I think our leader must be a regular reader of this column, or listener to my Political Frenemies podcast, or purveyor of my Twitter feed.
Because, for months now, in those outlets and more I’ve been calling for Ed to be making more of this unique political moment which gives our party the best opportunity for exponential growth since the modern founding of our party.
It had been the case, until last week, that apart from his appearance at PMQs Ed appeared to be doing comparatively little (in a public-facing sense at least); no platform speeches, not very many major media appearances, and so on.
And though, of course, I know he and our 71 other MPs are doing really important work on a host of issues; from holding this Labour government to account, to constituency work and delivering for their residents, the really harsh truth is that very little of that breaks through to the public, at least on a national level.
So it was with undiluted joy that, last week, not only did Ed do a full morning media round but then later gave a speech on a liberal approach to the economy to an audience at an Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) event in a speech entitled ‘A thriving economy in a turbulent world’, which I’m listening to whilst typing these words on this very wet Monday afternoon (certainly here in Leicestershire).
The main news story that emanated from Ed’s speech was the Lib Dem plan to halve energy bills by ‘breaking the link between gas prices and energy costs, so people can enjoy the benefits of cheap, clean power. This would halve bills and save families £870 a year on average.’
That’s more like it! More of this please!
Practical help for families and individuals who are hard up against it and totally aligned to our values as Liberal Democrats. Ed also managed to link Sweden, football, and fiscally responsible budget practices in a way only a Liberal Democrat could, saying,
We need nothing less than a major overhaul of the whole system. I think we should look at other countries, in particular a budget process more like the one Sweden had brought in when it faced its own budget crisis in the early 1990s, when its debt soared to just over 70% of GDP. Now the Swedish Parliament gets to debate the governments budget and can propose alternatives and amendments before it is finalised and gets a proper period of scrutiny and accountability in the months that follow. And now Sweden, that country well known for austerity and regressive policies, Sweden’s debt is down to 30% of GDP.
Now I won’t try and pretend that this won us acres of news coverage, it didn’t, and our sophisticated and nuanced policy and politics are rarely going to be as easy to sell as the populist waffle of Nigel Farage, but it at least was us beginning to set out our stall, a direction of travel, on a key policy area years out from a general election.
Speaking of Farage it was also good to see Ed, on that morning media round, call out the BBC for its increasingly sycophantic coverage of Farage and Reform UK.
Again, more of this please!
Ed and our top team need to push to do the morning media round on a regular basis, show our values in action, and give keynote platform speeches on a host of policies that are important to us as Liberal Democrats from health to education, and from LGBT+ rights to civil liberties.
The decent, fair minded, good hearted, liberal majority are crying out for an alternative to the other parties who (with the possible exception of the Greens) are all varying shades of conservative. We can and must be that alternative.
Let’s do it!
A gathering of Social Liberals
On Saturday, after defending the liberal cause on a panel on Talk in the morning, I raced from London to beautiful St Albans to get to the Social Liberal Forum conference in a church in our Deputy Leader’s constituency. A great day of set piece speeches, break out sessions, networking, and much more it was and a big thank you to the SLF team who organised it.
As you’d expect from such a gathering there was quite a lot of reflection on where we’re headed as a party and, as discussed above, how do we meet this unique moment in British political history.
Among the speakers were the legendary Sir John Curtis (via zoom from the Republic of Ireland), Sunder Katwala of British Future, and of course the wonderful Daisy Cooper herself.
My favourite quote of the day, though, came from Luke Tryl, from More in Common, in the final panel session, which was answering the age old question of ‘where do we go from here?’ who said:
There’s a danger for the Lib Dems that you become seen as the Home Counties branch of the Labour Party.
Ouch!
Superman and the positives of immigration!
And finally for this week, what should be an obvious truth for us as Lib Dems: Immigration is a demonstrable good for our society; economically, socially, and culturally.
That was reminded to me recently by, of all things, a big budget Summer blockbuster film… Superman.
Which I loved not just because it’s two main actors (David Corenswet in the lead role and Nicholas Hoult as his arch nemesis Lex Luthor) are both drop dead gorgeous but far more importantly because of the important story it tells about the acceptance, though after a rough patch of non-acceptance it had to be said, of a ‘foreign being’ into the American community.
As the American filmmaker James Gunn said on social media;
It’s a story to me about kindness. That’s the centre of the movie for me. That’s the thing we can all act upon, it’s kindness. And so what does that lead to? Well, does that lead to the way you vote? Sure. Does that lead to everything? Yeah. Does it lead to how many people are dying from road rage? Yes. All these things are affected if people just start to value kindness.
To repeat the oft repeated but sadly too little acted upon truism:
In a world where you can be anything… be kind!
* Mathew Hulbert is a former Councillor, is a regular commentator on TV and Radio, and is Co-Host of the Political Frenemies podcast.
