For over one hundred years now Liberals have been striving to improve the standard of living for regular folk. Before the Labour movement even existed, we fought hard for workers’ rights and then free trade to keep food prices low.
Now, as a party of government, we can be proud about the positive effect we have had on pensions, taxation and apprenticeships. But in the modern world this simply isn’t enough. We are still not winning the public vote. As a party, we talk about needing better leadership – but is it as simple as that? Don’t we need to know where we’ve gone wrong?
“It’s all about tuition fees!” you cry. But do higher tuition fees stop kids in poverty getting to uni?…..NO. Is good nutrition in primary schools important in helping these kids pass exams to get to uni? ….. YES. Resources are limited and yet it’s clear from our educational policies and welfare reform that we’re trying to improve young people’s access to higher education.
So where’s the problem?
Making promises you can’t keep is, quite simply, wrong. Why did we do it? When we made that promise to scrap fees, did we truly believe that we could make it happen? As coalition partners did we try hard enough to make it happen? Well, that’s where leadership comes in: convincing people that the unimaginable CAN happen (a redundant approach, of course, if you believe that to ‘put man on the moon before this decade is out’ is aspirational and total nonsense). This conviction is what is missing from all the main parties and that’s what we Liberals need to get back – and SOON.
We cannot win every battle – we all know life isn’t like that – but we must give ourselves a fighting chance. We must use our next conference in Glasgow to be bold, inspirational and emotional and to revisit our core principles and beliefs. Wishy-washy, complicated and off-message motions to conference will NOT convince the party, our leadership and – most importantly – the public to stand with us.
Take, as an example, the debate on Green Growth and Green Jobs at the Glasgow 2013 Conference. One option was “Rejecting the construction of a new generation of nuclear plant.” This option was voted down in favour of “Accepting that in future, nuclear power stations could play a limited role in electricity supply, provided concerns about safety, disposal of radioactive waste and cost (including decommissioning) are adequately addressed and without allowing any public subsidy for new build.” So far as voters are concerned, the first option gives a clear green message where the second appears to fudge the issue. Voters, and party members too, need to know where the party stands, even if that stance is new, daring and radical.
So, are these blurred messages the fault of our leaders? Or is it a case of “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…”? Let us not forget that, as party members, we make the policy. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about education, jobs, housing, energy, tax reform or, most importantly, the environment, it is our responsibility to state our case clearly and with belief. We need to ‘put man on the moon before this decade is out’. We need to lead from within and rally the nation to our cause.
* Richard Rowles is Chairman of Romsey and Southampton North Lib Dems, and a Lib Dem campaigner.
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52 Comments
Indeed.
I was always a fan of our stance on Trident. That was first, fudged and then I heard Michael Moore making an enthusiastic defence of nuclear deterrent on BBC AQ. Which is it: anti, middle way or pro?
Richard
I agree about the passion and we need true Lib Dem policies not watered down Tory versions. I disagree about Tuition fees that was the rock on which Nick Clegg led the party onto and the rock that sank our support in late 2010. The people want a British university system free for all and not an American system for the rich. Does a future bill for £30,000 scare poor graduates HELL YES. Do they blame and hate us for plunging them into a lifetime of debt – YES Again. School dinners don’t come into it. We were right to oppose Labour’s Tuition fees and wrong to betray the students. let’s hope Nick does the decent thing and resign tonight.
As you say Max when people start talking about the policy we adopted they start skirmishing with the interviewer because they are trapped by what is a complicated motion passed by us members. If we don’t like it we shouldn’t vote for it. Keep it simple! Like 1p on income tax for better education perhaps!
Jon, I would rather see uni fees written off is they go on to do a Masters, and so on for a Phd, educational deflation has made the regular degree academically irrelevant. Especially as there are now vocational courses that can be taken at degree (or equivalent ) level. We need more people with advanced degrees, especially in science and engineering.
>Making promises you can’t keep is, quite simply, wrong.
Lesson from government surely: you won’t be able to deliver on all your promises or objectives. Hence the better question to be asking is how do we portray our actions and commitments in a way that inspires people to vote for us?
I suggest one aspect of this is to vet all the commitments that are to go into the manifesto from a delivery viewpoint. Doing this would of avoided the daftness we saw around tuition fee’s. Tuition fee’s are here to stay, unless you want to fund the university education of people from other EU member states attending UK universities.
Roland I think the lesson started way before coalition I think there were many members that questioned that motion before it became policy, and I think a number of members voted for as you say without considering the feasibility of it. But it is possible to make the seamingly impossible happen through clear definative leadership.
When we made that promise to scrap fees, did we truly believe that we could make it happen?
Well, of course you didn’t make a promise to scrap fees, individual candidates made a promise to vote against any increase in fees.
“Making promises you can’t keep is, quite simply, wrong. Why did we do it? When we made that promise to scrap fees, did we truly believe that we could make it happen?”
I think we thought it was feasible in theory. It was costed at about £2bn. I think we thought that, in the unlikely circumstance that we ruled Britain alone, we could push it through, at a pinch.
But then we converted a not-totally dishonest promise “a LD government would do this” into a totally dishonest promise “we pledge to get tuition fees scrapped if we are in government”. That was something we (or rather, most of our MPs, including Clegg) said, off the cuff, during the campaign, when pushed by the NUS to do so. Even though we had not the least idea how to persuade a coalition partner to go along with it.
