Tag Archives: economy

Callum Gurr

Talk about economics, or we’ll be back to the party of the 8%    

By Callum Gurr | Mon 3rd April 2017 - 12:36 pm

 

I was delighted by Tim Farron’s performance at Spring Conference this year; his eloquence and passionate words show a good leader moulding into a great one. Yet, there is one thing that Tim’s speech missed: a distinct view upon the economy. The need for a Liberal Democrat policy on the economy is clear, with Tim himself saying in the speech ‘Britain needs a progressive party… a plan for an economy that makes the most of the opportunities in front of us’.

To put it short the Liberal Democrats need a clear economic policy so that when we get back into government (whether that’s in 2020 or 40 years away) that our voters know what they voted for. To my mind, we must focus upon investment. That investment starts with taking money creation away from high street banks and making it a government-influenced mechanism, as I called for in a previous article. Only then can we invest in our economy without extending the web of debt Britons and Britain find themselves in.

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David Thorpe

Why politicians should tread carefully before using Quantitative Easing to build infrastructure

By David Thorpe | Fri 24th March 2017 - 4:25 pm

At a time when politicians grapple with how to use the tools at their disposal to reduce inequality of opportunity and outcome, quantitative easing {QE) can seem like an easy option.

To those blessedly unversed in the intricacies of the monetary policy tool that has dominated more than anything else the economy of the UK since the financial crisis, QE sounds like, ‘printing money and spending it on infrastructure.’

If only it were that simple. QE is a policy of central banks to buy the bonds  issued by their own governments, the aim being to push interest rates down and drive capital into assets more likely to make the economy grow.

So the first problem with any idea of using QE to increase government spending is that, well, the government doesn’t have the power to do it, Politicians can issue the bonds, the Bank of England can choose not to buy them, and the Bank of England is independent of government. 

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems: Inflation rise hits the poorest

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 21st March 2017 - 4:28 pm

Senior Liberal Democrats have been commenting on the inflation rise today. I have to say that although  0.5% in a month is a lot, it feels like so much more. The prices of so much of my supermarket shop seems to have gone up by a lot more.

In Scorland, our Economy spokesperson Carolyn Caddick said:

Rising inflation shows that the British public are paying the price for Theresa May’s decision to take Britain out of the Single Market. With the pound falling in value by 18% since the referendum, the price of imports have shot up and broken the official target. Every Scot going on holiday abroad is seeing that their pounds do not buy what they used to.

Worst of all, the dramatic leap in food prices is hitting the poorest the most.

The fragile UK economy has been kept on life support by consumer spending, but with prices rising, that is now threatened. If Theresa May should change course immediately, and recognise that you can’t have a hard Brexit and affordable prices.

Our Shadow Chancellor Susan Kramer also blamed Brexit, saying that “You can’t have a hard brexit and affordable prices.”

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NewsHound

LibLInk: Nick Clegg: This is the future – the unstoppable march of machines

By NewsHound | Wed 25th January 2017 - 11:45 am

Nick Clegg’s latest Standard column starts off by setting out a number of current problems. One is very different from the others:

There’s a lot to worry about these days: hard Brexit, Trump’s protectionism, Diego Costa’s future at Chelsea, Putin’s manoeuvres, conflict in the South China Sea, Boris Johnson’s next gaffe, climate change.

It’s another that he focuses on, though. What happens to people as their jobs are replaced by machines. He uses the self-driving truck as an example:

According to one recent report, truck driving and related jobs employ more people than any other job in 29 out of America’s 50 states. It is estimated that there are 8.7 million trucking-related jobs in the US. It is one of the few jobs that still attracts a fairly decent income — about $40,000 (£32,000) a year — without requiring higher academic qualifications. In other words, it’s a precious ingredient in the American Dream: a dependable job, accessible to everyone.

It is a question of when, not if, American highways will be crisscrossed by thousands of similar self-driving trucks. And what then for the millions of truck drivers, their families and their communities? An economic earthquake, that’s what, which could leave millions of people out of work.

