The final deal: what would we say?

First published in LibDemVoice on 12th February.

If there is a referendum on the final deal about leaving the European Union, what would we say? Here is my starter:

Background

We recognise that the vote to leave the EU was fuelled (in part) by dissatisfaction with growing levels of inequality, and felt pressure on cultural values and identity. So we need to address a) the reasons why staying in the EU is better than leaving, as well as b) how we are going to address inequality in the UK and the identity issues tied up with some of our suspicion of foreigners. I think it is also important to make the point that staying in the EU is not the goal. It is a step towards our goal of ensuring that this country works for everyone, and not just the élite.

---

This is not just about the EU, it is about how we run this country, and about the fact that we can run this country better for the benefit of everybody in the EU rather than out of the EU.

1) The EU is not perfect, but neither is the UK. Leaving the EU would not take back control for us, it would take back control for the elites who want to rule us unfettered by considerations like human rights. An example is discussions within the EU about measures to combat tax avoidance by multinationals and the super rich, measures which have consistently been resisted by the UK government. Staying in the EU is actually more likely to help us make our own country work for everyone.

2) As the EU is not perfect, we need to work with other countries on securing reforms which are in the interests not just of British people, but of ordinary people all over the EU. These would include rules on tax avoidance, which we should embrace rather than resist; making rules of agricultural production and fishing more sustainable and fairer throughout the EU; ensuring that the single market works better for everyone.

3) While we work more closely with the EU, we will not allow that to be a distraction from solving the problems caused by selfishness within this country, for many of which the EU has been wrongly held to blame:

• We will rebalance funding to reduce regional inequalities throughout the UK.
• We will build more houses where they are needed, including a significant expansion of genuinely affordable housing
• We will reverse policies that have plunged millions into poverty or misery, and particularly the punitive policies being directed at unemployed, sick and disabled people
• We will end the deliberate underfunding and the creeping privatisation of the NHS
• We will change educational policy so that teachers can teach rather than constantly attending to targets
• We will work with the EU and with every other country in the world to reduce tax avoidance
• We will amend employment law to bring security and minimum standards to the gig economy
• We will attend to the pressures caused by immigration, including organising a fairer and more responsive system for funding local services put under strain by population growth

These policies reflect the standards and the approach we have always brought to our policies, as exemplified in our constitution:

The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.

Our relations with the other members of the EU and our commitment to work for the people of this country are not in opposition to each other.

They are part and parcel of the same thing.

"What I really wanted to hear from Remain"

Originally published on LibDem Voice on 23rd Dec 2016

I don’t know who Little Jackie Paper is but I am grateful to her / him for the following comment on  Katharine Pindar’s recent article on EU reform: “What I really wanted to hear from REMAIN in the referendum was, ‘if we remain in the EU the things that we would do differently in future are…..’”.

I think we all accept how ineffective the Remain campaign was overall. It is still quite painful to revisit it. I can still feel the daily gut wrenching at seeing opportunity slip by as the Leave campaign outthought and outfought us. We had so little to offer that was positive, and Little Jackie Paper’s comment sums that up. It focussed my mind, so here is my answer:

End within two years the silliness of the EU working in two places. It is a waste of money and time and it symbolises everything that is wrong about the EU. Find something to placate French feeling about the loss of prestige involved.

Invite every single EU country leader here on a rolling programme over the next two and a half years to explore concerns and mutual interests.

Get properly involved in the give and take of EU negotiation. We are so often a dog in the manger that we make people reluctant to give us concessions when they can.

Recognise (tough one this) that Britain needs the security of military and intelligence co-operation with all the countries that lie between us and Russia, and work to develop those links.

Give up our support for the remnant of TTIP, and support starting to work on a trade deal that benefits citizens, not corporations.

Work with others in the EU to ensure transparency, particularly in government spending. It should be UK and EU policy that any contract awarded by government must be subject to FOI scrutiny, and cannot be hidden by the fig leaf called commercial confidentiality. People have the right to see how their money is being spent regardless of who is spending it.

Develop an overall EU policy to tax corporations in the countries where they make their sales, not where they are able to set up their headquarters with sweetheart deals.

Make a point of publicising the benefits of immigration for this country, but at the same time recognise that central government policy has been unhelpful in dealing with effects. We should work to create quicker, more generous and longer term responses to places where immigration surges put pressure on housing, schooling and health services. We demand subsidiarity from the EU: we should practise what we preach and put more power, and more money, in the hands of local authorities who have to deal with the negatives of immigration.

That is one way of recognising that, as well as changing our approach to the EU. we need to change the way we do things in this country. The EU is not the cause of many of our problems. The bigger problem is the fascination that Tory, Labour and some LibDem leaders have for neoliberal practices which benefit elites far more than they benefit ordinary people.

We must develop a regional policy that spreads jobs and prosperity beyond the south east.

We must develop a housing policy that actually builds houses.

We must develop a principle that any major spending project, like HS2, must pass a test of benefit to the regions, rather than the de facto test of benefit to London.

We must immediately provide significantly more resources to HMRC to pursue payment of corporation tax.

That’s a start.

Best technology of the year: the delivery paddle

Manufactured somewhere near Newhaven. Pressed hardboard. The originals had no thong. The thong was added after one disappeared through a letter box, and now has teeth marks on it.

We need to focus on things which tangibly improve lives

Originally published in Liberal Democrat Voice on October 1st. Go there for a vibrant comment thread.

Are we barking up the wrong tree?

