The Liberal Democrats position themselves to the left of the Tories, to the right of Labour…But, y’know, I cannot tell the difference… September 18, 2008
Posted by WorldbyStorm in British Politics.trackback
Y’know what? Y’really want to know? I’d love, for once, that some British politician would eschew the faux blokey rhetoric (which I might add I use from time to time on the CLR for sarcastic effect) and try to treat us not to an ‘intimate’ conversation with fifty million other people, but something with substance and drive.
For Nick Clegg, who must rue the day that the Liberal Democrat party conference and it’s ‘radical’ tax proposals (radical in the sense of ‘not being radical’) had to compete with the demise of the US banking system amongst other trivia, is a prime offender. Unfortunately for him the coverage was pushed waaaay back on the news schedules.
That said, there was coverage. Not great coverage, but sufficient. And his courageous attempt to give a speech from the stage extempore as it were, was only briefly undermined by the shots of the enormous screens that had his words displayed upon them around the hall.
And the substance of the speech? The Guardian suggests that “…Clegg reached out to both Labour and Tory voters by launching a raid into territory traditionally occupied by his rivals”
Hmmm…
Moving to shore up Lib Dem support in the south of England, where a resurgent Tory party will present a major threat to the bulk of his MPs, Clegg buried his party’s tax-and-spend image with a pledge to deliver dramatic tax cuts.
Which will be?
“Liberal Democrats have called for tax rises in the past when what Britain needed most of all was more investment in our public services,” he said. “We were right to do so. But what hard-up families need most of all today is food on the table, petrol in the car and warmth in their homes.”
Clegg made clear that he is prepared to offer major tax cuts – up to 6p off the basic rate of income tax – at the next election. He pledged to offer “tax cuts for families who are struggling to help make ends meet and keep the wheels of the economy turning”.
I’ve already noted how Clegg and his party seem unwilling, or simply ignorant, of the necessity to take on utilities on these matters. But it seems to me that his speech was worse again, because it seemed simply to see tax cuts as a panacea for all ills.
Note the following:
But a substantial chunk, around £4bn, would fund tax cuts. This would pave the way for the Lib Dems to extend their existing pledge to cut 4p off the basic rate of income tax to 6p. The existing pledge would be paid from by tax increases on the rich, such as taxing capital at the same rate as income.
Clegg made clear that this approach was designed to appeal across the political spectrum.
“I want this to be the most progressive – most redistributive – tax plan ever put forward by a British political party. Using a little of the money the government wastes every day to help people in their everyday lives.
“That doesn’t mean cutting help for the poorest, of course. It doesn’t mean stopping vital investment in hospitals and schools. It just means taking a cold, hard look at all government spending and asking a basic question: is it working?”
My problem with this is that it puts the issue of tax cuts as the wedge that supposedly will drive a Liberal Democrat coach and horse into the heart of British politics. I doubt this. I really do. And I find his complaints about spending under New Labour, and in particular his framing of those complaints very very telling indeed. Talking about the doubling of spending by Labour from 300bn to 600bn he asked:
“Does anyone in this room believe every single pound is well spent? I don’t. And I think it’s liberal to be sceptical. Sceptical that central, controlling government gets things right. It’s the Labour party that believes every pound spent by the government is better than a pound spent by you and me.”
How is this different from the analysis of the Conservative Party? I can’t see it. And if it is not, if the Liberal Democrats are merely becoming a sort of paler blue version of the Conservatives (or at least their leadership is) then how can they hope to carve out political territory for themselves?
And what is fascinating is how weak his critique of the Conservatives actually is.
“Cameron’s only aim was to make the Conservatives inoffensive. Problem is, one you strip out the offensive parts of the Conservative party, there isn’t much left.
“Cameron’s hope is to become the Andrex puppy of British politics. A cuddly symbol, perhaps but fundamentally irrelevant to the product he’s promoting.”
That’s not a political attack, or an attack based on policy. And it’s worth reading it in full here to get a real sense of this void at the heart of his approach. In essence it seems to devolve to something close to suggesting that they’re all, y’know, toffs and stuff what with their ‘inherited power and their arrogance and their ‘born-to-rule’ conceit. Well, it’s an argument, but I’d sooner he took a long hard look at their policies. Y’know.
Meanwhile there is something a bit distasteful at the way in which the Liberal Democrats are trying to have it all ways. Because they are party which eschews class as a motive force their attacks on the Conservatives replicate aspects of class based critiques without any apparent substance… consider as an example the following:
Chris Huhne, the Lib Dems’ home affairs spokesman, who was narrowly defeated by Clegg in last year’s leadership contest, yesterday gave a taste of the battle when he devoted a third of his conference speech to attacking the Conservatives.
Huhne received a standing ovation from delegates after he said: “We are now told that David Cameron and George Osborne were idealistic young people who cared about fairness. Perhaps they agonised over their options as they adjusted their fancy tailcoats – mirror, mirror on the wall, which party is the fairest of them all?
“Fairness will be a Tory value when hell freezes over, Notting Hill becomes a workers’ republic, and the Bullingdon club affiliates to the Socialist International.”
And it is the painful effort to appropriate – even humorously – the rhetoric and terminology of the left which points up their dilemma. For what is Nick Clegg but a xerox of David Cameron, albeit one or two iterations down the line? And in that what is he other than a xerox, three or four iterations down the line, of Tony Blair?
And the essential unreality of all this is pointed up by a poll done by the Times which notes that:
Nearly two thirds (65%) of the public believe Lib Dem policies make little difference since there is “no realistic chance” of ever putting them in practice as a government, according to a Times poll today.
Y’know, that’s gotta hurt.
But it’s true.
They are the Tories in garish yellow.
They’re not, though, and that’s not to say I like ‘em. Any of them could be in the Tories if they wanted to be, and their views on social issues tend to be rather different from maintstream Toryism (albeit not what the front bench would like us to believe it is). The Orange Book people, though, are very rightwing economically, partly because that’s what’s happened to politics and economics over the past to or three decades, and partly because they’re a certain sort of person (professional class, ambitious, metropolitan) who will benefit very much from that sort of policy. It’s also the sort of policy that gets spoken well of in the media, because it’s the sort of policy that media people (who also fit that template) tend to admire.
Bear in mind too that the Lib Dems are far less choosy over their politics than their general public image would suggest – and that for most of them, economic policy isn’t really what interests them anyway. Moreover in local politics they’re notorious for saying completely different things when their opposition is the Tories than when it’s Labour. (If this isn’t well-known it’s because it is local politics, hence people tend to notice only what they say in their own locality.) Beyond that, over the past few years they’ve become absolutely obsessed with the fact that they weren’t winning any byelections against the Tories, that they weren’t winning Tory votes. “How to appeal to Tory voters” became the be-all and end-all for much of the party.
So when you add together political trends among professional-class people, an absence of interest or principle when it comes to economic policy and a desire to chase the economic rightwing vote – you have what happened. Seeing them as Tories probably obscures more than it enlightens, though it doesn’t hurt to say that they’ve just adopted an economic policy that only the most pop-eyed of Tory rightwingers would support.
That’s a fair point about the media being complicit in this. But on a functional level I think that Harpymarx may be more rather than less correct. They’re not Tories, but their approach (much as with some in New Labour) is one that colludes conceptually with Conservatism.
Well, with some aspects of conservatism. But it’s a wider set of ideas that tax and public spending cuts, which aren’t the most important component of conservatism by any means. (Though they may be the most important component of its practical electoral appeal.)
Surely.