In the photo above, Nick Clegg leaves Number Ten Downing Street this morning for an audience with the Queen upon the dissolution of Parliament.
We’ve had many debates on this website about the record of the Lib Dems in government. Nick Clegg has received shedloads of stinging criticism.
Channel 4’s Coalition docu-drama last weekend, though needing to be taken with a pinch of salt, reminded us of the events of 2010 and the formation of the government.
Many critics didn’t expect the government to last for more than a few months. We used to run a question on our monthly LDV survey asking members when they thought the coalition would end. Many thought it would end after a year or so, or at least six months before the election.
I started supporting the Liberal party in 1970 when we had six MPs elected. I was very fortunate to live in one of the constituencies represented by a Liberal MP – North Cornwall. Our MP was John Pardoe who I saw speak several times at the top of a Land Rover by Lloyds Bank, Bude. He was a hugely charismatic speaker who hooked me onto Liberalism.
I never realistically imagined we would form part of the government and spent decades being told by voters that we were irrelevant because we would never be in power.
But we confounded the critics and were part of one of the most stable governments in the last hundred years. We took over when the public were still traumatised from the banking crisis and the Eurozone was in turmoil.
Despite our visceral hatred for many of the things the Conservatives stand for, we rolled up our sleeves and got on with serious government.
I won’t go through a blow-by-blow analysis of what we’ve done and not done, but Caron has provided an excellent account on her blog.
I agree with her – I can’t remember a better government in my lifetime, and I have been knocking around since 1959.
And I think we can pause and recognize that a lot of that success of stable government can be credited to Nick Clegg, who has provided a remarkably steady hand on the tiller during the last five years.
I am very proud of my party and very proud of Nick Clegg.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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164 Comments
“spent decades being told by voters that we were irrelevant because we would never be in power.” and now we have been in power and are being told people won’t vote for us again for decades – not really a good exchange.
The 1997 Blair Government was better as was Wilson 1964-1970 IMHO.
The greatest leader the party has ever had, and the best statesman this country currently has by miles.
It is a shame that a combination of bad press and ignorance about internationalist values and globalisation may see him booted out.
Harold ‘the pound in your pocket’ Wilson did keep Britain out of Vietnam but many in the Labour movement were disillusioned by the end of the 1960s. Britain remained a low wage economy.
Bliar I think is the name for 1997.The economy brought to its knees by 2008. Worse the Middle East war started in 2003 now looks unstoppable.
All very good, but not many 2010 Lib Dem voters agree judging by the polls.
@PBBrown Ah, the wisdom of individual ignorance.
Clegg has made mistakes – some of them very serious (for the party and – in some cases – for the country). But history will, I suspect, rate him highly.
Clegg has always tried to do what is right, not what is popular. The far left, and nationalists may oppose him, but he will be judged to be on the right side of history.
At least Nick, unlike Cameron, needed to go to the palace….
As for history judging him well? If the decimation of his party is anything to go by, jt won’t….With polls in single figures, and successors lining up, it looks as if Nick will go out on a low
Crewegwyn – if nothing else for proving that coalition can work. Even the Guardian admitted that over the weekend
History will barely mention Clegg apart from the strange destruction of the Liberal Democrats. What lasting reforms has he achieved ? Party Funding ? no. Constitutional Reform ? no. Press Regulation ? no. A Liberal vision of welfare reform ? no. Seeing off UKIP ? no. Seeing off the SNP ? no.
There have been some changes – the personal allowance for income tax but in context of all the other changes to incomes and benefits it is small beer and won’t leave a great or long lasting impact on anything in a few years.
The social reforms under Wilson had massive effects. Blair went wrong after 2001 but implemented Cook-McClennan which is still more than Clegg has managed.
Clegg will be back in coalition with the Tories in 2015. There will be fewer losses of seats than predicted.
Blair did not just go wrong after 2001, he was far too cautious and far too scared of the Sun and the Daily Mail in his first term when he could have pushed further with a large majority (and probably Lib Dem support too).
He agreed to the absurd policy of sticking to Tory spending plans for the first two years (Kenneth Clarke said he wouldn’t have done that if the Tories had won!). He could also have won a referendum on joining the Euro in 1999 with the support of Lib Dems and Pro-European Tories (there were still some back then). If the UK had joined the Euro at the start it would have been much stronger, and I think we would have had to commit to Europe much more.
As for Clegg, and the Coalition, I have a feeling the greatest lasting benefit may well turn out to be the fixed-term Parliament Act. We have also proved that coalitions can work in the UK and go the distance just like they have in Local Government and in Scotland. There have been other triumphs, such as raising tax thresholds, the triple lock on pensions, and equal marriage, the problem is we were saddled with a poor reputation for trustworthiness after the tuition fee debacle, and we got the blame for Tory policies like the Bedroom Tax, and top down NHS reforms.
For those who have no time for Lib Dems they will always speak in derogatory ways. But history will say that after the most disastrous years this country had seen for 100 years and an election result that fuelled concerns and uncertainty.the Lib Dems led by Nick Clegg saw their responsibility and stepped up to the plate. With some mistakes on balance the country is moving in the right direction. At the 2010 election journalists said that whoever took up the mantle of government would have to take such unpopular decisions they would not be reelected for twenty years. Well Nick and party stepped forward and they should be congratulated not villifiefd
Nick may not be back in Parliament in May; unless the Tories form the government and he can get Cameron to give him a seat in the HoL.
You Gov poll 1% in Scotland, Ashcroft today 6% nationally. Cannot do much against that. Most of us have now stopped living in dreamland. We appear to be heading for the worst average seat election vote for the party since it the Liberal Party was e formed what 160 years ago. Our only salvation will be to get into opposition and peacefully regroup under a new leadership.
His legacy our party devastated. 75% of Councilors lost, 95% of EURO MPs lost , vote share down by 70%, MPs down by probably half to three quarters and resignation on May 8th. Showing coalition does work and destroying your party in the process is a pretty rum deal.. What I am interested in, does he care?
Nick had a majority of 15,000 votes in Sheffield Hallam in 2010- and that was over the Tories. Labour came third. If Labour can take Sheffield Hallam they should be in government by a landslide.
And we’re still in government with the Tories- ministers sitting together, working together. If the numbers are right, this government could simply carry on uninterrupted by the Election. I don’t like that idea, I’d like us to vote on the coalition again, but I’m not sure we would be able to.
Stimpson 30th Mar ’15 – 6:59pm
“Clegg will be back in coalition with the Tories in 2015. There will be fewer losses of seats than predicted.”
Staggering arrogance.
This party and its unique philosophy seeking to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community
are vital to this country and its people. We are merely its temporary custodians.
Clegg’s biggest mistake was to assume that his personal take on Liberal Democracy was bigger than the party, its traditions, members, supporters and voters.
This party is not one of soggy equidistance, it is proudly LIBERAL and DEMOCRATIC.
Much of what has been written and said about Clegg has been unfair but, I am sorry to say, he has brought it upon himself and even worse on this party.
Regarding fewer seat losses, I hope that comes to pass. If it does it will be down to local campaigners working in their communities.
I look forward to us returning to being THE party of social justice Liberalism.
One thing you have done is privatise the Probation Service and in todays news hundreds of Probation Officers are going to be made redundant and replaced by check in machines. Are you proud Mr Clegg? It sounds like an April Fool but it is not. Check out the Guardian.
Clegg turned out to be just another politician drunk on the outdated theories of Milton Friedman. After the crash of 2008 I think it’s fair to say many were expecting something different from a party that’s not supposed to be of the right.
Philip Thomas: You had me thinking for a moment, but there would be no coalition agreement so I do not think carrying on could happen. Nonetheless, I think you have a point to raise the question of who makes up the continuing government. Without the need to form a new government, could negotiations drag on for weeks if the numbers added up? But how would Parliament be reopened and how could there be a Queen’s speech?
I do not think that to “simply carry on” the government is a realistic possibility and in any case the precedent of a supporting vote from the Party has been set.
Although I do not agree with the emphasis he places on centrism, I do think that Nick Clegg and others – Vince Cable and (wincing somewhat) Danny Alexander do deserve credit and that much of the opprobrium heaped upon them will be hard to account for in the passage of time.
A further thought is that although we anticipated coalition to be costly to Lib Dems, we now know how costly. Whichever of the larger parties tries to form a coalition in the future should be in no doubt that the price of coalition has gone up and should be expected to concede that much more.
Steve Comer – Blair’s biggest betrayal was his failure to reform the voting system, which was after all in his manifesto. Consequently the schadenfreude that will arise through the imminent destruction of Labour in its Scottish heartland by the capriciousness of FPTP has an added piquancy
Steve Comer, I thoroughly agree with you about the Fixed Term Parliament Act. It is normally overlooked but it revolutionises politics in this country because it takes away the constant “will he/she or won’t she/he?” (call an election) nonsense.
Privatisation of the probation service was a sensible decision. Hopefully the police and armed forces will be subjected to global market competition in order to raise standards and break monopolies.
Since Nick Clegg became leader they have lost over 20,000 members, nearly half their council seats and all bar one of it’s euro MP’s. The current polls have them losing two thirds of their vote at the GE – and that’s not a one off poll, it’s been like that for many months now. In Scotland and Wales they are on track to be behind the Greens, Nationalists and UKIP in share of the vote. I’m fairly sure that whatever those millions of ex-LibDem voters feel towards Nick Clegg it’s not proud.
Stimpson 30th Mar ’15 – 9:08pm …Privatisation of the probation service was a sensible decision. Hopefully the police and armed forces will be subjected to global market competition in order to raise standards and break monopolies.
Meanwhile on planet earth…
Last time there was a global competition between various armed forces was about 70 years ago. Before my time, but I understand it was widely considered to have been a Bad Thing.
Clegg talks as if he had no options. He did. A minority Tory government would have collapsed within 12 months. And with Labour in disarray at the time, a fresh election would have seen the Lib Dems increase their vote into the 30s, making the stronger king makers. Even the intentions of Clegg were morally sound, history will judge the coalition as the Lib Dems self inflicting defeat from the jaws of victory.
Tabman: Yes I agree Blair could probably have got the ‘Jenkins’ electoral reform package. I think not doing so was a bit of a sop to his old Labour backbenchers, especially those from the safe seats in Scotland and the North of England.
However the bigger mistake on electoral reform was I’m afraid made by Liberal Democrat members of the coalition negotiation team. They went for an AV Referendum for Westminster rather than pushing for PR for Local Government elections. I think the latter might have been achievable, Pickles and his colleagues hold local democracy in contempt anyway, and PR would ensure a Tory presence in otherwise hostile territory (as it has in Scotland).
I’ve always felt Westminster would be the hardest nut to crack in getting PR, if only because your area asking turkeys to vote for Xmas, and MPs like to kid themselves that they have the finger on the pulse of 65,000 voters.
Ah, John Pardoe:
“But the present situation is gloomy. One per cent. of people in the country now earn 35 per cent. of the national wealth and 10 per cent. own 76 per cent. of our national wealth. We cannot allow this to continue. The wider distribution of wealth is essential to the full and positive liberty which is the hallmark of the Liberal society.”
Stiofan Hinde: that is an extraordinary judgement. With turbulent financial markets why would the public be induced to give increased support to Lib Dems? Cameron would surely have chosen the best moment for the Tories to go back to the country.
That is not to say that there has not been naïvety. There probably was a better way to handle the tuition fees issue, perhaps it would have been better to freeze the issue but encouraging those worst affected to bring more public pessure for change, but there is limited point tothese hypotheticals of the past.
I expected better of Liberal Democrats than to confuse and conflate two very different attributes. A passable minister does not have to be good at leadership. As we have found out. To be fair, this is not confined to one individual.
As a non-Lib Dem, I agree with Paul Walter that the Lib Dems have much to be proud of. The thought that Cameron might have a majority in five weeks or so fills me with horror and disgust and certainly concentrates the mind on all the good things the Lib Dems have done to rein the Tories in for the past five years.
What a tragedy that all this good work has been completely undone – several times over – by two catastrophic errors: the rose garden, and breaking the tuition fees pledge. Most voters will never give Clegg any credit for anything, because they think like the young doctor interviewed on Five Live earlier this evening. He lives in Sheffield and, as a student, voted for Clegg in 2010. When asked if he would vote for Clegg now he dismissed the notion out of hand as if it was the most ridiculous suggestion he’d ever heard. I can’t remember his exact words but he said something like “we all know what he did…”
It didn’t have to be this way. To left-leaning voters like myself, Clegg was genuinely one of the greatest people on the planet for that heady few days in 2010 between the election and the rose garden. He blew it.