I have wondered for a while if we are focussing on the wrong things, particularly where the EU is concerned. For the record, I want to remain in the EU. I see it as a flawed institution, run by the same cadre of neoliberal capitalists as those who run this country and most of the other countries in Europe. It has, however, two things going for it. The first is the possibility of deeper co-operation across national boundaries. The second is that it has woven into it a thick texture of human rights which the neoliberals despite their best efforts have been unable to unwind – it was after all woven in before they came along.

But when I look at this country's biggest problems, the EU is neither the problem nor the solution. The media cacophony remains completely confusing as to why people voted to leave. The people who voted leave are equally confusing, and there are massive attempts to shut down debate by taking offence if suggestions are made that, for instance, cutting immigration will not solve any problems other than the fragility of some people's sense of national identity. Taking back control does not take back control, but merely hands it to different members of the neoliberal elite. We still need to identify and solve the problems which have caused such disaffection with the political process.

Advocating staying in the EU is the same as advocating different voting systems. There is no point in either if nothing changes. For a very large majority of those who voted to leave, the key problem is disillusionment. Their experience is that, whatever changes at the top, their circumstances do not change. That experience has, if anything, been reinforced in recent years as the elite gets richer and working lives become more precarious. They do not perceive the benefits of staying in the EU; if anything they have been seduced into blaming some of the features of the EU – free movement of people, for instance – as being the cause of their ills.

So, while the flag at the top of our pole still needs to fly – to remain engaged with the EU (and also to think in terms of fairer voting systems), this means nothing to many people if we do not have detailed and credible policies for improving the material conditions of their lives, and make it clear that we prioritise these over what voters see as more flighty, less relevant issues.

So we should focus on housing (100% on the Farronometer there) – making housing available and affordable. This goes whether it is for renters or owners, and we should encourage more use of different forms of tenure – co-ownership and so on.

We should focus on public services, particular in terms of adjusting financing when population movement causes pressure. This goes with localism, a great LibDem virtue, but again, localism goes nowhere in the public mind without tangible outcomes.

We should focus on regional policy, particularly those regions that voted heavily in favour of brexit. Not directly because of that, but because that vote was nurtured in a sense of loss for destroyed prospects that have never been recovered. The focus of any policy decision should be the benefit to the region: if, say, someone proposes a new rail link between London and South Wales, the key question should be what is the benefit to South Wales.

We should focus on employment and benefit policies which are fit for the reality of the precarious working lives of too many people nowadays. Universal Credit is a good idea, being implemented in a hopeless fashion. The idea can be salvaged while removing the vindictiveness at the heart of current DWP culture.

Political ideas work best with tangible benefits. We've been great at the ideas; we need to found them solidly in tangible outcomes.

So what now?

The referendum is over. The people have spoken. Democracy is flawed. Many elections go “wrong”, and it does not hold up to demand a rerun because we did not like the result.. And now we have a number of Leave voters similarly saying “Oops”. That happens. It has happened before. Back in 2015, Lewes lost its best ever MP, Norman Baker. I am not often stunned, but I was stunned in the days after by the number of Green and Labour acquaintances of mine who had lent Norman their votes before but withheld them on this occasion, and afterwards said, “Oops, didn't mean that to happen”.

It might be possible to avoid leaving the EU. Various scenarios have been proposed. I find none of them convincing.

The Boris option – renegotiate from a position of strength – a non starter. Boris Johnson appears lost in a storm of his own making. It might be possible for him as the poster boy of the Leave movement to do some very subtle manoeuvring to get us into a position of an acceptable way to stay in the EU – but this demands a level of capacity which he does not reach. He has demonstrated himself to be a very clever, and extremely ambitious man, but sadly mediocre when it comes to political delivery.

It has been suggested that Labour might challenge Corbyn and elect an effective pro European leader, and that a new Tory PM might take the country to an election, and that Labour might win convincingly and take that as a verdict on the referendum. Apart from all the “mights”, that would require Labour to get its act together and there is no sign of that.

It is possible that reaction may come from the people. The Leave campaign was based entirely on lies. They lied on an industrial scale as they have already admitted. There is a moral case for rerunning the referendum. But there is no political case, at least not yet. The petition for another referendum is growing fast – of itself that is meaningless. But the number of Leave voters who are beginning to realise that they were conned is growing. There will be more, particularly as they absorb the fact that that the entire Leave case was based on lies. If enough Leave voters made their disillusionment clear, it might trigger a change of feeling. But again that is an extraordinarily long shot.

To be frank, Remain did not deserve to win on the basis of its campaign. In future years dictionaries under “lacklustre” will say “See 2016 Remain campaign”. There was some passionate and effective local campaigning by different groups, but the overall campaign somehow managed to saddle itself as its figurehead with David Cameron, a man incapable of passion on any topic. And as Juncker is reported to have said, if you rubbish the EU from Monday to Saturday, people are not going to believe you when you turn up on Sunday and say it's great. I don't blame Cameron for that actually, he is what he is, a man with no political anchor except a belief in privilege. But people who did, and do, believe in the European project should never have allowed him to be at the front of the campaign.

And further, I have to say I was not impressed with the LibDem campaign. Again, good in parts, but I feel badly let down by the hierarchy both nationally and locally. With apologies to any individuals involved. We are supposed to be good at campaigning – it's what we do. But we did not manage it on this occasion.

I take account of the fact that the media ignored us. That is not our fault. They were not interested in anything – anything – we had to say. They focussed only on blue on blue infighting. They amplified Cameron's misreading in using the referendum to try to heal internal Tory divisions. They helped him fail. That's not our fault, but we could still have done better than we did.

So what now. Well, I accept the result. But not the argument. And for me, the issue is that the EU was never the problem. Whether we are in or out, that will not change. The problem is a lump of English people, voters, who feel disenfranchised. They feel they have no voice, and they feel their identity is threatened. Our failure as LibDems to address this feeling is a problem. We have allowed the elites of the political, financial and media classes to deflect soundly based working class anger on to the EU and on to immigrants.