Clegg, by all accounts, was very iffy about making the original, not-totally-dishonest, manifesto commitment. But he later had no qualms about moving forward with the totally dishonest NUS pledge. You meet people like that in life, don’t you? When pressed, they’ll just say anything that sounds good, irrespective of whether it bears any relationship to reality. It’s the classic used car salesman’s approach, though sadly a lot of people who should be more professional do just the same.
Now, I know a lot of other LD candidates also signed the pledge, but I don’t think they really share the blame. It was the leader’s call. The leader could have been thinking “we’ll do like the Scots did, and make this our one big demand in any coalition negotiation”. He could have, but he didn’t. The average candidate for Little Wotting West was entitled to imitate the leader, and wasn’t to know that Clegg actually had no thought-out plan whatsoever.
Sheer incompetence.
Correction, as Chris says, our totally dishonest promise was in fact “we pledge to prevent a tuition fee rise if we are in government”.
The pledge on tuition fees.
“I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative”
So whilst half Lib Dem MPs voted for an increase in fees, there was a system introduced for a fairer system and it seems poorer students have not been deterred.
The manifesto policy was to scrap tuition fees – voters would understand that when we are in a coalition with the Tories we are unlikely to win that debate.
The signed promise (pledge) was “I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative.”.
Much less of a financial cost but a very clear promise.
A key theme of the 2010 Lib Dem campaign and the subject of a whole PPB was “No More Broken Promises”.
When a politician breaks a promise, particularly when highlighting how wrong it is for politicians to break promises, we shouldn’t be surprised that it creates a huge issue of trust (or mistrust) for the average voter.
“But do higher tuition fees stop kids in poverty getting to uni?…..NO”
No, they stop adults from retraining and getting back into the workplace. As you know. Having done your homework. Right? Oh, you mean you didn’t consider the issue of mature and part-time students? Well, if you didn’t, then congrats, you’re in exalted company.
@David Allen
No, I’m afraid you’re factually wrong about the substance of the pledge and as a consequence you’re rather overcomplicating things. It was in fact ‘I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament’. Now, there is no guarantee of success in that pledge, so it was totally achievable. How hard is it to vote against something, really?
That is probably why it seemed like a totally reasonable pledge to make: because nobody could imagine a universe in which the Lib Dems, of all people, could be induced to vote for an increase in tuition fees. As if, thought the voters. That would be like persuading the Greens to vote for clubbing baby seals to death on ice floes or construction of combined fracking and nuclear waste installations in nature reserves. Antithetical to their nature.
Then of course the LDs went ahead and voted for it. Doh!
Some of the comments here demonstrate quite clearly why the Lib Dems are no longer trusted.
Seriously folks, google the letter that Nick Clegg wrote to students to persuade students to vote LD and read what he actually said. Then read some of your comments on here (‘did we really believe…?’) through the eyes of the people who believed what Nick Clegg told them and voted Lib Dem. it’s really as simple as that.
Echo everything (not so) Daft says above!
Tuition fees were going to be scrapped one year at a time, not all at once. Nick’s letter made it very clear the LibDems had the economic situation at the forefront of their plans and that it could not all be done at once but would be done gradually over five years.
Oh please no, not another article saying the decisions of the leader are nothing to do with the leader. The “party of In” whos decision was that if not the leaders. The debates with Farage – who was responsible. The Party Political broadcasts that ignored our councillors and ignored our MEPs and just had Clegg – who’s decision. The Manifesto pledging abolition of fees signed off by the leader, the NUS no increase in tuition fees pledge signed by the leader and other candidates told to sign. Forcing Gordon Brown to step down – a decision of the leader, the timing of the AV referendum – a decision of the leader, inability to get a sensible proposal on Lords Reform – the direct responsibility of Nick Clegg. I don’t expect a leader to be perfect, heck I don’t even expect them to learn from mistakes – but at least they could admit them. cleggs speech today – ignores the people calling for him to resign and instead pretends people are saying leave the coalition – it is truly insulting to everyone intelligence.
“”Students can make the difference in countless seats in this election. Use your vote to block those unfair tuition fees and get them scrapped once and for all.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7641956/Lib-Dems-target-student-vote-with-tuition-fees-warning.html
And also
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/09/tuition-fees-clegg-vote-mps
Richard Rowles – you completely fail to even mention the problem. Let alone put your finger on it. This is a big part of it:
Bedroom tax.
Kicking the disabled etc People with a social conscience aren’t going to vote Libdem again. Some of them never. The party along with the Tories have given kick after kick to the poorest whilst rewarding the richest with bungs and tax cuts. Even a £1billion pound Royal Mail privatisation giveaway – incompetence that apparently doesn’t even deserve a resignation. In fact the electorate have been told that was a success – as if they’re stupid.
All that wasn’t in the manifesto. Those are nothing to do with promises. You become the deputy nasty party – people won’t vote Libdem any more.
I wrote a piece on the folly of breaking the pledge at the time and since then have kept quiet.