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Helen Flynn

Why liberals should embrace the Steady State Economy

By Helen Flynn | Fri 9th December 2016 - 11:55 am

One of the saddest things about the lurch to extremism and the right wing of the political spectrum over the past few years—and especially these last few months—has been that attention has been taken away from the significant problems with capitalism and its reliance on continued growth that the 2008 crash had exposed.

The Classical Economists, in particular Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, had already theorised centuries ago that growth could not go on forever and that eventually states would enter the condition of being a “stationary state”.  John Stuart Mill wrote that the “increase of wealth is not boundless….the …

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Ashley Cartman

There are issues more important than Europe

By Ashley Cartman | Wed 7th December 2016 - 10:25 am

David Cameron famously told his party to ‘stop banging on about Europe’, are we in the Liberal Democrats in danger of doing the same? I fear we are.

With our seemingly exclusive focus on Europe we are missing a more fundamental concern for British voters, to paraphrase Bill Clinton’s campaign message ‘it’s the economy stupid!’

An Ashcroft poll conducted in September this year showed that although most voters agreed that negotiating the best Brexit deal possible was the top priority for the country as a whole when it came to issues facing themselves and their families it came fourth behind tackling the cost of living, improving the NHS and getting the economy moving. This doesn’t surprise me.

Like many I was dumbfounded by the result in June. For the first time I felt there were huge sections of our society that I neither knew nor understood. It would be easy to write off the 17,410,742 who voted to leave as xenophobic, racist, ignorant or just conned by an anti EU media establishment. That would be a mistake.

I have spent the last few months thinking about why, when to me the arguments for remain were clear, we as a nation voted to leave.  My belief is that confused by a torrent of dubious facts from both sides a significant proportion of the electorate assessed the ‘state of nation’ and concluded that it simply wasn’t good enough. With nothing to lose they voted accordingly.

Should we really be so surprised by this? Faced with falling real wages, declining social mobility, greater financial insecurity and government policy that rescued the banks but let the steel industry wither it really isn’t that shocking that so many voted as they did.

As Liberal Democrats we are certainly doing a great job articulating the publics concerns about Brexit. Since June we have become the rallying point for those deeply worried about the implications of a hard Brexit and a recent YouGov poll  showed that we could gain significant electoral advantage in the event of a snap general election. 

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Arnold Kiel

Opportunities? Brexiteers, please specify

By Arnold Kiel | Wed 23rd November 2016 - 12:39 pm

The motives and backgrounds of leave-voters are by now sufficiently understood to conclude that many of them cannot afford to and would not have voted for becoming substantially and permanently poorer. Some may, but had it been widely understood that Brexit comes at a high economic price for everybody, the result would have been a different one.

Apparently, most leavers dismissed the economic arguments of remain, and instead of asking for better arguments from leave bought the “scaremongering”-claim (admittedly, leave was much better at creating slogans). And this continues: leave already claims victory on the economy after 6 months in which nothing (apart from a 15% devaluation of the country) has happened. Luckily, consumers so far remain complacent and keep spending.

I know the typical response I can expect from Brexiteers: unsubstantiated claims (“see the opportunities”, “champions of free trade”…), denial (“Q3 was good”), fluffy sovereignty-talk (“Brussels”), and pressure (“how dare you not respecting the will of the people?”). Is that all you have got?

May I challenge you to think a little harder? Specify trading opportunities the UK currently misses because of EU membership, which outweigh the losses from leaving the single market. In other words: How and when will you have replaced the benefits of preferential access to 27 EU member states and the EUs’ 53 third-country agreements with higher yielding UK-deals? How and when will you recover the transitional losses? Will the current generation of young people recover from the damage within their professionally active lifetime? No leave-campaigner has ever presented any such case. Can you?

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Ben Andrew

Labour did not crash the economy

By Ben Andrew | Mon 21st November 2016 - 10:07 am

 

After the financial crash, the Tories persuaded the public that they were the only party who could be trusted with the economy. Osborne’s message went something like this:

“Labour crashed the economy. They did this by spending too much, borrowing too much, and letting the budget deficit get too large. In order to create a strong economy, we need to get the deficit down. And the only way to do this is to implement spending cuts until our deficit reaches zero again.”

