The Liberal Democrats have a problem. They have spent decades indicating to the left, when actually they need to overtake on the right. Three-quarters of Liberal Democrat target seats are currently held by Tories. Yet polls consistently indicate that people now see them as a party of the left. Throughout Labour’s time in government they have taken the easy road. They have offered more public spending on every issue without having to account for where it comes from. The end result: they speak to parts of the Labour party uneasy with the responsibilities of government but alienate the people they need to persuade. It is a Question Time approach – big cheers from the studio audience but too rootless to attract the trust and commitment of a vote.
Lib Dem tacticians are waking up to this. Hence a reshuffle, hence a set of spending plans that hand money to the well-off at the expense of the poorest, hence a sleight of hand to make it look as though their spending plans add up. Kennedy’s reshuffle sidelines liberal ‘lefties’ with people less likely to frighten the horses in the home counties. Mark Oaten and Vincent Cable are described as ‘psuedo-Blairites’ by Lord Greaves, a Lib Dem Lords’ spokesman.
This is why the Lib Dems are a phantom party. Their policies are a trick of light, designed to be left and rightwing and their accounting is phantasmagoria too. Have a look at some of their key pledges.
Tax and spending
Liberal Democrats need money the way compulsive gamblers do. They spend the year promising increased funds to absolutely everyone, then, when the time comes to settle their account, they have a lot to find. This is when a few really hokey ideas are brought out to balance a whole year’s spending spree.
This year’s are as follows. First, scrap the DTI. But the DTI is a spending pygmy – and what about its emergency funds to help out employees whose firms have collapsed? Second, don’t bail out British Energy (saving £650 million). Nobody wants to bail out the nuclear industry – but would a Liberal Democrat government really let Britain’s nuclear power stations fall into disrepair and bankruptcy? Third: um… a drive against waste in government spending. This saloon bar canard is now offered by both the Tories and Lib Dems as a serious piece of political thinking. These three money spinners are the political equivalent of those folded up bits of paper in your pocket that look like fivers, but turn out to be old bus tickets.
Then, of course, there is a targeted tax rise. Everyone remembers one Liberal tax pledge – put a ‘magic’ penny on income tax and it will solve all education problems – oh, and health, and transport, and pensions. Unfortunately, that magic penny, the hardest working piece of currency ever known, has been retired.
In its place we have an equally flexible friend – a new top rate of 50p on incomes over £100,000. This is just another miracle tax. The Lib Dems refuse to make rigorous income and expenditure plans – the rest of us have to every day of our lives. Until they do, how can they ask to be trusted with our jobs and our homes?
Pensions
The Lib Dems want to end the ‘complex’ pensions credit and hand out more money through the basic pension – £5 (rising to £10 and then £15 for older pensioners). A pensioner relying on the basic state pension, the very type of person Labour is trying to help, would find the Lib Dem policy immediately takes £19.65 a week out of their pocket.
Meanwhile, richer pensioners would get a little extra spending money. It’s taking from the poor to feed the rich. The Lib Dems are right about one thing, though. The pension credit is not simple. It is, in fact, a sophisticated tool for helping most those in the most need. That is what government is about. The Lib Dems’ childish policy shows they just don’t get it.
Student fees
The Lib Dems promise to stop top-up fees and reintroduce grants for poorer students. All this will be done on the new 50 percent rate on income over £100,000 a year. There simply is not the money there to sustain higher education funding, let alone to allow the sector to grow and develop. The Lib Dems are ducking the responsibilities of government in favour of populism.
Council tax
Earlier this year, the Lib Dems promised to use the same 50p tax again, this time to cut £100 a year off council tax bills. Once more, this is a blanket bribe to the electorate – it parcels out money without any relation to need. They have changed their minds since, of course. Now they want a local income tax to replace council tax but, as they say in an internal briefing note, they might: ‘get asked about the rate of local income tax we expect we would levy…’ Sounds reasonable, what is the answer? ‘We don’t want to be drawn extensively into this!’ Wise words.
Personal care
The Lib Dem approach to costing policies is not always ironclad. For example, they think they can offer personal care to everyone without even having to look for the money. As it says in their ‘shadow budget’: ‘We will allocate ‘unspent money in the central NHS budget for next year, to fund £1 billion more to pay for free personal care for the elderly.’
Brilliant! Why did nobody else think of that? We should use all that free money rolling around inside the NHS! Of course, there is no such windfall sitting inside our hospitals: this is phantom money to offer false hope to those in need.
Claiming credit
The Lib Dems also claim credit for Labour’s investment in the public services. ‘Over the period from 1997 to the end of the current spending review (2005/06) government spending will rise by almost £2,000 billion in cash terms… This represents a significant victory for the Liberal Democrats as we have argued for such investment for years.’
Does anybody really count Gordon Brown’s budgets as ‘significant victories for the Liberal Democrats?’ He is very remiss in not thanking them more for all their hard work. After all, they opposed the working families tax credit, the new deal, raising the minimum wage and the 10p rate of income tax. That shows real support for Labour’s successes.
They also have a clever new plan to ‘ringfence’ the recent national insurance rise to the health budget. It is a way of trying to muscle in on a Labour success, long after all the hard work has been done.