Tag: liberal democrats

Aug 18 2010

100 days later: A Lib Dem view

I woke this morning to the sound of a bandwagon rolling past, grabbing my keyboard I jumped aboard. It is 100 days since the Coalition formed following the General Election. For people wedded to the decimal system of counting 100 is a nice round number, for programmers of a certain generation 128 is preferable. Perversely the Marquis de Sade chose 120 days, but I can’t wait 20 days.

As a member of the Liberal Democrats for 20 years, I thought my opinions on a 100 days of partly Liberal Democrat government might be interesting to at least a few people. You can see my previous political postings here, to get a bit more context.

Things I’m pleased about:
Pupil premium; a rising lower tax threshold; increased capital gains tax; Ken Clarke sounding like a liberal on prison policy, an end to ID cards and over-enthusiastic lawmaking for every occasion; some hope of constitutional reform both in the Lords and for general elections;  no changes to the married tax allowance;

I’m also pleased by the very existence of a coalition government, it seems far more healthy to me that government is composed of members from two parties representing a majority of voters in the country, rather than one party who through a quirk of the electoral system has scraped in with a majority of seats based on a minority of votes. Far better coalition than more opposition where our influence is minimal.

I see my vote as delegating my views to the Liberal Democrats based on their manifesto, if they were in government alone I’d expect them to attempt to implement the entire manifesto (even if I didn’t like all of it). In coalition I expect them to negotiate using that manifesto as a basis, the fact that the entire manifesto is not being implemented is a result of them not achieving an overall majority. The inability to implement the entire manifesto is a fact of electoral arithmetic.

Things I’m not so pleased about:
fatuous comparisons of civil servant pay with the Prime Ministers pay; ostentatious “dipping of hands in blood” following the Budget, at times it felt like the only people cabinet ministers defending it were Liberal Democrats; David Laws’ rapid exit from government; Trident – I’m not particularly anti-nuclear but now was the perfect time to get shot of a piece of Cold War willy-waving.

As far as the economy is concerned, I believe we’d be in approximately the same place as we are now regardless of which party was in government prior to the election. The logic of this is also that regardless of who would have won the election they would have ended up doing approximately the same thing now (or in the near future): cutting government spending fairly dramatically. Arguments about timing are largely political; economics, it seems to me, is a “science” too imprecise to tell us much about the future and the fervent calls for cuts now, or cuts later are largely political. There is some marginal argument about the scale of the cuts, but given a Labour government we would be facing cuts of broadly the same magnitude.

I suspect there is a lot of departmental spinning going on at the moment: they’ve been asked to make fairly large cuts and they’re leaking the ideas for cuts that they know will be politically the most unpalatable in order to give themselves some leverage for the spending review.

There’s much enthusiasm about the LibDem’s apparent problems in the polls, however they’re generally at levels comparable with the last 10 years or so (see the Guardian Datablog). They are only low if you compare them to the heady heights of the election campaign which were quite evidently wildly inaccurate – the only accurate poll was the exit poll. I suspect a LibDem party in coalition with Labour would find itself in very much the same position.

It’s worth highlighting again the inequity of first past the post system: plug the latest opinion poll into the BBC’s calculator: (Lab:37% Con: 37% LibDem: 18%) and you get (Lab: 336 Con: 244 LibDem: 42). Labour get a 92 seat advantage over the Tories for an identical percentage of the vote and they get  8 times the number of seats as the Liberal Democrats for twice the vote. The Electoral Reform Society did a report for “Conservative Action for Electoral Reform”, on this subject – interesting conclusion is that equalising constituency size doesn’t really address the problem.

After the General Election the Liberal Democrats had three options: one it seems was unworkable, one was simply lazy, we chose to do the other thing. The only principle the Liberal Democrats have given up is the principle of not being a party of government.

Jul 01 2010

A brief return to politics – the Budget

Following on from my pre-Budget “Sceptical look at the economy“, I thought I’d return to politics and the Budget.

The financial position seems to be largely what was expected before the election and the size of the proposed cuts seems consistent with the scale of cuts in Spain, Greece and Ireland.

What I would have done? I suppose I prevaricated in my last post on what I would have done in the recent Budget. To be a bit more explicit: I would have put probably something like 3p on basic rate tax, lifted the lower threshold of basic rate and brought down the threshold to the higher rate. And looked to cutting something like 15% across government spending with no ring-fencing. I may have put up capital gains tax a bit more at the higher rate and not reduced corporation tax – but to be honest these measures don’t bring in much cash anyway. As for benefit cuts, I’d probably have gone for means-testing things such as child benefit, winter fuel allowance and so forth. My impression is this would approximately fill the appropriate gaps (but I haven’t done any calculation).