This narrative was a huge political success. Even now that we have a new Chancellor, and a supposedly new approach, the Conservatives still hold onto the reputation of being the only economically sensible party, built on the foundations laid by so-called Osbornomics. The problem is that it is absolute nonsense.

Their economic narrative is flawed in three ways.

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Steve Trevethan

Is austerity working? And do all debts have to be paid?

By Steve Trevethan | Mon 5th September 2016 - 9:32 am

 

These questions invite binary “Yes” or “No” responses. More considered approaches exist. We need to consider the economic consequences of debt repayment, structural and attitudinal causes and contributions, responsibility for debts both particular and general, beneficiaries and losers, and, how they may be prevented in the future. Also, can such enormous debts be paid?

This requires analysis and accurate, accessible language. In Economics and Finance, that which has different labels is sometimes not significantly different and that which is under one label has significant differences. For example, money consists mainly of credit creation since loans create deposits and loans are debts.

Debt is a form of relationship: financial activity connects and affects people.

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Peter Martin

What is monetarism and what happened to it?

By Peter Martin | Tue 23rd August 2016 - 3:08 pm

In the late 70s and early 80s economic monetarism was espoused by Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph  who wanted a radical alternative to the prevailing Keynesianism of previous governments. The theory seemed to be simple enough. The idea was that the money supply was a key parameter of our economy. Therefore, if we wanted to control inflation, and it did need to be controlled at the time, all Government needed to do was control the supply of money. Inflation would then fall and all would be well. Very quickly the Government and Treasury economists learned that they could not actually do that. It was difficult enough to define what money actually was let alone control the amount of it. Is it base money M0, which is just the amount of notes and coins in circulation? Or is it M1 which includes travellers’ cheques and demand deposits? Or, maybe M2 which includes savings deposits? Or M3 or M4?  For anyone who cares to look it up they can find out what MZM means. There are lots of ways we can create money and lots of ways to try to define it. If I write out an IOU that is a form of money. As Minsky famously said, anyone can create money. It is getting it accepted which may be the problem.

But if we think about it, we can see that the money supply, no matter how we define it, does not tell us anything much at all. If the Bank of England were to, say,  create £10 trillion of banknotes and keep them securely in their vaults they would have absolutely no effect at on the economy. But if they were stolen and scattered around the country by dropping them from a proverbial helicopter then they certainly would have an effect. They would be spent. So it is not so much the amount of money that exists that matters. It is the amount of money that is spent.

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Jeremy Hazlehurst

Workers’ Councils – one way to take back control of our economy

By Jeremy Hazlehurst | Wed 27th July 2016 - 11:59 am

When Theresa May suggested that businesses ought to set up workers’ councils, she was said by many commentators to be moving to the centre ground, perhaps to hoover up centrist voters put off by Labour’s leftwards drift. Whatever the political motivations, it is an extremely interesting idea. Is it one that liberals should support? Absolutely, because it can help people take back control — in a meaningful way.

A lesson from the EU referendum was that many people are dissatisfied with the economic system. The slogan “Take Back Control” was vague to the point of meaninglessness, but psychologically potent for people …

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NewsHound

Tim and Vince write for the Times on the need for ministers to provide leadership on Brexit strategy

By NewsHound | Fri 1st July 2016 - 2:49 pm

Tim Farron and Vince Cable have written for the Times’ Red Box website setting out what they think should happen in negotiations with the EU and in economic strategy as we face a self-induced Brexit recession.

As Nick Clegg said before the referendum, so called Project Fear was understating the impact Brexit would have. We are also suffering a void of leadership and some very unrealistic thinking from the Brexit camp who, as we discovered, didn’t really have a plan.