My vote for the best government of my lifetime goes to Thatcher 1979-1983 and 1983-1985.
The Coalition 2010-15 comes out in mid-table. The best Lib Dem contribution was Steve Webb’s pension reforms. But there have been so many missed opportunities, and of course the early tuition fee reverse made enemies of many from the start.
2/10 ( where have I heard that before! )
@Stuart
“He lives in Sheffield and, as a student, voted for Clegg in 2010. When asked if he would vote for Clegg now he dismissed the notion out of hand as if it was the most ridiculous suggestion he’d ever heard. I can’t remember his exact words but he said something like “we all know what he did…””
It is a fair challenge, but I just wonder about the vast, vast swathes of broken promises by Labour between 1997-2010 and the Tories in the last five years and still can’t work out how one policy that couldn’t be delivered compares to the countless ones by other parties.
Labour pulled the rung out from under my years as a student but I see a new generation coming through set to vote happily for a party that did worse to me than the current one has done to them. They broke two pledges with huge majorities, but there we go.
@ Steve Comer
“[Blair] agreed to the absurd policy of sticking to Tory spending plans for the first two years (Kenneth Clarke said he wouldn’t have done that if the Tories had won!).”
That would be the period when Gordon Brown was faithful to ‘Prudence’ and secured by 1999-2000 a budget surplus of 1.5% of GDP – quite right too, since the economy was above trend and growing at about 3.5%. Far from being “absurd”, this was absolutely the right stance. A pity he then abandoned his prudent ways and drove the budget into a deficit of 3.4% of GDP (4.1% on a cyclically-adjusted basis) by the end of Labour’s second term.
“He could also have won a referendum on joining the Euro in 1999 with the support of Lib Dems and Pro-European Tories (there were still some back then). If the UK had joined the Euro at the start it would have been much stronger, and I think we would have had to commit to Europe much more.”
Frustrating Blair’s pro-euro designs is something I will give Brown due credit for. The cross-party establishment support for the single currency (which there had also been for the ERM) was a classic example of fashionable groupthink getting a big call wrong. If the UK had joined the single currency there is no reason to think we would have made it “much stronger” for it would not have addressed the fundamental structural design flaws of this hubristic project. We might be a proud nation but we cannot defy economic logic or work miracles. In all likelihood it would amplified the property bubble during the boom years, exacerbated the bust and left us locked in a debt-deflation trap without the one thing (independent monetary policy) that has helped keep the wheels on the wagon.
On a more limited point, it is sometimes claimed that – as dutiful followers of the letter of EU obligations and agreements – the UK would somehow not have allowed countries to breach the deficit limits during the early/mid 2000s, that we would have insisted on sticking to the building blocks on which the credibility of the euro was supposedly founded. But the frugal Germans were among the first offenders back then (since their economy was briefly in a funk), and we in Britain were breaching the Maastricht limits anyway (even though our economy was humming along) so we would have been in no position to lecture southern Europeans on fiscal profligacy…
“I can’t remember a better government in my lifetime …. I am very proud of my party and very proud of Nick Clegg.”
That’s the way to quieten troubled consciences and win back all the doubters!
And as for Ken Clarke’s comments about Gordon Brown sticking to his spending plans in the first two years, they say everything about Clarke’s engaging candour and were intended as a tribute to Brown’s early – if all too short-lived – prudence.
In the absorbing and insightful book of ‘Chancellors’ Tales’ compiled by Howard Davies, Ken Clarke says the following about Brown’s conduct of fiscal policy:
“Tony and Gordon decided that the best way to stop me going on about the economy [in the 1997 election campaign, when the economy was performing well] was to say that they agreed with me. So they said they would not increase taxation. That surprised me. I would have done it if I had needed to… They would stick to my [public spending] figures – indeed they stuck to my figures in spades…”
In the event Brown did raise taxation (but stealthily) in his first two budgets, and he kept a firm hand on public spending until 2000, completing the fiscal consolidation that had begun in 1993. Clarke, writing in about 2005, takes up the story:
“It was extremely difficult to oppose [Brown] at a time when the economy was doing so well. By the time he took over, the economy was doing well and it continued to do better… He then went into a period where we had an American-led boom which turned out to be an unhealthy boom. For a time the economy began to do roaringly well and their rhetoric constantly harped on our history of recession… Gordon was walking on water until about two or three years ago with the real economy thriving. I think he is heading for a fall… Since Brown has ceased to be prudent, since he became ‘tax and spend’, he has become extremely complacent, and the British public are extremely complacent about the state of our economy.
“The public on the whole I fear are persuaded that somehow we have the finest performing economy in the world, free of problems. Everybody else has problems which we don’t have… But we are getting the argument across that Gordon Brown has increased the burden of taxation to no worthwhile effect, that the levels of public expenditure are now somewhat out of control, and the total level of public expenditure is getting excessive… I also think that the British are steadily losing their competitive position, that our present growth rate is based on dangerous levels of both public and household debt, and that it is not guaranteed to be sustainable for very much longer.”
He nicely conveys the challenge of debating with Brown while he (Clarke) was Chancellor: “He used to produce great, rather content-free, shopping lists. He used to get up and demand a strategy for investment and a strategy for growth and a strategy for jobs. He still goes on in a non-stop recitative which you cannot interrupt. He’s better than he was [at presentation] but I think he is getting more and more vulnerable.”
In these comments (dating, as I day, from 2005) I think Clarke showed some awareness of at least a few of the key vulnerabilities (lax fiscal policy, household debt and misplaced complacency about British economic performance), which put in him in a small minority in the House of Commons. Unfortunately, as we know, neither Ken Clarke nor Vince Cable nor any of Brown’s other adversaries were able to lay a glove on him until the crisis laid bare the underlying fault lines.
‘It is a fair challenge, but I just wonder about the vast, vast swathes of broken promises by Labour between 1997-2010 and the Tories in the last five years and still can’t work out how one policy that couldn’t be delivered compares to the countless ones by other parties.’
Including, ATF, Labour’s pledge pre-1997 not to introduce tuition fees. You’ll remember that after that election Labour had a healthy overall majority; so could do anything they wanted; no pesky coalition partners to accommodate, yet they still introduced tuition fees. Yet everybody seems to have forgotten that.
Similarly with the SNP. who promised to bring in a Local Income Tax, while they were a minority government, then gave up saying there was ‘no consensus’. Fair enough, but they have now had an overall majority in Edinburgh for 4 years and have only now started making noises about trying to replace the council-tax. It will be interesting to see what if anything they come up with before the 2016 elections and if it is actually ‘local’ or determined centrally, as they proposed last time. And there was the small matter of promising to cut class sizes in primary schools, down to 18 if I recall correctly, which they also didn’t manage to fulfil. Yet both these failures to keep promises are apparently wilfully ignored by everybody; only LibDem failures are remembered, it seems.
Bolano: You mention John Pardoe. Not sure where he came into this, but it reminded me of Denis Healey’s memorable verdict on Pardoe after working with him during the Lib-Lab pact: “He was robust and intelligent enough, but sometimes I felt he was simply Denis Healey with no redeeming features. More than once [Treasury Chief Secretary] Joel Barnett had to pick up he pieces after we had sent the crockery flying.”
Of David Owen, Healey remarked that he had a ‘rebarbative’ personality. On another occasion Healey, the master of put-downs, was earthier: “The good fairies gave the young doctor almost everything: thick dark locks, matinee idol features, a lightning intelligence – unfortunately the bad fairy made him a shit.”
As I’ve observed before, I reckon the quality of political insults has gone down since then, in direct proportion to their increased quantity…
It is too early to try to say how Nick Clegg will be viewed by history. Yes history will say that this coalition government was stable and it might say it made coalitions more acceptable. It has been said that Asquith’s decision to support the Labour government rather than form a coalition in 1923 was a major factor in the decline of the Liberal party (at the time coalitions were very unpopular). Whether our decision to go into coalition will go down as a factor in the death of the Liberal Democrats only history will say.
How does one judge a government and decide this one has been the best for 50 or 60 years? Maybe the Labour government of 1964-70 was the best. I still think the Labour government of 1974-79 was good, but it made mistakes. I don’t think this government has handled the economy better than any government in the last 70 years. Maybe the Conservative governments between 1951 and 1964 were better. They were some of the best Conservative governments. This government has made life harder for the unemployed and long term sick or disabled. It has made the law more difficult for lots of people to afford. Yes there have been some good policies, but do they out balance the bad?
@ boy sayer
I don’t understand how you could say that the Brown government years were the most disastrous years for 100 years, worse than the National Governments of 1931-39?
@ ATF
Perhaps there are two factors which make the tuition fee increase so bad for us. It was not just something in the manifesto, but every MP signed a pledge not to vote to increase tuition fees and the party promised a new type of politics one feature of which was no more broken promises.
Being “very proud of ourselves” is exactly what the public loathe. Sigh….
Paul, apologies, I missed your own reference to John Pardoe in the main article. I like the idea of him and Healey sending the crockery flying and Joel Barnett having to pick up the pieces! I was also tickled by this Pardoe quote, courtesy of the Dictionary of Liberal Quotations, on the subject of the Liberals’ October ’74 campaign: “Everything was arranged down to the size of our wellingtons. Only no one had given any thought as to what we were supposed to be saying.” Harsh but fair perhaps…?
I’m not prepared to prophesy final doom for the Liberal Democrats, whatever happens in these elections; that will depend entirely on decisions to be made afterwards. The Liberal Party went through travails quite as bad and survived. However, it should be understood that we are emerging into a completely different situation. Unlike the Liberals, the Liberal Democrats can no longer claim to be the sole refuge for voters protesting against a duopoly of mirror-image parties. Rather, they have to compete against several possible choices representing a great deal of ideological variety. In this situation, many of the old rhetorical tropes will no longer do and must be abandoned. The Liberal Democrats will have to strike out and forge a distinctive vision, which will not leave them looking like a softer-edged Labour or nicer Tories. The basis for that vision is there; but it has not, as yet, been embraced by the leadership of the Party. And there is not much time; crucial decisions may need to be made in, not just the days but the hours after the elections, and on those decisions the entire future of the Party may depend.
David-1. Yes, the worry I have is about trying to position ourselves equidistant between the Tories and Labour is that this makes us less visible. It is also not a positive message to put forward. Our great new pledges on the environment for example are lost in all this.
ATF “It is a fair challenge, but I just wonder about the vast, vast swathes of broken promises by Labour between 1997-2010 and the Tories in the last five years and still can’t work out how one policy that couldn’t be delivered compares to the countless ones by other parties.”
It’s very simple. Nick Clegg made that very point about other parties breaking “vast swathes” of promises in a Party Political Broadcast, saying he was promising “no more broken promises”. And the Tuition fee pledge was much more than a promise, there were huge posters of LDs signing it and Nick Clegg wrote to students saying it the policy was “fully costed” even with the challenges of the recession because unlike any other party, Lib Dems believed in free higher education at point of use. If you make it the central plank of your campaign that you are more trustworthy than other leaders, you then cannot point at the others when you break your biggest promise and say ‘ but they do it too’. Not without turning voters against you.
More from Stimson, please.
Phyllis, it was fully costed within the context of a Liberal Democrat spending plan. When you work with another party you have to come up with a different spending plan. Had the Lib Dems been governing alone, we would have been able to keep that pledge because we had the plans for funding it.
Caron Lindsay, I was explaining why the Lib Dems’ ‘broken promises’ are judged more harshly than other parties’ broken promises’.
But on your specific point, I am even sure that free higher education is Lib Dem policy any more. It seems that Vince and Nick are quite happy with the current policy even though it is the total opposite of what they said in 2010. Perhaps you can clarify what the position is now, as we all decide who to vote for?
”crewegwyn 30th Mar ’15 – 6:38pm
@PBBrown Ah, the wisdom of individual ignorance.
Clegg has made mistakes – some of them very serious (for the party and – in some cases – for the country). But history will, I suspect, rate him highly.”
I hope we live long enough to see you proved wrong 🙂
”Tabman 30th Mar ’15 – 6:46pm
Crewegwyn – if nothing else for proving that coalition can work…”
We’ve already had proof of coalition’s working.
The Labour & Plaid Welsh government worked in a dignified and effective way, with none of the Rose Garden love in & embarrassment, or constant off [& on] record negativity we’ve seen from both Lib Dems & Tories.
