Clegg needs to find some courage
David Blackburn 10:53am
Nick Clegg is eviscerated by this morning's press. The Independent,
The FT and The Guardian gleefully report that the influential IFS has decreed the Budget
(supposedly a model of fairness according to Clegg) to be regressive, that there is discontent fomenting on the Lib Dem benches and that the latest polls place Lib Dem support at 12 percent.
None of this is news. The IFS is reiterating what it argued on Budget day: Osborne’s measures will hit the poorest in 2014-15. That is still some way off and action can be taken to lessen their impact. Besides, the coalition should have delivered its promise to raise the income tax threshold to £10,000 by 20-14-25. Also, UK PLC owns enormous shareholdings in two potentially very profitable banks; at some stage they will yield dividends for the taxpayer, Clegg should insist that the windfall is spent in the cause of fairness.
The poll rating is a concern and support has hovered around 12-14 percent throughout the summer. But the party’s performance was similar anaemic when Charlie Kennedy was kicked out and it recovered in time. It is not a panic situation: the election is five years away. Internal Lib Dem dissent is not yet widespread. The same MPs who opposed the VAT hike remain in open discontent, but Bob Russell and Mike Hancock have not swelled their ranks. Certainly, there is tentativeness and reluctance in Lib Dem circles but most still recognise and want the opportunity to influence government for the first time in eighty years.
As the party conference approaches, Clegg's problem is that he does not seem to be influencing policy. There is to be an AV referendum and the tax system is being reformed in favour of fairness; but it is telling that senior Tory ministers are publicly resisting departmental cuts, not Lib Dems. Clegg needs to find an alternative voice to that which just extols the cosy coalition. He can’t criticise government policy, but he should air a different narrative and promote debate occassionally (as Vince Cable did recently on immigration). It is a token but necessary gesture to quell the braying: otherwise Clegg and the Liberal Democrats will be subsumed.
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Rhoda Klapp
August 25th, 2010 11:24am Report this commentI feel like an overworked gelder. Another day, another load of..
alexsandr
August 25th, 2010 11:35am Report this commentAs i said just now on another thread here, who is the IFS, are they neutral.
If you check out their funding on their website their sponsors are all government departments, QUANGOs and stuff like that. F-all from industry...
At the moment anything they say goes. They need taking down a peg or two IMHO
alexsandr
August 25th, 2010 11:42am Report this commentand why is government funding them. seems an obvious cut to me!
normanc
August 25th, 2010 11:45am Report this commentI don't really care who the IFS are, they are a left leaning think tank and that's fine, they're entitled to print what they want. There are right leaning think tanks and they are entitled to their say too.
What irks me is that the media (BBC at the forefront) is treating this IFS report as though it is the final word on the matter. We're all going to be worse off, that's what happens when you vastly overspend for 13 years.
What part of 'there is no money' do people not understand? Maybe we should just keep hammering away at the wealth creators and cross our fingers?
What also irks me is this talk of 'fairness' as though stealing money from person A to give to person B is somehow fair. The real fair way to do things would be lowering the taxes A & B pay but in our 'progressive' society this type of thinking makes you a candidate for Bedlam.
Salopian
August 25th, 2010 11:54am Report this commentThe problem about the iFS is not their identity or their provenance. They may even be false prophets - name an economist who isn't. But people believe false Prophets and march to their tune.
If Clegg ran a disciplined army then it wouldn't matter - but too many of his people are just waiting for any prophesy which willsupport their case. There's a lovely poem by Christina Rosetti - Promise me no piecrusts. Clegg should read it to his troops
Richard of York
August 25th, 2010 12:03pm Report this commentFor years Oik and sham man hid behind the IFS and now speccies want them abolished...you couldn't make it up.
Not so long ago Mr Chote was heralded as the next head of the OBR.
So Oik got his sums wrong and now everyone else is a mathmatical numbskull....haha!
Rhoda Klapp
August 25th, 2010 12:06pm Report this commentWhat are the Lib-Dems going to wish for in future, when it turns out they cannot deal with getting their traditional wish of holding the balance of power? What a pathetic shower, completely unable to live with the responsibility of government. Clegg should kick their arses at the upcoming conference. If they cannot do this, there is no point in their existence at all.
