By Stephen Tall
| Wed 23rd December 2009 - 10:20 am
My favourite bedside reading, Aaccountancy Age, has the story:
Vince Cable has emerged as the accountants’ choice for the next Chancellor following the pre-Budget report. In a poll of around 600 readers conducted by Accountancyage.com both before and after the pre-Budget report, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader and shadow chancellor proved popular with members of the profession, with 44% and 45% of voters wanting him as next chancellor rather than political rivals Alistair Darling and George Osborne.
Here are the results in full:
Pre PBR
George Osborne 45%
Vince Cable 44%
Alistair Darling 10%
Post PBR
Vince Cable 45%
George Osborne 38%
Alistair Darling 17%
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 21st December 2009 - 12:30 pm
The decision of the Tory party to turn a blind eye to the mysterious tax status of their deputy chairman – and the man who funds their marginal seats campaign – has come under close media scrutiny in the last few weeks, with Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable last week raising the issue at (Deputy) Prime Minister’s Questions, and labelling Lord (Michael) Ashcroft a “non-dom”.
A week ago, Lib Dem treasury spokesman Lord (Matthew) Oakeshott wrote to his fellow peer to put the the simple question – “Are you a non-dom or not?” – to him directly: …
Never let it be said that the Lib Dems’ deputy leader is a one-trick pony, capable only of talking sound common sense on the economy – he is also, as we all know, a ballroom dancing prince, a man who knows his paso from his tango. So he’s on sure-footed ground in the Mail, when he questions whether the Beeb has runined the show that, in previous series, has entranced millions:
Britain is divided into two nations: those who watch Strictly Come Dancing on a Saturday evening and those who watch The X Factor. There are a few neutrals, but not many. I have been firmly in the Strictly camp from its early days but I worry now that the formula no longer works – that it is not just losing the ratings battle but is losing its way. A national treasure is at risk. …
More than any other show I can remember, it has brought together people of different ages and social backgrounds from different parts of the country – men and women. It has helped to create a national conversation and has given a big boost to dancing as a popular pastime.
Yet something has gone badly wrong. Millions of viewers voted with their feet for the other channel. Even diehard supporters like me became bored in the early rounds this year by very ordinary performances from an excessive number of unknown ‘celebrities’.
You can read Vince’s article in full here. And as an extra special treat on a cold Monday morning, you can enjoy re-living our shadow chancellor treading the light fantastic with Alesha Dixon:
By Philip Young
| Sat 19th December 2009 - 10:21 am
Vince makes the front page of the Daily Express, Nick scores two page leads in the Mail, Huhne forces a Tory U-turn, Paddy bazookas a Brigadier, Bob Russell biffs a Bishop and The Telegraph’s Deputy Editor says George Osbourne is a childish prat … A few press clippings you may have missed, in our Newspaper Review of the Week.
“Tories lack clarity” – Simon Heffer, columnist: Daily Telegraph, 16.12.09
“Do the Tories enunciate a clear alternative that will benefit not merely their supporters, but also the country? Not yet. It’s not just that George Osborne seems to have no clear plans to …
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 16th December 2009 - 6:35 pm
Forgive me if I tread carefully here, for while the Lib Dem deputy leader is protected by the cloak of Parliamentary privilege your humble scribe has no wish to tangle with a billionaire. So I’ll let The Times tell the story of today’s (Deputy) Prime Minister’s Questions:
A senior Liberal Democrat today referred to Lord Ashcroft, the Tory deputy chairman, as a “non-dom” in the Commons. It is the first time the Conservative peer, whose tax status is unknown, has been described in a such a way on the floor of the House.
By Peter Welch
| Sat 12th December 2009 - 11:20 am
Let’s start with a health warning. My first-hand knowledge of Derby amounts to changing trains there once a decade ago. But the press are keen to help us find out more. Derby North qualifies as a three-way marginal (Lab 39.5%, Lib Dem 30.6% and Tories 25.9% according to Antony Wells). And not one but two national papers descended on the seat to find out how the public saw the PBR.