We can’t hang about, they say:

Business and investors won’t wait around forever to see leadership.  Many first tier organisations will simply pack their bags and go unless they see a path ahead.  Meanwhile our smaller businesses, and particularly those in high risk/ high innovation sectors will feel the squeeze as bank lending dries up as it did in 2008.

Two things need to be done. You get the feeling this was filed before yesterday’s extraordinary events:

The first can only be done by leaders of Leave – those who wish to lead us into the new unknown – and in particular, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.  They must now show his vision for the UK and provide a clear plan for Britain’s relationship with the EU.  To reassure the market they, and other potential prime ministers, need to make clear that membership of the single market is the priority ask for any negotiations.  Businesses need to know that, whatever else, their key relationships will not have to fundamentally change.

It will require real leadership, rather than populist platitudes.  It may mean securing a deal which pleases no one and does not address many of the concerns raised by leave voters about immigration and freedom of movement.  Leading is about making choices, it’s now time for Boris and Gove to tell us theirs.

The second urgent priority must be the responsibility of the current government.  There is now every likelihood of a Brexit recession.  If the government acts now, by abandoning its already unnecessary financial straitjacket and allowing capital investment and stimulus support to flow into precarious parts of our economy, we might avoid the worst impacts on jobs and livelihoods. The economy could be stimulated through the Network Rail Capital Project and local authorities being allowed to borrow to build houses. The £250bn the governor of the Bank of England has put aside could be put into the Funding for Lending and the Regional Growth Fund.

Of primary concern must be our most innovative industries.  Those businesses on the cutting edge are likely to see funding from traditional financial institutions dry up as banks revert to their core business model.  Giving serious financial help and stability to these industries is vital to ensure their long term future in the UK.

The British Business Bank, set up by the Lib Dems in Government, is a crucial part of the support for business that’s needed:

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The Voice

Rennie: We need to keep access to EU markets easy for business

By The Voice | Sat 4th June 2016 - 9:26 am

Willie Rennie argues today that we need to make sure that we keep access to EU markets easy for business. We don’t want to be putting borders up, creating more red tape, which could cause problems and cut jobs. He says:

At the heart of the argument for remaining in Europe is a single market, making trade easier, and allowing businesses based on innovation and excellence to thrive is going to underpin our future success.

That was the argument that won the independence referendum and is just as powerful now.

Three million jobs in Britain depend on Europe. We need to make Europe easy for business.

As part of Europe we are part of an economic market worth trillions. There are 500 million customers.

It means that a Scottish company that is good and efficient at its job can expand across the continent.

Easy access to 500 million customers is worth millions of jobs in Britain.

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Michael Berwick-Gooding

Can the Liberal Democrats provide a vision for Britain that the disaffected can support?

By Michael Berwick-Gooding | Fri 20th May 2016 - 8:55 am

A few weeks ago Liberal Democrat Voice published an article by Lord William Wallace entitled Could Trumpland reach Britain in which William Wallace argued that we need to firstly “pay more attention to ‘the bottom third’ of society.” He identified that “what used to be called ‘the white working-class’ has deserted the Democrats in the USA” and spoke of the rise of Marine le Pen in France and UKIP in Britain.

Lots of liberals talk of the rise of inequality over the last 30 or so years. However few if any talk of the major causes of this – firstly the rejection of managing the economy to provide full employment where everyone will have a job. Some people talk of their experience in the 1960’s and 70’s by saying you could hand in your notice on a Friday and within a week you would have a new job and some would say by Monday or Tuesday they would have started their new job.

Secondly the increase in the mobility of labour. In Britain we have seen this most clearly from the 2004 EU enlargement, but in worked in favour of British building workers in the 1980’s who went to West Germany as in “Auf Wiedersehen, Pet”

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Steve Trevethan

Cakeonomics and Free Trade

By Steve Trevethan | Thu 19th May 2016 - 12:34 pm

 

Crumbs!

Not heard of Cakeonomics?

Cakeonomics is a simplified, quick and sometimes fun approach to economics and its connections with everyday life. It uses the metaphor of cake in an effort to make Economics more accessible and attractive, so that more of us can ask better questions about it and be sharper at assessing any answers. We need stronger, more confident knowledge to better analyse and help address the problems of our times, which are also likely to be the problems of our children and theirs.

