks and rumour about delaying Trident replacement over the past week are designed to defuse discontent at our Party Conference on this issue. So don’t be put off giving the emergency motion on Trident your support! 🙂

  • I’ve got news for Ms Gourtsoyannis, and many others, child detention has not ended, it has not even been suspended. Just because Clegg announced its ending, it that messianic tone of his, doesn’t make it so. And as for the higher tax threshold. the increase was less, in percentage terms than the 2008/09 increase.

    And now we have Clegg saying that the LibDems have no future as a party of the Left. Now, I for one never saw the LibDems as a party of the Left, more Centre-Left. Is this what Clegg means. One can never tell with him nowadays.

  • the chatter from the right (Redwood) is Gove has fallen at first hurdle and his plans would only have a marginal impact anyway
    but Lansleys NHS White Paper can drive through the Thatcher agenda !!!

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