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19 Comments
What are the components of Sweden’s debt?
To whom is it owed?
Under which conditions?
Might Social Liberal Democracy withs its expression of clear theory and graspable policies for managing
the ever present twins of “Freedom to” and “Freedom From”, present a set of sound, practical, generally effective and fair/kind policies which, despite the bias of the main stream media, are eminently presentable?
I agree. How was Nigel Farage on the news last night declaring pie in the sky that he would half crime with no costings. Why was this a news event? Surely our party needs to be threatening the BBC with injunctions in relation to biased coverage including question time etc and making more than private overtures behind the scenes.
” Sweden’s debt is down to 30% of GDP.”
Is this a good thing?
Japan has a National Debt of 251%. Is this a bad thing? For Singapore it’s 175.2% Is this much worse than Sweden’s, but not quite as bad as Japan’s?
If the government were to pay out all Premium Bond holders with cash, which it could do, it’s gross debt would be reduced. Would it be any better off? Perhaps slightly because it wouldn’t have to pay out any prize money. It could do the same for all bond holders. Would that make any real difference? Again, possibly because it wouldn’t have to pay any interest.
The supposedly independent BoE could do that if told to by government.
National debts aren’t well understood by the general public and I don’t believe professional economists are much wiser. If they were they might be quicker to explain that National Debts are quite normal. They might point out that even a level of 100% of GDP is just the same as someone who might be earning £60k p.a (after all tax) and who owes £60k on their house which is worth ten times that.
@ Paul Clark If the BBC give coverage to a Bungee jump they will give coverage to somebody else talking Pie in the Sky. Your suggested approach would be totally ineffective and counter productive.
Matthew writes about opportunities for the Lib Dem Party to, in effect, ‘own the narrative’ on important issues, and yesterday in parliament Calum Miller did just that in his response to the Foreign Secretary’s statement about the letter he has co-signed, demanding an end to the systematic destruction of Gaza and its people by Israel. Calum was eloquent and forceful, as he usually is, and he is the appropriate spokesperson.
However, picking up on Matthew’s point about Ed Davey, it would be nice if Ed could learn from Calum how to generate real momentum in parliament in response to the worst man-made humanitarian catastrophe to have occurred in his lifetime, or for that matter (and I’m a bit older than Ed) mine.
The Labour government is failing miserably to hold Israel to account, almost entirely because Sir Keir Starmer has a blind spot when Israel’s war crimes are being discussed. Watching David Lammy yesterday, I could see he is frustrated by the constraints imposed on him by ‘number 10’, and it would be nice if Ed could lead a cross-party rebellion against Starmer on this issue. Sadly, I don’t think that will happen.
“……with no costings”
“Costings” are part of a neoliberal approach to macroeconomics. The motivation for this is to generally convince the population that we can’t afford something. However, if we have a national emergency like a war or a Covid epidemic no-one in authority says “where’s the money going to come from?”.
If that were the case we’d have surrendered immediately in 1939.
The correct questions to be asked should be: Are there are enough spare resources in the economy to halve crime? Are those resources better used for this or something else? If these resources are unavailable, will tax rises or cuts in some kinds of spending be necessary to free up some resources?
“National debts aren’t well understood by the general public and I don’t believe professional economists are much wiser. If they were they might be quicker to explain that National Debts are quite normal.”
The interest on the UK national debt is £110 billion a year at current interest rates. If there were no debt that money could be spent on some combination of:
Improving home insulation
Social care
infrastructure to get sewerage out of rivers and the sea
disability benefit
winter fuel allowances
reducing VAT
Increasing personal allowances
Increasing defence spending to 5% of GNP
Making the Court system work better
Making the Land Registry work better
Processing asylum seekers quicker
[Add your favourite expensive policy proposal here]
Worth thinking about perhaps
@Peter: Claiming that professional economists don’t understand national debts is quite an assertion to make, especially if you are implying that you yourself do understand them. It rather reminds me of how Farage and Trump and many on the right seem to think that scientists don’t understand climate change (but that, despite their own lack of scientific training, they themselves do).
@ SimonR,
How about if I’d put it that either most mainstream economists don’t understand National debts or they are unwilling to explain them to the rest of us? Maybe they’d like to have a try to do that? Using Singapore and Japan as examples of why our 100% or so puts us on their path to ruin?
@ Tristan,
I know the argument you make and it superficially all makes sense. However, the Govt could reduce its interest bill to zero with a single instruction to the BoE.
I’m not saying it should do that but it’s good to know that it could. Why do you think it shouldn’t?
@Peter Martin
“I’m not saying it should do that but it’s good to know that it could. Why do you think it shouldn’t?”
Because the lenders would demand their money back immediately and/or demand extortionate rates of interest before ever lending money to the UK government again?