But here is the nonsense about the policy itself:
a) in terms of cash flow virtually nothing will come in to the Government from the increased fee paying students in the life time of this Parliament. It did nothing to stave off a Greece like crisis.
b) it was not critical in increasing funding to Universities in this Parliament.
c) It alienated a core part of our vote, generally, and royally hacked off the major source of new activists coming into the Party. Many parents and grandparents have seen their children and grandchildren alienated from the political process. And they won’t forgive us for that because they value democracy and participation and had hoped that they had successfully encouraged their young people to be active citizens. It is therefore probably the single greatest addition to the democratic deficit made in this country – do you know, I think I can say EVER.
d) For a country determined to build a knowledge economy it sent the wrong message on this to the entire population.
e) Here’s what our ‘competition’ in the ‘global race’ does in comparison: http://www.mastersportal.eu/articles/358/overview-of-tuition-fees-in-germany.html
Richard Rowles,
. You ask at the beginning of your article — As a party, we talk about needing better leadership – but is it as simple as that?
I suggest you check Nick Clegg’s record popularity rating, if you did not know he is the most unpopular political leader of all time. That’s right Clegg is even more unpopular than Gordon Brown.
Yes more unpopular than Gordon Brown the man that Nick Clegg said must go in 2010 because the voters rejected him.
So now that the voters have repeatedly rejected Nick Clegg, should Clegg go ? Yes, he should go.
It is as simple as that.
As to your comment about new nuclear and the overly complex phrasing of the Ed Davey ‘sleight of hand’ approach to policy, you have my sympathy.
But who do you think was responsible for that sort of wording? Do you think the leadership had nothing to do with it?
Has it not occurred to you that those who wanted to fog the issue might just be those who wanted a policy agreed that would be acceptable to the Conservatives and their big multinational energy company pals in the nuclear business?
Just ask yourself this question, who was going to benefit from a fudged wording like — “Accepting that in future, nuclear power stations could play a limited role in electricity supply, provided concerns about safety, disposal of radioactive waste and cost (including decommissioning) are adequately addressed and without allowing any public subsidy for new build.” ?
And when only a couple of weeks later Ed Davey signed a deal with those business interest to provide an enormous subsidy to nuclear power for decades to come, did you hear Nick Clegg complaining?
When Ed Davey and others repeatedly justify his action by saying that the Glasgow Conference changed party policy, do you think that was unconnected with the fudged wording?
It really is that simple! The leadership must be changed. Clegg must go, because all he offers is more of the same.
Not to worry – clearly the only thing that matters now is getting back into Government.
This recent job advert details the party’s number one, or only, priority and I thought the important things might have included our vision for the future, ideals, policies we believed in, trust , building a fairer society and on and on.
General Election Director of Strategy Westminster, London, SW1
£70,000-120,000 (according to experience)
The Liberal Democrats are looking for a world class individual who can develop and lead the
delivery of a strategy that will allow the party’s to maximise its success in the 2015 General
Election and to come out of the election as a party of government for a historic second time.
As soon as I tripped up on ‘regular folk’ my suspicions were raised.
Would you like fudge with today’s pep talk?
We had arrived at the battlefield Jo Grimond had pointed us towards decades before. The troops had aimed high and we had the target within our sights, then Captain Clegg, Lt. Laws and Brigadier Browne decided to compromise with the nice people in the Tory party instead. They didn’t seem so different after all; once you got to serve under them.
Oops. Looks like I’m off message again.
@John Barrett. Thanks for this John.
The advert doesn’t seem mention the ability to work while wearing blinkers.
Predilection for fudge desirable. Values and politics immaterial.
Preference will be given to candidates wearing the correct school tie.
At least the job brief is clear.
@JohnTilley I’m trying to point out that somehow at the conference even though the second option was well gerrymandered indeed over half the reps at Glasgow voted for that fudge. So are we voting reps just sheep? I am saying this is not the case, But that if we are to ever win the public vote then we as members of the party must stand up for what we believe in not simply do what we are told.
As for Nick going before the 2015 elections I say no! If you don’t like him or what he’s done fine. But turn up at conference put your card in and speak with passion and change peoples minds. I have seen even first timers make a big difference.
Richard Rowles – ‘We need more people with advanced degrees, especially in science and engineering.’
Be very careful with that – http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/does-the-uk-really-need-more-engineers/2011723.article
A lot of people say it, but there is a lot of nuance there.
John Barrett,
“The Liberal Democrats are looking for a world class individual who can … lead … a strategy that will allow the party … to come out of the election as a party of government for a historic second time.”
Only world class? They’re being too unambitious to achieve their aims. They need Darth Vader for this job!
Bill le Breton (on tuition fees)
in terms of cash flow virtually nothing will come in to the Government from the increased fee paying students in the life time of this Parliament. It did nothing to stave off a Greece like crisis.
No. With the insistence on almost universal loans (yes, daft ha’p’orth, I do get your point), and generous repayment and write -off conditions, it actually achieved a stand-off situation – in net terms not very different from what the government borrowing the money directly and paying it off with a graduate tax would have achieved.
it was not critical in increasing funding to Universities in this Parliament.
Well, yes it was, because direct state subsidy of universities was slashed. The tuition fees replaced it. So if there were not the tuition fees, either some other tax would have had to be raised, or big spending cuts made, or the government would have had to borrow the money to pay for it. The reality is that the loans system is just disguised government borrowing.
When daft ha’p’orth writes “How hard is it to vote against something, really?” he ignores the fact that voting against cuts automatically means also voting for more government borrowing or more taxes or some other cuts to balance it. You actually CAN’T just vote against something in isolation with no knock-on effects.
We could look very popular by voting against all spending cuts and against all tax increases and in favour of tac reductions. But the reality is, if we did that we would be voting for more government borrowing.
It alienated a core part of our vote, generally, and royally hacked off the major source of new activists coming into the Party.
