Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
The Speedy Revival of Liberal Britain
From the close of polls on Thursday night to 6 pm last night (the 9th May), 4,000 new members joined the Liberal Democrats.
If you too are interested in joining, you can do so within minutes at http://www.libdems.org.uk/fightback?splash=1 It costs £12.
Having talked with hundreds of voters during the campaign, I know that many people around here, who had considered voting for our party, decided instead to vote for other parties. Their main reason for doing so was that they wanted to be sure of keeping the Conservatives out of Downing Street.
As we now all know, the trouble with this view was that because of the way in which the rest of the country voted, a government led by Conservatives and restrained by us was succeeded by a government in which the Conservatives can do as they please.
As a result, they are likely to reintroduce a number of things, which we had blocked during the last Parliament, and to introduce some new things which we would be blocking now, were we in a position to do so. These include:
- the "snoopers' charter" (already announced by the Home Secretary) which will greatly increase the powers of the government to intercept private communications.
- £12 billion in welfare cuts.
- huge cuts in spending in non protected departments and in local authorities to pay for Tory promises to reduce taxation for the better off and to bring the current budget into surplus within an unnecessarily short time frame.
- slashing of expenditure on green energy.
- cutbacks to the BBC.
- reducing the rights of workers not to be "fired at will."
What is about to happen proves, in my view, that the identity of the Prime Minister is not nearly so important as what he or she actually does when in office.
I very much look forward, therefore, to our membership continuing to increase.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Here's an interesting article on the revival of the so called snooper's charter from the Guardian yesterday.
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Permalink Reply by David Schmitz on
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Yes, indeed, Hugh. It is, I fear, merely a foretaste of what the Tories will be getting up to, now that my party's absence from government will be permitting them to revert to type.
Next up is likely to be a curtailment of the European Convention on Human Rights by the removal of the right of appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. How the government can do that without precipitating our withdrawal from the Council of Europe is anyone's guess, as is the question of how the protection of human rights elsewhere will be maintained if the authority of that court is undermined by our refusal to be bound by its decisions.
It looks like we won't be short of things to do.
By the way, the latest on our membership is that it has now increased by 5,000 since Thursday night. This brings us to over 50,000.
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Permalink Reply by Philip on
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Got to admire your chutzpah David. Thanks to the Libdems we have had five years of cuts to benefits, privatisation in the NHS, attempts to wreck public education, and a host of others. None of this could have have happened without your help. Oh did I mention the lie about student fees? The Libdems are a spent force. Labour has moved to the right so only the Greens stand out as the party of the NHS , free education, the living wage and opposition to HS2 and Trident. We have a host of policies which we want to use to benefit people before bankers.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Philip the country is (still) in enormous debt, something you chose to ignore. If you had an unexpected bill for £100,000, it might crimp your lifestyle, or even force you into bankruptcy. Do you just ignore your bills and borrowings?
Most of the cuts that occurred under the last government would have happened under any government. Thanks to the presence of the LibDems in the Coalition, those cuts tended to be less than otherwise.
Most of the cuts that will occur under the new government, would have happened under any government. Due to the absence of the LibDems in a Coalition, those cuts will tend to be greater than otherwise.
The Greens are not the government for a variety of reasons, including that most of Britain's voters wouldn't trust them in the Treasury.
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The 'country' is not in debt. Our government chose to hand over over more than £110 billion pounds to bail out the banks. This was all done on the banks' terms, and they continue to act with impunity with OUR money, paying huge bonuses despite massive losses. I do not, and neither does the Green Party, accept the logic of 'austerity'. It is a complete and absolute con. The Libdems worked hand in glove with the Tories and rightly paid the price. The fact that Labour is also an 'austerity' party does not justify it. Labour also bangs the anti-immigrant drum while the Greens remain resolute in our refusal to blame immigrants for our woes.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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A quotation from John Kenneth Galbraith which I also posted in reply to Clive on another thread.
"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."
Here's a question for Philip Foxe, Clive Carter, David Schmitz and everyone else who is a Party Activist. Does nobody think that a period of open-minded discussion, listening, reading, and reflection might be helpful?
What I now observe is the same old sets of separate "echo chambers" in which people are busily constructing their "narratives". The proof of why they were broadly correct to think and act the way they did. And why their solutions are still the right ones.
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Philip the distinction you draw is unrealistic. If the public finances are in the toilet so, broadly, is the country.
The last government did not "chose" to bail out the banks: there was no alternative in October 2008. The Labour government had allowed massive credit expansion. Had it been a Conservative government, banking regulation would have been even slacker and the accumulated problem, even worse.
It requires little imagination to understand what would have happened if the government had "chosen" not to bail out the banks.
Left to themselves, as we saw, banks are reckless and greedy and it is up to governments to exercise restraint. That HSBC is threatening to relocate it headquarters from London, is a sign that some progress was made in the last government. IMO, however, the Vickers Report did not go far enough.
If only we had borrowed as little as you suggest! Your claim of £110 billion borrowed is out by a factor of more than four and probably nearly eight. The Audit Office estimated the total cost of the bailout to be £0.85 trillion (here).
These matters may be of no interest to you, but even in today's extraordinarily low-interest environment, total government borrowing attracts interest of circa £48,000,000,000. Interest alone.