Slightly bizarrely, they both report on the seat as a Conservative prospect. (It is number 130 on the Tory hit list, number 30 on the Liberal Democrat list of targets.) …
By Philip Young
| Fri 11th December 2009 - 1:40 pm
A look back at the last few days of news and comment in the National newspapers, by former Fleet Street News Editor (and former Editor of Liberal News), Philip Young… including a few clippings you may have missed.
Sunday Times, 6.12.09:
“A Tory peer has been caught using someone else’s home address to claim tens of thousands of pounds in expenses. Lord Taylor of Warwick, a 57-year-old former barrister, told the House of Lords that his main home was a terrace house in Oxford, which he neither owned nor lived in. Taylor has lived in his family home …
Party strategists have bet heavily on their assessment that voters think it is time for a change.
Perhaps simplistically, they hold to the notion that British political fortunes are governed by a pendulum. You often hear them criticise what they term the blue/red red/blue swings, but privately they accept it as a fundamental ‘law’ of political physics and have allowed themselves to be governed by this supposed law these last two years.
2010 will be one of those ‘Time for a Change’ elections, they have deduced.
From that deduction they moved on to suggest that the Conservatives (to whom in their estimate the pendulum has swung) have won the argument among the British public that they, the Conservatives, are the party of change.
The next step in the analysis was to presume that attacks on Conservatives or Conservative policies would thus position the Liberal Democrats as against change and therefore implicitly pro the status quo and, deep down in voter consciousness, pro-Labour.
Among leading Liberal Democrat MPs this conclusion may have been conveniently close to their political preferences, for others – and I think we may include Cable in this – it makes for an agonising and uncomfortable position.
Here’s the video response Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable recorded yesterday in response to Alistair Darling’s Pre-Budget Report yesterday. (It is him, promise: you can make out the outline of his hat in the evening gloom – it might be worth filming Vince nearer a street-lamp next time.)
Here’s what Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable had to say in response to Alistair Darling’s Pre-Budget Report statement:
What we needed was a national economic plan but what we got was a weak party manifesto. There has never been a deficit like this and we need a sensible and coherent plan for dealing with it.
“The Chancellor has ducked the hard choices on spending and cuts. Instead of facing up to reality he has chosen to move the goal posts by relying on fanciful growth forecasts. He could have used this Budget to make the tax system fairer. But
This week sees the Government reveal its Pre-Budget Report, usually a review of spending in advance of the budget where the Chancellor says how he’ll be paying for it all though, traditionally, the run-up to a general election is the time for the Chancellor to play Santa, showering presents on favoured voters in key marginals, and with all the indications now pointing to a March General election, chances are we’ll never quite get to Hard Labour facing the BILL.
This year, of course, there is considerably less room for LARGESS. So let’s start with a look at where we’re …
Over at the Mail, Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable previews this week’s pre-budget report, says what the Lib Dems’ priorities would be, and and argues that the banks should pay back the taxpayer for saving their business. Here’s an excerpt:
This week the spotlight switches from bankers’ bonuses to government deficit. The collapse of the banks and the recession has devastated public finances. In Wednesday’s Pre-Budget Report, taxpayers will get the bill and the debate will begin as to who pays and how and when. … Unless painful budget measures accompany a fairer tax system, the public will be very angry. … There has to be a clear plan to bring the finances back into good order. Otherwise, there is a serious risk of a collapse of confidence leading to much higher interest rates and a weaker economy for a long time. It will not occur this side of an Election. …
I guarantee, on my party’s behalf, that we are prepared to take unpopular decisions – albeit with a commitment to distribute the burden fairly.