Sure, but the net result in terms of actual payments made is not that different from what the opponents of tuition fee rises wanted anyway. The Tories were so desperate to get this “market” system in place that they just rolled over and agreed to write-off conditions so generous that experts are now saying means there will be MORE straight government subsidy to universities than before. This could be seen as very clever – subvert what the Tories wanted by making it underneath no different from what was there before. But obviously, just TOO clever really …
@Matthew Huntbach
You have said yourself that as much money was removed from the direct state subsidy as comes in from the new increased tuition fees. Since that money comes from the same place, you are spending the money anyway. You would have done it by borrowing. Now we are doing it by ‘disguised borrowing’, otherwise known as borrowing it and then misleading everybody about the likelihood of getting the money back.
So no, he does not ignore that fact. He merely believes that self-deception about finances is extremely poor financial practice. This is not an uncommon viewpoint. PFI isn’t popular, either, for much the same reason.
As for the net result, no, it is quite different. For one thing, previously if you were not in a position to benefit from loans you could eventually achieve it, with a great deal of work. Now, you’d pretty much have to be Daddy Warbucks. For another, it has destabilised the sector in ways that have barely begun to bite. Additionally, it illustrates an attitude that I cannot agree with at all (‘your learning, your luxury, your risk, your problem’), but then I have many old-fashioned ideas that aren’t shared by LDV.
Clever, maybe – ‘so sharp, he’ll cut himself someday.’
richard rowles 9th Jun ’14 – 9:38pm
“…..even though the second option was well gerrymandered indeed over half the reps at Glasgow voted for that fudge. ”
You may think that this provides a legitimate decision, I do not. The party leadership using every trick in the book managed to scrape a small majority with slightly more than 200 people voting for what you describe as letter calling on “gerrymandered” and “fudge”. The majority considerably smaller than the payroll vote now used repeatedly by the leaderhip to subvert the mmbership. The size of this vote approximately half the number of people who recently signed a letter calling on Clegg to go.
But even then the conference agreement was only to –“nuclear power stations could play a limited role in electricity supply, provided concerns about safety, disposal of radioactive waste and cost (including decommissioning) are adequately addressed and without allowing any public subsidy for new build.”
Despite this Ed Davey went ahead and signed up the government to subsidies for decades to come without any change whatsoever in the safety and disposal of radioactive waste..
You seem to think this is democracy and an example of admirable leadership. I do not. I think it is a perfect example of the deplorable state that the democracy of the party has been allowed to decline to under the appalling leadership of a man who is clearly not up to the job.
Perhaps you just demand very low standards from leaders ?
So are we voting reps just sheep? I am saying this is not the case, But that if we are to ever win the public vote then we as members of the party must stand up for what we believe in not simply do what we are told.
As for Nick going before the 2015 elections I say no! If you don’t like him or what he’s done fine. But turn up at conference put your card in and speak with passion and change peoples minds. I have seen even first timers make a big difference.
A good example on nuclear power, it illustrates how we changed from a simple easily understood policy to one you have to read three times before understanding it!..of course the Green Party policy is still easy to understand isn’t it?
I was able to just about live with that fudge, providing we didn’t subsidise nuclear power (which Labour would have done). Yet it looks like that is precisely what we have done, that is why the EU Commission are checking the Hinckley Point deal with EDF to see if it contravenes the policy on state aid.
I won’t rehearse all the old Tuition fee arguments again, in some ways it is a better deal than Labour’s scheme, but why did WE not call it a ‘deferred graduate tax’ which is in effect what it is (and with a salary ‘floor’ that has to be passed before repayment is due). I was told at the time that the “Tories would not accept the word tax,” but why did that have t stop us using it? If we’d kept repeating that term it might have become established like Poll Tax (‘community charge’ in Tory speak) or Bedroom Tax (‘under occupancy charge’ in Tory speak).
On another note, I adore the masterful use of the passive voice in ‘direct state subsidy of universities was slashed’, as though funding cuts descended on this country as the result of a freak weather pattern (previously-unknown side effect of El Niño?)
Act of God. Our hands are tied. Nothing we can do.
So should voting reps be able to vote by post? Would that make a vote at conference more inclusive and representative? Has this been suggested before?
Richard Rowles
You seem to be in denial about your wish to cling on to Clegg.
Meanwhile in the real world,, The Mirror reports as follows —
Nick Clegg’s days as leader appear numbered as senior Liberal Democrats gather today for a postmortem on the party’s catastrophic election results .
………the party’s ruling Federal Executive committee, which will meet later in Westminster, is expected to discuss his future as leader.
Committee member Martin Tod said: “There’ll be a full, candid review of every aspect of where we are and what needs to happen between now and May.”
Mr Clegg’s enemies are now trying to trigger a leadership contest by getting the support of 75 constituency parties.
Activists from 170 constituencies are among more than 400 who have signed a petition calling for him to go.
A letter being circulated in one London seat, and passed to the Mirror, has called for him to go saying voters are not prepared to listen to Clegg.
……
But is adds: “We believe that it is vital that we have a leader at the General Election who will get a fair hearing from voters about Liberal Democrat achievements and ambitions for the future.
………
“We believe that the interests of this party will, therefore, be better served with a new leader and that it is time for Nick Clegg to step down.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-liberal-democrats-set-discuss-3663587#ixzz34BgDyxeb
Follow us: @DailyMirror on Twitter | DailyMirror on Facebook
World class director of campaigns for the general election.