We have to engage with the causes of working class resentment. And to do that, we can leave behind both the EU and immigration. The key problem for all of us is that misnamed thing, neoliberalism, together with the establishment and the new global elite. (Glenn Greenwald says all this a lot better and in more detail than I can here.)

The LibDems are by definition anti establishment. I will leave for another day the question of what counts as the establishment, but suffice for these purposes to say that the establishment includes both Boris Johnson and, very definitely, Nigel Farage. (Michael Gove, I'm not so sure about; I'm not sure that the establishment knows what to do with him.)

Our entire economic and political system in this globalised world is designed to keep the working classes adrift on a sea of uncertainty. I am afraid to say that the unreconstructed economic liberal wing of this party aid and abet that system. (I am all for free trade that benefits citizens. I am not for things like TTIP that pass for free trade but actually continue to benefit corporations and the elite.)*

They feel their identity is under threat. It is. I think they divide into two types – those who are defending privilege, who believe that somehow their interests should take precedence over other people's. I have no truck with them, and they will most likely remain our political opponents. Another block are genuinely ill at ease, puzzled by a world of increasing uncertainty, which their education and their lives have not prepared them for. We should be speaking to these people, we should be working for them and against the elite, and we have failed to do so with sufficient consistency and clarity. I have a few ideas and no doubt others will supply many more.

- everybody capable of work deserves a decent job and a decent pay rate. That they do not get them is because of the inequality in the system, whereby our national elite cream off all the surplus, and our politicians enable them to do so. In short, bankers and billionaires – regardless of whether we are in or out of the EU. I think there is fertile ground for promoting responsible redistribution of the profits earned by the work put in by everybody with a job. As well as everybody out of a job, because that becomes part of our security. We should be much more upfront about the fact that the profits earned by people's hard work are automatically redistributed from working people into executive salaries and corporate profits, and they can be redistributed back. It is not a “burden” on rich people, it is fairness in action. In particular we should create much more effective regional strategies that enable job creation in the places that most need them. We can most effectively start with the areas that voted most strongly for Brexit.

- we should be saying loud and clear we have had enough of austerity, both the Tories' austerity and Labour's austerity. All austerity has ever done is take money out of the pockets of ordinary decent people and stuff it into the pockets of bankers and billionaires. I am not scapegoating bankers and billionaires (though they deserve it). I am just responding to the way the system we have works – it siphons money up. Our job is to siphon it back down.

- everybody deserves a decent and affordable house. We have done quite well with this message but we need to do more, much more. In particular all LibDem controlled councils should stretch every sinew to create affordable housing by every means possible.

- we are proud of being a British party. We are proud of our identity as English (in my case) and British. Nothing will ever take that away from us. I know this is problematic for some of us, but it is possible to have a liberal approach to promoting a more secure national identity (as opposed to nationalism). This is something I think we need to say much, much more clearly. There is nothing wrong with us using the Union Flag (as long as it exists) and the flag of St George. We can be liberal and patriotic; we can be liberal and proud of it. We can be proud of being who we are without pretending that we are better than everybody else – and we should be.

- and we are clear, as Tim Farron has now said, that it is best for Britain to remain in the EU. We are democrats and we respect the result of the referendum. But people are already changing their minds, in large numbers. We will give them the opportunity to vote for that change of mind at the next election.

*all comments will be accepted. I expect rampant commentary from TTIP ultras, which I will probably ignore because there is no point arguing with them (a bit like some Brexiters), but please comment on the other stuff as well.

Why I am a Liberal Democrat

The LibDems recently ran an essay competition on the theme "What  it means to be a Liberal Democrat today". Results of the competition are not out yet, and I have no idea when they will be. Here is my effort, for what it is worth.

________________________________________________

I am a Liberal Democrat because I have a sense of justice. Justice means everybody getting a fair chance without the playing field being tilted against them throughout their lives. Justice does not mean everyone being treated the same all the time. Equality before the law is a sine qua non, but equality before the law requires different treatment, e.g. those who cannot afford representation should get legal aid. Those who can should not. My sense of justice is Biblical as much as it is political, though I accept it will not be for everybody. The Old Testament justice of Amos “Let justice roll on like a river and righteousness like an ever flowing stream”. Justice is so much more than equality before the law: it demands that we treat everybody as we would wish to be treated ourselves. Thus the two most important fibres in my being, the political and the religious, are intertwined.

Liberal democracy involves a lifetime of effort levelling the playing field. We come into a world with a tilted playing field. We make the effort to level it. But the effort does not end once the field is level because in our world the most influential currency is money, and money is magnetic. Wherever it is, it attracts more. If we leave the playing field alone, it will gradually tilt again as those with money use their power to accumulate more. So we need to work constantly to keep the playing field level. It is not just about fairness, it is also about effectiveness. Wealth used for the benefit of all benefits the wealthy too (some of the wealthy realise this). Wealth redistributed to those who have no work keeps them fit and alert and best able to contribute when work does come their way. Wealth redistributed towards those who will never be able to work means we care for those less fortunate than ourselves. Hence my implacable opposition to the poisonous policies and practices of the current Department for Work and Pensions.

The second most influential currency is information, which is crucial for the exercise of power. Information is light which we shine into the murk of both states and corporations to find out how they are affecting us. Without information we are not free, so being a Liberal Democrat means a concern for the freedom of information everywhere and in every form. People must be free to communicate with each other everywhere and about anything, provided it does not harm other people. But people in power hide information as obsessively as they hide money. So liberalism involves a permanent struggle to uncover information and set it free.

