Tag Archives: liberal democrat manifesto 2014

Opinion: A ringfence is not enough for the science budget

The party has recently been trailing hints of the content and priorities of the new manifesto. One released last week was an announcement touting a ringfence of the science budget. They write:

The manifesto plans include ringfencing the science research budget and introducing a green innovation arm to the British Business Bank.

It’s great that the manifesto team have chosen to flag investment in science and innovation as a reason to vote Liberal Democrat in the 2015 general election, but what a meagre and unambitious announcement this was. One worrying sign is the wording mentioning only the ‘research budget’, which raises the concern that this ringfence might be a fig leaf hiding underspending in capital investment for science, as we saw in the early years of the current coalition government – though the 2014 budget went some way towards plugging the gap in capital spending in the sector.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 10 Comments

Times reports Lib Dem “infighting” but misses out David Laws’ dismissal of their “highly misleading” story

Yesterday, the Times reported that the Liberal Democrat leadership were preparing to ditch policies from our manifesto which wouldn’t get agreement from either the Conservative or Labour parties. I wrote of the dangers of such a move, arguing that our manifesto needed to be brimming with liberalism.

David Laws, who chairs the manifesto group, wrote on the party website that the Times story was highly misleading.

The latest example of this is the highly misleading article on the front page of today’s Times (18 February) under the headlines ‘Lib Dems Axe pledges for coalition deal’ and ‘Lib Dems seeking policies to

Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 24 Comments
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Recent Comments

  • Simon R
    It's nice to see an attempt to not just suggest a policy but think through in detail how it could be implemented and how much it would cost. But @Mike Pete...
  • Steve Trevethan
    Thank you for a most interesting article. What is to stop paying N.H. S. staff decent attractive pay and making sure that they enjoy their work (mostly) with...
  • Craig Levene
    Nobody at moment Denis. Those who talk about AOC or Newsom just goes to show how detached the Dem party is from reality. They only have themselves to blame for...
  • Mick Taylor
    Unfettered capitalism -of the sort Donald Trump gavour - is not good for workers or consumers. This was recognised even by Adam Smith, who whilst thinking capit...
  • Denis Loretto
    Who is the leader or even potential leader of the Democrats? What prospect is there of their putting together an inspiring campaign? Is their only hope a fall-a...