Clegg confirms his fiscal hawkishness
Peter Hoskin 5:38pm
Nick Robinson's documentary on the coalition negotiations is just under four hours away,
but I suspect we've already heard about one of its key moments. As various outlets are reporting this
afternoon, Nick Clegg tells Robinson that he had changed his mind about the pace of spending cuts sometime before the coalition agreement. Or as he puts it:
This matters because the Lib Dem manifesto said that spending shouldn't be cut (above and beyond Labour's plans) this year – and that the squeeze should wait until next year. So comes the question: was Nick Clegg deceiving voters during the election campaign? Labour say yes, but I think the issue is a little more complicated than that. The question should be something more like: does a party leader need to agree with every aspect of his party's policy and, what's more, announce it if he doesn't? And I'm not sure there's a clear-cut answer. After all, let's say the Lib Dems won a majority in May: a Prime Minister Clegg could still have stuck by the manifesto policy even if he, in the quiet depths of his conscience, was unsure about it."I changed my mind earlier than that ... firstly remember between March and the actual general election ... a financial earthquake occurred in on our European doorstep."
Besides, Clegg's claim shouldn't be all that surprising. As I wrote before the election, all signs were that he, and people like David Laws, were just as hawkish on the public finances as the Tories, if not more so – and that the limper approach to deficit reduction came at Vince Cable's insistence. If anything, Clegg's "change of mind" may well have come as his profile started to eclipse Cable's after the TV debates, and it has now been allowed to flourish in partnership with the Tories. This could well be a story about Clegg and Cable's relative influence within the Lib Dems, as much as anything else.
This isn't to say that Clegg doesn't have questions to answer, particularly to his own party. The fact that Clegg was railing against 'Tory cuts' in May leaves a sour taste – was he, on some level, being dishonest then, or being dishonest now? But I'd prefer to characterise this apparent "U-turn" another way: once a hawk, always a hawk.
Previous
Alex
July 29th, 2010 5:58pm Report this commentSo .... when circumstances change....a smart man changes his mind...
...unlike the dummies running for labour leadership!
TGF UKIP
July 29th, 2010 6:31pm Report this commentWhat this programme might also answer is who lied about AV. Did the LibDem coalition negotiators lie to their Tory counterparts that Labour had promised AV without a referendum. Or was it Dave who knew no such promise had been made by Labour but then lied to his MPs to obtain their grudging consent to this coalition.
That someone lied there is no doubt and we all know what happens to constructs built on dishonesty.
Andrea Gill
July 29th, 2010 6:52pm Report this commentWell actually, the Lib Dem manifesto said we'd cut depending on circumstances, not by political dogma, and that this was ESTIMATED to be 2011. Events earlier this year would certainly count as "circumstances" I should say.
Plus Clegg and Cable have been calling for Savage Cuts since last autumn, and while not everything passed through conference & got into the manifesto, that doesn't change their own beliefs.
Andrea Gill
July 29th, 2010 6:54pm Report this commentIf anyone has the time to read through this excellent report by Vince Cable, it's anything but "limp" and contains much of what made it into the budget & programme for government.
Yes, even down to the amount to be gained from potentially raising VAT to 20%: http://www.reform.co.uk/Research/ResearchArticles/tabid/82/smid/378/ArticleID/950/reftab/56/Default.aspx
Richard of York
July 29th, 2010 8:20pm Report this commentOh my Goodness your deputy PM is getting the biggest kicking on the bloggs ever.
If it get any worse they will be calling for Raoul Moat to be zapped into life to take over.
Huge mistake from Clegg the honeymoon is not only over the hotel wants their bathrobes back.
libertarian
July 29th, 2010 10:23pm Report this comment@Andrea Gill
Vince Cable !!! What Vince knows about economics could be written on the back of a postage stamp and still leave room for his entire knowledge of business and enterprise.
There isn't a single politician in the front line of any of the major parties who has a flying clue what to do really.
Hint interest rates up to 4% . House prices fall, savings go up, banks rebuild their balance sheets and begin to lend. Fiscal stimulus in the shape of a CUT in CGT and scrap payroll tax plus incentives for business investment. Bingo, jobs created, wealth produced, tax revenues go up, deficit narrows.
Every last bit of that beyond St Vince of all the alternatives, Georgie Boy, Dave and Cleggie
davidk
July 29th, 2010 10:39pm Report this commentCleggover is the most loathsome politician at Wesetminster. A devious snide.
HJ
July 29th, 2010 10:50pm Report this commentYou missed the most astonishing part of the programme - Ed Balls describing the Lib Dems as "arrogant" in their negotiations with him.
Balls, of course, is modest, unassuming and charming. Just like that nice Alastair Campbell.
TGF UKIP
July 29th, 2010 11:27pm Report this commentAnd now we know and, much more importantly the MPs know, that Dave did lie to them on AV.
The programme also underlined the visceral distaste the LibDems have for this arrangement, a distaste that would have been mirrored by so many Tories if Robinson had bothered to interview any.
nonny mouse
July 30th, 2010 5:01am Report this commentTGF
The program showed that Labour did put AV without a referendum on the table but did not make the offer formal because the talks were going nowhere. Cameron picked up on that through back channels. Nobody lied, just confusion from the fog of war and the LibDems playing a good hand.