I don’t aim for a small state. I aim for an effective state. Size and effectiveness are not necessarily correlated. I want a state that is strong when I need it to be and otherwise leaves me alone. At the same time I want a society that encourages other people to be all that they can be, but to leave me alone if I am not affecting them. Regulation is a necessity; without it markets and social relations would not be peaceably ordered. Too much regulation is problematic, but so is too little – as we discovered in 2008. I want a smart state, one that is strong enough to counter balance prevailing global forces, and at the same time nimble enough to deal with rapidly changing circumstances. The Home Office’s leaden footed response to legal highs is a perfect example of how not to respond to change.

So the state needs to be smart, which entails that the people need to be smart. We need an active concerned and involved citizenry to keep the state tuned to our needs rather than to the needs of those in power. Liberalism also involves realism. I am realistic enough to know that we will never have an entirely active and involved citizenry. The forces of individualist consumerism are too strong for that. But we need a certain minimum, and everybody should at least have the chance, which means we need an education system in which people learn how to be smart. The system we have at the moment teaches one thing and one thing only – how to be measured. It is a tribute to the indomitability of the human spirit and to the professionalism and creativity of our teachers that most of our pupils leave the system with their character intact.

Ultimately, liberalism, like any political philosophy, is about character. Liberalism includes generosity of spirit. I do not envy those who are richer than me, provided they have earned it, which is by no means always the case. I do not scorn those who are poorer than me, because they did not bring it on themselves. They just live in the wrong part of the playing field, the one that I am constantly working to level up. Liberalism involves being always conscious of the rest of the world, not just the bits of the UK that go beyond my comfortable environment, but the entire world. Being internationalist means we won’t forget that our comfort depends on the discomfort of many others.


Liberalism is not an easy creed. It involves a tolerance for complication, an appetite for the convoluted practice of listening to every point of view and working to accommodate all of them. By and large political philosophies are based on either fear or hope. The politics of fear is easy. You point and shout. Liberalism is founded on the politics of hope, which is hard, hard work. We do not have the Daily Mail to expound our beliefs. We have Focuses. Which have to be delivered. So we pound the pavements. Activism gets you fitter. Not only have you got the message out, but you’ve taken your health into your own hands as well.

May and Baker – A Tale of Drugs and Crime at Bonfire Time

The following poem was read to Norman Baker at the annual Lewes Liberal Democrat dinner on Nov 26th 2014. Notes at the end will help with appreciation of the poem's finer points.

May and Baker – A Tale of Drugs and Crime at Bonfire Time

In olden days did May & Baker
help the needy sick to take a
draught to treat that desperate fear:
Bismuth Salt for diarrhoea!

Chloroform & Anaesthetic,
Calomel (a diuretic),
drugs for all by M & B,
made in perfect harmony.

But now - a sorry tale to tell-
'twixt M & B all is not well.
Drugs became the source of friction
as Baker tried to cure addiction,

While all the time Theresa May
was locking troubled folk away.
But Baker said "the Portuguese
have come across this triffic wheeze:

Prison sentences are found
to cycle users round and round".
Baker said "by doing time
they learn about a life of crime."

With splutt’ring May now turning red
our Norman raised his voice and said
“Addiction can be cured the best
by going through the NHS (t)*”

He said “the scientific proof
is irrefutable, you goof.”
“We don’t want reason here,” said May,
“We’d rather throw the keys away.”


“What Nonsense,” Norman B replied,
“You have to see the other side.
The way to rid men of this vice
is through Restorative Justice.”

In Whitehall May ranked over Norm
and sticking to her previous form
she wouldn’t budge, so Norman B
waved his farewell to Ministry.

A perfect pair these two are not.
Theresa doesn’t know how hot
revenge will be. –The Final Story?
Norm’s a match for any Tory.


*the ‘t’ is silent as in cup.

Moral


The moral of the story’s clear
don’t give Theresa May your ear
before you go to meet your maker
Get out the vote for Norman Baker.

Presented to Norman Baker at the Lewes Liberal Democrats Annual Dinner November 2014 by the members of the Executive Committee of Lewes Constituency Liberal Democrats. Poem, if such it is, by Harvey Linehan and Peter Gardiner.

Notes

• Norman Baker is MP for Lewes where bonfires attended by 40,000 or more happen every November 5^th. Nov 5^th celebrates the failure of an attempt by Guy Fawkes and others to blow up Parliament in 1605, but the Lewes celebrations also memorialise 17 protestants martyred by the Catholic authorities during the Marian persecutions of 1555-57. Nov 5th is a country wide event, but the Lewes celebrations are spectacular.
• Effigies of topical public figures are burned on Lewes bonfires. These include Osama bin Laden in 2001, and Alec Salmond and Vladimir Putin this year. (Salmond seemed to take it quite well; we don't know what Putin thought.)
• Norman resigned from the Home Office on Nov 3^rd when Theresa May, the Home Secretary, refused to consider a paper setting out alternatives to imprisonment for drug users.
• 0n 5 November 2014, Adams, the Daily Telegraph's cartoonist, depicted Norman Baker lighting a bonfire on which sat an effigy of Theresa May. A copy of the cartoon was presented to Norman at the dinner.
• Between 1834 and 1984 a company aptly called May and Baker produced pharmaceutical drugs. This is one of their advertisements.

Bedroom tax, sanctions and other benefit issues....