Caron Lindsay 31st Mar ’15 – 8:50am …….Phyllis, it was fully costed within the context of a Liberal Democrat spending plan. When you work with another party you have to come up with a different spending plan. Had the Lib Dems been governing alone, we would have been able to keep that pledge because we had the plans for funding it…..
The difference between pre and post election was not just scrapping tuition fees but tripling them…Big difference!
Caron, had Nick Clegg supported the party policy on tuition fees, we could have implemented it. You know that Lib Dem MPs even secured the option not to vote for an increase but Nick voted for an increase despite even George Osborne advising him not to. Still as you and Nick Clegg regularly trot out the line that Cameron said we couldn’t afford to raise the income tax allowance could you explain how that differs from your line that we can’t afford free tuition fees, but can afford pupil premium, free school meals, and borrowing £100 billion a year for other things but have no money for free tuition fees ?
Phyllis: the pledge in 2010 was not to scrap fees, but not to vote for an increase in them. At that point we had a 6 year plan to remove them.
We’ll have to see what the manifesto says on the issue, but I suspect that Labour and the Tories would change the current system because it is going to cost quite a lot in the long term.
It’s also worth remembering that a) nobody has to pay fees upfront like they used to and b) the number of kids from deprived backgrounds going to uni is increasing.
@caractacus I guess it’s about priorities. Raising the tax threshold and taking people on very low incomes out of tax was, I think, of more used to the poorest and most vulnerable workers. Similarly, unlocking opportunities for kids from deprived backgrounds, making a long term investment in their life chances is, I’d say, more important than tuition fees.
There also wouldn’t have been a parliamentary majority for reducing or removing fees. It’s also worth noting that Lib Dem ministers voted for the proposal because Vince had had such a hand in making it fairer than Browne originally recommended, insisting on a higher threshold before people had to start paying back. That makes a difference of I think £74 a month less for those earning less than £21k on new system. Previously they’d have paid from £15k.
It’s not perfect, we screwed up big time, but we are not the devil and what we did put in was wholly targeted at making it fair.
What Caron says about tuition fees (and I’d also add the new funding regime is very fair indeed… LDV passim ad nauseam).
What’s very revealing though is the way the “rose garden” is seen as a big broken promise. It’s revealing about a certain mindset on the left that has never accepted – and could never accept – any coalition involving the Tories. This is despite us being very clear before the election that we would be willing to work with either Tories or Labour.
Julian Tisi Might it be that some voters found it hard to accept Lib Dems enabling a Tory-led government because in some places Lib Dems said ‘ vote for us to keep the Tories out’ ?
Caron Lindsay and Jukian Tisi, I don’t agree with you about tuition fees. However, the question was ‘why are voters judging the Lib Dems’ broken promises more harshly than the other parties ‘ broken promises’ ? ‘ . I’ve given my thoughts on this as have others. We could have a long discussion about tuition fees (as a parent of a first year undergrad in Sept, I have a vested interest in this) but that would derail this thread. In any case we still don’t know what the LD manifesto will say about tuition fees so any discussion would be merely rehearsing arguments already made many times.
But of course, “vote for us to keep the Tories out” wasn’t exactly a lie. The Tories did not get a majority government. They had to compromise. And it would be truly ironic if, in those seats were voters think we betrayed them by letting the Tories in, those voters actually let the Tories in this time around.
PB BROWN “The Labour & Plaid Welsh government worked in a dignified and effective way,”
That’s as may be, but 95% of the UK have no knowledge or experience of it so it’s irrelevant. For the vast majority of the UK all they know about the Welsh parliament is the mess labour has made of their nhs.
Phyllis “vote for us to keep the Tories out.” And that’s exactly what happened. The alternative was a conservative majority government; the coalition was not a conservative government
Philip Thomas – that will indeed be the case in too many places because of the likes of Phyllis and John Tilley and all the other nay sayers and their shrill screams of “betrayal!”
David-131st Mar ’15 – 4:26am
“I’m not prepared to prophesy final doom for the Liberal Democrats, whatever happens in these elections; that will depend entirely on decisions to be made afterwards. The Liberal Party went through travails quite as bad and survived. However, it should be understood that we are emerging into a completely different situation. … … The Liberal Democrats will have to strike out and forge a distinctive vision, which will not leave them looking like a softer-edged Labour or nicer Tories. The basis for that vision is there; but it has not, as yet, been embraced by the leadership of the Party. And there is not much time; crucial decisions may need to be made in, not just the days but the hours after the elections, and on those decisions the entire future of the Party may depend.”
Sadly, the leadership actually rejected the existing vision mentioned above; beyond that I again find myself with a high level of agreement with David-1.
I must be dim, I had thought that the idea was we’d get in a position of power, implement our sensible and popular policies, people would see how they improved things and be more inclined to vote Liberal Democrat. But someone had a better plan, that was we’d get into power, implement 75% of our manifesto (the 50% that was the same as the Tories and the 20% that no one cared about) and tell everyone who voted for us that they were a protest vote, that our costed policies on tuition fees had been unaffordable, that when we said abolish tuition fees we meant treble.
Try telling a child you are going to treble their pocket money and then abolish it to see how easily the words treble and abolish are so easily confused.
Indeed Philip you could argue that the coalition marked the end of Thatcherite conviction conservatism and a return to the more pragmatic version of the 50s and 60s. And that is no mean achievement
“@caractacus I guess it’s about priorities.” quite – it wasn’t Nick Cleggs priority, he opposed the party tuition fees policy in private and didn’t actually agree with it. He should have resigned.
“There also wouldn’t have been a parliamentary majority for reducing or removing fees.” and how did we demonstrate that as a party? did we put it to a division ? No we didn’t.
“Vince had such a hand in making it fairer than Browne originally recommended”
The Browne review was set up by the last Labour Government – did we really expect to support it recommendations ? No, we knew what the intention of the ‘review’ was and that us why we secured the right to abstain.
The question is not whether it was fairer than Browne but whether it was fairer than the existing system. If the problem we had as a party was repayment starting at £15,000 we could have raised the threshold to £21,000 without any need for us to vote for tripling of fees.
No we are not the devil (hey I didn’t even get a vote on tuition fees, but Nick still blames me for him making a pledge)
but lets not pretend we didn’t put out leaflets pointing out Labour and Tory broken promises on tuition fees, and yes people did punish them and that is why the Lib Dem support amongst students was so high and why it has crashed so low.
@Tabman
I think that is going too far. Rather, the Tories have moved significantly to the right of Thatcher (and particularly to the right of Major- as symbolised by what has happened to the last survivor of the Major administration, Ken Clarke), but the coalition has largely concealed this movement from the electorate, so that the electorate don’t realise just how awful a Tory majority would be.
Caractacus. Your characterisation doesn’t really make any sense. A better analogy would be a parent telling their teenager that if they got a promotion they would take them on a holiday, but then having their hours significantly reduced. The freedom to make spending choices is very different in each case.
” you could argue that the coalition marked the end of Thatcherite conviction conservatism and a return to the more pragmatic version of the 50s and 60s. And that is no mean achievement”
So benefit sanctions and the bedroom tax that even Thatcher wouldn’t have contemplated are pragmatic conservatism ? The £24 billion housing benefit bill and £13 billion tax breaks given to private sector landlords represent a return to the McMillian build 3000 council houses a year ? The extension of right to buy with bigger and bigger subsidies and massive hand-outs for a select few under help to buy represent a return to affordable housing ?
Average income £25,000, minimum wage £12,375 average house price £273,000 (source = Lib Dem Campaigning Stats Update)
Philip Thomas – could you imagine Thatcher going into coalition?
I have been defending our party and its role in the coalition since 2010, but when I read articles like Paul Walter’s, I don’t know why I bother.
Sure, the Liberal Democrats have had some influence on this government, and many people who find this government horrendous just don’t realise how much that influence has stopped it being even more horrendous. But it is a government whose main thrust is inevitably that of the Conservative Party, and while it may have shifted in a liberal direction on a few old-style small-c conservative issues, the Conservative Party continues to move to the hard right on the key economic policies.
Whatever is meant by “I can’t remember a better government in my lifetime, and I have been knocking around since 1959”, people will interpret words like that as us giving full endorsement to these hard right economic policies. I joined the Liberal Party in the 1970s to oppose those sort of policies, not to support them. I was an active member of the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats for decades because I felt my party was the most effective opposition to the Conservatives, and could win votes and seats from them that Labour could never manage.
Yet, SO MANY people who I in the past persuaded to support the Liberals and Liberal Democrats are now disgusted with us and are saying “never again”. I have tried and tried to put the case that we were in a difficult situation in May 2010, that had we not joined the coalition we would have had a minority Tory government which would have manipulated things to call another general election early and gain a majority, that even though it may not appear to be so, actually we have achieved much in this coalition. I have probably, HERE in Liberal Democrat Voice, argued the case more than anyone else that our “U-turn” on tuition fees was actually a clever compromise, and so the right thing to do under the circumstances. I am not listened to, in part because of the “nah nah nah nah nah” attacks on us from Labour, a party I still despise, but in part because those creating our national image and people like Paul Walter seem to keen on supporting what the “nah nah nah nah nah”s are saying by using words that the sceptical DO interpret as us only being interested in government office for Mr Clegg and a few of those surrounding him, and us giving uncritical support to the sort of right-wing policies that we used to be against.
Sorry, Paul, I do not know what you think you are playing at here, but I cannot go out and defend the party when people like you are kicking down my defence argument. I give up. Please, Liberal Democrat central organisation, send me no more communications asking for my help in this election. With people like Paul Walter dominant, I can give NO SUPPORT whatsoever to the party in this general election.
Got that Paul? YOU are the final straw. Get lost the lot of you, I don’t want the party called “Liberal Democrats” that you have created, and neither do all the people I know who used to support the Liberal Democrats.
@Tabman- if she had to, yes. And Major would have taken to coalition like a duck-to-water, probably preferring us to his right-wing colleagues!
@Matthew. Please come back and help us after the election. We’re going to need you- and those like you.
“Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems can be very proud of themselves”….
The thought behind these sorts of LDV articles are one reason why, in May, I and many thousands, who have almost always voted LibDem, won’t…… Spin it any way you like but the last five years have been an unmitigated disaster for the LibDem party and for the weakest in our society….. I always considered myself, as a LibDem, far closer to Labour than the Tories but, month after month, LDV have article after article criticising Labour and few, if any criticising the Conservatives……
What pride there can be in seeing hundreds of hardworking LD councillors and 9 MEPs disappearing from the political landscape, is beyond me…. I’m fed up with hearing how the electorate don’t understand us (rather like a husband caught in an affair) instead of facing the fact that Farron’s 2 out of 10 was, if anything, rather generous….
I’ve gone! Will I come back? I really don’t know…
Shock post of the day?
In no particular order, 10 policies I believe we can reasonably be proud of during this parliament:
Equal marriage
Pupil premium
Significantly raising the profile of FGM
Raising the profile of mental health issues
Blocking Beecroft’s ‘business reforms’
Blocking automatic replacement of Trident
Green investment bank
Boosting appenticeships
Extending the right to request flexible working to all employees
Raising the tax threshold to £10,600
Matthew Huntbach31st Mar ’15 – 11:10am
I must agree that I too am completely turned off by attempts to elevate certain people from within leadership circles to hero status.
I would suggest that deference should not be high in the Liberal mind set. From there it is but a small step to being on the side of the governing instead of on the side of the governed.
If the arguments for voting Lib Dem are but those of Matthew Huntbach and Paul Walter – which I would paraphrase as “the crew are not responsible for us hitting the iceberg” and “hitting the iceberg was the wisest thing we’ve ever done” – then the election is over.
Another tub thumping performance from the uber loyalists on LDV. The party and even worse the values it promotes have been on a course of continuous decline for the last five years and throughout we have had obedient postings on how good things are and how proud we should be and how good Nick is.
So Paul, you “started supporting the Liberal party in 1970 when we had six MPs elected.” And after five years of continuous disaster for Liberal Democracy you are “very proud of my party and very proud of Nick Clegg.” A man who promised an end to broken promises and then broke one without hesitation to get his bum on the back seat of a ministerial limo; a man whose personal target was to double the number of Lib Dem MPs parliament in two General elections – he lost five in his first try and we are now looking at closer to losing half this time; a minister who promised “The biggest shake up of our democracy since 1832” and delivered five year parliaments; a leader who ignored his party’s values, principles and its own conference and voted for Secret Courts – you must be so proud.
