Clegg embodies his party's incoherence

David

Rough rule of thumb/back of a fag packet. 30m taxpayers x £5K increase in personal allowance =£150bn x20% tax basic rate =£30bn cost. This would be the biggest tax cut in history at the time of the largest deficits. It doesn't boost Limp Dem credibility or electability; it destroys it. They are still not being subject to a critical examination or people would all be laughing.

Moraymint

Hello! Hello!?

The nation is going bankrupt.

Any politicians out there care to engage with the screaming reality of the next 10 years and start explaining to us how they intend to prevent the United Kingdom being taken over by the IMF, before we go spectacularly bust?

Each day I look for evidence of a politician having figured out just how slender a thread we're hanging on at the moment.

Banging on about prejudice, civil liberties and inequality is not going to recover our nation from the almost incomprehensible financial disaster that Gordon Brown will shortly be bequeathing to his successor (probably with that weird, gurning grin thing that he does).

For Clegg to talk about saving public sector jobs at all costs tells me he should be sectioned under the Mental Health Act long before he is the recipient of anybody's vote.

Just what planet do these guys live on?

Each night I go to bed concluding that we're a day closer to socio-economic chaos. Our political class is bereft: it knows not what policies to develop and implement to prevent our nation from sleepwalking into desparately serious social problems over the next few years, borne of Brown's economic train crash.

In fact the truly alarming issue is that so few of our politicans have yet grasped the sheer nature, scale and urgency of this country's dire economic condition, still less have any idea how to steer the nation away from catastrophe.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

God Save The Queen.

John Richardson

You are so correct Mr 'Moraymint'.

Covering this conference of 3rd rate nobodies is like studying a copy of 'Hello' in a cattle truck bound for Treblinka.

Roger Daley

Clegg ready to be PM - My arse.
I'm waiting for the day when the urbanites come out here into the country to climb into our backyard fences foraging for food and water. This country is only three days lack of food away from anarchy - get the army back pronto.

Dirty Euro

Moraymint I am sure you agree with me that we must increases taxes on the rich to stop this economic collapse then.

Jon Rosenberg

The big problem for the lib dems is not their lack of professionalism, nor that they routinely come up with some wonderfully wacky policies, it's not even their penchant for full on, dagger drawn infighting (though that has much to recommend it as a spectator sport). Their big problem is that they can never quite bring themselves to actually displace either The Tories or The Labour party. There is an essential dialectic in British politics and the voters as a whole are swayed one way or another between the large state intervention, high spending, authoritarianism of Labour, and the Tories mild libertarianism(in-between spasms of knee jerk authoritarianism when they are actually in power) and market forces monetarism.

What they want to do is fuse the mild Libertarianism of the Tory party with the state intervention of Labour, but those two things are inherently, mutually antagonistic. So there sits the lib dems starving like a donkey caught between two piles of hay not being able to choose between them.

If Clegg can take them on a journey to displace Labour, they will have to take on Labours liabilities as well as its strengths. They will have to deal with the unions and accept union mony, but at a price of allowing the unions to influence policy. They will have to deal with the fact that the majority of the British working class are inherently small c "conservative" over most social issues. And what's more have an inherent distrust of Brussel and the bureaucracy it houses. And they will have to decide to be the Labour Party in all but name.

If the reaction this week of the senior party delegates to Clegg's and Cable's attempts to make this happen is anything to go by, The Liberal party as a body will never, ever follow the project through. And in a way quite rightly so, as they'd no longer be the liberal party if they did. And for all the sense they are often out of touch with reality that would be a sad thing, for they frequently are prepared to air subjects neither of the other parties care about.

Frank P

Whenever I see Clegg performing I am minded of Ian Lavender's role as Private Frank Pike in Dad's Army. Just as when Vince Cable appears his resemblance to Brian Wilde, in his role as Barrowclough the kindly warder in Porridge, overwhelms any temptation to take him seriously. It is therefore ironic that Cable made his political reputation on a plagiarised remark about Gordon Brown resembling Mr Bean. As for Clegg - "You stupid boy!"

Hysteria

"the mild Libertarianism of the Tory party "

WTF?

The Tories do not have any meaningful sense of libertarianism - totally at odds with membership of the EU to name but one obvious problem with this proposition.

No - the Tories and Labour are both Statist, Big Government and essentially anti-democratic

Flemingcrag

The only things that were convincing about this Lib-Dem conference were;
Next time they can safely book a smaller venue.
This party has more faces than Big Ben.
They have yet to get to grips with addressing the mistakes of the ruling government as they obsess with attacking the Conservatives.
They openly flaunt their desire to get into bed with New Labour.
They do not talk to each other.
Other than that, the conference went very well.....for the Conservatives that is.

Moraymint

Roger Daley - yes, my concern also is the propensity for the situation in the UK to go wrong precipitously.

Our political elite appears to be blind to the requirement to at least discuss openly draconian measures to prevent the underlying downward economic trends from tipping suddenly into a series of uncontrollable socio-economic events.

One has the sense already that the politicos have lost control of the economy: just look at the monthly public sector borrowing requirement.

My fear is that if/when the government loses virtually all control, ie when the bond markets start calling the shots, we go from a financial (City of London) crisis to an economic crisis (where we are now) to a social crisis.

Part of the problem here too is that 90-odd percent of the population appears to be largely clueless about the parlous state of our economy in the wider context of collapsing global finance/trade (see Edmund Conway in today's DT).

I don't think we've ever seen anything quite like this in global economic terms. However, our politicos would have us believe we're experiencing a little local difficulty.

John B Sheffield

Nick Clegg acts more like a sixth form student in a debate, he trolls out policy knowing that they will never have to be costed or implemented by himself.

It is also interesting how he tells us all that as a future PM?? he has Shirley Williams, Paddy Ashdown and Ming Campbell around the table, respect for them the service they gave, but is it the future for the LibDems or does it say a lot more about the way Clegg really rates his current colleagues?

oldtimer

My attention to the LibDem conference has, I confess, been less than total. What little I have gleaned may be summed up very easily. They do not appear to know whether they should sit on arse or elbow. Sadly, this is an affliction shared by too many of our politicians - they do not deserve the description "leaders". I conclude that much of the meaningless waffle that emerges from them is displacement activity to avoid the awfulness of the nation`s financial situtation and the painful decisions that are required.

Alfred T Mahan

For the life of me I can't work out how you reconcile "savage cuts" with "saving public sector jobs at all costs".

Perhaps one line is for election addresses in Twickenham, the other for Dagenham?

David Skitmore

I hate to say this but i have started to feel somewhat sorry for Gordon Brown, his intentions where good but like the old saying the road to ruin is often paved with good intentions!!!