Niles’s Blog

>>>> Podcast available at LibDemVoice.org Last night a good crowd turned out to hear Paul Burstow MP, Mark Pack, Alex Wilcock and Bridget Fox talk about our new online project, Authoritarianism vs Liberalism and to talk more generally about their work and current campaigns. As ever, I was there with my trusty Zoom H2 so that we can share the fringe meeting with our listeners at home. Unfortunately in our efforts to demo our new website to our live audience, we were using a mobile internet service that has had the predictable but unforseen by us consequence of adding a bit of a beepity beepity sound track to the recording, so apologies for that. We have also had to remove the hurried Q&A session from the end because although you could hear the panel’s responses you can’t hear the questioners.

We were taping ippr’s fringe with our own Editor at Large Stephen Tall along with some relative political unknowns – Shirley Williams, Menzies Campbell and Charles Clarke.

The ippr did say they were recording the event themselves, and their recording is probably better than ours, but I can’t immediately find it on their website.

We asked delegates if their constituency was ready for the General election; if Nick Clegg was right on tuition fees; how a mansion tax would go down in their area; and how they were campaigning online.

Answering our questions were Tom Holvey and Chris Wiggin, from York, Katy Gordon for Glasgow North, Alan Bullion from Tunbridge Wells / Sevenoaks and Brendan D’Cruz from St Albans.

There are now many ways of getting your brain around Vince Cable’s keynote speech. Read it on the party website. Hear our podcast below. See what ePolitix thinks – or the Guardian, for that matter.

There was much that was really important that jumped out at me from the speech – here are my favourite bits:

We should not be taken in by the hysterical nonsense about the country being bankrupt. It isn’t.

The Tories are currently getting a free rein to slash budgets. Tories like cutting public expenditure, so the opportunity comes to them like manna from heaven. By making great hay of the idea that we are massively in debt they have all the cover to need to make the evil spending cuts they wanted to make all along without taking any of the flak. Labour do not have the standing to take them on on this, so it is vitally important that we do.

Spending first. If public spending is cut in the usual way – slash and burn – there will be great damage to local and national services. Good will be cut with bad. Front line services will be butchered and lower paid workers will bear the brunt of cuts. [...]

The Liberal Democrat approach to spending, is fundamentally different from the Tories. The Tories propose cuts, carried out in secret behind closed doors after the Election, if they win. We want an open, democratic debate about priorities. They want to control everything from Whitehall – just like Labour. We believe in local government. Local decision making is more accountable and more efficient. This requires lifting the dead hand of centralisation and scrapping the command and control quangos who treat local elected representatives like children. We would give additional roles to councils through health commissioning. And with that duty should go responsibility including more local revenue raising powers including business rates.

This is the vital counterbalance to Clegg’s “savage” cuts. This is Vince being measured, realistic and taking every step needed to engage the public sector in finding the economies necessary. Almost everyone who works in the public sector knows there are efficiencies to be made. It’s vital we continue with campaigns like “In the Know” to keep the public sector onside and not alienate them. The bureaucracy is a vast army who must be turned to work for the public good. That means, however, that the public sector unions and management have be nimble enough to use their powers to tackle waste and to tackle wasteful projects without grumbling. The quid pro quo will be: avoid slash and burn by taking responsibility for the public purse.

We must also lead the debate on tax reform as a Liberal government did a century ago with the People’s Budget. We should aim to shift the tax burden further from income – work, savings and innovation – onto pollution – the green tax switch. Switching taxation onto financial pollution – questionable transactions of no social and economic value. And onto land values instead of penalising productive investment. But at the heart of our tax plans must be a commitment to social justice.

Explicit links to LVT? Some in the party will be jumping for joy at that!

We need a financing mechanism which can meet the investment needs of big long-term projects which will lie at the heart of a green economy: tidal power, high speed rail, carbon capture and storage, telecommunications infrastructure.

Yes, yes, yes with knobs on! As someone with a strong interest in the environment and transport, it’s clear that massive investment is needed that will ultimately save money, but affording that is always a challenge. Any mechanism like that – that real people can invest in – will be vitally important to our future prosperity and ultimately, keeping our heads above water.

Finally, I’ve been a little puzzled about the £1m home tax idea, which is being lauded and trumpeted as a new idea. It rang bells with me, because I’m sure it had been floated before in a Vince speech. He says in his own speech, “You may also recall that I proposed a small annual levy – half a penny in the pound – on property values over one million pounds.” With a bit of Google fu, I eventually found a story from the BBC saying Vince abandoned his £1m home tax in March 2008, following pressure from his colleagues that this would impact too much on the middle classes. Wind forward 18 months to an utterly different tax climate with a much greater willingness to clobber the wealthiest, and once again, Our Sainted Vince looks remarkably far-sighted.

Those links in full:

Lib Dems plan wealth tax on £1m homes (2007)
Why the Conservatives must stand up for the deserving rich
Cable rethink on high value homes