Perhaps you will be as proud when unless we ditch Nick Clegg and his dream of turning us into a right of centre minor irrelevance, and return to our traditional values very, very quickly, we could well be down to six MPs in another ten years or so. We won in Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles fifty years ago, an event that continued the great liberal revival in Scotland begun by Jo Grimond. We are now in danger losing it all. You really must be so proud.
You say you listened to John Pardoe in North Cornwall. A seat that has been Liberal for 36 of the last 50 years and has a tradition going back to its creation in 1918 years. Now, according to Lord Ashcroft, it is marginal and the biggest worry that might swing it way from us is Nick Clegg. You must be so proud.
Pride is not a virtue and self-justifying false pride in Nick Clegg’s disastrous leadership in a show of loyalty to the man is a travesty and destruction of Liberal values. I hope one day you will realise your mistake and work tirelessly to put things right, but it is a long way back and it take the efforts of more than our generation to do it. But it has to be done. The alternative is too frightful to contemplate.
Tabman 31st Mar ’15 – 10:52am
Philip Thomas – that will indeed be the case in too many places because of the likes of Phyllis and John Tilley and all the other nay sayers and their shrill screams of “betrayal!”
Hardly “shrill”….And I am surprised the mods let you get away with such ad hominem attacks especially on a venerable commentator such as John Tilley.
Do you think that the Lib Dem leadership might be partly responsible for their own and the Party’s loss of support and possible demise as a national party? Or is it all the fault of John Tilley and myself?
I don’t even live in a Tory-Lib Dem marginal.
Tabman 31st Mar ’15 – 11:08am
Caractacus. Your characterisation doesn’t really make any sense. A better analogy would be a parent telling their teenager that if they got a promotion they would take them on a holiday, but then having their hours significantly reduced. The freedom to make spending choices is very different in each case.
your scenario makes even less sense! The pledge was to OPPOSE any rise in tuition fees. The LDs could have done that by erm.. not voting for the rise in tuition fees (as Tim Farron et al ). Instead they voted FOR tripling them.
And we have differing explanations for why this happened :
1. There was no money.
2. There was money but there were more important things to spend it on.
3. It was a compromise of Coalition.
4. It was the right thing to do because graduates should pay for higher education
5. It was the right thing to do because the new system is fairer,
6. The LD leadership never believed in state funded higher education.
It will be interesting to see what the Manifesto says, and I’m curious to know what LD candidates are saying to voters about future funding of higher education on the doorstep. Lib Dem policy, we are constantly told, is made democratically at Conference. Well that policy passed by Conference is to abolish tuition fees.
Superb post from David Evans.
The point about Five Year parliaments is important. The FTPA is not some revolutionary reform (especially given it can and will be repealed by the next government to have a majority in its own right.. maybe Labour will with SNP support), and the imposition of a five year gaps between elections is not some democratic change.
It was introduced because Liberal Democrats feared that they would not like the result of the next election and therefore wanted to guarantee the longest possible time in power.
Interesting comment from WildColonialBoy, but I think he missed the point with the Fixed Term Parliaments Act – It wasn’t to guarantee the longest possible time in power for the Lib Dems by making it impossible for David Cameron to dump the Lib Dems. It was to guarantee the longest possible time in power for Nick Clegg by making it impossible for the Lib Dem membership to dump him.
David Evans. In the mutual backslapping with WCB you seem to have failed to spot that he is ye olde Labour trole
Tabman – Apart from the fact that I wasn’t slapping WCB’s back but pointing out his error …
@Julian Tisi
“What’s very revealing though is the way the ‘rose garden’ is seen as a big broken promise. It’s revealing about a certain mindset on the left that has never accepted – and could never accept – any coalition involving the Tories. This is despite us being very clear before the election that we would be willing to work with either Tories or Labour.”
As one of those on the left who was so appalled by the rose garden, I don’t think your analysis is correct.
In the days immediately after the election, far from being appalled at the prospect of a Tory/LD coalition, I was absolutely delighted because I saw the inevitable coalition as a massive improvement on the Tory majority government I had feared. For a few days there, Clegg was genuinely my hero – and all the left-leaning people I know felt exactly the same way.
What I expected from Clegg was at least some semblance of the equidistance the Lib Dems had always been careful to maintain. During the campaign, Clegg had rightly rubbished Cameron’s repeated use of the slogan “Vote Lib Dem and Get Labour”. If the outcome had been different and a Labour/LD coalition had been the only viable government, I would have fully expected Clegg to take the attitude “well I don’t like having to work with these people and I have fundamental differences with them, but I’ll hold my nose and do my best for the good of the country”.
That’s exactly the same attitude he should have taken with the Tories – but he didn’t. I watched the rose garden live on TV and felt like I was watching two Tories having a love-in. To be honest – I probably was. It really didn’t have to be that way.
I can’t stress enough that it wasn’t the act of forming a coalition that brassed people off – it was the way in which it was done. Clegg immediately alienated not just every Labour voter in the country (me included), but half his own party to boot. Even as the Lib Dem poll ratings nose-dived, I don’t think Clegg had any sense at all of the mistake he’d made until over two years later when his new buddies stabbed him in the back over HoL reform. By then, it was much too late.
@Caron Lindsay
“Had the Lib Dems been governing alone, we would have been able to keep that pledge because we had the plans for funding it.”
Caron, why do you persist with these two pieces of fiction?
We know that Lib Dem MPs were “able” to keep the pledge – because some of them did so.
We know that there was no urgent need to reform the system on financial grounds – because the new system is costing taxpayers a lot more than the previous one, and will do for many years to come.
The Lib Dems need to find a better narrative on this, because the current one feels dishonest and insults the intelligence of voters.
Stuart. You have self-identified as a Labour voter. I think the “problem” with the rose garden is that it showed that some conservatives could be pragmatic, reasonable people and we saw two individuals surprised that the culture of demonisation, once stripped away, just revealed two guys trying to do their best for the country and finding someone of a like mind.
Unfortunately it didn’t fit with the “all tories are evil” mantra, and when faced with evidence to the contrary of deeply held beliefs there is a tendency for the believer to declare heresy.
@Alex Sabine
Sorry to others for responding to such an off-topic post… but whenever I read some wise-after-the-event analysis of Gordon Brown’s “imprudence”, I feel obliged to point out that this imprudence was so unappreciated at the time that the Tories didn’t drop their commitment to match Labour’s spending plans until as late as November 2008. Even then, they only retreated a tiny amount. This was when the crisis was already well under way.
The Lib Dems, of course, spent the entire period of Brown’s chancellorship saying that he should be spending more.
I’m not convinced Ken Clarke was much of a seer. 99% of predictions on the economy are wrong, but because a lot of people make these predictions, it’s easy to pick out a correct one ten years later and give it more significance than it deserves. (Derren Brown exploited this principle in his brilliant programme “The System”.)
@Tabman
I can appreciate why you might want to see it that way. All I can say is that it’s of no importance to me personally whether Clegg loves the Tories or not, since I am not a Lib Dem. But if I were a Lib Dem, looking at the electoral and polling evidence of the past four and a half years, I’d see very little reason to believe that Clegg hadn’t messed up.
Put it this way – I don’t think any future leader of a junior party in a coalition will ever make the same mistake, whoever they are obliged to work with.
Tabman 31st Mar ’15 – 6:40pm ………Stuart. You have self-identified as a Labour voter. I think the “problem” with the rose garden is that it showed that some conservatives could be pragmatic, reasonable people and we saw two individuals surprised that the culture of demonisation, once stripped away, just revealed two guys trying to do their best for the country and finding someone of a like mind…..
So, in a nutshell, there is no difference between Clegg and Cameron…….If by reasonable you mean ‘top-down’ NHS reorganisation, tripling tuition fees, unregulated ‘bedroom tax, welfare/disability cuts, etc where were these policies in the 2010 LibDem plans?…
.Your words;’finding someone of a like mind’ says much
Tabman, well don’t forget Nick Clegg’s comment when he thought the cameras were off – “at this rate we’ll have nothing to disagree about in the ….. leaders’ debates”.
Expats. Do you believe all Tories are inherently evil?
Expats. Most people have to work with people they wouldn’t necessarily choose to. Often they find that they have more in common than they think. That’s perfectly normal in a workplace; especially if the other party has been demonised. Its certainly been my experience and I date say yours too in your workplace if you’d admit it yo yourself.
Tabman
I don’t believe they are inherently evil – I just believe they are inherently wrong (and frequently nasty but not all of course). Any party that believe Grant ‘Michael Green’ Shapps is worthy of the Chairmanship must be a little bit lacking!
I work with people I wouldn’t choose too in the workplace but I do not throw my values and principles out of the window in an attempt to suck up to them……that is assuming the values and principles are different – which I doubt they are in this case!
I imagine someone like Vince Cable or Farron would have shown a different approach more akin to the the way I would have done. Polite but keep the distance….
@Phyllis. Ed Davey said that Labour’s pledge to reduce fees to £6,000 was “stupid” so I can only assume the Manifesto will defend the £9,000 fee level. I wish the Lib Dems had not only apologised to students but backed that up with a commitment to reduce fees to at least £6,000 with reimbursements to students who didn’t get “under the wire” before fees tripled. Yes I know, we may not have been believed, but ploughing on with a bad policy is worse.
Stuart Moran. The conservatives don’t have a monopoly on bad choices. You may recall we’ve been led by a serial adulterer who expressed admiration for Hitler, someone who was on trial for attempted murder (and was very lucky to be acquitted), an alcoholic, and were a few votes from being led by a perjuror. We also tolerated a child molester.
The rose garden came at the end of six weeks of high intensity campaigning and a further intense week of negotiation. The relief that a deal had been struck was palpable and the huge release of tension in such difficult circumstances could quite easily spill over into bonhomie.
I mostly agree with David, Stephen and Matthew, and whilst I can accept what some of you say about fixed term Parliaments, they are something the party has argued for since at least the ’80s. We have them in local government, the devolved assemblies and for the European Parliament, so why not Westminster?.
Julian: I agree we needed to be prepared to go into a coalition with either Tory or Labour, but I’m very concerned that the party doesn’t back itself into a corner so that the ONLY coalition we can ever have is with the Tories. That is where the FDP in Germany ended up after 1982/3, and look what happened there – they created the space for the Green Party to move into, and there are signs in some towns and cities that we’re doing the same.
For a large proportion of the electorate the Tories have been toxic since the Thatcher/Major era, and still are. So by going into coalition some of that toxicity stuck to us. I have to say I noticed a subtle change on doorsteps when meeting our former voters since 2010. In 2011 some were hostile about us ‘going in with the Tories’ and they voted Labour. By 2014 the views I were getting were more regret that they thought we were different, but that we’d joined the Westminster establishment. We managed to win a lot of these voters back for the local elections, but not for the Euro on the same day (In Bristol our local election percentage was twice as much as it was in the Euros).
I am very concerned that Nick Clegg sees a future for us as a ‘pivot party’ in the way the FDP was pre-1982, and some Continental Liberal parties are now. The problem is the Tories are still toxic with the Nationalists, and Green Party, as well as with large portions of the electorate. So the danger in this ‘Clegg Centre Party’ strategy is that we end up as latter day Liberal Unionsis or Liberal Nationals, and we know from history what happened to them.
Tabman 31st Mar ’15 – 7:24pm ……..Expats. Do you believe all Tories are inherently evil?……
No….However, the current philosophy is that of a 19th century mill owner, those at the bottom serve those at the top…..Make life as difficult as possible for those who are not contributors (Why else would you penalise someone for having a ‘spare’ bedroom even when there is no alternative accommodation?)…..
Phyllis
The pledge was to OPPOSE any rise in tuition fees. The LDs could have done that by erm.. not voting for the rise in tuition fees (as Tim Farron et al ).
Well, not quite, because if the vote against the rise in tuition fees was successful, then they’d also have to say what they’d do instead to pay for universities. If the vote against the rise in tuition fees was successful, but otherwise the budget was as it was, university funding would have been massively reduced and most universities would have had to close down. So, obviously, it was not JUST voting against the rise in tuition fees, it would also require a vote to give more government money to universities to replace what the tuition fees were going to bring in.
Well, ok, so when you do that, where’s the money to come from? So you also have to vote for some extra taxes, or bigger cuts elsewhere to make up for it. Or just more government borrowing.
Expats. And the evidence for your assertions is?