It is an open secret in Westminster that this job is reserved for the present government paid strategic director to the lib dems in government, Ryan Cortzee. For anyone else thinking of themselves as a world class strategic type it really is a waste of time applying.
Now this is the genius who came up with the 20% or was it originally the 25% strategy which claimed it could identify and win over those who were the new core of lib dem voters to replace those long term supporters spurned by the leadership. How has he performed you may ask? Is he worth £100,000 of party member’s funds?
Well he has apparently ‘found’ 7% .
This is madness. If the leader no longer wants him in his team of advisers, why should the party be made to stump up for him?
John, it’s interesting you say ‘cling’ which implies I’m in some way desperate. I’m aware of what the daily labour has said. I’m not desperate but I still think 200 voting reps deciding the outcome of a binary option is not democratic, why are those not able to make it to conference excluded from the vote? What’s the total number of voting reps in the party any ideas? If there is a structural issue that allows this to happen why not fix it? Otherwise it will be a case of ‘the king is dead long live the king’
daft ha’p’orth
@Matthew Huntbach
You have said yourself that as much money was removed from the direct state subsidy as comes in from the new increased tuition fees. Since that money comes from the same place, you are spending the money anyway. You would have done it by borrowing. Now we are doing it by ‘disguised borrowing’, otherwise known as borrowing it and then misleading everybody about the likelihood of getting the money back.
Sorry, who exactly do you mean by “you” here?
You seem to mean me personally, as if this is a scheme I devised personally and think is the best way of funding university education. It’s not a scheme I devised, and I would prefer university education to be funded by direct taxation.
Why, why, why, is it that people like you just can’t get away from thinking of political parties in Leninist terms? Why is it that this Leninist model of political party has become so dominant that most discussion on politics just assumes it and continues on that basis? Just because I am a member of the Liberal Democrats does not mean I agree with the Leader and his policies. It does not mean I believe everything done by the party is the best that could be done. It does not mean I am an unthinking supporter of the Party Line, whatever it is that our Dear Leader tells us it is this week.
So, no, I’m not playing the Clegg line of trying to paint every compromise which comes out of the coalition as if it’s the best thing going, as if it’s what we wanted in the first place, as if it’s even better than what was in our manifesto if I can’t find a way of twisting the facts to make a false claim that it was what was in the manifesto (as Clegg and the party image-makers a doing over tax allowances). You seem to be attacking me under that assumption. Just what do I have to do that I haven’t done already to convince you that I am not a Cleggie?
Perhaps we could have a sensible discussion if we could start off with you accepting me for who I am rather than attacking me on the basis that I’m someone else.
Yes, I agree with you that the tuition fees and loans system is daft and damaging. Yes, I agree with you that like PFI it’s just a shuffling trick to disguise state borrowing so that it doesn’t appear on the balance sheets, and I agree with you that it would be better and more honest to do it with direct state borrowing. So stop attacking me on the basis that I don’t.
My actual point was that if as a compromise the LibDems managed to push the tuition fees and loans systems so far that it ended up in practical terms not so different form what went before, maybe that is a good achievement. I’m saying if it was a choice between that and something like immediate big cuts in university places, because the Tories would not budge on the principle of the scheme. Saying that some of the potential damaging nature of the scheme has been taken away like this is not the same as saying the scheme itself is a good thing.
Now I appreciate that a big part of the problem here is that here as with much else, Clegg HAS confused the two things, that’s what I meant by “the Clegg line of trying to paint every compromise which comes out of the coalition as if it’s the best thing going”, here as in with much else. In doing so I think he has greatly undermined the defence I would otherwise be willing to give to the party’s position in the coalition. That’s why I’ve stopped working for it.
daft ha’p’orth
On another note, I adore the masterful use of the passive voice in ‘direct state subsidy of universities was slashed’, as though funding cuts descended on this country as the result of a freak weather pattern
Look, Mr or Mrs or Miss or Ms or Dr or whatever it is, ha’p’orth, can you please give me the courtesy of accepting me for what I am rather than assuming I’m some Clegg fan desperate to support his Dear Leader?
It’s a fact that direct state subsidy of universities was slashed, yes. Yes, that was in the budget, and yes, tuition fees and the loan system replaced it, and yes, Clegg and leading members of the Parliamentary Liberal Democrats supported it – though it would be nice if it could be acknowledged that many Liberal Democrat MPs did NOT support it. You with your Leninist assumptions about how political parties work can’t get your head round this, so instead of thanking and supporting those LibDem MPs who did not follow their leader, you and all these others just carry on attacking all of us as if every single Liberal Democrat member is an unthinking puppet of the leader.
No, I am not doing some ad-man’s trick here as you are insinuating. I am trying to have a mature discussion on this issue. A mature discussion would involve at its centre the acceptance that if the state subsidies something it has to do that by raising the money in some way. Yet in all the years of discussion on tuition fees here in this forum, I’ve never once seen a “nah nah nah nah nah, dirty rotten LibDems, you supported tuition fees” person show the maturity of accepting this and moving the debate forward on that basis.
It’s a fact that direct state subsidy of universities was slashed, so therefore if it had not been done, some other way of paying for it would have had to be done. Simply because I state this is a fact does not mean I think it is the best outcome there could have been. However, I think if we are going to say it is not the best thing that could have been done – regardless of the political balance in Parliament, which is another issue i.e. there is the different issue of the best thing that could be done with the additional constraint that 3400+ Tory MPs have to be got to support it – then we need to continue by suggesting alternatives that could have been done. My alternative is higher taxes, particularly taxes oriented on property. If you could stop the “nah nah nah nah nah” stuff, maybe you could tell us what’s yours. Then once we’ve done that, we’re in a position to move forward to a democratic debate on the matter.