Timing is very tricky. Rushing into painful cuts or tax rises will plunge the country back into recession. … The Liberal Democrats and I have already indicated some of the programmes that could go: ‘baby bonds’, tax credit for high earners and identity cards. There will be defence cuts, providing these don’t affect the kit for our soldiers in Afghanistan; the Trident missile system is one item for the long term. Unless politicians spell out priorities, we shall get indiscriminate, damaging cuts to valuable services. …
Taxes should be cut for those on low and middle incomes by lifting the income tax threshold to £10,000
a year, £200 a week. This should be paid for by removing tax reliefs which enable the very well-off to avoid income tax. I am sticking with the idea of a mansion tax, a one per cent charge on property over £2 million. This is also a way of getting non-doms to pay tax; you can’t move a mansion to Monaco or the Caymans.
If we are looking for more tax money, the place to start is with the banks. Some are making very large sums on the back of a taxpayer guarantee and we should demand a fee for this – ten per cent of profits. These are the people who got us into this mess and splattered the nation’s account in red ink. They should get out of their pin stripes, roll up their sleeves and take the lead in cleaning up.
A new weekly round-up of random press clippings, compiled for The Voice by former Fleet Street News Editor (and former Liberal News Editor) Philip Young, including snippets you might have missed.
“Almost two million Britons have accepted pay cuts or chosen to work part-time in an attempt to stave-off unemployment as the recession bites. But the desperate measures mean that income tax receipts have collapsed by almost a fifth, and now the Government is facing the biggest peacetime deficit in history. Next week Ministers will confirm that they are likely to borrow close to £180 billion this year – the …
By David Lawson
| Fri 4th December 2009 - 10:05 am
There is a set of well known slights aimed at the Liberal Democrats. First, no one knows what they stand for. Or maybe they stand for lots of things but too complex and subtle for anyone to bother with. Secondly, they are just somewhere in between Tories and Labour. And that means you don’t need to listen to what they say because you can just take a bit off the edges of Tory and Labour.
Sell it right and this week’s tax policy is the sort of thing that will at least chip away at those preconceptions. Conveniently it may also be right.
The key part is – or should be – the abolition of income tax on the first £10k of earnings. That is a policy which can be sold from the left or the right. And we should do it openly and hard from both angles.
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 30th November 2009 - 3:05 pm
Ever since the Lib Dems shadow chancellor Vince Cable launched his proposed Mansion Tax on an unsuspecting world in September, there has been a suspicion that neighbouring Richmond Lib Dem MP Susan Kramer – who faces a tough battle against trustafarian Tory Zac Goldsmith – was, how shall we put this?, a little less than enamoured of the proposal that those living in houses worth £1m would be taxed more.
In a BBC interview, Susan declined the opportunity to support the tax as originally proposed, while the Hounslow Chronicle summed it up bluntly, and I suspect accurately: …
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 30th November 2009 - 11:35 am
As I write, Nick Clegg and Vince Cable are setting out the framework of ‘the party’s tax policies, the philosophical basis that underpins them and the contrast between the Liberal Democrats’ policies and those of the other two parties.’
This has been well trailed in the media this morning, with Nick conducting a series of media interviews. Much focus so far on the tweak to the ‘mansion tax’ proposals that Vince mooted at conference to public acclaim, but some disquiet among his own Parliamentary colleagues (many of whom knew nothing about it in advance).
The party has responded to criticisms made of the tax, especially in marginal seats in the south of England, by lifting the threshold at which the annual levy is paid to cover all houses worth more than £2m, and doubling the levy from 0.5% to 1% to ensure even more money is raised by the new tax.
The revenue raised from this and other measures (such as green taxes) will be ploughed back into the party’s spending priorities, including raising the tax threshold for the poorest in society.
The Lib Dems’ shadow chancellor Vince Cable today set out proposals today for the creation of what he’s calling a National Infrastructure Bank.
In his speech to The Civilisation Congress, Vince notes that the UK has one of the worst records for infrastructure investment in the OECD, and argues that there is an urgent need for a step change in infrastructure investment to create jobs, increase competitiveness, promote environmental sustainability and boost the economic recovery. Creating a National Infrastructure Bank – leveraging public funds with private capital – is, he argues, the best vehicle, especially with private investors beginning again to look for good long-term opportunities.