Judy Abel, thanks. I don’t understand how keeping the £9000 tuition fee is possible though if Conference hasn’t voted on it? Isn’t policy decided at Conference? Maybe the Party has voted on it and I missed it…
Totally agree with the rest of your comment. Child no 1 is off to University in September and the thought of starting off with that debt is giving us sleepless nights. Of course we are told that nothing has to be paid upfront or until salary reaches 21k if and when that ever happens, so it seems the repayments are on the ‘never-never’. If that’s the case and nothing is being repaid now, where is the money coming from ? And why were we told ‘ there is no money’? It just makes no sense on any level.
Matthew Huntbach but no-one is paying anything in tuition fees now. And the Universities have not closed down.
??
Paul Walter
“I started supporting the Liberal party in 1970 when we had six MPs elected. I was very fortunate to live in one of the constituencies represented by a Liberal MP – North Cornwall. Our MP was John Pardoe who I saw speak several times at the top of a Land Rover by Lloyds Bank, Bude. He was a hugely charismatic speaker who hooked me onto Liberalism.”
And, correct me if I am wrong, going down the lane out of Crantock just to the south of Newquay, over the little stream that eventually flows into the sea at Polly Joke, one entered David Penhaligon’s Truro constituency.
David, and his position on social Liberalism and nuclear power, were key factors in me joining. Happy days!
Matthew Huntbach in any case, couldn’t some of the money have come from not implementing the Health and Social Care Act.
Expats. Of course no other party has ever fallen victim to the law of unintended consequences.
Matthew Huntbach
“Well, not quite, because if the vote against the rise in tuition fees was successful, then they’d also have to say what they’d do instead to pay for universities.”
According to the Lib Dem 2010 manifesto they had a fully costed plan to eliminate tuition fees over 6 years. So really all they had to do was say what the plans were.
@Mathew Huntbach
Are you really suggesting that’s the answer on the doorstep to Phyllis’ point? I said at the time, for all the reasonableness of the argument its the emotional point that has turned so many people away from this party. You promised change, you promised a different kind of politics. We didn’t get it so don’t be surprised if the electorate takes it revenge.
@ Matthew. A report last year by the Higher Education Commission estimated that three quarters of students will never be able to repay their student debt. The size of outstanding student debt is estimated to increase to more than £330 billion by 2044. This level of debt is not sustainable.
“The [HE] Commission fundamentally questions any system that charges higher education at a rate where the average graduate will not be able to pay it back.” (as reported in the Independent 18th Nov 2014).
Every party is going to have to rethink urgently the current tuition fees model.
I’ve said before we should be proud of our record of government and ashamed of our failure to hold onto our supporters. We need to rally round to ensure 50+ MPs and a moderate voice for 2015. But we need to learn the lessons of Clegg’s mistakes as well as celebrate the successes.
Jackson 31st Mar ’15 – 8:58pm
“ … So really all they had to do was say what the plans were.”
No – all NC had to do was say, “Sorry, you are aware of the pledge Lib Dem candidates have signed. It is quite impossible for us to go back on such a public pledge.
Any fool knows that if we were to break the tuition fees pledge we would be lose all credibility with the students and their parents but that we would also destroy any credibility we had regarding our claim to be different to you and Labour and our offer of a new approach to politics.
My advisors, whom I have specially selected from amongst our very experienced local campaigning base, advise me if I were to do as you suggest, that by 2015, with just weeks to go before the next general election, we’d probably be languishing below 10% in the polls and, having lost much of our activist base, most of our councillors and MEPs, that we would be in danger of getting just 25-30 MPs on the 7th of May and potentially even face the threat of disappearance soon after 2020. I’m not sacrificing my party on that alter thank you very much”. “Next topic?”
Sadly he didn’t and the rest, as they say, is history.
@Jonathan Pile: the problem is it is precisely being proud of our record of government that is alienating our erstwhile supporters (as Matthew Huntbatch so clearly demonstrates).
@ Stephen Hesketh 31st Mar ’15 – 9:48pm
Absolutely right.
The great basic management failure of Clegg and co is that they could not discern between what was urgent and what was important. The least urgent and most important of all was the next election.
@ Stuart
– On the ‘off-topic’ point, I was responding to Steve Comer’s argument about the 1997-2001 Blair government, which itself was a response to the very first comment in this thread by Caracatus. This fairly free-ranging thread has invited comparisons between the performance of the coalition and previous governments.
– For my part I was never taken in by Brown’s mantra of ‘prudence’ after he turned the spending taps on full blast in 2000. I noticed that in every subsequent budget he boasted of what tip-top shape the economy was in, yet still he found it necessary to borrow heavily for year after year. It seemed to me he should have been taking advantage of the benign global environment to strengthen the public finances, not weaken them.
I did not discover LDV until 2006 or 2007 but I remember arguing in my earliest comments (in the members’ forum, since I was then a Lib Dem member) that the fiscal position was dangerously exposed and that public spending needed to be curbed to provide more headroom in the event of a downturn. I have consistently argued that Brown’s over-spending dates back to the start of Labour’s second term (at least) and was not, as many of his more recent critics seem to imagine, a question of him being a prudent Chancellor who suddenly let go of the purse strings when he moved to Number Ten or when the crisis hit.
You are right that George Osborne did not make these arguments and matched Brown’s spending plans until the onset of the financial crisis. This was his worst misjudgement as shadow Chancellor in my view, and it stemmed from his submission for political reasons to Brown’s tendentious ‘investment versus cuts’ dividing line. A few more experienced Tory MPs (notably Ken Clarke and Peter Lilley) had in fact drawn attention to the loss of control over public spending several years earlier, and made this and other salient points about the state of the economy in budget debates. But their insights fell on deaf ears among the modernising Notting Hill set around Cameron and Osborne who were obsessed with rebranding the party and political chess games, and basically swallowed Brown’s bullish rhetoric about the state of the economy.
– It is an exaggeration to say the Lib Dems “spent the entire period of Brown’s chancellorship saying that he should be spending more”. This was true up to the end of Labour’s second term (though to be fair they did not advocate a looser overall fiscal position in 2001-05, since they called for additional tax rises to fund their additional spending commitments). After the 2005 election the Lib Dems dropped their net tax-raising stance in favour of ‘fairer taxes, not higher taxes’ (ie tax reform on a revenue-neutral basis) and keeping within Labour’s overall spending envelope. This went through a number of evolutions culminating in 2008 in a call for net spending cuts (relative to Labour’s baseline, ie smaller increases) offset by net tax cuts – a stance that caused a heated debate in the 2008 party conference.
So it is true that at no time did the Lib Dems argue for a tighter overall fiscal stance than Labour – and indeed in 2004, when Brown was running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP, I remember Vince Cable arguing that government borrowing was not a problem. For me that does take the shine off his claim to have foretold the crisis – while his warnings about the shaky foundations of the economy in terms of household debt and a property price bubble were indeed prescient, the clear implication of that was that the tax base was being inflated by ‘bubble’ revenues and the underlying budget deficit was worse than it superficially appeared. Yet, either because he didn’t spot the link or because the policy implications – spending cuts or tax rises – were politically inconvenient, Vince confined his warnings to the household balance sheet position. In fairness he still deserves more credit than most of his fellow MPs for at least analysing what was going on with the economy in a serious way and identifying some of the key vulnerabilities.
Stephen Hesketh 31st Mar ’15 – 8:20pm
“…….one entered David Penhaligon’s Truro constituency.
David, and his position on social Liberalism and nuclear power, were key factors in me joining. Happy days!”
David Penhaligon had the wisdom during the Lib-Lab Pact to maintain a distinctive radical Liberal position by promoting a “row a day” with the Government’s Labour Ministers. Nobody accused Penhaligon of being the Prime Minister’s poodle. He was a sort of Tim Farron of his time.
What a shame that early in 2010, nobody at the top of our party followed the example ser by Penhaligon. As was mentioned by a former LibDem MP on Ch 4 News last night the big mistake of the Rose Garden Coalition was that NC thought it was his job to “chair” and achieve agreement between two parties, when what he really should have been doing was providing leadership for the Liberal Democrats.
Too busy being DPM, never got into the job of being Liberal Democrat Leader. Too comfortable and too cosy propping up a vicious and out of touch right-wing Etonian Prime Minister.
Phyllis
Matthew Huntbach but no-one is paying anything in tuition fees now. And the Universities have not closed down.
??
Ye-e-e-s, but where do you think the money that pays for my salary as a university lecturer comes from? If we took it at face value, you’re suggesting that I’m working for free in the hope that some time in the distant future I’ll be paid.
The reality is that it DOES come from government borrowing. Or rather, it’s the borrowing that is paid out in student loans that isn’t officially “government borrowing”, but it might as well be, seeing as how it’s guaranteed by government and forecasts are that the generous write-off conditions mean much of it will be paid back by government.
Phyllis
Matthew Huntbach in any case, couldn’t some of the money have come from not implementing the Health and Social Care Act.
Phyllis, could you and Jackson and Peebee and Judy Abel go back to my message of 31st March 11.10am and read it?
Why are all of you arguing with me as if I am a devoted supporter of Clegg and everything he does? Doesn’t what I wrote there suggest something else? This is what makes me fed up with the “nah nah nah nah nah”s like you lot, and it is why I won’t join you. You seem to think there are only two positions that can be taken – yours, which is the completely unrealistic proposition that somehow 57 Liberal Democrat MPs could have got the entire Liberal Democrat manifesto implemented and are bad people because they did not, and the Cleggies’ such as Paul Walter and Caron Lindsay, which is that this government is a super-duper wonderful one and everything it is doing is just what the Liberal Democrats want*.
My position is somewhere in between this, so I find you “nah nah nah nah nah”s arguing me under the assumption that I am a Cleggie, and the same time the Cleggies arguing against me under the assumption that I am a “nah nah nah nah nah”. It has been like this since 2010.
* OK, I know this is not quite their real position, but the point of my earlier message is that the wording they choose to use comes across to most other people as that.
Phyllis
Matthew Huntbach in any case, couldn’t some of the money have come from not implementing the Health and Social Care Act.
Yes, if the Tories could have been got to agree to that. But then the original plan to subsidise universities completely by tax could have been got through if the Tories could have been got to agree to that. If I had some ham, then if I had some eggs, I would have ham and eggs.
What’s your point here?
Judy Abel
@ Matthew. A report last year by the Higher Education Commission estimated that three quarters of students will never be able to repay their student debt. The size of outstanding student debt is estimated to increase to more than £330 billion by 2044. This level of debt is not sustainable.
Yes, so actually it IS being paid for by the government through government borrowing. Which is what those who said the LibDems should just have voted down tuition fees without regard to how universities are to be paid for are in effect saying they wanted in the first place.
QED, you prove my point.
Matthew H, I’m simply trying to understand the logic of alienating lots of voters by breaking a pledge that encouraged them to vote for you in the first place by arguing that higher education has to be paid for, but then not having any income from tuition fees coming in anyway. No-one is attacking you. If we had Vince here, we’d be asking him but we don’t and you have said that universities would have to close without raising tuition fees to 9k so we are exploring that statement. Your contributions seem to be well-thought through so I am hoping you can shed light on this.
Isn’t politics about debate and discussion?
Peebee
Are you really suggesting that’s the answer on the doorstep to Phyllis’ point?
No, I am just pointing out that government spending has to be paid for one way or another. Why do you think it is a bad thing for me to make that point?
Peebee
You promised change, you promised a different kind of politics. We didn’t get it so don’t be surprised if the electorate takes it revenge.
Who is this “you”? Am I an official spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats? Since my first message in this thread made clear that I am so unhappy with the party’s current image and arguments it is making for its case that I am refusing to give any assistance to it in this general election, it hardly makes sense to argue against me on the supposition that I am so much in agreement with them that there is no difference between “you” meaning Matthew Huntbach and “you” meaning the political party of which I am still just about a member of as presented by a bunch of people at the top who I did not vote for to be in that position and so far as I am concerned are doing all they can to push me out of the party.
Tabman 31st Mar ’15 – 8:15pm ………Expats. And the evidence for your assertions is?
It’s on LDV every day…..We are constantly been told , “How much worse the lives of the weakest in our society would be under a Conservative majority government”….
Peebee
You promised change, you promised a different kind of politics. We didn’t get it so don’t be surprised if the electorate takes it revenge.
Plus, we did not get a Liberal Democrat government. We got 57 Liberal Democrat MPs out of 650 MPs in total.
That is why I think the Cleggies are getting it so wrong. By over-emphasising what the party was able to achieve in that position and by making out it was all wonderful rather than the reality, that it was a miserable little compromise, they are aiding and abetting unrealistic attacks on it such as yours.