Your piece of cake depends on various factors. Two crucial factors are the size of your slice and the size of the cake from which your slice comes.

Here’s some data and information about the global economic cake:

The richest 1 per cent increased its income by 60 per cent in the last 20 years (1992-2012) with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process.

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The Voice

Kramer: Cameron and Osborne must stand up to despots and oligarchs

By The Voice | Thu 12th May 2016 - 12:22 pm

Lib Dem Economics Spokesperson Susan Kramer was not entirely impressed with David Cameron’s pronouncements on corruption. It’s fair to say she won’t be holding her breath. She said:

We welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement that those buying property in the UK or bidding for government contracts will be required to register, but quick action is vital for him to show sincerity, and any such register should be publicly available.

Don’t forget, we have heard similar platitudes before that have amounted to nothing. Back at the G8 conference in 2013 a new drive against tax havens was heralded, and the Panama Papers have exposed just how pathetic that action turned out to be.

When push comes to shove, Cameron and Osborne have shown they will always cater to the whims of corrupt billionaires from across the globe rather than pushing through real change. Unless they are willing to stand up to despots and oligarchs from places like China, Russia and Nigeria, any commitment will prove to be utterly shallow.

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Peter Martin

Reducing the Government’s Deficit is not the same as reducing the UK’s Deficit.


By Peter Martin | Wed 6th April 2016 - 9:45 am

Now that the immediate fuss over the recent Budget has died down a little it is perhaps time for some more considered reflection on the nature of any criticism on the failure of the government, and George Osborne in particular, to make anywhere near the progress promised on the question of cutting the budget deficit. Maybe we can get it right for the next time it hits the headlines. The deficit problem is not going to be solved any time soon.

Naturally, the duty of an opposition is to constructively oppose, and so if the government’s deficit does not fall and total debt does rise, when the Government has a clear policy for just the opposite, then the Lib Dems, together with the other left of centre opposition parties, need to point out the failure of that policy. However, we need to be careful. That argument can be easily turned around. So we are in favour of even higher taxes and even more drastic cuts in public spending, are we? And when we say we are not, how does that chime with the public? Will they accept we are really being constructive? Aren’t they just going to think we want it both ways?

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Peter Martin

Should the UK have a policy on the Pound’s exchange rate?

By Peter Martin | Mon 22nd February 2016 - 11:12 am

 

One point of agreement between the more radical of Post Keynesian economic thought and the mainstream is that there should be little or no intervention in the exchange rate and that the pound should be allowed to float freely. However, whilst many Post Keynesian economists would argue this way, they would also not be in favour of being quite so concerned about the budget deficit which is behind the austerity drive favoured by the mainstream.

An exchange rate policy need not be in the form of an old fashioned peg between the pound and the dollar, or even a basket of currencies, at any one particular rate, but it could be that government tries to ensure that imports and exports are always close to being in balance and always is prepared to nudge the exchange rate either way to try to achieve that. At present the imbalance is approximately 4% of GDP which puts the UK as a whole into debt. Either the government or the private sector has to cover that. There’s no point there being a squabble over just who that has to be. But that is where we are now in our economic thinking.

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George Potter

Farron’s strategy to tackle Corbyn is all wrong

By George Potter | Mon 18th January 2016 - 10:10 am

 

Recently Tim Farron responded to Jeremy Corbyn’s economic strategy by saying “Unfortunately Corbyn’s anti-business policies will ensure that no company has the budget to pay the wages their employees deserve”.

Now this is absolutely true and it’s very much Tim Farron’s approach to Corbyn and Labour at the moment. But it’s also absolutely the wrong approach to take.

The thing is, the public already thinks Labour aren’t economically competent and the Tories keep on ramming home that message. But since the public think that the Tories are economically competent then any attacks we make on Labour’s economic competence will just drive voters to the Tories.