But then nobody voted for me, and the Liberal Democrat experience is if you offer the voting public an increase in income tax they say how great this is, and how they’d really love you to spend the money where you’ve said you’ll spend it, and then vote for someone else who has promised not to raise income tax. Of the national parties the Green Party manifesto was the only one to imply they would not make any cuts, but increase overall taxation to cover the structural deficit; electorally the Green Party didn’t do that well in the General Election with about 1.0% of the vote.

As it stands the Budget was somewhat different from my preferred option. There are a few mitigating factors but I’m not convinced that VAT rises are a good way to raise tax (it has been suggested that they are better than income tax rises because they do not fall on essentials and they are “voluntary” to a degree, which income tax rises most definitely are not). It seems rather notable that there was much symbolic “dipping of the hands in the blood” by Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander and Vince Cable, you’d have though the Tories would have been a bit more forthcoming about defending a budget in which they were the majority partner and which largely matched their electoral commitments.

The Labour Party has started pointing out that this is a very political Budget, that’s true, and so was their idea of defering cuts into next year. For the Opposition this has the positive political benefit of not needing to be clear about what you would do until well after the General Election (and not even then) and allows you free-reign to criticise cuts by the incoming government without proferring an alternative because obviously you’d be doing this next year when things would have become magically better.

I’ve come to the conclusion that macroeconomics is almost entirely about politics, and the vehemence with which economic opinions are presented leads me to believe that everyone realises they don’t actually know what they’re talking about and that by shouting loudly they can get away with it. Presumably MP’s and ministers feel they have learnt to run the economy through the odd lecture course on the infamous Politics, Philosophy and Economics undergraduate degree course at Oxford. It seems notable that prior to the election the global consensus appears to have been for “economic stimulus” and after it is for “deficit reduction” (with the exception of the US). I’m not clear how this has happened, because I can’t believe it’s entirely driven by the UK election.

Inferring what the voting public want from elections and opinion polls is always a tricky business but the evidence seems to be they’re happy with the Budget and it’s pretty much what they expected. I suspect the reason for this is that the majority of them will be in the private sector and over the past few years the companies they work in would have laid people off, been on pay freezes and, over a longer period, treated employees less generously in pension terms but this largely hasn’t happened in the public sector. The same opinion poll shows fairly good support for maintaining the state pension whilst “cutting benefits for those of working age”. 

The Office of Budget Responsibility is pretty upfront in saying it’s estimates for GDP growth are subject to large uncertainty (see p10 of this report, and also Annex A on how figures are derived – hat-tip to Christopher Cook for that). The biggest problem seems to be that recession are utterly unpredictable. I’d be interested to see similar analysis for unemployment figures – can’t help thinking they’re not going to be good.

My useful pieces of contextual information for the day: UK employed population is about 30million, of which about 5million are in the public sector.

May 12 2010

Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government!

I think this will be my final political blog post for a while. I’ve written quite a few over the past month: I started with an explanation as to why I was a member of the Liberal Democrats here. I hunted out some data on the occupations of MP’s and made a graph here (what a lot barristers!). Then I wrote a blog post about the statistical errors in opinion polls, which I think was a little prescient (latest reports suggest that the voters that didn’t turn out were predominantly LibDem – hence biasing the pre-election polls). Approaching the finishing line, I wrote a post on my plans to stay up late on election night, followed by a post on my crashing gloom of the night itself. Then I made a post on what it might mean as the negotiations for coalition continued.

This post is about coalition, and a look at the debris of the election. My friends at work from Labour and Conservative tendencies called me a “turncoat weasel” today (in a friendly manner) so I have illustrated this post with a picture I took of a weasel.

First up, my take on the agreement between the Liberal Democrat and Conservative Party: remind me not to negotiate with Nick Clegg for anything, I think he’s played a blinder on this one. The agreement contains a mix of LibDem and Tory policies, and five positions in cabinet. It’s quite clear that the LibDems are a junior partner, but then that’s what you’d expect. I’m also pleased Nick Clegg did what he said he would do before the election: go to the party with the largest electoral mandate in the first instance.