The news that Liberal Democrat policy has turned against the bedroom tax is very welcome indeed. My only regret about it is that it does not go far enough, but it probably went as far as could be reasonably achieved. Largely this is a move in a political game, using a formal report that tells us what we already knew (and only some of it) as cover for a change of policy that is carefully designed to distance us from the Tories enough to be able to make a separate space for ourselves, but not so far as to endanger the coalition. That being the case, I doubt that we will see much more in the way of policy differentiation on benefits until a few weeks short of the election. I live in hope but I'm not holding my breath.

It always was a crap policy. Nice idea to share out housing more equally, but the key way to do that is to build more houses. Nice idea to reduce the benefit bill, but the key way to do that is to build more houses and reduce the market price. You get the picture. The brainlessness of the policy, as hatched in the thing IDS calls his mind is exposed here, and in many other places, better than I can do.

I do hope for more because, looking across the whole breadth of the coalition's endeavours, I see nothing that has been as destructive as the DWP's war on claimants. Tory shenanigans on the NHS have hurt a lot of people, and cost a lot of money. There is little evidence that they have caused as much misery and even shortening of life as Iain Duncan Smith's pernicious policies and practices. His mantra has been fairness, “It can't be fair that...”. Fairness works both ways; there has to be fairness for claimants as well as for tax payers. They are often the same people, which IDS seems to ignore.

I hope the next step we take is to repudiate the sanctions regime. Of course you need a bit of stick to deal with the few recalcitrants who have no intention of taking a job. But there are very few of those, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary decent people are being clobbered hard with sanctions for the most minimal of reasons, and sometimes not even that. Let's remember, a sanction is not just a slap on the wrist. It is the loss of four weeks of benefits (the first time). The claimant is rendered destitute for a month. And that is supposed to help them look for work. And it is a totally unfair system. Make a thought experiment with me for a moment, please.

Suppose you are at work in a good steady job, 9 to 5, 5 days a week, doing well, no complaints. One day you turn up five minutes late for work. Your boss fines you a month's wages. Once you've got over that, your boss gives you a date for an appraisal. You tell your boss you can't make it as you have an appointment with a customer, and you keep the customer appointment. Your boss fines you a month's wages for missing the appraisal. When you finally have your appraisal - bear with me, this one's a corker - when you finally have your appraisal, you have a heart attack in the middle of it and have to be sent home. Your boss - you guessed it - fines you a month's wages for not completing the appraisal. You would not think any of those decisions were fair, would you? Every one of these is documented as having been done to claimants.   The heart attack one is a bit of a one off, but the others are not exceptional, they are being done repeatedly to thousands of claimants by job centres and their outsourced agencies  every day, every week, every month. It is pernicious, it is nasty,  it is completely ineffective in helping anyone to get a job. It should cease if we want to claim any kind of civilisation in our policy.

Along with the vindictiveness, there is the sheer incompetence with which much of this is being managed. See here for more details.   And the story of David Clapson is just one example of the effects of Mr Duncan Smith's poisonous policies.

Maybe a good strap line for LibDem policy would be “a Britain free of food banks”. Much as I have great respect for the Trussell Trust (particularly after they stood up to IDS) and their brethren, I hate the fact that we live in the sixth largest economy in the world, and we cannot find enough to keep even working people away from the need to beg for food. And I am sure that there is much good that the Trussell Trust and their like could do once the need to feed people was done away with. Most people who can work really want to find a job. It is the lack of jobs, not the number of applications they send in which is preventing them from getting one. Most people who cannot work really cannot work, and lead lives far more painful than most of us can imagine. It is time we pledged respect within our benefits system, and a decent minimum benefit for all.

Footnote: we have a LibDem minister in the DWP as in most other departments, and the LibDem minister's job is to keep an eye over the whole range of departmental policy and mitigate where necessary. Our man at the DWP is Steve Webb, who has done an excellent job carrying through much needed reforms to pension policy. He has achieved widespread recognition for what he has done. Even Labour have kept very quiet about what he's done, which means there is nothing there for them to attack. I do not know what Steve Webb has done on the mitigating front, but I think two factors come into play. When made minister for pensions, Steve would have recognised that there was an opportunity for him to take pension reform by the scruff of the neck, but also that that would be an all consuming job. Secondly, I think he would have seen very quickly that IDS was unstoppable and also capable of being extremely nasty to people he didn't like. (None of that “quiet man” stuff any more.) I'm sure Steve can look after himself in a fight, but it's a massive waste of energy that can be more profitably spent elsewhere. It would have been very rational for him to focus on pension reform and not try to get in the way of the IDS juggernaut. Even his junior ministers had that glint of “if it hurts you, it must be good for you, and actually we don't care if it turns out not to be good for you anyway” about them. Remember, at the start of this government DWP had Chris Grayling as well, whose bare faced lies outstrip even IDS's.  

Lessons from Eastleigh: nothing we didn't know already

The by-election at Eastleigh provides a much needed fillip to the LibDems in general and to Nick Clegg in particular after a nasty few weeks. But it tells us nothing new about the state of politics in the UK.

We know that where we work we win. We have worked ceaselessly in Eastleigh over the last couple of decades and built an excellent local party that has delivered when it mattered. We also worked tirelessly during the campaign itself. We are very good at ground wars, and this was a particular case of a good ground war. It was not a surprise that we won.

It would also not have been a surprise if the Conservatives had won. Reasons they did not – they chose a candidate who they needed to keep out of the media spotlight, and their choice backfired on them. It was also clear that they let slip their attack dogs, and some very unpleasant things were said about the Liberal Democrats during the campaign. When people vote for the current Tory party, they know they are voting for a nasty party. A lot of them did, and a lot of them will do in a general election, but not enough will. The lesson for the Tories, if they will heed it, is that slipping to the right does not help their vote. But we knew that already.