Here are the highlights from Vince’s speech:
There is a big hole in the prospects of the long-term recovery and growth of the UK economy.
Our infrastructure is currently rated 34 th in the world, which is poor by anyone’s standards. The Policy Exchange estimates that £500bn needs to be spent over the next decade on transport, energy storage, broadband and transmissions systems.
But in this recession, infrastructure investment is one of the first things to be squeezed and there is currently no prospect of investment on anything like the scale that is needed.
The 1997 general election turned out to be a once in a generation opportunity for many local Liberal Democrat campaign teams to gain a Parliamentary seat from the Conservatives. At the tail end of a by then deeply unpopular Conservative Government, the election saw unprecedented numbers of seats falling to the party. A few seats that were not quite gained from the Conservatives in 1997 did subsequently fall in 2001 and 2005, but it was the 1997 election with the Conservatives in government that was the main opportunity. Nearly every campaign that missed then did not subsequently win.
The Lib Dems’ deputy leader Vince Cable is the cover star of the December issue of Total Politics, trailing a feature interview with the Tory blogger we all love to name-check, Iain Dale. Here’s a taster:
Do you see the Liberal Democrats as a centre-left party?
No, I don’t use that description. I know some of my colleagues have in the past. There are some areas where we are, to use the jargon, centre-left progressive. A redistributive approach to taxation is obviously one of them, but there are other respects in which we are genuinely liberal, which puts us on the other
In today’s Times, Lib Dem deputy leader and shadow chancellor Vince Cable advocates a 10% tax on bank profits to fund a ‘safety net’ until finance houses can be broken up and are no longer too big to fail. Here’s an excerpt:
Some bankers might claim that they are doing God’s work. But the banks all owe their continued existence to the British and American taxpayer.
Some have been supported directly — RBS, Lloyds-HBOS, and the fully nationalised Northern Rock — but all benefit from the guarantee that they will not be allowed to fail. UK banks have received the equivalent of
Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free, Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable argues that simply “bashing bankers” will not solve the inherent structural problems in the banking system, and urges a considered response to address the issues. Here’s an excerpt:
Of course people are angry, and they have every right to be, especially when so many are losing their jobs in a recession triggered by a banking collapse. There are, however, different types of banks. Bonuses are a big issue in investment banks from proprietary trading, but are rare in retail banks. Some banks over-reached themselves and have been nationalised
Chris Jordan is Economic Justice Campaigns Officer at at ActionAid and writes about their new campaign – and the opportunity you have to suggest a question to be put to Treasury Minister Stephen Timms.
With the G20 newly anointed as the premier global economic forum, the final Finance Ministers meeting of the year of the in St Andrew’s on 7 November will provide a useful insight into just what kind of ‘G’ the 20 intends to be.
Will they take the path of the G8, making and breaking commitments on an annual basis, or take the opportunity to step up and …
Over at the Mail, Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable examines the “trickiest problem” facing Government: “to rein in public borrowing without making recession worse or damaging the useful things government does”. Here’s an excerpt:
The grim news that the economy is still in recession makes this dilemma more acute. It also reminds us that Britain is a deeply divided country. In the inflated metropolitan bubble of the City, there is a lot of excited talk about recovery based on a bounce-back in the stock market, city bonuses and rising house prices in posher parts of London.
The UK economy unexpectedly contracted by 0.4% between July and September, according to official figures, meaning the country is still in recession. It is the first time UK gross domestic product (GDP) has contracted for six consecutive quarters, since quarterly figures were first recorded in 1955.
Here’s what Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable had to say:
For all the hopes of a quick recovery, these figures make it clear we are still in the longest and what could yet become the deepest recession on record.
British National Party leader Nick Griffin has used his Question Time appearance to criticise Islam and defend a past head of the Ku Klux Klan.
He also told a largely hostile audience that Winston Churchill would be a BNP supporter if he were alive, and said he would find two men kissing “creepy”.
Anti-fascist protestors scuffled with police outside BBC TV Centre in west London before the show was filmed.
