Over the last week I’ve had a series of posts about the main Liberal Democrat challenges for 2011. In case you’ve missed any of them over the Christmas festivities, here is a quick recap:
- The economy – get this right, or little else matters
- Winning elections – for a political party winning votes is key to success
- Making progress on core beliefs – the coalition needs not only to be a success but a liberal government
- Showing the difference Liberal Democrats make – we mustn’t become the party equivalent of a speech writer, making lots of improvements but no-one knowing about it
- Using members and supporters as a campaigning resource – or what the party can learn from John Prescott
- Defining and explaining economic fairness – is “social mobility” the right message?
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4 Comments
I think the link below identifies an extremely top-down approach to the creation of LibDem party policy not just from presumably senior LibDem coalition members but also from Tories and I am unclear where ordinary party members or officials actually figure in this particular policy formulation process which could produce prospective ‘Coalition MPs’ standing at the next GE under a ‘coalition’ policy banner rather than separate Tory and LibDem party policies. Especially as Letwin says it has the full backing of both parties.
I wonder if this will begin the fusion of LibDems and Tories into one party? It also seems to suggest that the original Coalition Agreement is capable of being changed and extended and isn’t actually cast in stone as currently argued.
Link is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12064969
The link contains the statement: ‘Conservative and government policy chief, Oliver Letwin, claims in the Guardian newspaper that a “deep bond of trust” has been formed between both coalition parties – whose policies, he said, have a huge amount of overlap.
‘The coalition was working on a range of policies that had the full backing of both parties, which it planned to announce mid-term once the current tranche of major policies had become law.’
The Letwin article makes no mention of joint candidates & in fact makes it quite clear that the two Parties will fight the next Election seperately.
“Defining and explaining economic fairness – is “social mobility” the right message?”
Not quite.
“social mobility” is good. More than that, it is essential for a well run society to get the best people into key jobs (at all levels) and make the best use of resources, irrespective of previous privilege or disadvantage. For optimists and the self-confident it can seem to be fair. But “social mobility” can go down as well as up.
However, fairness is more than that. It should provide a basic lifestyle and opportunities for the less fortunate, whether they are chronically or temporarily in bad straits. People who chronically down are not attractive, and are unlikely to have political clout. Some of them are even seen as “undeserving poor”. That is why those of us who have some power and influence must spend time and effort caring for them, if we are to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror.
Of course, one group without current power and influence are the people of the future. As a society we haven’t been too good at being stewards in their interests.
Fairness should not only provide a basic lifestyle and opportunities for the less fortunate, it should also make the less fortunate more fortunate by redistributing the inheritance of wealth in each new generation.
Nothing wrong with inequalities of wealth brought about by creating, earning, saving, making wealth, but a lot wrong, from the point of view of people in each new generation, with vast lifetime unequal receipt of gifted and inherited wealth.
In a truly democratic capitalist Big Society, those who inherit a lot ought to pay some tax so that those who would otherwise inherit nothing will inherit a basic minimum of capital to help launch them in life. See http://www.universal-inheritance.org. Liberal Conservatives ought to agree on this with Liberal Liberal Democrats!