The figures are so large, it's easier to pretend that they doesn't exist.
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Thanks for the correction Clive. Of course much of the complexity is lost in the argument due to limitations of space and time. The point here surely is that you brief for a party which has helped this situation to persist. But attacking those on benefit, and by not proposing solutions ie, a massive council house building program, major controls on the financial sector, the Libdems are part of the problem. If you locate the key elements of success within the free market system, then you play into the hands of those who argue for cuts, privatisation, increased political and social alienation etc. I have to chuckle at the way you accuse ME of playing down the financial crisis. You seem curiously blind to the economic views of the Libdems which is free market capitalism! You seem to be claiming 'credit' for a bank threatening to relocate! I would suggest that sending those bankers to prison, as happened in Iceland, would be 'making some progress!'
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Philip the things that you seek – some of which are desirable – would all require more borrowing.
Much borrowing by the last Labour government, was of the off-balance-sheet variety: the irresponsible PFIs, continued on from the Conservative govt.
Borrowing has limits.
Take a look at Greece's experience over the last several years and the hardship experienced, worse than Britain. And watch what happens to Greece in the next few days and weeks.
I half wonder if they've been quietly printing a new Drachma currency, in preparation for Grexit.
If and when it happens, it'll happen suddenly.
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there was no problem borrowing to nationalise our key industries, and to set up the NHS, and to build council houses. The problem is borrowing to shore up(bail out is an entirely approprate phrase) banks and pay off PFI. It is people of your ilk(no offence, we are just on opposite sides of the political divide) who help to prop up a criminal, rapacious system which robs people blind while lining the pockets of the rich. Now we have TTIP, which you support, which might make it impossible or very difficult to claw back our valuable services and utilities. Perhaps you could explain the benefits of Vince Cable flogging off our postal services? It is now in the private sector where all profits will go into the private sector instead of the public. If you think the Libdems are going to make a comeback, you are living in cloud cuckoo land.
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So I take it. Philip & Clive, that your reply to my question (third paragraph above) is 'No'.
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The Speedy Revival of LibDem Oyster Beds
"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!""I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes."O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one."- Lewis Carroll
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Before responding to the comments which have been made to my posting, I'd just like to repeat the points which I originally made, namely:
- A heartening revival of our party's fortunes is taking place right now.
- I expect this to continue as the contrast between the last government and the current one becomes ever more apparent.
I made these points, not to annoy our opponents, but instead to assure the many people who remain in the political centre - a space which has been left vacant by the other parties - that there is something which they can do to express their political values. They can do that by using the link mentioned above, or more conveniently by going onto http://www.libdems.org.uk/join
There are many people who believe that the state can and should be used to make people's lives better, but who are cautious about conferring great powers upon the government as against the individual; there are people who are not afraid of change, who are internationalist in approach and who strive to protect our environment.
Such people have a natural home in the Liberal Democrats, and I am pleased to tell them that there are now 50,000 of us and still counting. They understand, as do I, that if a political movement suffers losses because it did the right thing, the proper response is to rally to it.
If I may now turn to some of the comments made, and supplement some of the points which Clive Carter has so ably put:
- As, I believe, the Labour Party's Andrew Adonis observed the other day, austerity is not an expression of nastiness; it is the result of a recognition of the economic laws of gravity. When the coalition government came to power, governments everywhere were in danger of not being able to borrow money, save at very high interest rates. Without the prospect of a stable government here the situation would have become far far worse, not only for the government but also for anyone who had private debts, such as mortgages, because their interest rates would have shot up as well.
- The word "lie" is a strong word - in this context saying that you will do something which you know you will not do. That word is not justified here. In a coalition government no-one gets everything they want. The art is to get as many policies adopted as you can. On getting the first £10,000 of earnings taken out of income tax and on getting the pupil premium, we got our way; on tuition fees, we did not. And with the sovereign debt crisis around us, we weren't actually in a position to insist on getting our way on this as well.
- "Bailing out the banks" is an easy phrase, but a misleading one. Misleading because it obscures the difference between ensuring that banks can repay their debts (like your savings account) and ensuring that the value of the shareholders' interests is preserved. The bailout did the first but emphatically did not do the second, as is shown by the fact that people's savings are safe, but the value of shares in, for example, Royal Bank of Scotland, declined by 95 per cent.
More generally, we have never been, nor have we ever pretended to be, some sort of suburban branch of the Socialist Workers Party. We are essentially centrist, and being at the centre involves accepting capitalism, subject to necessary regulation and to ensuring that the public gets a good deal when the public and private sectors interact (what Clive says about PFI's is in point here).
The lesson I think that people on the left should draw is that this country is not Haringey or even London. It is made up of many people who will rush to the perceived safety of the Conservative Party whenever they think it possible that the left may acquire influence. David Cameron was able to play on these fears this time by invoking the SNP.
Alan Stanton can always be relied upon to come up with an amusing literary reference. Fortunately, though, this one isn't entirely apposite because our oyster bed is being healthily restocked, which is of course the point of my posting in the first place. Where, I think we can find agreement, however, is in another quote by Lewis Carroll which summarises Cameron's election strategy;
How cheerfully he seems to grin
How neatly spreads his claws
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws
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