I've just listened to Nick Clegg's interview on the Today programme. I tried, honestly I did, to listen to what he was saying but I just couldn't get past his manner. Why is he so stroppy? It was a perfectly light canter around his own party's tax policies. There was nothing too heavy. No personal attack, no really tough questions. He sounds like he is going to walk out of the interview at any moment having thrown his glass of water over the presenter and upturning the table before kicking the door on his way out.
It's a fact of life that the Lib Dems have difficulty making themselves heard in the media. They generally gain support in a general election as they can demand more airtime. I wonder whether that will be the case next time with Nick Clegg as leader. His biography has echoes of David Cameron's but I can't imagine a wider gulf in personal style. Having said that, I'm not sure it is just style. It is temperament as well. It is type of temperament that led to him marching his MPs out of the Commons chamber when he couldn't get his way on the Lisbon Treaty.
I honestly think the Lib Dems have made a huge mistake in replacing Menzies Campbell with a completely unproven alternative. I don't know what the Lib Dems can now do but I really think Nick Clegg needs to look very closely at his way of communicating. Stroppy doesn't cut it in the modern media age.
Showing posts with label Lib Dems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lib Dems. Show all posts
Thursday, 17 July 2008
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Clegg riding the tax waltzer
Nick Clegg describes the tax regime under Labour as a 'tombola tax system.' Good line. But the tax system he proposes is akin to a waltzer tax system, just as you think it's spun one way, it spins back again. The whole thing ends up in a dizzying mess.
Let's leave aside his claim that some people on low incomes are paying 'effective' tax rates of 90% (did he mean 'marginal' rather than 'effective' by any chance? Are you telling me that someone on £10,000 pa could be taking home just £1,000 pa? Nonsense.) The mishmash of proposals will have all sorts of bewildering effects. Let's just take those on low incomes:
- Basic tax down to 16%. Good.
- Tax shifted to pollution (the poorer you are the higher proportion of your incomes in consumed by energy costs and the like). Bad.
- Reducing taxes further after tax avoidance clamp-down. Goodish. If tax avoidance was so easy to cease someone else would have done it by now so probably won't happen. Remember the non-doms saga?
- Scale back tax credits. Bad- Clegg is right that it would be simpler to take people out of tax altogether. Simpler but I'm afraid more costly and less targeted.
- Introduce a local income tax system. Good or bad. If you are single and working could be good depending on the rate. If you are a working couple would be bad. If you are on a fixed income, undeniably good.
So overall, if you are on a low income I think you would rightly be concerned about the overall Lib Dem tax package. The most amazing thing is that having castigated Gordon Brown for the complexity of the current tax system, it would be just as difficult if not more so to calculate whether you were better or worse off under the Lib Dem proposals.
The one thing that the Lib Dem tax waltzer isn't is simple. Dizzying, quite fun, politically opaque, yes but simple, no.
Let's leave aside his claim that some people on low incomes are paying 'effective' tax rates of 90% (did he mean 'marginal' rather than 'effective' by any chance? Are you telling me that someone on £10,000 pa could be taking home just £1,000 pa? Nonsense.) The mishmash of proposals will have all sorts of bewildering effects. Let's just take those on low incomes:
- Basic tax down to 16%. Good.
- Tax shifted to pollution (the poorer you are the higher proportion of your incomes in consumed by energy costs and the like). Bad.
- Reducing taxes further after tax avoidance clamp-down. Goodish. If tax avoidance was so easy to cease someone else would have done it by now so probably won't happen. Remember the non-doms saga?
- Scale back tax credits. Bad- Clegg is right that it would be simpler to take people out of tax altogether. Simpler but I'm afraid more costly and less targeted.
- Introduce a local income tax system. Good or bad. If you are single and working could be good depending on the rate. If you are a working couple would be bad. If you are on a fixed income, undeniably good.
So overall, if you are on a low income I think you would rightly be concerned about the overall Lib Dem tax package. The most amazing thing is that having castigated Gordon Brown for the complexity of the current tax system, it would be just as difficult if not more so to calculate whether you were better or worse off under the Lib Dem proposals.
The one thing that the Lib Dem tax waltzer isn't is simple. Dizzying, quite fun, politically opaque, yes but simple, no.
Monday, 24 March 2008
Compulsory voting? Electoral reform?
The Government is consulting on the introduction of compulsory voting and changing the voting system for Westminster elections. Are either of these things a good idea? On balance, I favour the introduction of preferential voting (where second or third choices are re-distributed to the leading two candidates) but I am opposed to compulsory voting. I've come to two opposite conclusions but for the same reason.