In a nutshell, attacking Labour on the economy does nothing more than to annoy Labour voters who we want to win over while helping to turn undecided voters to the Tories.

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Lucy Nethsingha

George Osborne’s austerity policies put economic growth under threat.

By Lucy Nethsingha | Fri 15th January 2016 - 10:25 am

On 6th January George Osborne made a speech emphasising the threats to the UK economy in the coming year. His emphasis on the weakness of the economic situation might have come as a surprise to anyone who had listened to his autumn statement, where he was keen to trumpet how well the economy is doing, but Mr Osborne is a spin master above all else, and he clearly feels that the time has come for a different spin on our economy. The spin yesterday was all about the impact of the global economy on the UK.

The UK and US economies are growing at the moment, but growth in the rest of the world is looking very shaky. A down-turn in the global economy is bound to have an impact at home, and George Osborne’s austerity policies are not helping the UK to weather any potential global economic storm.

The biggest threat to the UK economy at the moment is not inflation, but deflation. Deflation means that any debt held by individuals or companies increases in value rather than decreasing over time. As a result deflation discourages spending and investment by individuals and companies, particularly the type of long term investment our country desperately needs.

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Geoff Crocker

What’s wrong with the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement?

By Geoff Crocker | Fri 27th November 2015 - 3:15 pm

There are three huge defects in the Chancellor’s autumn statement

1 Technical

The Chancellor fundamentally believes that the government budget can and should be balanced, or even run in surplus. This basic accounting assumption drives his whole thinking. But facts prove him, and the traditional thinking of the whole financial establishment, wrong on this. He has been unable to eliminate the deficit. He will not be able to eliminate it. In modern high technology, high productivity economies, deficit is inevitable, and manageable.

There’s a huge problem in thinking here. The Chancellor approaches economic policy like an accountant, rather than as an economist. Books should balance. He talks about what we can afford, purely in financial terms. But it’s not money which gives value to the real economy, but rather it’s real economic activity which gives money its value. Economic activity creates financial value, and not the other way round. What we can afford has to be measured in real resources of people, skills, natural resources, technology and capital assets. A thought experiment demonstrates this. If it were possible to plug a machine into the earth to produce the whole GDP without labour and therefore without wages, then the money vouchers the government would have to allocate would all be a total financial deficit each year. Money does not have to be backed either by gold, or by the sale of government bonds, but only by output GDP. Deficits are here to stay. Facts support this hypothesis.

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The Voice

Susan Kramer responds to the Autumn Statement in the Lords

By The Voice | Thu 26th November 2015 - 8:15 pm

New Liberal Democrat economy spokesperson responded to the Autumn Statement in the Lords yesterday. Here’s her speech in full.

It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, but I confess that he disappointed me today. He did not throw anything, so we have missed out on the drama of the other place. I was also somewhat disappointed in the Budget. It is less generous than it appears on first viewing: we still have a £12 billion cut in welfare. If I understand it correctly, that will now happen as people transfer into universal credit. I am sure that the Minister will advise noble Lords about that—it would be good to understand how it will work. Of course, I am absolutely delighted that the Chancellor reversed his plans to cut tax credits for poor working people. I think, with some interest, that had the Chancellor been a Member of this House a couple of weeks ago, when the relevant statutory instrument was debated, he would have supported neither the Conservative nor the Labour Motion, but the Liberal Democrat fatal Motion.

We are also pleased with the up fronting of money for the NHS in this Budget, especially the investment in mental health. That is welcome, but can the Minister confirm whether that £600 million is new money for mental health and does not contain any former promise within it? We are supportive of stamp duty on buy to let and very supportive of the increased spending on infrastructure. We note that the Chancellor partially explained that that was because borrowing is now cheap. That is what we have been saying for weeks, so we are very glad that he has listened to that argument.

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Richard Flowers

A Liberal Democrat Economy Group

By Richard Flowers | Thu 19th November 2015 - 3:58 pm

Tim’s talking about the economy. And it’s great.