The reality was that the Parliamentary balance in May 2010 left the Liberal Democrats in a very weak position, so what they were abel to get out of it was modest, and very far removed from what they wanted. Those of us who have thought long-term about no-majority Parliaments, who have looked at how coalitions work in other countries, who have experienced no overall majority situations in local government in this country knew this. The Cleggies did not, and ignored the advice that we were giving them about the need to be defensive in this situation and not to exaggerate what could be achieved.
expats
It’s on LDV every day…..We are constantly been told , “How much worse the lives of the weakest in our society would be under a Conservative majority government”….
Try reading a few Conservative Party discussion groups. You will find they are full of people attacking the Liberal Democrats for stopping them doing what they wanted to do, and full of people saying there are much more right-wing policies they want to have implemented, but they can’t because the LibDems wouldn’t let them.
To the “nah nah nah nah nah”s, the LibDems have just rolled over and given in to the Tories and done nothing. But to those on the opposite side, that is, real Tories, this is a “LibDem government”, I’ve seen that claim made many times.
The reality is that it’s a compromise. A compromise way to the Tory side, true, that comes from the small number of LibDem MPs and weakness due to no alternative coalition being possible. But it’s a compromise that LOOKS like a pure Tory government only because the Tories have shifted way to the right since the last pure Tory government, so even a compromise looks more right-wing than that was.
Jackson
According to the Lib Dem 2010 manifesto they had a fully costed plan to eliminate tuition fees over 6 years. So really all they had to do was say what the plans were.
Yes, I agree. I feel the tuition fees situation should have been handled as follows – the LibDems put up an amendment to raise whatever tax is needed to pay for it, but without the Tories having an obligation to support it. Then it would be up to Labour whether to support it or not. If they did not, it would show up their “nah nah nah nah nah” attacks on the Liberal Democrats over this issue as hypocrisy.
Phyllis
Matthew H, I’m simply trying to understand the logic of alienating lots of voters by breaking a pledge that encouraged them to vote for you in the first place by arguing that higher education has to be paid for, but then not having any income from tuition fees coming in anyway. No-one is attacking you. If we had Vince here, we’d be asking him but we don’t and you have said that universities would have to close without raising tuition fees to 9k so we are exploring that statement. Your contributions seem to be well-thought through so I am hoping you can shed light on this.
Isn’t politics about debate and discussion?
Yes, but you just aren’t listening to what I am saying. Instead you are just replying with “nah nah nah nah nah” attacks on me under the assumption that because I am still just about a member of the Liberal Democrats I am a Nick Clegg fan and take the Paul Walter line that this government is super-duper wonderful.
I have already explained my logic many times, here and elsewhere. I do not know what I can do to explain it again. Every time I do, all I get is the same “nah nah nah nah nah” attacks back which ignore what I wrote. I appreciate that the situation isn’t helped by people like Paul Walter who wreck my line of defence by their super-super what a wonderful government we have rhetoric. But, it might help if you start by realising that’s not my own position.
Matthew Huntbach 1st Apr ’15 – 10:24am
expats, Try reading a few Conservative Party discussion groups. You will find they are full of people attacking the Liberal Democrats for stopping them doing what they wanted to do, and full of people saying there are much more right-wing policies they want to have implemented, but they can’t because the LibDems wouldn’t let them…
Did you read what I said about Tory values? I believe my assertion that, “The current Tory philosophy is that of a 19th century mill owner, those at the bottom serve those at the top”, was clear enough….
Matthew, You often seem to read, “what you want to have been said rather than what was said”….
I accept that coalition is a compromise but, as I’ve said many times, there should have been ‘red lines’.. Sadly,not only were there no red lines but our leadership seemed to be as enthusiastic about implementing policies, that had “TORY” written in large blue letters on them, as were the Tory front bench…
Alexander appearing on every media outlet espousing Osborne’s budgets…Clegg sitting alongside Cameron nodding at every sentence, and dutifully laughing on cue, are the lasting images of this coalition….
Reading how we can be proud of Nick, when the polls and past results tell us how we’ve failed to hold on to long standing supporters (let alone the ‘floating vote’) is unbelievable…
@ Matthew Huntbach
There are some people on here who do not take the two positions you keep saying everyone does. This is why some people would be unhappy if you stopped posting on this site which was implied in your post of 31st March 11.08 am. And I am one of those people. It is good to see that you are still posting here.
However some people who agree with your general position still have not been convinced by your argument on tuition fees. You are right to point out that students are being financed by government borrowing but because by calling it a student loan it doesn’t count as government borrowing until it has to be written off.
If all of our MP’s had voted against the new tuition fee scheme I believe it would not have been passed. The government then would have had to look at alternative solutions. I believe that the government might have been able to enact some more of our programme to finance the phrasing out of tuition fees to finance the existing system, but not all of it. Of course it might have meant more cuts but if we had not agreed to the Conservative programme to reduce the deficit we could have managed the situation better. However it is not only Nick Clegg who is responsible for this mess, but all those who voted for the coalition agreement that didn’t include a clause saying we would keep our tuition fee pledge. I believe that if this had been one of our red lines the Conservatives would have conceded it to get into government.
Once we had agreed the coalition agreement your alternative solution of moving an amendment to set out how we would finance the phrasing out of tuition fees or just keeping the existing system or just increasing the salary needed to start repayments would have been better than what happened.
expats
Sadly,not only were there no red lines but our leadership seemed to be as enthusiastic about implementing policies, that had “TORY” written in large blue letters on them, as were the Tory front bench…
Yes, and I have said that while I find this suggestion slightly unfair as it ignores a lot of what HAS been done to moderate the worst of what the Tories really want, so much of the way the party’s national image makers put it, and people like Paul Walter and Caron Lindsay saying things like “I can’t remember a better government in my lifetime” helps make this sort of attack on us credible, and undermines the hard work I would want to put in trying to defend my party.
Michael BG
There are some people on here who do not take the two positions you keep saying everyone does. This is why some people would be unhappy if you stopped posting on this site which was implied in your post of 31st March 11.08 am. And I am one of those people. It is good to see that you are still posting here.
Well, I keep wanting to give up, I keep thinking “Why on earth am I trying to defend this party, when its leadership and people like Paul Walter just undermine that defence all the time, why don’t I do what Clegg’s outgoing Director of Strategy told me to do in his New Statesman article?”. But then I keep hitting this profound illogicality of the “nah nah nah nah nah”s, and maybe it’s the Computer scientist in me kicking in, I just have to point it out, they are being illogical.
ALL I did was to point out what I thought was rather obvious – that if the government provides something, then it has to find a way to pay for it, and there we go, the “nah nah nah nah nah”s all jumped in, attacking me as if I were a Cleggie, as if I thought the same thing as Paul Walters does or give the impression that he does, that this is a super-duper wonderful government doing just what he would want a government to do.
Then we go through rounds and rounds of me trying to explain that, no I’m not a Cleggie, and thinking that if only I can get the words right, they’ll see what I’m saying, but they don’t, oh no, it’s more “nah nah nah nah nah” because I can’t agree with their position that 57 Liberal Democrat MPs could have caused a government which is 100% Liberal Democrat to come into agreement, and ALL Liberal Democrats (myself included) are very bad people for not having made that happen.
Michael BG
If all of our MP’s had voted against the new tuition fee scheme I believe it would not have been passed. The government then would have had to look at alternative solutions.
Right, so what do you think the Tories would have done? Said “Oh well, let’s increase taxes to whatever is necessary to pay for it” and everything else is the same.
If that is what you think would happen, you are bloody naive. Bloody naive, I say that in a heartfelt way.
Michael BG
If all of our MP’s had voted against the new tuition fee scheme I believe it would not have been passed. The government then would have had to look at alternative solutions.
The alternative solution would have been to pay for it by BIG cuts. If you think this wouldn’t have happened, it ALREADY HAS in Further Education, and it already has in local government. Having been a councillor up to 2006, and we were often struggling then, I just cannot comprehend how local government can possibly manage the cuts that have been pushed on it under this government.
The Tories would have loved to have been able to make those cuts. Close down all the old ex-polytechnic universities, with their trendy lefty head-in-the-clouds lecturers (as they see it), no bother to them as none of their children go to those universities. Best of all for the Tories, they and their friends in the press would push the message again and again and again, “Oh dear, sorry we had to do it, but the LibDems forced us to do it so they could keep their pledge”.
Vince Cable has sort of hinted at this, in discussing what Labour plans to do, and since he was in the middle of it, he does know what he is talking about. If you keep universities under direct government subsidy with the Tories in government, you WILL get big cuts in them, just as other areas of government spending are having big cuts.
Me
as if I thought the same thing as Paul Walters does or give the
Sorry, that should be “as if I thought the same thing as Paul Walter does or give the”.
Nick Clegg on course to lose seat at election, according to Lord Ashcroft poll…..
Pride comes before a fall?
Expats. I’ll bet with you, lower pays £50 to the charity of the other’s choice, that labour won’t take hallam
*loser
Matthew – As you know, I agree with your oft-repeated mantra that everything has to be paid for somehow and parties should be honest about how this is done. But the choices are not as limited, or as black-and-white, as you present them.
In opposition Vince Cable used to argue that large savings could be made from the very department he is now running. Lib Dem policy was to shut down what was then the DTI and transfer some residual functions to other departments, scaling back industrial subsidies while also pruning central administrative costs. And beyond the BIS budget, there were other savings that could have been made. The government could, for example, have restricted the generosity of pension uprating by puting it on the same indexation basis as that used for working-age recipients of benefits and tax credits, rather than introducing the triple lock.
None of this would have been politically easy but there is always a range of realistic choices in a budget of £700 billion, even once a given total spending ‘envelope’ has been agreed.
I don’t believe the decision to raise the tuition fee cap was taken because the teaching grant was “unaffordable” in a strict fiscal sense. I think it was taken because the key decision-makers (Tory and Lib Dem, and specifically including Vince Cable) decided it was a lesser priority than other items of spending from which it was quite feasible to prune the same (net) £2 billion or so.
Given the need to make the “tough choices” in public spending of which the Lib Dems had spoken since 2005, Cable, Nick Clegg and other senior Lib Dems had long been sceptical of the Lib Dem fees policy and tried unsuccessfully to change it. Having failed in that attempt they did manage to get it downgraded to a second-order commitment (ie not one of the four flagship manifesto commitments), and it was consistent with that approach that when it came to the coalition negotiations that they did not make HE finance a ‘red line’.
On the other hand, since they were saddled with a policy which they didn’t want but which had an obvious appeal to students, they (or somebody with responsibility for the Lib Dem election campaign) decided they might as well get as much political capital as they could out of it. Hence the fateful decision to sign the NUS pledge, which turned out to be a boomerang when they did the opposite in government.
But the idea that was a mad panic to save a couple of billion pounds and that trebling fees was the only conceivable or feasible means of doing this is not credible in my view. There was a much wider context to this decision, and in many ways it was perfectly justifiable in policy terms. It was underestimating the political and reputational hit of the broken pledge that was the big misjudgement in late 2010.
I would certainly qualify the statement in the OP, but overall, just, Clegg can be commended for his work in coalition. However, he should stand down, simply because he’s lost the trust of the public over how he managed the ‘optics’.
Can I vote for you Alex?
@Matthew Huntbach
“The alternative solution would have been to pay for it by BIG cuts.”
So you keep saying, but what evidence do you have that the reforms saved the government money? Most of the reports we hear seem to be to the contrary, such as this :-
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/mar/21/student-fees-policy-costing-more
If you’re going to argue that what the Lib Dems did was excusable because the country could not afford to do otherwise, then it’s pretty darned important to establish whether the scheme is really saving us money or not, don’t you think?
@Alex Sabine
“they [senior Lib Dems] were saddled with a policy which they didn’t want”
Though it was a policy their party wanted. Perhaps the leadership was just saddled with a party they didn’t want?
@Michael BG
“I believe that if this had been one of our red lines the Conservatives would have conceded it to get into government.”
Of course they would. Why on earth would they have not? The amount of money expected to be saved – even by what proved to be the over-optimistic estimates of the time – was small beer in the overall scheme of things. Nor were the Tories driven by any sort of ideological obsession with trebling tuition fees. Their manifesto was entirely non-committal on the issue. It was a massively important issue to the Lib Dems but a relatively unimportant one to the Tories – which makes it all the more mysterious that the Lib Dems caved in so easily.
Even if we accept, as many do (including Alex), that the leadership was saddled with a policy it didn’t want and was happy to get rid of it, it simply beggars belief that said leadership, who had all been photographed signing giant pledge cards just a few months earlier, could not foresee the political consequences.