Despite the massive apparent differences on Europe, I suspect it won’t be a big problem for the coalition. Liberal Democrats have a principled view that power should dissociate to the appropriate level – some things are best handled at a local level, some at a national level, and some to the European level. My guess is that over the next five years there will not be another major treaty moving power towards Europe, and joining the Euro in the next five years, as we all crawl out of recession, would be unwise as far as anyone is concerned. Perhaps David Cameron will value a coalition partner who has not isolated itself in Europe.

I’m wondering whether the Labour Party are trying to take the mantle of “the nasty party”, in the background to David Cameron’s speech in Downing Street could be heard a chant of “Tory scum”. David Blunkett described Nick Clegg as a harlot, amusing coming from an adulterer. And this morning Nick Cohen, left-wing columnist for the Observer and various other places, tweeted:

Here’s my writing sorted out, Will crucify every fucker who voted Lib Dem, one by one, in the national press. Better you had voted Tory.

I suppose I should proviso this last one, on the whole I don’t believe a single tweet means national news, perhaps Cohen was joking, perhaps he was tired and emotional. But it picks up the tenor of quite a few of the tweets I’ve seen from Labour supporters today.

Maybe this is why I’m a natural Liberal Democrat, I feel nothing like a visceral hatred for either of the two other main parties. I believe that people are largely in politics for the right reasons, I may think they are wrong but I don’t question their faith in what they believe is for the best. Getting a glimpse of how elections work via twitter, I see just how much work is involved in getting elected as an MP (at least in a contestable seat).

It’s tickled my fancy that much of the discussion of the last few days has centred around the percentage share of the vote that a different alliances would get, that’s lovely and I agree entirely with that line of argument but your past record: opposing proportional representation, tells me that you’re a hypocrite if you raise it just now.

I’m still glad I voted Liberal Democrat, I didn’t vote Tory because of the social conservatives, Margaret Thatchers “no such thing as society”, Michael Howard’s blind faith in market solutions, isolationism in Europe, Peter Lilley and his little list, John Major’s denial of support to the Iraq rebels after the first Gulf War and the moves of senior Tories into directorships of companies benefiting from their privatisations. The Tories claim to have changed, perhaps they have, perhaps the LibDems will reinforce that strand.

I hope the move for fair votes takes off, in a sense this is one of the key things I’m after long term in politics. Democracy is important, when I go to the ballot box I want my vote to count just as much as yours. Sorting out the deficit is ephemeral, fair votes will be a lasting legacy.

Perhaps the coalition will fall apart before the end of its term, perhaps the LibDems will suffer for this coalition in the next election (there’s some suggestion that this happens to smaller coalition parties). But for the first time in 70 years people who call themselves “liberal” are in government.

May 10 2010

May you live in interesting times…

It turns out that a chunk of my audience for my last blog post were my colleagues at work, they thought it a bit of a gloomy rant. These days I’m a bit more perky: in contrast to every election since 1974, this time the Liberal Democrats (my party) have something to be cheery about following the despair of election night! Usually post-election we are most definitely not in government, returning wearily to our constituencies to prepare for more time in opposition. This time it’s different!

Watching the comments on twitter as events have unfolded has raised a few questions, and clear misconceptions which I thought might try to address from my point of view as a long (21 years) term party member.

What are the Liberal Democrats?
Some Liberal Democrats were carried over from the old style Liberals, some Liberal Democrats split off from the Labour party as the Social Democrat Party, since 1988 they were simply Liberal Democrats. I’ve always been a Liberal Democrat but my political origins are probably closer to the soft-right of the Tory party. I’ve never been tribal Labour (or Tory) for that matter. It’s fair to say that the majority of the Liberal Democrats are left of centre, but we’re in the party for a reason – we don’t want to be in any other party.

What is coalition government?
The way people talk you might get the impression that the Liberal Democrats in coalition would simply be there to prop up their coalition partners. Labour seem to view this almost as a right, that the Liberal Democrats are a little turbocharger for those elections where they didn’t quite win in their own right. Consequently they believe that a LibCon coalition would simply prop up a Tory government with a Tory agenda. This misses the point of coalition entirely, why on earth would we sign up to such a deal? The point of coalition is to get at least some of your agenda implemented, if you’re not in the governing coalition then none of your agenda is implemented.