With George Osborne building an economy to benefit big business and Mr Corbyn swerving Labour towards “big state” nationalisations, there’s a clear big gap for the Liberal Democrats to be the Party of Britain’s creative talents, home-grown entrepreneurs and innovators, the self-employed and small business owners.

But we need to go further.

It’s increasingly urgent that Lib Dems present a distinctive economic agenda to underpin our social and liberal plans.

So the Party needs a new (possibly unofficial) Liberal Democrat group to raise awareness and to promote what the Liberal Economy means.

(That is a group about the Liberal Economy to be quite distinct from “Economic Liberals”, or for that matter Social Liberals, accepting input from either side or neither.)

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Caron Lindsay

Tim Farron’s full speech on the economy: the radical gems that weren’t in the extracts

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 19th November 2015 - 2:35 pm

In days of yore, 6 months ago, if the Liberal Democrat leader made a keynote speech on the economy, the journos would be there in force. While there was a bit of coverage on the Guardian and BBC, it was nowhere like it used to be. So, I guess that means it’s up to us, and by us I mean all Liberal Democrats, to get the word out. The first section of this piece has some commentary on the speech and the full text is at the bottom.

The trails sent out last night in my opinion missed out the best bits of the speech. The whole thing covered a huge amount of ground from entrepreneurship to mass migration to climate change to inter-generational fairness to massive investment in infrastructure to housing. There were also some key elements that weren’t there quite as strongly as I’d have liked, for example on the living wage and tackling poverty and inequality. He spoke of these things in his Beveridge Lecture to the Social Liberal Forum two years ago.

He cast the Liberal Democrats as the party of small business, innovation and creativity, while the Conservatives were the party of corporatism:

The fact is that the Tories aren’t really pro-free market capitalism at all.  They are pro-corporate capitalism.

They are there to fight not for entrepreneurs, not for innovators who oil the wheels of the market, but for the status quo.

In recent years, a common criticism of the Liberal Democrats is that we have been way too establishment. Tim Farron sets out that we are no such thing, likening us to entrepreneurs as the insurgents:

So I say “let the Tories be the Party of huge complacent corporations”

The Liberal Democrats will be the Party of Small Business, the party of wealth creators, the insurgents, the entrepreneurs.

And there’s a good section about challenging power, government or corporate:

We are in politics for precisely the opposite reasons to the Tories: to challenge orthodoxy and challenge those with power, while they support orthodoxy and established power – in business, just as in politics.

Because here is the truth – it doesn’t matter if it is big government or big business, the fact remains, too much power in the hands of too few people means a bad deal for everyone else.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Vince Cable: Britain’s economic recovery is precarious and an economic storm is coming

By NewsHound | Sun 15th November 2015 - 11:13 am

Vince Cable has form for predicting economic disaster, so you take notice when he says that there could be another one on the horizon, even if he qualifies it with an anecdote from his professional life:

I use the word “could”. I am always mindful of the day 20 years ago when I was greeted in my role as chief economist at Shell with a plaque, in Arabic, which translated meant “Those who claim to be able to forecast the future are lying even if, by chance, they are later proved right”. The reputation of economic forecasting as a science, which makes astrology looks respectable, reflects the same scepticism. And that scepticism was greatly reinforced by a total failure of standard economic models based on efficient financial markets to anticipate the last disaster.

Writing in the Independent, he outlines the factors which could indicate that all is not well: the high level of debt, the asset bubbles which have been created particularly in housing and the international economy, particularly any shock waves from a Chinese slowdown.

One side-effect of keeping economies growing through cheap money and credit creation through quantitative easing has been the generation of asset bubbles, especially in property markets. Britain demonstrates the problem in an extreme way, magnifying underlying imbalances between housing demand and supply. Double-digit housing inflation is not merely creating appalling social problems and division between classes and generations but grossly distorting investment from productive activities to property holding. The Bank of England has tools of macro-prudential management to curb this inflation but the extreme timidity in using them reveals the high level of dependence on this precarious and dangerous form of growth.