The problem is that so long as every cut in state spending supported by Liberal Democrat MPs is met with “nah nah nah nah nah, dirty rotten LibDems, you supported these cuts” instead of an acceptance that if there aren’t the cuts there needs to be the taxation, the difficult discussions on that taxation won’t be had. Big new taxes are going to be unpopular, we know that because even small new taxes have been so unpopular that they’ve been misrepresented and argued down in the press, for example the entirely sensible withdrawal of special tax allowances which benefit only wealthier older people, denounced as the “granny tax”. So, if we are to go ahead with these tax proposals, we need to have a strong argument that they are needed to pay for the things people want the state to provide, and if we don’t have them, the state can’t provide them.
I long for the day when we can have a mature discussion on that sort of issue. People like you, daft ha’p’orth, with your “nah nah nah nah nah” attitude stand in the way of that.
Can anyone show me the figures which demonstrate that young people who received free schools meals are not deterred from going to university. The ones bandied about do not seem to demonstrate this, with the students highlighted coming just as easily from well off families in otherwise deprived areas
A Social Liberal, having had two children going through university in the last four years, one under the old system and one under the new, and watched the one under the new system feel the pressure of knowing that he is building up debt/feeling he is putting his parents under strain, and also seeing many of his peers opting for a local rather than for the most suitable university, I believe the impact is insidious.
Personally ,though, I can’t understand why we should be campaigning for the kinds of levels of fees being charged in Germany. Soon people will decided once again that having having graduates that are not burdened in this way and who contribute to society and to tax revenues throughout their lives.
It always was a short sighted and mean spirited policy, which sadly our leaders for some reason personally supported against the wishes of Conference. But poor Richard Rowles’ piece has been side tracked and he must be rightly rather frustrated.
@Matthew Huntbach
Oh, we’re back in the well-worn Leninist-ultrapersonal!!-why-me???-Matthew-as-proxy-for-the-party track. I refer you to the previous thread in which I and about ten other people all separately and repeatedly explained to you that nobody thinks that You, Matthew Huntbach, Are The Party, and that nobody personally thinks that You, Matthew Huntbach, Must Agree With The Party.
Let me express this again:
You, Matthew Huntbach, have said yourself that as much money was removed from the direct state subsidy as comes in from the new increased tuition fees. Since that money comes from the same place, government is spending the money anyway. Government would have done it by borrowing. Now the government is doing it by ‘disguised borrowing’, otherwise known as borrowing it and then misleading everybody about the likelihood of getting the money back.
OK?
And the reason why I don’t think the passive voice is very useful in that statement is because it stops us from having a sensible discussion about the actual progression of events. If one wants to judge the actions of Coalition members one really needs a good, detailed understanding of who did what, when and why. If the argument one wishes to make is that LDs had no influence over the slashing of government subsidy to universities then one needs to lay out clearly why one believes that, rather than hand-wavingly implying that the LDs had no choice but to react to a fait accompli and therefore only had only one pathway open to them. You wouldn’t let students get away with it in an essay question, either.
Bill yes I am poor literally, but disappointed rather than frustrated. We voted for the nuclear motion. If only a few hundred voting reps out of a potential several thousand voted then that is the problem as I see it. I loved Glasgow last year but it literally had to take the pace of my annual holiday. I don’t think I got much change from 800 quid all in!
I agree with Richard that there are not enough clear policies. I think this is a key reason that we lost the European election. Vague talk about EU reform with no specifics capped by the leader’s incredible answer in the Farage debate that he expected to Europe would be about the same in a few years time. Much better on the Today programme this morning although he still got involved in rather technical argumets on the powers of different EU institutions which mean nothing to the ordinary voter.
Why can’t we lead the campaign against Juncker?! Cameroon has to keep Merkel on side so he can’t go too far but we don’t have that constraint. This would be a great opportunity for us to come up with a list of specifics we require on EU reform and that the UK Government and MEPs should only support a Commission President who supports them. Obvious high-profile example which could be delivered immediately is getting rid of Strasbourg!
Whether he was right or not, Nick Clegg did reach the conclusion that scrapping tuition fees was an unaffordable commitment before the last general election. He tried to get the policy changed but there was overwhelming opposition within the party to do that, so it didn’t happen. The NUS got him to sign the pledge before the last general election, encouraging all Lib Dem MPs to do likewise. Back then he did everything he could to make this a flagship policy. The Lib Dems won a huge share of the student vote. In government Vince Cable had to make huge cuts to his department which included student finance. Loans in the private sector are regressive. The wealthy are more likely to pay back their loans and so can get better rates. So the decision was made that huge cuts were needed. One possible solution was to introduce a graduate tax. But that would incentivise graduates to work abroad where they do not have to pay it. The other solution was to introduce even bigger loans, but to adjust them to be progressive, which is what happened.
But whatever you think of the policy, politically it was a disaster. To say one thing to win votes, and do the opposite in government, no wonder people are questioning what is the point of voting Lib Dem. However trying to get the party to drop a popular vote winning policy is far easier said than done.