Proportional Representation
A lot of the discussion at the moment is around proportional representation, personally I think it should be around the economy first: massive deficits don’t get reduced by themselves. I don’t intend to discuss proportional representation properly here, but simply highlight three systems:
The pure Alternative Vote system is the one proposed by those that don’t actually want proportional representation, it doesn’t actually provide a proportional output. The Jenkins Commission, set up by the Labour government following the 1997 election, recommended Alternative Vote plus top up (AV+). In AV+ there are constituency elections with a top-up from party lists that provides proportionality, the benefit here is that there are still relatively small constituencies. The output should be pretty proportional. The Electoral Reform Society prefers Single Transferable Vote, this provides broadly proportional output, but requires the use of large constituencies to work.

Labour and Proportional Representation
Labour’s new-found enthusiasm for proportional representation leads to hollow laughter amongst Liberal Democrats. For why? Go have a look at the evolution of the Labour commitment to a referendum. Basically a referendum was promised at the 1997 election, this referendum never happened and although it remained in the manifesto for subsequent elections the commitment became ever weaker. You can see why Liberal Democrats don’t trust Labour on proportional representation.

I’d like to present a slightly heretical opinion for a Liberal Democrat: an absence of a commitment for a referendum on proportional representation should not be a deal breaker. My reasoning: I don’t believe either Tory or Labour party could currently deliver a majority in parliament for such a referendum. It is possible that a referendum would not require a parliamentary vote, but let’s assume it does. A commission on electoral reform means that at least the Tories will have to start thinking about it on their own terms, something they haven’t been doing, even if it is a self-evident kick into the long grass. The next time there’s a hung parliament we will then have fruitless electoral reform documents from both Labour and Tory parties, but here’s the good thing: that means that they can’t really ask for another one. Furthermore there appears to be a groundswell of opinion in favour of electoral reform, and I don’t think it’s party political. Over the coming parliament, and at the next election I really hope this groundswell is directed into contact with politicians, we shouldn’t be hearing “This isn’t an issue on the doorstep” next time.

Under proportional representation coalition government is likely to become a fact of life so a successful Lib-Con coalition in the absence of a deal on PR would be worth having. I must admit the green shoots of coalition are promising. Rather than a pointless exercise in taking chunks out of each other we are starting to see politicians talk about what they agree on.

In a way we have nothing to lose, what’s the worst that can happen? Things fall apart and an election is called where we lose some percentage share of the vote leading to a reduction in seats – unpredictably fewer due to first-past-the-post system. We’d still be an opposition party with little power in parliament, so in a place broadly similar to the one we found ourselves in before this election campaign. What’s different now is that there is a broader movement for electoral reform, that may be the thing we won at this election.

In posting this now (5:30pm on Monday 10th May) I am very aware that I may be overtaken by events!

Footnotes

May 07 2010

I was up for Evan Harris

This is a graph that shows you the number of seats (actual seats) each of the three main parties will get*, and the number of seats (proportional seats) they would get under a pure proportional system. You notice for the Labour and Conservative parties the number of seats they actually get is more than the number of seats in proportion to their votes, for the Liberal Democrats the opposite is true and by a very substantial margin.

When Liberal Democrats went into the polling stations yesterday they were given a single polling card, their Labour and Conservative comrades had three. Look them in the eye, ask them:

What is it about you that makes your vote three times more powerful, three times heavier, three times more important than mine?

What is special about you but not about me?

Explain to me how this is fair.

Explain to me how this is democracy.

To put it another way, every Labour or Conservative seat requires about 33,000 votes to win, a Liberal Democrat one requires 100,000 votes. We are the Great Ignored.

We have come to accept this inequity, it’s happened in every election since the early 80’s. As a country we just accept it as part of the way things are. It’s the defining feeling of being a Liberal Democrat, seeing the overall share of our vote creep up election by election and receiving the same feeble, disproportionate harvest in seats. The sinking feeling in the middle of the night that, no, of course there has been no breakthrough. It’s not because we perform poorly, it is because we have one polling card each, the others have three.

In 1997 the defining moment was Michael Portillo losing his seat to Stephen Twigg. My defining moment for this election was seeing Evan Harris lose his Oxford West and Abingdon seat. “I was up for Evan Harris”, I had a tear in my eye.

Footnote
*This is based on the exit poll (see entry at 23:11), which looks consistent with the results of the actual election as of 10:30am May 7th which are Conservative 291, Labour 247, Liberal Democrat 51 616 of 650 seats declared. Under pure proportionality UKIP would receive 20 seats, the BNP 12.