Has anybody ever actually ASKED the Lib Dem negotiators why exactly they did what they did? I know Laws wrote a book, but obviously I wouldn’t bother reading it.
Tabman 1st Apr ’15 – 6:15pm
“Can I vote for you Alex? [Sabine]”
Don’t waste you time Tabman, Alex has Liberal sympathies!
Stuart 1st Apr ’15 – 6:41pm
[[@Alex Sabine “they [senior Lib Dems] were saddled with a policy which they didn’t want”]]
“Though it was a policy their party wanted. Perhaps the leadership was just saddled with a party they didn’t want?”
Hmmm Not sure about that Stuart; clearly they wanted the party – it was just the traditional Liberal Democrat supporting members they didn’t want 😉
Stuart
@Matthew Huntbach
“The alternative solution would have been to pay for it by BIG cuts.”
So you keep saying, but what evidence do you have that the reforms saved the government money?
I am not claiming that it did.
If you’re going to argue that what the Lib Dems did was excusable because the country could not afford to do otherwise,
But I’m not arguing that.
Perhaps if you did not start from the assumption that I am a Cleggie, we could get somewhere.
@ Matthew Huntbach
“you are bloody naive. Bloody naive,”
I have expressed sympathy with your position and expressed my alternative view while not attacking you. Therefore I do not appreciate that you are calling me naive.
I don’t accept your view that the Conservatives would welcome reducing the number of university places. Do you have any evidence or is it just a personal view?
You seem to want to make this a black and white issue, (which you are always criticising others for) but I want to explore the grey.
If you have misinterpreted what I wrote I will try to clarify it. I do not believe that the Conservatives would have accepted all of our financial changes to finance keeping tuition fees unchanged. I do not believe we could have got the Conservatives to agree to phrase out tuition fees.
The Conservatives did not identify Higher Education as an area of massive cuts. It seems that it was the Browne report that identified Higher Education as an area where cuts could be made. Therefore there was no reason for the Conservatives to wish to slash and burn Higher Education. The tuition fee increase according to the Browne report would not necessary provide extra funding for universities but it should allow them to increase university places.
If we had tuition fees as one of our red lines it does not follow that massive cuts would have been made in Higher Education spending, but they may well have faced cuts. According to the Resolution Foundation Education only 7.5% of Education spending has been cut.
Therefore I do agree with you that the cost of keeping our tuition fee pledge would have likely been that universities would have less money than they have today. How much less would depend on how many of the Liberal Democrat cuts the Conservatives would accept that they didn’t in fact accept and how much could be cut from other areas.
If when discussing cuts we had said we wouldn’t accept tuition fee increases I still believe that the coalition government would not have cut 30% from Higher Education spending, which often seems to be what you are saying.
@ Stuart
“What evidence do you have that the reforms saved the government money?”
There is no “evidence” that can answer this question definitively at this stage; indeed by definition there cannot be conclusive evidence, since the long-run financial impact depends on variables that stretch 30 years into the future.
What we can do is draw tentative conclusions based on certain assumptions – recognising that the outcomes are highly sensitive to the assumptions (which we can safely say politicians will not recognise when making partisan points on either side). In particular, small changes to the projection of graduate earnings over the 30-year horizon make a big difference to the level of loan repayments and therefore to the long-run taxpayer contribution.
Bearing in mind those important caveats, various recent estimates by BIS, the IFS and others suggest there will be a small long-run net saving to the Exchequer. (The IFS estimates that the total taxpayer contribution will be 5% lower than under the old system.) They do not show that the reforms are ‘likely to cost more’ than the old system as the Guardian headline claims – indeed the article itself does not repeat or substantiate that claim. But the proportion of the total loan value that is now expected to be written off does take the long-run financing projection close to the ‘break-even’ point.
However, the IFS point out that a number of estimates of the long-run cost – such as the widely-cited study by London Economics that puts the ‘tipping point’ of loan write-offs above which the new system would cost more than the old one at 48.6% – rely on questionable methodology and are not comparing like with like. This is because “the main uncertainties that could increase the estimated cost of the current system (such as lower earnings growth) would have made the provision of loans under the old system more costly as well” yet this is not taken into account. Therefore, the IFS say, “there is no simple ‘tipping point’ for the proportionate cost of student loans above which the total taxpayer contribution under the current funding system can be said to be greater than that under the old system”.
In view of the inherent uncertainty, it isn’t sensible to make confident assertions about the long-run impact on the public purse. What we can say is that on the current projections the long-run saving will be small and possibly negligible.
Given this inconclusive outcome, you might well ask what the point of all the upheaval was. The most obvious answer is that there has been a clear benefit to the universities themselves (which will hopefully have been passed on to students): the funds available to universities for teaching have significantly increased, from £22,143 per student under the previous system to £28,250 per student under the current system (over the duration of the average student’s course). This represents an increase of 28%.
Per-student funding has risen because the higher fee income which universities are receiving has substantially outweighed the reduction in teaching grants. Part of this was anticipated. But the fact that more universities than the government expected charged the full £9k in annual fees had two effects: the universities received more additional income than expected, and (correspondingly) the government has had to issue higher loans than expected, reducing the proportion that it expects to be repaid. However, the later effect is taken into account in the recent, more pessimistic, estimates of the long-run taxpayer cost; so there is still a big net gain in terms of higher per-student funding.
Stuart
Nor were the Tories driven by any sort of ideological obsession with trebling tuition fees.
Wrong. Ideological obsession was at the centre of it. The Tories are obsessed with the idea that markets are everything, that the answer to any issue is to put it out to the market as that will “drive up quality”. They wanted university funding by something that involved nominal direct payment because they believed this would create a market and drive up quality and drive down costs. They were wrong in this, and I said so at the time it was introduced, and I explained why it would not work as the Tories supposed it would do and I was right.
Instead of creating a competitive market, every university put its fees to the maximum £9,000 because the reality is that students would judge the quality of a university degree by its price. No university would dare charge less than £9000 because it would then be written off by potential applicants as low quality. I could see when it was introduced that this would happen, and that students would regard the money as “funny money” anyway, given the automatic loan entitlement, and in their usual over-optimism would assume they would graduate, earn pots, and pay it all of quickly. So, there is no cost-driven market, as the Tories in their ignorance and ideological obsessiveness supposed there would be. I know that, since I work in that area. Most students are pretty clueless on university quality, they aren’t capable of making a good market judgment, and almost always they make their decision on which university to attend on which is the highest in the league table they can get into. The consequence is that universities put all their effort into research and reduce teaching quality, because it’s research record that pushes you up the league tables.
However, so anxious were the Tories to introduce what they supposed would create this market that drives up quality, that to get it they readily conceded to what was actually very generous state support, as you say, not saving the government money, indeed, the opposite. Oh, disguised in this nominal loans and payback system, sure, but underneath it does involve much the same people paying much the same money as it would be if it were all paid more directly through taxation, or state borrowing paid back by taxation.
You suggest the cost of fully paying for universities through state funding is trivial, so that it could easily be done through fiddling around with tax a bit. But it would be the same amount as is paid in tuition fees overall, so if it is a trivial amount, then why worry about paying back the tuition fees? See, there you go being illogical. It’s trivial amount in tax, you say, but the same amount paid in loan repayment is a horrendously big burden.
So, being so obsessed with this idea of having a market, the Tories conceded to a level of state funded support (albeit disguised) to universities that they would never have agreed to if the same level of support had been given in a less disguised way. All you have to do is look at the massive cuts they’re making elsewhere to see that. The idea you and others have that somehow universities would have been exempt from the swingeing cuts we are seeing elsewhere if they had remained under direct state subsidy is naivety, madness, or at perhaps just driven by your “nah nah nah nah nah” attitude towards the Liberal Democrats.
Oh, I appreciate this argument I’m making is too clever-clever for most people to get. But I’m sorry, it makes sense to me, and I really wish if you lot could get out of your “nah nah nah nah nah” attitudes, you could at least try to see my point.
Michael BG
I don’t accept your view that the Conservatives would welcome reducing the number of university places. Do you have any evidence or is it just a personal view?
Well, they’ve made huge cuts in most other public services apart from the ones they pledged not to (but keeping NHS funding at a steady level is actually huge cuts due to demographic pressures pushing requirements up). So isn’t it up to you to give a reason why you think they would have made universities exempt from the level of cuts they have imposed on local government, Further Education, etc? Especially as they would have been able to blame the Liberal Democrats for the cuts.
Michael BG
If when discussing cuts we had said we wouldn’t accept tuition fee increases I still believe that the coalition government would not have cut 30% from Higher Education spending, which often seems to be what you are saying.
Please follow this link. As it says, “Councils are currently half way through a scheduled 40 per cent cut in funding from central government”. So if all the vital services that council provide are being cut by 40%, in the face of opposition from people who benefit from those services, what makes you think universities wouldn’t even get 30% cuts, when those cuts would result in far less screaming and shouting and wouldn’t hit people who bother to vote nearly as much as cuts to local government?
Michael BG
You seem to want to make this a black and white issue, (which you are always criticising others for) but I want to explore the grey.
No, I don’t think so. I think it’s me that’s being pragmatic, and looking at what it actually means in terms of how it works underneath, who pays what, and you and others who are refusing to see it in those terms and so being black and white about it. You are seeing the black and white division between direct state funding and what we have now, I am seeing it in terms of grey, and seeing that underneath actually the difference is not so much as might be supposed.
And all of this comes about just from me saying “If the government provides something, it has to be paid for in some way”. Jeez, having started off here angrily denouncing the Cleggies, the inability of their opponents to get this rather basic point and so their getting angry with me about making it and about trying to find a pragmatic way to deal with it that the Tories would swallow is starting to make me think that perhaps the Cleggies do have a point about the irresponsibility of the left.
Phyllis
Matthew H, I’m simply trying to understand the logic of alienating lots of voters by breaking a pledge that encouraged them to vote for you in the first place by arguing that higher education has to be paid for, but then not having any income from tuition fees coming in anyway
The Tories would not have agreed to higher taxation. The fact that they agreed to a disguised equivalent because it fitted with their market obsession doesn’t change that. If the LibDems had insisted on generous direct state funding for universities, that would HAVE to be paid for somehow, and it would HAVE to be done by cuts over and above what we have seen already.That is basic mathematics. Why do you and other have so much trouble in seeing that? My guess is that the most likely way of meeting the cuts requirements would have been big cuts to universities themselves.
Matthew. But we’re paying the equivalent of direct state funding for universities at the moment, right? That is why students pay nothing up front. So the difference in funding would be that there wouldn’t be a mythical future promise that students would repay the debt.
Granted, some students will repay some debt eventually, so if you don’t have a fee system you have to find some extra funding at the point that revenue would have started to come through. But the mathematics is beginning to look rather complicated…
Philip: The mathematics certainly are complicated. So was the 2006-2012 system. Any system of loans and deferred income-contingent repayment is, because of the number and uncertainty of the variables that affect the calculations and the long time period over which those calculations apply.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the long-run saving to the Exchequer of the new system is not 5%, as the IFS estimate, but zero. On that basis the government has merely rejigged and rescheduled the cost to the public purse, not reduced it.
The one clear advantage is that students are getting an extra 28% spent on their education. I am always being told by Matthew and others that you cannot improve, or even maintain, the quality of public services without extra spending: well, whatever its faults, the new system has resulted in better-funded universities. Moreover, universities feel that fee income is a more secure funding stream than HEFCE grants, which have in the past been easy pickings for the Treasury in retrenchment phases. (That said, the government could reduce the real value of this fee income by freezing the fee cap in nominal terms for an extended period.)
At the risk of getting bogged down in technicalities, I will explain one further advantage of the new system from the government’s standpoint, which was probably at least as big a factor in why it was adopted as the desire to see better-funded universities. It has to do with the way the various elements of HE funding are classified in the government accounts. The advantage might be dismissed as merely presentational, but it is not evidence of sharp practice. It is a result of the shift in public sector accounting from a cash basis to a ‘resource’ or ‘accruals’ basis, which was initiated by the Labour government in 1998.
Teaching grants count as public expenditure and therefore contribute to annual government borrowing, while student loans are classified as a ‘financial transaction’. Only the subsidy element of student loans made in any one year counts as public expenditure. These are viewed as the permanent costs to the taxpayer. The amount which is repaid is seen as the temporary effect of a financial transaction. As I mentioned, this system of resource accounting and budgeting (RAB), aka accruals accounting, has been in place in the public sector for more than a decade. The subsidy element is the face value of loans made in any one year less the present value of future repayments. (This is frequently expressed as a proportion of the value of loans, the so-called RAB charge.)