Peter,
The problem with your straw man question …
“the Govt could reduce its interest bill to zero with a single instruction to the BoE. I’m not saying it should do that but it’s good to know that it could. Why do you think it shouldn’t?”
is the answer – The markets.
Liz Truss found that out with her crazy ideas sprung on a market with effectively no notice.
If the UK went there again, the knock on implications of the loss of trust would be catastrophic.
Today’s market panic is tomorrow’s historical footnote. In a system where the whole edifice is driven by speculation there are bound to be ups and downs. Of course, cutting red tape makes the effects far more noticeable and extreme. Then there are bull and bear markets and futures – which are 100% speculative if there is no insider trading.
Using the markets as an excuse not to do something really is crass.
Borrowing to fund infrastructure investment with obvious long term benefits is not going to spook markets at all.
Trickle down economics assumes that if taxes are cut, the beneficiaries will spend more and that will grow the size of the economy and the number of jobs required to meet increased demand.
Trickle down economics has never worked in the way described. What is has done is allowed the wealthiest in society to accumulate assets at a prodigious rate including mortgage debt, government securities, shares, and property while increased consumer prices (driven by higher asset prices) erode the benefit of tax cuts for the lower paid.
Thomas Piketty in his 2013 book Capital in the 21st Century argued that the rate of capital return in developed countries is persistently greater than the rate of economic growth, and that this will cause wealth inequality to increase in the future.
The housing and cost of living crisis we see in the UK is a global issue affecting every major city and economy across the world. It’s cause is inequality and wealth concentrations. As more and more private and public assets are effectively acquired by a small group of ultra-wealthy elites via debt liens, passive income far in excess of what can be consumed is utilised to acquire evermore assets including residential housing investment via financing of mortgage lending.
As Piketty argued, the relative equality of the post-war years was a historical anomaly. We have been reverting to the pre-war environment of extreme income and wealth inequality for decades. Increasing levels of Government debt held by the wealthiest in society is a reflection of those imbalances. The Lib Dem plan to halve energy bills by breaking the link between gas prices and energy costs may be a way to start addressing some of these imbalances.
@ David Evans,
It might surprise you, and possibly Tristan, to know that I agree with you – at least partially. This is if, by ‘markets’, you mean the forex markets. If the Govt suddenly pushed interest rates down to zero the pound would fall, prices would rise, and the Govt wouldn’t be at all popular.
Therefore we can conclude that reason for having interest rates as they are isn’t connected with raising money per se for spending purposes. It is to maintain the value of the pound as it is. High interest rates will encourage everyone to lend to us which means we acquire more debt. But, why then bemoan the fact that the UK is acquiring more debt?
So we can’t have a low debt and a high pound economy. I’d favour reducing debt by lowering interest rates and and having a lower pound. However, this needs to be done gradually and the electorate needs to be fully on board with the options.
@ Peter Martin
“This is if, by ‘markets’, you mean the forex markets”
Clearly “the markets” includes foreign exchange and yes interest rates may have a role to play in supporting the value of the £ (see Norman Lamont’s embarrassing exit from the ERM back in the day when he tried to “buck the market”) , but I am thinking more of the market for government debt including especially the primary debt market.
This is worth a read in the context of a discussion of public debt and the importance of markets.
When Britain went bust – OMFIF https://share.google/a2SQ8hY99RIySuaAP
@ Tristan,
The ‘market’ for UK government debt can’t be classed as free given that the BoE is a major player, if not the main player. The BoE has recently been reversing its previous QE policy (buying up govt debt) into a QT policy (selling govt debt). The former pushes down interest rates whereas the latter is designed to increase them. The government is acting through the BoE, which has to be regarded as an integral part of government.
So why would anyone want to make the interest payable on loans be any more than it need be? Would you do that with your mortgage costs if you had the power?
So there has to be another motivation. The only possible explanation is because the govt wants high interest rates to increase the value of the pound on the forex markets. In the short term this is a popular policy. Those holidays in Spain can be very cheap! In the longer term it adversely affects the economy of the more industrial regions of the UK.
A high pound policy has probably cost Lib Dems its cherished membership of the EU.
@ Peter
“So there has to be another motivation. The only possible explanation is because the govt wants high interest rates to increase the value of the pound on the forex markets.”
I have to tread carefully because I have no economic training but I suspect the orthodox answer is to maintain price stability.
@ Tristan,
“the orthodox answer {the reason for high interest rates} is to maintain price stability.”
Yes but it’s the same thing effectively. If the pound is high the price of imported produce in ££ is going to be lower than it would be otherwise.
This is the obvious positive. The negatives are:
Our exports are more expensive than they would be otherwise and so we less competitive. Industries close down. Workers lose their jobs.
The inflow of money in the capital account to offset the deficit in our current account leads to an increase in both govt and private debt levels. If we are running a current account or trading deficit someone has to be doing the borrowing to finance that.