Minister Peter Hain said the BBC had legitimised the BNP’s “racist poison”.
But the corporation defended the invitation to the leader of the anti-immigration party to appear, saying it had a duty to be impartial.
One of the panellists, Justice Secretary Jack Straw, said it had been a “catastrophic week for the BNP because for the first time the views of the BNP have been properly scrutinised”.
And following the programme, other panellists said Mr Griffin had been exposed. BBC (with video)
Was it only a month ago we were in the throes of the Lib Dem conference? How time flies. Cast your minds back four weeks, and the Lib Dems’ shadow chancellor, Vince Cable, made a few waves by announcing his wish to introduce a new tax, quickly dubbed the ‘Mansion Tax’, of 0.5% on the value of properties over £1m.
In fact, as LDV’s Alex Foster spotted at the time, Vince was re-treading a policy he’d been forced to abandon just 18 months previously. But, then, a lot has changed in the last 18 months, both economically, and in terms of Vince’s popularity. The surprise announcement caused Vince more than a few headaches, with shadow cabinet colleagues complaining of being kept in the dark.
A few months ago, Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable tabled an Early Day Motion in the Commons to attempt to pressure the Government to treat fairly the Equitable Life policyholders who lost their pensions due to “serial maladministration” by the, erm, Government. Rather remarkably, the EDM attracted 331 signatures, a recent record, and over half the MPs in the Commons.
With such support, the Lib Dems decided to put the issue to the vote (the first time it’s been voted on by the Commons), giving over one of their oppositon debates to the subject. Surely Labour would either give in, and at last accept the independent Parliamentary ombudsman’s judgement that the Government was liable for compensation; or, if they didn’t, enough MPs would ensure they backed up their EDM signature with their Parliamentary vote?
Neither event happened. Labour squeaked through with a majority of 25, the whips’ job done. Equitable Life policyholders remain uncompensated for the incompetence of their Goverment.
The 10:10 campaign is calling for a commitment to a 10% cut in the UK’s carbon emissions in 2010. It’s aimed at individuals, businesses, schools, politicians – in fact, everyone in the UK.
At 4pm today, Parliament will be debating the following motion, submitted by Simon Hughes MP, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy & Climate Change Secretary:
Over at The Times, the Lib Dems’ shadow chancellor Vince Cable argues that the Financial Services Authority’s review on mortgages doesn’t go far enough to prevent a return to banks’ wild excesses. Here’s an excerpt:
Some of the more aggressive banks, seeking to expand their market share, are relaxing their offerings in terms of loan-to-value ratios. Any eagerness to return to former lending practices should be a source of concern. The housing market has not adjusted, at least yet, to realistic levels. Historical trends show a cyclical pattern of boom and bust, lasting roughly 15 to 20 years, going back to
Writing in the Mail yesterday (yes, the Mail: the newspaper which last week published the most complained-about article in British history) Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable contrasts two of the big stories of the last week: the investment bankers, announcing record bonuses, alongside the news of another big rise in unemployment. Here’s an excerpt:
A year after the collapse and rescue of the banking system by the taxpayer, the number of British workers without full-time jobs is still rising: 120,000 more in the three months to August.
But the big international banks – mainly US-owned but major players in
Hywel Ballsy move using a close-to-the-knuckle knock off of the Fifa logo. Prob be OK, they are usually pretty relaxed about that sort of thing!...
Steve Trevethan Might we have a definition of government debt?
Might we have a definition of democracy?...
David Raw @ Tristan Ward. Given your views on carers, I would strongly advise you to remain healthy and not to grow old....
Katrin Harding Thanks for grasping this issue! On the consultation sessions- I’d love to join one but the timings are impossible as a parent of young children. I’m happy t...
Peter Martin @ Kira,
The words you quoted were from Peter Davies'. Not me. I wouldn't agree with raising VAT on energy to 15% right now. I'd leave it as is.
The point ...
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Hywel 
Steve Trevethan 
David Raw 
Katrin Harding 
Peter Martin 