Our Stephen Tall has written a column for Total Politics in which he suggests that the Liberal Democrat manifesto next year will have much more in common with Labour than the Conservatives.
First he sets the scene in the wake of the European and local election results and the Oakeshott coup:
Clegg knows he needs to do more than just survive. Limping towards 2015, acknowledged to be a survival election for the Lib Dems, won’t be good enough. He must inspire the troops that a great liberal victory is possible (or, more realistically, that a truly awful defeat can be avoided).
So Clegg’s sought to re-focus the party’s sights on the 2015 election. In a major speech in June at Bloomberg, he extolled its “unique mission” and promised “a manifesto which will set out our own distinct ambitions for Britain”. Here was the Lib Dem leader differentiating himself from the deputy prime minister. Gone was his usual talk of “anchoring the government in the centre ground”. Instead, he declared, “I have never been interested in power for power’s sake. I have never been interested in coalition at any cost. What I am interested in is Liberal Democrats in government to build a more liberal Britain.”
And wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could just implement them all. Actually, there’s a bit of a reality check:
This is the kind of attaboy-go-get-em-no-compromise spirit the party needs. But it doesn’t alter the fundamentals.
As no-one, including us, believes we’ll win a majority in 2015, there’s only one way to implement liberal policies in government: by co-operating either with Labour or the Tories. In which case, we’ll have to accept some of their illiberal policies we don’t like, they’ll accept some of our liberal policies they don’t like, we’ll each jettison some of the impossible policies we’ve had to include because our activists cleave to them, and on the rest we’ll work out a compromise.
After describing our manifesto making process, he sees a pattern emerging in the polices that have emerged so far
I’ve totted up the number of Lib Dem policies which overlap with Ed Miliband’s.
I make it 21 to date, including tax-cuts for low-earners, the introduction of a mansion tax, a major council house-building programme, cuts to universal benefits for wealthy pensioners, rent reforms for private tenants, a living wage for public sector workers, and an elected House of Lords.
If Labour ends up the largest party in a hung parliament there’s plenty of material for a Lib/Lab pact. The same cannot be said of the Lib Dems and our current coalition partners. As the Queen’s Speech showed, the cupboard is bare of ambitious reforms both parties can unite behind.
There is, however, an absolutely massive BUT which will give a fair few readers some serious collywobbles:
Yet the trend in the polls is now turning in the Tories’ favour. It’s always the economy, stupid: Cameron and Osborne are becoming the beneficiaries of the austerity-delayed recovery. My current bet would be that it’s they who end up with most MPs, though short of an overall majority. The Lib Dems and Tories might hate the thought of continuing to work with each other, but the voters may leave them with little choice.
You can read the whole article here.
Photo by Riots Panel
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