There is only one good reason to change our system of voting. That is democratic engagement. Political engagement is weak in the UK and is getting weaker. Local organisations of all the parties are failing to motivate voters to either vote or participate in the democratic process. That harms politics: it makes political decisions seem remote and imposed and that further feeds disillusionment. Politics is something that is done to people rather than done with them.
I have always been sceptical about electoral reform- I never bought the arguments about 'fairness' and I do still have concerns about handing disproportionate power to minority parties in Government (that can happen in the current system of course and is more likely to when you have a third party with 50 seats or more as the Lib Dems currently do.) But the gains to be had from an electoral system that forces parties to engage locally with 70% or 80% of the electorate rather than 45%-50% are considerable and parties that fail to widen their appeal will face electoral defeat. So I am in favour of the Alternative Vote system for Westminster elections because the democratic benefits could be considerable and the risks are not monumentally greater than the current system.
But compulsory voting is another matter. The 'liberal' objection, that to force people to express an opinion is wrong doesn't quite fly. We force people to do all sorts of things (including registering to vote, for example) when there is an overriding community benefit. But voting rates have been declining, give or take, for a considerable period of time. It is something that politicians, local or national, should be deeply concerned about. Compulsory voting would mask this fact and therefore would allow politicians to feel that they were engaging competently when the opposite could well be true. That would only further feed disillusionment. If you want to really anger people then introduce state funding for political parties at the same time...
So the Alternative Vote could improve democratic engagement and compulsory voting could harm it. I am for the former and against the latter.
Post script: How would the parties benefit from change? Labour would benefit most from compulsory voting (its voters have a lower propensity to vote.) In the current context, Labour would also benefit to a certain extent from electoral reform in terms of seats won (though coalition politics would probably then determine whether it was in or out of power.)
It is worth seeing some research from a year ago about the second preferences of Liberal Democrat voters.
Conservatives on balance would favour the status quo. Liberal Democrats have much to gain from any type of proportional voting system. Compulsory voting is neither here nor there for them. I bet on the basis of this analysis, you can predict how each of the parties' will vote on the overall package.....the question is whether the Conservatives can prevent the changes coming in before the next election by crying foul at a Government changing the rules of the game.....It will be a brave short term political decision for the Government to try to force these changes through in time for the next election.
There is only one good reason to change our system of voting. That is democratic engagement. Political engagement is weak in the UK and is getting weaker. Local organisations of all the parties are failing to motivate voters to either vote or participate in the democratic process. That harms politics: it makes political decisions seem remote and imposed and that further feeds disillusionment. Politics is something that is done to people rather than done with them.
I have always been sceptical about electoral reform- I never bought the arguments about 'fairness' and I do still have concerns about handing disproportionate power to minority parties in Government (that can happen in the current system of course and is more likely to when you have a third party with 50 seats or more as the Lib Dems currently do.) But the gains to be had from an electoral system that forces parties to engage locally with 70% or 80% of the electorate rather than 45%-50% are considerable and parties that fail to widen their appeal will face electoral defeat. So I am in favour of the Alternative Vote system for Westminster elections because the democratic benefits could be considerable and the risks are not monumentally greater than the current system.
But compulsory voting is another matter. The 'liberal' objection, that to force people to express an opinion is wrong doesn't quite fly. We force people to do all sorts of things (including registering to vote, for example) when there is an overriding community benefit. But voting rates have been declining, give or take, for a considerable period of time. It is something that politicians, local or national, should be deeply concerned about. Compulsory voting would mask this fact and therefore would allow politicians to feel that they were engaging competently when the opposite could well be true. That would only further feed disillusionment. If you want to really anger people then introduce state funding for political parties at the same time...
So the Alternative Vote could improve democratic engagement and compulsory voting could harm it. I am for the former and against the latter.
Post script: How would the parties benefit from change? Labour would benefit most from compulsory voting (its voters have a lower propensity to vote.) In the current context, Labour would also benefit to a certain extent from electoral reform in terms of seats won (though coalition politics would probably then determine whether it was in or out of power.)
It is worth seeing some research from a year ago about the second preferences of Liberal Democrat voters.
Conservatives on balance would favour the status quo. Liberal Democrats have much to gain from any type of proportional voting system. Compulsory voting is neither here nor there for them. I bet on the basis of this analysis, you can predict how each of the parties' will vote on the overall package.....the question is whether the Conservatives can prevent the changes coming in before the next election by crying foul at a Government changing the rules of the game.....It will be a brave short term political decision for the Government to try to force these changes through in time for the next election.
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Nick Clegg's Lib Dems (errata)
I stated in a post yesterday that the Lib Dems are not potty.
I apologise unreservedly:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7265516.stm
I apologise unreservedly:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7265516.stm
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