UKIP did very well indeed. But a significant proportion of their vote was not a vote for UKIP, it was a “none of the above” vote. (The LibDems won despite no longer getting the “none of the above” vote. That may be a surprise to some people, but LibDems already knew that for some time people have been voting for us not against somebody else.) UKIP's fortunes in this by-election were tied to Labour's. The Labour vote collapsed partly because their choice of candidate backfired but mostly because people still don't have a reason to vote Labour. They do not look like a party ready to form a government. It's only two years to the next general election so they need to move soon. They need to say sooner rather than later, “We made a lot of mistakes, especially near the end of our time in office. We will not make those mistakes again. But the Tories, despite the lessons of our time in office, are continuing to make those mistakes”. But they are still too terrified of the right wing press to make that move. If they don't make it soon, they will not win the next election. In the absence of that move, people who are not loyal Labour voters have no reason to vote for them.

In the absence of a real alternative in Labour, voters went to UKIP. I don't believe it was because they liked UKIP's policies. Those policies are superficially popular. When they come to be properly tested in the heat of a general election, or indeed a (unnecessary) referendum, support will melt. The support went to UKIP as a protest vote. Perhaps by the time of the 2015 general election, Farage will have achieved the momentum of the other comedian Beppo Grillo. It is likely that the internal tensions between sensible Conservatives and their right wing will get worse. It is possible that the Tories will spend more energy fighting each other than fighting the other parties, and it is possible that UKIP will profit from that.

Much of the future is unpredictable – there is a balancing act involving Labour's ability to look as if it is capable of governing, the internal tensions of the Conservative party, and UKIP's ability to continue to mobilise a none of the above vote, and not to implode in its own personal and political contradictions.

But we knew all that before the Eastleigh by-election.

Liberal Democrats and boardroom pay

This started out as a comment on somebody else's post, but it grew and grew. Nick Clegg has signalled the possibility of government action on high pay, and Charlotte over at DigitalPolitico says he's being “worryingly illiberal”. I don't see that. I think we need to be clear about what the issue is and about what a liberal response to it would be. Then in terms of a strategy there are two questions to answer. The first is does government have a right to interfere; the second is will it be effective.

As for what Nick Clegg has actually done, this is what the BBC website says: “The government is to publish new proposals to curb "unjustified and irresponsible" pay rewards in the private sector, Nick Clegg has said. The deputy prime minister said ministers would announce plans to "get tough" on excessive boardroom pay in January and may legislate if necessary.”

And this is what Robert Peston says: “... it is highly likely that companies will be forced to publish the numerical relationship between senior directors and other staff pay.

“But I would be staggered if any Tory prime minister and chancellor - even those who have repeatedly said that "we're all in this together" - would legislate a legal maximum for bosses pay.

“As for the other two proposals, on giving investors the formal power to block pay awards and on forcing the remuneration committee to have a workforce rep as a voting member, goodness only knows whether they will be enacted or squished.”

What problem is this action answering? It is not just high boardroom pay and a growing divide between top and bottom pay levels. If it were just that, I would be with Charlotte – there is no need to interfere and no rationale for interfering. (Just tax the rich buggers more and the poor buggers less.) It is more that boardroom pay, and traders pay in the financial sector, has become divorced from performance. People are paying themselves and their friends large sums of money which they have not earned. I have no objection (and I doubt very much if Nick Clegg or Vince Cable does either) to people earning very large sums of money. What I do object to is them being paid sums that they have not earned.

Should a Liberal interfere in such a case. Well, if it were just that I find it objectionable, the answer is no. People are free to do what they want provided it doesn't harm other people – the usual liberal principle. But this activity does harm other people. It puts money in directors' pockets at the expense of employees, shareholders and customers. Logically, employees, shareholders and customers should do something about that if they really care, but the history of this recession demonstrates, if it needed demonstrating, that they are not able to (and those that are able to, namely the representatives of large investors like pension funds, have been unwilling to, probably because those representatives benefit from the same gravy train).

It goes wider than that as well. This is not just a matter of distribution of spoils between a few people directly concerned with specific companies. These practices led to, or at the very least contributed to, the recession from which the majority of us are now suffering. This is actually a market failure, and it has become a prolonged and persistent one. In an efficient market, people get paid what they're worth. If people are paid more than their worth, their business loses competitiveness. The company loses market position, or those people lose their jobs and more effective managers come in. But this is not what is happening. People were being paid vast sums of money for poor performance before the crash – Fred Goodwin one of the most notable examples. (I would really enjoy being able to drive my company off a cliff and walk away with a pension pot the size of his.)

Generally speaking such a crash would be seen as a wake up call, the directors responsible for the bad decisions made that led to the various crashes around the world would lose their jobs, with little compensation, and new managers would come in and would manage better. But that is not what is happening. Directors are still getting paid very large sums, with little evidence that they have earned those sums. Directors pay in the UK went up 50% on average in the last year. The companies they work for are not performing 50% better than they were a year ago. You might argue that actually seeing 50% increase in profits is unreasonable in a recession, and what these directors have been doing is helping their companies ride out the storm better. I have not examined the figures in detail, but I will take a bet that if you compare companies that have given their directors large increases with those that have given their directors small increases, you will not find any difference in performance. No, they have not suddenly become 50% more valuable than they were last year, they have just waited for a decent interval before turning back to their old ways. The market has not worked in this case and is not working.

We often forget that markets actually rely on governments. Without government rule making, markets would not exist. Without the enforcement provided by national and international law, nobody would be able to trust that a contract would be honoured. Excessive rule making squeezes markets; effective rule making enables them. When markets fail, governments not only have a right to intervene, they actually have a duty to intervene, to enable the market to work again. The rules by which directors pay are set have become ineffective and unsustainable – they are very sustainable for directors, but not for the rest of us. And they need to change, so that the people to whom the money belongs, primarily shareholders, get the primary say in who is paid what.