@A Social Liberal (10th Jun ’14 – 10:21am)
“Can anyone show me the figures which demonstrate that young people who received free schools meals are not deterred from going to university. ”
I suspect the question that should be being asked is whether the livings costs of going to University, covered through the maintenance grant many decades back, are deterring people from going to Uni. Personally, I don’t understand why the NUS campaigned on tuition fee’s rather than grants towards maintenance and living costs.
daft ha’p’orth
If the argument one wishes to make is that LDs had no influence over the slashing of government subsidy to universities then one needs to lay out clearly why one believes that, rather than hand-wavingly implying that the LDs had no choice but to react to a fait accompli and therefore only had only one pathway open to them.
Look, daft ha’p’orth, I feel I have been banging my head against a brick wall here. Far from “hand-waving”, I have been putting the point extensively and in detail in this website for the past four years on why I believe the position of the Liberal Democrats in the coalition is weak, and why I think people like you who just seem to assume they could have asked for whatever they want and could have got it are being naive. We may agree to disagree on this, but please don’t dismiss me as some sort of Clegg fan who says what he says only out of unthinking loyalty to his party leader, when I would have thought from much else of what I write here it’s obvious I’m not that.
The central point here is that a government has to make a budget. It has to balance all that it spends money on against all the taxation income that comes in. That is why it is just not possible to take one big spending commitment in isolation and say it could just be voted to be kept without considering the balancing budgetary implications of that. But that is just what you and everyone else here is talking about the student tuition fees issue and attacking the Liberal Democrats are doing. You are saying the Liberal Democrats could easily have stood firm on this issue without any acknowledgement of the budgetary balance. I am saying that cannot be done, if one stands firm on a big spending issue, one has to balance it either by much more taxation or by much cuts in other things, or by straight borrowing.
I just don’t think the Conservatives were going to agree either to the big tax rises that would be necessary to keep full state subsidy of university education, or to the straight state borrowing it would imply. They might have agreed to big cuts in spending elsewhere, much bigger than what we have seen so far, however. So I think people like you who tell us that it would have been easy-peasy for the LibDems to have stood firm on tuition fees should tell us what big cuts you would like to have seen them agree to in order to allow it. As I have said before, the most obvious cuts would have been to universities themselves, a slashing of the number of places – and there HAS been a lot of talk in Conservative Party circles on those lines.
So, if the Conservatives are not going to agree to pay for it by straight state borrowing, not going to agree to direct tax increases, and threatening big cuts with the line “blame it on the LibDems as they forced us to do it in order to retain the university subsidy they are so keen on”, what should the LibDems do? Note, you will have the Sun/Times, Daily Mail, Telegraph only too keen to point out supposed “Mickey Mouse” degree programmes in their usual highly misleading way which they will say the LibDems are making us pay for.
Right, so here’s a wizard wheeze. Agree in words to the Tory tuition fee system, but so undermine it by insisting on generous loan and repayment conditions that in practice it works just like the graduate tax its opponents wanted anyway. As you have agreed with me, in reality it IS disguised state borrowing, which the Tories have been got to agree to though they would never have agreed to straight down the line state borrowing.
I’m not saying it was good to do it this way, as you are accusing me of saying. I have said, and I have said repeatedly, that my preference would be direct and open state subsidy through direct and open taxation. That is why arguing with your is like banging my head against a brick wall, because despite my repeated saying of this now for several years, you STILL come back and accuse me here of being some slimy trickster with your sarcastic “I adore the masterful use of the passive voice” comment.
I can see the logical arguments for this wheeze as the best available compromise, even though as I’ve already said it’s just too clever-clever for most people to grasp. Also, as I have been REPEATEDLY saying (brick-wall head-banging again) for four years now, Clegg makes things MUCH worse by his tactic of exaggerating what can be achieved in the coalition circumstances and promoting each compromise as a triumph and making out it was what we wanted in the first place, or even better than what we wanted. I have been saying repeatedly for four year that a better tactic would be to be far more downbeat and far more honest about it being a compromise.
Jeez, how much more time do I have to waste saying the same things again and again and again because people like you won’t listen and instead just throw insults at me accusing me of being an unthinking Cleggie apologist, to which I feel I have to respond as I am most definitely not that? As I’ve said, if you think that better compromises could have been obtained, at least do me the courtesy of taking me at face value and agreeing to disagree.
@Matthew Huntbach
I do most certainly agree that I disagree.
daft ha’p’orth
I do most certainly agree that I disagree.
Fine. So:
1) How do you think university education SHOULD be paid for? Higher taxes – if so which? Cuts in other things – if so, what? Or just more state borrowing – paid back how?
2) How do you think university education COULD be paid for in a way that would get the 300+ Conservative MPs we have at present to support it?
I see it very much as Matthew sees it, particularly that the policy and its implementation are all “clever-clever”. the parliamentary party could have dug in its heels and resisted any change, however the consequence would have been massive cuts to HE and fewer students getting on to courses. Could we have lived with this? The political advantage would that we could have heaped blame on the Labour Party, whilst claiming that we were still the party that is against fees in principle.
Poorer post graduates and many prospective students would be amongst the losers. More university departments would be cosed down.
I do not know how a Lib Dem as business secretary could defend the squeeze on HE , perhaps that position would have to be given up to a Tory.
The problem is that much of politics is about achieving a balance – in order to do things that people will like and say they want we must also do things that people will dislike and say they don’t want. The biggest and most obvious example of this is, of course, the balance between state provision of services and taxation.