AngloWelshDragon
August 25th, 2010 12:29pm Report this commentSo what? The budget should not be fair to the bottom 9/10ths. Putting a bit of a squeeze on this group may encourage them to get off their pudgy nylon-clad arses and look for work. What is not fair are those of us who work, of whatever class, subsidising idlers and wasters who spend our tax money on alcohol they can then piss out over war memorials.
Holly
August 25th, 2010 12:34pm Report this commentWould these worst hit,poorest bods be the ones on £42k + the £300k house,paid for by the taxpayer?
Or the jitterbuggin disabled,who also fell trees & play sports?
Or the bods who queue up in the offy for their cans,or the bods who still reek of booze at 6.30am buying cans/bottles of cider.
Or will it be the bods paying half their income,plus NI,plus the VAT rise to pay for the poor bods on £42k + the £300k house?
Makes ya bloody laugh dunnit!
Fergus Pickering
August 25th, 2010 12:39pm Report this commentWTF do you mean by 'air a different narrative'? Explain in words I understand what you want him to do?
Occasional Ostrich
August 25th, 2010 12:53pm Report this commentYeah, Rhoda. Just who is going to try a palace coup at their conference? Whether deserved or not, he's Deputy PM, and that's higher than any LibDem has ever risen. It'd be like cutting your own head orf.
Simon Stephenson
August 25th, 2010 1:15pm Report this commentA difficulty that the politicians have is the dichotomy between the real, sober, substantiable analysis of the world, as set out by bodies such as the IFS, and the cloud-cuckoo-land of hope and wishful-thinking that vast numbers of the population have cemented into their minds as being actual and true. So immature and unsophisticated has become popular thinking that no mortal can possibly deliver what the general population considers to be straightforwardly and automatically achievable.
No substantive progress will be made until such time as the majority can be moved into accepting that the major stumbling block to such progress is not the inadequacy of the rational elites but the absurdity of the expectations of the masses.
TrevorsDen
August 25th, 2010 1:44pm Report this commenteviscerated? LOL
How desperate are you? Just what the country needs - tokenism. Clegg and the LDs are in govt with responsibility for getting the economy on back track. As are the Tories.
The report is only partial and selective and full of assumptions (and commissioned by a self interested lobby group) - reporting on THAT is what good journalism is about and not simply jumping on any passing band wagon.
But really - in just what fairyland are you living in? Debt is heading towards 1.4 trillion the deficit is 155 billion ...
Just pass me your magic wand to wish it painlessly away.
Graham King
August 25th, 2010 2:28pm Report this commentCan Mr Blackburn explain to me what fairness is?
I took School Certificate English 60 years ago and still don't know the meaning of the word.
Pip, pip!
Graham
yank
August 25th, 2010 4:15pm Report this comment"Nick Clegg is eviscerated by this morning's press."
.
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Of course Clegg is being attacked by the establishment, Mr. Blackburn. Whatever else did you expect? They will attack viscerally, because what they hold dear is being threatened, and they perceive this as their OWN evisceration. I don't have to read your linked articles... I've read similar over here in our newspapers, from our establishment... when true change is broached.
They'll first look to divide and conquer, and the Lib Dems are a nice little group for them to start with.
No sense quivering and quaking about it. Clegg need only ride out this first flush of anger. 5 years to the next election? Please... that's several political lifetimes. That's an eternity.
Soon, when this all quells, Labor will be making quiet gestures towards him. He must only remain open for those gestures, and they will undoubtedly come from the smart Labor... and I must presume there are some of those types, there as here.
However bad the reactionaries think it looks right now, Clegg's truest political power will come 1-2 years from now, if he remains principled. And if Dave screws up and goes monster, Clegg can be his worst nightmare.
Interesting times over there on the pile of rocks.
Tarka the Rotter
August 26th, 2010 9:28am Report this commentOK so that covers the Cowardly Lion, but what about the Tin Man and the Scarecrow?
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