Financial transactions do not affect public sector net borrowing (PSNB), which is the headline measure of the budget deficit. However, they do affect the total stock of debt the government is accumulating. Changes in the stock of public sector net debt (PSND) are driven by its flow counterpart, known as the public sector net cash requirement (PSNCR) – which is the sum of PSNB and the flow of financial transactions.
So the effect of cutting the teaching grant is to reduce expenditure and the budget deficit. The higher value of loans issued does not increase the annual deficit but it does add to public sector debt. The government’s fiscal priority for this parliament was to reduce the deficit, rather than the stock of debt which was set to rise for years to come (until the budget was back in balance). The change in the balance of HE funding from grants to loan subsidies achieved that objective, at the cost of greater uncertainty over the long-run taxpayer contribution. That public contribution now looks higher than originally forecast, though still slightly lower than under the old system. The main net benefit has been to university finances.
Simples 😉
Matthew: I must have missed the part of Paul’s article where he argued that the coalition has been a “wonderful super-duper government doing just what he would want a government to do”. What he actually wrote was “I can’t remember a better government in my lifetime”, which is not quite the same thing. Since this was only the second government of his lifetime with a Liberal/Lib Dem input – and a rather more enduring and substantial input than the much more short-lived Lib/Lab pact achieved – is it really so surprising or unreasonable that a lifelong Liberal/Lib Dem should make that judgement or express some pride in it?
You say it “wrecks” your attempts to defend the party to the “nah nah nah nah nahs”, but perhaps some of your Lib Dem colleagues don’t see self-flagellation about the supposed impotence of being a junior partner in coalition as the best tactic for persuading people of the party’s relevance? By the sounds of it, some of the “nah nah nah nah nahs” may be irreconcilable in any event. There are people across the political spectrum who will not listen to reasoned argument or show any sense of proportion.
The point Paul particularly emphasises is that this government confounded expectations by proving that a coalition could in fact be stable and functioning forms of government. ‘Stable government’ may not be a slogan to get the heart racing, but given the economic and political circumstances of 2010 it was no small achievement. The value of that achievement may be thrown into stark relief if the next parliament throws up some of the high-wire act scenarios the pundits are salivating about…
I am not sure what the definition of “stable government” in this context is. If it means in real terms, as I think, “David Cameron getting his way on everything,” then I don’t quite see what makes it such a blessing.
@ David-1
Well, for one thing, I don’t think the last five years can fairly – or accurately -be summed up as “David Cameron getting his way on everything”. As Matthew has pointed out, plenty of Tories would dispute that characterisation…
As for the blessings of stable government, I was thinking of things like (inter alia):
– not having a political vacuum at a time when the UK was in a massive hole, with a budget deficit of more than 10% of GDP, the government borrowing £1 in every £4 it was spending and the banking system on life support
– as a direct consequence, avoiding the real risk of panic gripping the bond markets, the currency markets and ultimately the equity markets, with the knock-on effects that would have had on the borrowing costs faced by a government and households that were both up to their necks in debt
– having a clear and stable parliamentary majority to implement austerity measures that would inevitably be controversial but (whatever the debate about their size, shape and pace) would have been unavoidable for any government, and which the three main parties had all agreed was necessary given the structural nature of the deficit
– demonstrating that the jeremiads about coalition as a feasible form of government for the UK were wrong and that it could function tolerably well (indeed could be less dysfunctional on a day-to-day operational level than the previous single-party government at the height of the ‘TBGBs’ psychodrama) – this being of particular importance to the Lib Dems since they have a vested interest in showing that coalitions can work
Alex Sabine
Matthew: I must have missed the part of Paul’s article where he argued that the coalition has been a “wonderful super-duper government doing just what he would want a government to do”. What he actually wrote was “I can’t remember a better government in my lifetime”, which is not quite the same thing.
Yes, I know that is what he actually wrote. My point, which I clearly explained, was that what he wrote would be interpreted as that. It’s what I’ve been saying almost continuously since May 2010. I am prepared to defend many of the compromises coming from this government as what one might expect given its party balance. They are far from the policies which would be my ideal, but I can see the Liberal Democrats have managed to push it a little my way. Obviously, as someone on the left of the Liberal Democrats, they’re still going to be much further from my ideal than they are to someone on the right of the Liberal Democrats. People on the right of the Liberal Democrats, who predominate at the top, need to realise that in terms of conceding policy, we on the left have made the biggest sacrifice, and just perhaps if they want to keep a united party with the level of activist support that has been key in building it up, they should think beyond their own factionalism and stop doing and saying things that just seem to be designed to alienate us further.
I think many of the attacks on the Liberal Democrats from the left outside the party are extremely unfair; as I keep saying they seem to suppose that somehow 57 Liberal Democrat MPs could have enabled a government which is 100% Liberal Democrat policy to come into existence, and we are bad people for not getting this. As I am a strong supporter of multi-party politics, I feel I have to accept what we have, it ought to have been a reasonably easy point to make as it was the only stable government that could have been formed out of the May 2010 Parliament.
However, I am concerned that what I call the “nah nah nah nah nah” attacks on us are working. They seem to be widely believed. So many people I know who are not politically involved or particularly politically committed, nevertheless believe that “the Liberal Democrats just rolled over and gave up their own principles to support the Tories, “there is no difference between the Liberal Democrats and the Tories now”, and so on. Word used that are intended to say good things about the Liberal Democrats’ influence on this government seem to be get interpreted that way. Over-optimistic and exaggerated accounts about what are party has achieved ARE being interpreted as us giving unconditional support to the Conservatives and their policies, even if they are not meant that way.
Paul’s words are classic. I assure you, though they were not meant that way, many people, I might even say MOST people outside committed Conservatives would interpret them as I have paraphrased them, even though I accept that paraphrasing is unfair. We just need to be more careful about giving the wrong impression in that way, but at the top, the party hasn’t been careful in that way, indeed it seems to have gone out of the way to do the opposite. I don’t accept what you are saying that being more careful about the way we explain necessary compromises in a multi-party system has to be “self-flagellation”. No, I think we can be positive, but do much more to put across the message that we could have had much more influence and therefore had a government much more in line with our real policies if we had more Liberal Democrat MPs.
Alex Sabine
Well, for one thing, I don’t think the last five years can fairly – or accurately -be summed up as “David Cameron getting his way on everything”. As Matthew has pointed out, plenty of Tories would dispute that characterisation…
Indeed, and this proves my point. When someone like Paul Walter says something like “I can’t remember a better government in my lifetime”, people like David-1 will interpret it that way. I’ve had SO much experience of people who aren’t committed Labour supporters nevertheless throw that sort of thing back at me whenever I attempt even a partial defence of the Liberal Democrats’ role in this government. If you attempt to give a few achievements attributed to the Liberal Democrats, what is thrown back is all those other things, which I know are not what the Liberal Democrats, even more right-wing ones, would have wanted, which have had to be conceded as part of the compromise of coalition government, with the accusation “You supported that” as if it is what we now really would want.
That is one reason why I am coming out so strong on the tuition fees issue. No, the compromise reached is not at all my ideal solution to how to fund universities, but as I keep saying in terms of actual money flow is closer than many might suppose. I can very well see that had the Liberal Democrats pushed further and demanded that only full direct state support was acceptable, the cost in terms of what they would then have had to concede on other issues would be immense. Since the Tories’ red line is tax increases, it WOULD have to be paid for by much bigger cuts in other service areas, and/or in the amount of money going to universities. I am sorry if it comes across as rude to those who argue against me, such as Michael BG, but it really does seem to me to be incredibly naive to suggest that the Liberal Democrats could have so easily stood their ground on this issue and there would have been no consequences elsewhere. A lot of this does seem to boil down to people just not being able to see that governments spending has to be paid for, that you cannot isolate one area of spending as a “policy” without also having balancing tax policies, or to having a completely unrealistic idea of budgeting, so if you say “OK, how would you pay for it?” for something that costs billions, they raise something that costs millions that could be cut, throw it in you face and say “There” and think they have won the argument.
@Matthew
“Since the Tories’ red line is tax increases, it WOULD have to be paid for by much bigger cuts in other service areas, and/or in the amount of money going to universities.”
Where on earth do you get the idea that tax increases are a red line for the Tories? Do you think the VAT rise was in some way not a tax increase?
Tory governments tend to dislike income tax increases but are happy enough to put up most other sorts of tax you can think of, and invent myriad new ones. Yet for decades the Tory spin machine has been doing a superb job of fooling people in to thinking that tax increases to them are like garlic to Dracula.
I was fooled myself for most of the ’80s. I believed my mum’s Daily Mail when it told me that the Tories were the party of low taxation. Then in around 1988 my economics A Level teacher told us that Thatcher had increased the tax burden to the highest level in history. Me and my mate (there were only two of us in the class – no wonder taxes were high!) flatly refused to believe him, until he produced a load of Bank of England economic bulletins from his drawer and there it all was in black and white. The most memorable lesson I ever had, probably.
I’m really struggling to get your point here Matthew, because you keep insisting that the alternative to trebling fees was either cuts or tax increases. This suggests, with some degree of logical inevitability, that you believe the 2010 reforms to have saved the government money – yet when I put this to you the other day, you said I’d got it all wrong.
Given that the current scheme seems to be costing around the same as the previous one, exactly how do you come to the conclusion that continuing with the old scheme would have led inevitably to either cuts or higher taxes? Is this simply to do with the accounting trickery that we’re all well aware of?
Philip Thomas
Matthew. But we’re paying the equivalent of direct state funding for universities at the moment, right? That is why students pay nothing up front. So the difference in funding would be that there wouldn’t be a mythical future promise that students would repay the debt.
No, it’s being paid for by government borrowing, except that it’s done in a form which doesn’t count on the books as government borrowing. So where does that differ from those who say the Liberal Democrats should have just voted against tuition fees without anything else to balance it, so one must assume they just supposed the government would borrow more directly to pay for it? Well, I don’t think the Conservatives would have just agreed to all that extra direct state borrowing, so they would have insisted on balancing it by big cuts elsewhere.
If it was paid for by direct state borrowing, that would still have to be paid back, and who would be paying it back? Well, mainly higher earning people in the future, and these would mostly be today’s students. That is, much the same people paying back much the same amounts of money.
So, there’s my point. By conceding to the tuition fees system, and in return for that concession insisting on generous loans availability with generous write-off conditions, the Liberal Democrats have managed to secure decent funding for universities that the Conservatives almost certainly would not have agreed to if they were funded more directly by the state. In terms of personal impact on individuals, it isn’t great. Sure, the Liberal Democrats are humiliated by going back on their “pledge”. But consider, if there had been massive cuts in the number of university places, but those left were fully state subsidised, the Liberal Democrats could then rightly say their pledge had been kept. Would people be happy with that?
What angers me is that that this point is just not being made anywhere. There huge amounts of attacks on the Liberal Democrats on this issue, but I don’t think I have ever seen one such attack include a realistic alternative for paying for universities that would have gained majority support in this Parliament. As I’ve said, if there was one, it would have to be Labour that supports it, so why doesn’t Labour propose it? They can’t, and they’ve been hit now we have got into the election by having to make good their “nah nah nah nah nah” attacks by proposing some way to pay for reduced direct tuition fees, and they are struggling.
What we have is a compromise, and I don’t think the Liberal Democrats are bad people for having agreed to a compromise that safeguards university spending as opposed to another that is more in line with the “pledge” but is likely to lead to big cuts in universities, and more cuts in public spending elsewhere that would be against Liberal Democrat ideals.
Government borrowing is state funding. The money comes out of the public finances. Exactly the same amount of money *could* have been produced from the public finances directly without the tuition fees smoke and mirrors.
There would not have had to be massive spending cuts- expenditure would have been the same.
I take the point that the Tories wouldn’t have agreed it this way (although we didn’t really try to change their minds).
Maybe the problem is that the grey hasn’t been explained in sufficient detail. The case that Matthew Huntbach makes that by supporting the tuition fee increases we saved cuts elsewhere may be completely correct and my belief that there were cuts suggested by us that the Tories rejected is nonsense. Does anyone know or know where to find how much the grant to Universities was cut each year when tuition fees came in? Does anyone know which of our cuts identified in our 2010 manifesto the Conservatives rejected?
I wonder if Paul realises the problems he may have caused for Nick. After all, we all know “Pride cometh before a …” The question is how big?