So Nick and Vince are proposing changes to the rules. They are not proposing legal caps on directors' pay, which would be illiberal and ineffective. But they are proposing to change the balance of power by three possible measures. This summary comes from Robert Peston's blog quoted above.

to make shareholder votes on remuneration packages for directors binding, rather than advisory (as is the case now);
 to force big companies to include an employee representative on the committee that sets directors' pay (the remuneration committee);
 to force companies to publish the ratio of senior directors' pay to the typical or median pay in the company, and even (perhaps) to prohibit pay rises that bust a mandated threshold for that ratio.

These measures seem to me to be eminently sensible and liberal. I hope all three get enacted. I hope they will be enough to bring boardroom pay under control, and to see that directors earn what they are being paid. Boards, though, have been so careless and intransigent throughout the recession that I fear they will need their heads knocked together before their behaviour will change.

Vince

It's good being a Liberal Democrat

I was at Norman Baker's adoption meeting last night. He was introduced by Lord Oakeshott who told us what we knew already – that Norman has been a fantastic MP both in the constituency and in Parliament, and will continue to be a fantastic MP if he is re-elected. Lord Oakeshott had some words for us about not letting the Tories in on the back of dislike of Brown, replacing one bad lot with another. I particularly liked his line about not wanting to have a Chancellor on work experience (an original Oakeshott line, though one he's used before). To get Norman back in we have to overcome the standard Tory tactics of throwing money at a seat. Despite not having Lord Ashcroft's money, this not counting as a marginal, we are up against a very well funded Tory candidate with over £200,000 raised in the last two years. We compete with enthusiasm, good people, good policies and endless foot slogging.

It feels better than ever to be a Liberal Democrat at the moment. I have a wonderful MP, now candidate, to campaign for. I have an excellent set of policies to sell to voters on the doorstep. I can talk about genuine fairness, I can talk about properly thought through and funded tax proposals, I can talk about decent proposals for schools and hospitals.

I can talk about a great team. Nick Clegg as the leader, Vince Cable for Chancellor, Norman Baker himself on transport with many excellent ideas for getting Britain moving better, Chris Huhne's great common sense in the Home Secretary role, Ed Davey as Foreign Secretary, Simon Hughes on energy and climate change, where do I stop? Nick Clegg doesn't mind which of them gets photographed with him, unlike Gordon Brown who is photographed with his whole cabinet in the hope that he will sink into oblivion among them, and David Cameron who is photographed with none of his in case they remind people what they're really like.

And I can talk about a great record. Our consistency over the last few years is one of our strongest selling points. Consistent opposition to the Iraq War - fully justified by subsequent events ( and one that goes hand in hand with a realistic and hard headed defence policy for the future). Consistent opposition to the whole waste of money on ID cards. The fact that we heralded some of the problems brewing in the recession years before either Labour or Tories had a clue. A record on MPs expenses and other abuses that cannot be touched by Labour or Tories. Norman Baker began his campaign to reveal MPs' expenses with a Freedom of Information request in 2005, and his filibuster was crucial in 2007 in preventing Tories and Labour uniting to exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act (reason alone to be proud of him). We proposed rules on lobbying in 2006 which were thrown out by the combined forces of the gravy train, Tory and Labour again.

So I can talk about a history of genuine honesty, fairness, consistency and principle. Yes, it's good to be a Liberal Democrat today.

Liberal Democrats pledge biggest rail expansion since the Victorians

Norman Baker launched a Liberal Democrat plan for massive rail expansion today. He said, “High speed rail is hugely important, but it is only part of the 21st century rail network Britain needs. Our plans will reopen thousands of miles of track across the country and make our railway great again... The Liberal Democrats will transform the railways with the biggest expansion since the Victorian age."

The plan is to create a Rail Expansion Fund of nearly £3bn from which councils and transport authorities can bid for money to pay for rail improvement and expansion projects. The reaction from the motoring lobby was immediate and predictable: according to the BBC "the RAC Foundation said it would be a waste of taxpayers' money when only 7% of UK journeys were made by train, compared to 90% by car". Maybe more routes and cheaper fares will make a difference to that proportion.

Some of the plans include, again from the BBC, "the electrification of lines from Manchester to Liverpool, Leeds and Preston; from Birmingham to Bristol and Basingstoke; and between Leeds and York. New or reopened stations could be funded in Ilkeston, Kidlington, Wantage, Corsham, Tavistock, Middlewich, Ashington, Blyth, Washington and Skelmersdale. New lines could link Southport with Preston, Bournemouth with Ringwood and the Midlands main line with the Birmingham-Derby route. And track could be reopened between Exeter and Okehampton; Tavistock and Plymouth; Penrith and Keswick; and Galashiels and Carlisle."

No sign of the Lewes to Uckfield line in there, but maybe, maybe...

Update 6th April
The plan does include reopening the Lewes Uckfield railway. Norman says: "The reopening of the Lewes - Uckfield line is something I have campaigned for locally for over twenty years. It is vitally needed, not just to link the two towns again, but also as a key building block in providing an alternative to the heavily congested Brighton main line."

The Observer half endorses us, Rawnsley doesn't

I have decided that I am no longer going to be grateful for small mercies.