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The Voice

Tom Brake on why Liberal Democrats opposed George Osborne’s Fiscal Charter

By The Voice | Thu 15th October 2015 - 10:55 am

It’s all quite simple, really – the Liberal Democrats, unlike Labour, were not going to fall into Osborne’s trap. Here is Tom Brake’s speech from last night’s debate:

The Liberal Democrats will not support the charter tonight. Whatever the machinations in the Labour party, our reasons for opposing it are clear: the charter is just as much about fantasy economics as was Labour’s magic money tree. We remain committed to abolishing the structural deficit by 2017-18, and to seeing debt fall as a percentage of GDP in the following years. We will not, however, abandon the critical need for continued investment in infrastructure, and we will ensure that our economy remains competitive in the medium and long term. We are for sound and stable economic policy—something that sadly has been abandoned first by the official Opposition and now by the Government.

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Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged and | 10 Comments
James Baillie

Liberty: It’s an economic issue

By James Baillie | Mon 28th September 2015 - 8:46 am

 

In light of recent events, one key question that has been flying about is where we fit into this new and radically changed political climate. Corbyn’s Labour may adopt more liberal policies on social issues such as mental health or LGBT rights, which whilst welcome gives us fewer unique campaigning avenues. Amongst all this, the economy is a key divider, and how we frame our policies may be crucial to our electoral revival or lack thereof.

Building a new liberal economics, distinct from Conservative or Labour strategies, is possible, and we need to do it by the simplest of methods – applying our own passion for personal liberty in the economic sphere. That means ensuring that neither corporate wealth, private wealth, nor the state are able to dominate people’s economic lives, and trying to make the position of ordinary individuals more economically powerful. That means a push to spread wealth and income more evenly without direct state control, by targeting ownership as a source of economic power.

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Posted in Op-eds | 12 Comments
Greg Webb

Challenging this Conservative-led narrative on the economy

By Greg Webb | Sat 26th September 2015 - 1:03 pm

 

  • Building the green economy to take Britain forwards sustainably.
  • Improved support for victims of domestic abuse.
  • Better access to vocational and further education.
  • Providing sanctuary and support to those fleeing conflict and drought.

We can (I suspect mostly) agree that these are good aims for us as a party, and that Lib Dems back in government would work hard to deliver on them. But they all cost money.

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Posted in News | 45 Comments
The Voice

Farron proposes start-up allowance for new business owners as he focuses on the party’s economic credibility

By The Voice | Sun 20th September 2015 - 6:00 am

Tim Farron is using the first full day of conference to announce plans for a so-called start-up allowance for entrepreneurs launching new small businesses. The allowance would be worth £2600 over the first six months (£100 a week) after they set up their new business. It comes as part of a leadership focus on building upon the economic credibility won by our five years spent in government.

Tim said:

Liberal Democrats believe that if you have a dream you should be supported to fulfil it.  Those who take the chance to set out on their own and create a business should be celebrated and supported.

Lib Dems recognise the courage of those who seek to create something new.

While Labour have said they now want to strip Government support for businesses and the Tories focus on giving tax cuts to giant corporations, we want to focus on entrepreneurs and small business seeking to grow.

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Posted in Conference | Also tagged and | 10 Comments
George Turner

After Corbyn, what’s left with the Liberal Democrats?

By George Turner | Wed 16th September 2015 - 10:58 am

There has been a tendency in recent years for the Liberal Democrats to define the party in relation to others. We will give a heart to the Conservatives and a brain to the Labour Party. Look left, look right, then cross.

There will be those who will argue that the election of a left wing MP to the Labour leadership means that the Lib Dems will have to keep close to the the centre. Any temptation to reposition itself on the left wing of British politics after leaving the coalition should be resisted.

Immediate reactions of this nature should be avoided as should any crass remarks about the ‘economic illiteracy’ of ‘Corbynomics’. Corbyn’s approach is rooted in serious economic thinking. Whether people disagree or not is a different issue but illiterate it is not. To that end Sal Brinton’s response to Corbyn’s election was both disappointing.

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 50 Comments
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