If you want to know why there were no right wing tories on the program check out Douglas Carswell's blog. The BBC wanted to make it a 'tory right wing angry about coalition' story but nobody on the Tory right would take part because it was not true.
James Sproule
July 30th, 2010 8:59am Report this commentIn the coalition negotiations, the Conservatives had to compromise on any number of issues from voting system referendum to keeping inheritance tax. What the LD’s gave up, we were told, was that cuts would start immediately, rather than wait until 2011. It now appears that Clegg was convinced sometime before the election, and by Mervin King, that cuts would have to come immediately. So where exactly have the LD’s compromised, on anything?
Holly ......
July 30th, 2010 10:15am Report this commentBozo & Labour are out..
Let's just be grateful for that for now.
I don't see the coalition doing anything that will bankrupt/destroy britain or the economy in the long term so I'm happy to let them get on with pissing off the unions & Labour...for the benefit of the country.
It is refreshing to have a PM who does not fear telling it like it is.
The public appear to be allowing the coalition to do the job so the MSM can only attack the next best thing...Clegg.
He has more in common with DC than he ever had with Labour bods like Bozo or Balls,
which also means DC has more in common with
Clegg,than he has with some of the right in the party.
The MSM do not understand what has happened so attack it every day,non stop for the past
two months.
British politics has changed forever & if the coalition is successful why change it?
Why would we re elect Labour,even in a coalition,just to have them increase public spending & raise taxes to pay for it?
Holly ......
July 30th, 2010 10:19am Report this commentHJ,
Balls being his usual stupid self.
I loved it.
Me & Mr Holly just looked at each other & laughed.
Add to the joy that Balls will not be leader
Or the years of opposition if he is...our happiness is complete.
Oh happy days as some bod says.
Commentator
July 30th, 2010 10:45am Report this commentJames, very fair point: they haven't really. The Coalition was primarily about saving David Cameron's skin given his failure to win against the worst government in living memory during the worst recession in living memory. Hence the indecent haste with which Cameron and his mates (who are Lib Dems at heart) went about junking the Tory manifesto, which was hardly radical. Also I would reserve judgment on whether many of the "savage" cuts will be implemented: most Lib Dems are emotionally wedded to Labour's fiscal incontinence and Clegg is now every unpopular within his own party. The IMF may still need to intervene.
davidk
July 30th, 2010 10:59am Report this comment@ nonny mouse - "The program showed that Labour did put AV without a referendum on the table but did not make the offer formal because the talks were going nowhere."
It did nothing of the sort. It allowed Nick Clegg to foster that impression with zero Labour spokesmen backing that up.
Clegg lied. He lied to his own party and to the Tory negotiating team. Simple as that.
Tiberius
July 30th, 2010 11:43am Report this commentCommentator: seemingly many voters, probably of the "I'm all right, Jack" variety, did not think Brown's government was the worst in living memory.
Commentator
July 30th, 2010 12:26pm Report this commentAnd what did the Tories do over a 13-year-period to disabuse them? Nothing. Indeed for long periods, they played along with Labour's mad plans.
Daphne Millar
July 30th, 2010 1:06pm Report this commentPeter Hosking is wasted as a blog commentator. He could make a fortune as a contortionist working in a circus.
Is there no limit to the extremes you will go to in an effort to protect Clegg? Either he lied before the election when he said he was against cuts this year; or he's lying now. Or both.
We have already had coalition defenders saying that he can stand up in the Commons and say things which are not government policy, just his personal opinion. And now it is argued that he can say one thing and believe another.
This coalition is going to be very humiliating for all thhose who support it before matters are over.
Tiberius
July 30th, 2010 2:31pm Report this commentCommentator: the Tories were certainly in no state to disabuse the voters over New Labour before Cameron became leader. That he was left so much ground to make up after the 2005 GE is the reason that he never had the open goal in the 2010 GE that so may keep harking on about.
Commentator
July 30th, 2010 2:46pm Report this commentI think your last comment involves buying into the myth that the Conservative Party was deeply unpopular in 2005 and was "saved" by the charismatic Cameron. This is another fairy story ripe for the debunking. In 2005, the economy appeared to be performing well, although the fault lines were already there to see. Many foolish voters bought into that and the Tories could hardly criticise Blair about Iraq. Even then, Labour's share of the vote was little better than the Tories but produced a large majority because of unequal constituency sizes.
Tiberius
July 30th, 2010 3:15pm Report this commentCommentator: this is an interesting debate.
But how is it a fairy story that Cameron saved his party (by which I mean a party that could govern again), when the evidence of the 1997, 2001, 2005, and 2010 GE results suggests otherwise?
The 2005 result, with the much reduced Labour majority, was indeed down to Blair's unpopularity over the Iraq war, and only highlights the hopelessness otherwise of the Tories' situation at the time.
I quite agree over unequal constituency sizes, and that problem provided one of the pieces of ground he had to make up.
Commentator
July 30th, 2010 7:19pm Report this commentHe didn't save his party at all and he isn't that popular. This nonsense is part 1 of the Leni Riefenstahl film of the life of Dave. List all those hard right measures which the Tories (including Cameron) were backing in 2001 and 2005. The Tories were undoubtedly divided in 2001 and 2005: an utter rabble in fact with Portillo, Maude and Bercow working overtime to stab others in the back. No wonder that the voters were unimpressed.
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