That is why I so despair at the tendency in politics to argue as if there was no such balance, to take one side of the balance in isolation and to ignore the other. We see it from the political right who love to push the argument that taxation is just a matter of “envy”, just something done by people who are jealous of the rich and so who want to take money from them in order to punish them for their wealth. How often does one read right-wingers using this sort of line and ignoring the fact that taxation pays for state provision of services which people say they want?
We see it from the political left, who so often argue about state provision of services as if it costs nothing, so therefore as if any attempts to meet a budget by restricting them are done purely to be vindictive against those who use those services. This is why I am so objecting to daft ha’p’orth’s hand-waving line on tuition fees, as if the Liberal Democrats could just have opposed them easy-peasy without any sort of balancing consequence.
The danger with the daft ha’p’orth hand-waving approach is that it actually suck up to the political right and make it much HARDER to push policies on the left, such as full subsidy of university tuition or better NHS provision. If tuition fees and NHS cuts and the like are opposed without consideration of the balancing costs factors, then the political right can get away with its line on taxation that it is just a vindictive attack on the wealthy.
We need to centre our argument on the balance issue, because this is how we will get the necessary public support for those things that people dislike but are necessary to get those balancing things they do like. That is why talk on tuition fees against state subsidy for universities needs to come alongside talk on the taxation that would pay for that state subsidy. People may accept higher taxation, or forms of taxation against which they would first resist, if it can be shown that they are necessary to pay for the state services they want to see. If people refuse to accept the taxation, then it must be clear the consequences will be that the state services they want don’t get provided as they can’t be paid for.
People like daft ha’p’orth with his/her assumption that state services can be provided with a hand-wave leave the population refusing to accept higher taxation, or rejoicing in tax cuts (as with the latest Cleggery from LibDem HQ, and I have said elsewhere what I think of THAT), and then getting angry because of cuts in services. Then they blame the politicians for not being able to deliver the impossible – all the nice things with none of the balancing nasty things – and then they turn against democracy itself.
Throughout my political life I’ve wanted a different sort of politics which talks about the options in a mature way, and so avoids this drift to anti-democracy, which I saw starting when I was young and I see becoming steadily worse through my lifetime. I used to think a revived Liberal Party would be the key to this different sort of politics. I’ve stopped actively supporting the party now that Clegg and the Cleggies have taken it over and destroyed my dream.
The questions I posed at 4.36pm yesterday were not meant to be rhetorical. I do think, given the way daft ha’p’orth has attacked me over this, that he or she has a duty to answer them.
Matthew Huntbach
The questions I posed at 4.36pm yesterday were not meant to be rhetorical. I do think, given the way daft ha’p’orth has attacked me over this, that he or she has a duty to answer them.
Not a peep. So here we see, like many others, daft ha’p’orth attacks the Liberal Democrats relentlessly, suggesting they could very easily have obtained so much more from the situation after the May 2010 election and just chose not to. But when asked for details on just what he or she thinks they could really have obtained, addressing it in the cold reality of the actual situation, there’s none.
I’m no fan of Nick Clegg, I think he’s handled the situation very badly, I’ve stopped working for the Liberal Democrats while he remains as leader, I’ve signed up to every “Clegg must go” now petition and campaign that I’ve come across. Yet one reason Clegg has managed to hang on is because of the unrealistic nature of much of the attacks on the Liberal Democrats over the coalition – he’s carefully played the game of confusing general attacks on the Liberal Democrats over forming the coalition with the different issue of attacks on his own leadership. So people like daft ha’p’orth help keep him going, he can use them to say “the opposition to me is just fantasists who have no real answers to the difficult questions”.
@Matthew Huntbach
Astonishingly, daft had exams to mark. I know, right, isn’t it shocking that people who work in education should occasionally get extra homework?
Short version, daft ha’p’orth notes that he or she has no obligation to do anything: but since you are going to talk to yourself all year unless I do:
a) There is no way anybody who should be in government should be reduced to ‘oh, um,we were presented with a fait accompli, so we were manipulated into choosing this as the best of the available options’, which is the nicest available way of looking at this situation. If so, Lib Dems were played like a cheap violin: OMG, space aliens stole our funding, whatever shall we do? Sorry, if LDs were blindsided by that then LDs needed to be paying more attention before.
b) The situation still costs as much money as it used to, if not more, so all your ramblings about money are kind of irrelevant to the price of cheese, if not actively misleading. This government is spending money like a drunken sailor and pretending that it is not, which is not helping anybody and does not improve the situation financially.
c) It’s called politics. LDs will have to learn not to get trapped in hobson’s choice situations, then perhaps they will do better in government.
d) If we’re going to get real about spending less money on education while delivering the same effect: I have often said that I believe that university overheads are too high and that education tends to cost too much for what it is. You have vehemently disagreed with me on this before. I still believe it, and one reason why I believe it is because I know full well that it is possible to mass-produce course materials and deliver the course cheaply, especially in more popular first/second-year undergrad courses. I teach just such a course and somehow most of my students still seem to manage to learn something. Too little of the students’ money is used on teaching students; let’s see how much we can improve that ratio.
If anybody wanted to save money they would be looking at ensuring stability (uncertainty is expensive), limiting costs, reducing overheads and retaining/improving outcomes. Current drivers are not conducive to any of this. So, do we want to really save 5% of real money, or just play funny-money accountancy until the debt bubble bursts? Again?