It is a small mercy that Andrew Rawnsley has said very nice things about us in the Observer today. He says the LibDems alone are truly serious about electoral reform. He skewers Cameron for his non-credentials on the issue. He excoriates Brown for his puny record on constitutional reform and his opposition to voting reform. He says quite correctly that the Liberal Democrats are the only party that has been consistently in favour of transparency about expenses. (How David Cameron must wish for a bit of Stalin's power to rewrite history so that he could forget the Conservative attempt - abetted by Labour - to exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act). He says if you want serious constitutional reform you should vote LibDem. And then he says - "This is not an endorsement of the Lib Dems." I'm sorry, Andrew, but why can you not bring yourself to give us an endorsement? Where is the logic in saying all that you have just said, and then saying that you are not going to give us your backing? You have just become a microcosm of the self defeating political behaviour of this country. Yes, we're great, you say. Yes, we are the party with the consistent policies on green issues - which you like. Yes, we are the party with the consistent policies on the economy - which you like. Yes, we are the party with the consistent policies on poltiical reform issues - which you like. Yes, we are the party - the only party -with the consistent policies on transparency issues - which you like. Yet, you are still not going to endorse us. Why not, Andrew? Why not? We are the party with the answers you like on environmental issues, on reform, on transparency, on Europe, miles ahead on the economy. Stop being so mealy mouthed. Put us in power and give us a chance to show you what we can do.

It is also a small mercy that the Observer has editorially endorsed us for Europe on Thursday. That's nice. Here's what they have to say.

"On the environment, on civil liberties and on the mounting debt bubble, the Lib Dems were quietly but consistently ahead of the Westminster curve.

"Likewise on transparency. In 2007, they opposed the Conservative move, tacitly encouraged by Labour, to exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act. The Lib Dems alone took a party line for openness.

"That is worth recalling as Mr Cameron and Mr Brown engage in an unseemly scramble for reformist credentials."

And yet despite being accurate about our policies and our consistency on major domestic and international issues as well as Europe, they have only endorsed us for the European elections. They haven't said a word about the local elections happening on the same day. Why ever not? We have a great record on local government as well as all the nice things they said about us in their editorial. But still only half an endorsement. I said it to Rawnsley, so I'll say it to the Observer. We know we can do it. You know we can do it. You've just given all the reasons why we can do it. Give us your backing and give us a chance to do it.

The Freedom Quiz

If you're not concerned about our freedoms now, you ought to be. Perhaps you think things still aren't too bad. Take the Freedom Quiz, and see if your perceptions are still the same afterwards.

Then have a good read of the Liberal Democrats' new draft Freedom Bill.

I quote Chris Huhne in the Guardian's Comment is free:

"There has always been a problem for civil libertarians. The sacrifices of freedoms made by successive governments often seem small, particularly when they are pushed through at times of panic about terrorism. Each time, the government argues that you only need to give up a modest amount of freedom or rights to win greater security. And what could be more free than life itself? Yet the cumulative effects of this salami-slicing have now become deeply corrosive to the free spirit of a civil society."

Members of the public are invited to discuss and debate. There is also an opportunity to sign the Freedom Bill petition. So what are you waiting for?

The leadership race - more

I'm feeling quite comfortable about the way things are going. I was worried that it would not be much of a show, but I am reassured by some of the things that have been happening recently. As points out,in a two horse race and with horses so similar in many ways,they will have to work a bit to be distinctive, so I look forward to things hotting up as they get into their stride.

I'm still sitting on the fence, apparently unlike my MP, Norman Baker. I like Huhne's stance on Trident. I like Clegg's stance on ID cards. Huhne has adopted the same policy but Clegg got in first. Guys, my vote is still up for grabs.

That leadership contest

One of my Tory friends (I do have some) has made a point of saying the LibDem leadership race is so boring. And then implying that that means the LibDems are boring. It could just mean we're a relatively united party, with no big issues over which we disagree greatly.

I remain firmly undeclared pending more goodies from the two conbatants.

So Ming went...

... and proved to be another example of what I blogged about here recently, the relative power of press and politicians. I can't quite decide whether it amounts to dishonest journalism or not. The story of Ming's age, pardon the pun, was an old, old story. We knew some LibDems didn't like him, and we knew that some LibDems were concerned about his age and image. We've known that for two years. We know Gordon Brown is a control freak - the press don't go on about it day after day after day. We know Dave the boy Cameron is completely vacuous - the press don't go on about it day after day after day. But they decided some time ago that the story was Ming's age, and it became the story - day after day after day. And that despite everything we were doing - the real news - things actually happening, policy announcements, policy working, oh sorry not news, now let's talk about Ming's age. The revelation that he was asked about his age at every single one of sixty plus interviews at the party conference this year shows the intensity of the thing. A lesson for whoever succeeds him. And at one level, OK they were right - every party needs a telegenic leader, it is now clearly a sine qua non.

So a decent, honourable man has been knocked out of the limelight. His colleagues may have fashioned the knife (it's difficult to tell from what I know and impossible, I'm afraid, to believe anything the press says, because they are determined to take no responsibility for their actions) but it was the press that wielded it.

I hope Ming comes back. Whoever becomes party leader needs him on the front bench, where he can still wield a scalpel of his own occasionally. One of the government's most embarrassing moments of recent years was the admission Ming forced of their complicity in flights of rendition. Of course, they were able to get over it because not enough people cared. But it's our job to make them care.

Coming to you via the Conservative party...

... LibDem policies. We wanted to do something about inheritance tax before they did; we were quicker off the mark with taxing non-doms; we were ahead of them on taxing planes instead of passengers...

But I couldn't say it better than Vince Cable did, according to the Beeb, "Most of these policies were set out by the Liberal Democrats. We had set out this policy on changing the basis of aviation tax, the Tories pinched it from us and now the government have pinched it from them.

"I mean for the Tories to be bellyaching about it, it's like a gang of thieves complaining about their houses being burgled."