![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Myopic Milibland's misplaced attack.
So, Boy George did his first budget yesterday, and it was nasty. But I somehow suspect the nastiness was inevitable, and it was a lot less nasty than it would've been if it'd been a Tory-only administration. Labour have decided to spend their political capital attacking the Lib Dem junior partners for the nasty, instead of the senior party, and there's no sign whatsoever from them of what they'd do instead.
I agree, completely, with Sunny on this one, their attacks are misplaced. One of the leadership candidates, currently rated as "second least awful" on my scale, has even set up a tool to email the LD leadership. Because apparently ameliorating the Tories and getting clear committments to help the lowest paid through increased tax credits and personal alloances, while increasing taxes on the wealthy through increased CGT is something we should be ashamed of. So, he wants to recruit former Lib Dems, and wants us to email the leadership. Using his tool, here's what I send:
Have Labour said what they would've done instead? No. If the LDs weren't in coalition, would the Tories have even considered raising the personal allowance, increasing tax credits to the lowest incomes, pegging pensions back to earnings, increasing Capital Gains Tax? No.
I've voted Labour in the past. At the next election, odds are very good I'll have a second preference to allocate as well. Dear Labourites, it would be nice to have a choice as to where I'll put my second choice, currently, you're not giving me one. Wake up, FFS.
I agree, completely, with Sunny on this one, their attacks are misplaced. One of the leadership candidates, currently rated as "second least awful" on my scale, has even set up a tool to email the LD leadership. Because apparently ameliorating the Tories and getting clear committments to help the lowest paid through increased tax credits and personal alloances, while increasing taxes on the wealthy through increased CGT is something we should be ashamed of. So, he wants to recruit former Lib Dems, and wants us to email the leadership. Using his tool, here's what I send:
Dear Mr Clegg and Mr Hughes,Do I like the VAT increase? No. Do I like the cuts in some benefits? No. Do I like that spending cuts were inevitable and would have to happen this year or next regardless of who was in power? No. Do I like that they've ring-fenced the NHS budget so waste there isn't being hit, meaning spending elsewhere will have to fall further? No.
I'm sending this using a tool on Ed Miliband's campaign site, but basically am doing so to offer full support, he wants to recruit former Lib Dem activists who don't like we're in Govt with the Tories.
I don't like it, but it was inevitable. The Budget has a lot of stuff I really dislike in it. But it has a lot of stuff I like, and I'd like to see what Labour would've done differently.
Getting the Tories to accept an increasein CGT and the allowance was brilliant. Having to accept a, hopefully short term, increase in VAT in order to prevent further cuts was probably inevitable.
Labour are out of ideas, and all they want to do is attack us, instead of the Tories who're the senior coalition partner.
Pretty much proves we made the right choice.
Have Labour said what they would've done instead? No. If the LDs weren't in coalition, would the Tories have even considered raising the personal allowance, increasing tax credits to the lowest incomes, pegging pensions back to earnings, increasing Capital Gains Tax? No.
I've voted Labour in the past. At the next election, odds are very good I'll have a second preference to allocate as well. Dear Labourites, it would be nice to have a choice as to where I'll put my second choice, currently, you're not giving me one. Wake up, FFS.
no subject
no subject
My task for the next few weeks is to turn it into a proper layout, so that a) anyone can use it and b) it can be assessed for officialness. But adding individual bits is easy, and because ofthe way DW actually works, you only need to add/amend the bit you like, instead of rewriting the whole thing as on LJ.
no subject
no subject
That's, theoretically, how LJ works, but many of the layouts are coded so badly it doesn't. Advantage of starting from scratch having learnt from mistakes is pretty big, but having a completely reworked Core sheet is useful (the LJ one is a code horror, looks like something I'd write).
I'll post it when I'm done, in various iterations for different people to use.
no subject
no subject
no subject
The fact is, a lot of the budget is nasty and not inevitable. For example, it is nasty and not inevitable to reduce the period of backdating of tax credits from one month to three months. It's especially nasty given the administrative chaos that the Tax Credit Office seems to revel in most of the time. Real people will lose out on money they should have had. It is nasty and not inevitable to punish Jobseeker's Allowance claimants with a 10% reduction in their benefits if they haven't found work after a year. It's especially nasty given that it's very difficult for many people to find a job at the moment, and that JSA is a breadline benefit in the first place. It is nasty and not inevitable to change benefit uprating from the RPI to the CPI. They know that this will mean a drop in the real value of benefits over time as research has shown that the things which the poorest people buy rise in price faster than the CPI. And don't get me started on VAT ... some hope of economic growth recovering if this is the solution.
And Labour have said what they'd do instead. They would make cuts next year when the benefits of growth would make the cuts less savage. Of course they can't say exactly what would be cut and how, no more than the Tories would before they got elected and had had a chance to look at the books.
Besides, when the local Lib Dems here stop sending me leaflets attacking the Labour party for not forming a coalition and being a little over jubilant beating Labout into third place (it's mentioned three times in the latest missive) I'll get interested in Labour negativity. Dunno when they're going to work out the election is over and they won. :-)
no subject
True, no argument there. Thing is, it's palpably obvious it would've been a lot worse without LD influence. Tactically and strategically, I think Labour are playing this wrong.
They should be showing an alternative, and making the LDs feel there was a different option, highlighting that working with Labour would be possible, that the Tories weren't the only option.
Carping on about 'betrayal' and similar all the time is palpably wrongfooted; there's a real feeling in LD circles that it was Labour who betrayed us, which is why Clegg and others will repeatedly talk about the 13 years thing; when they came in, we were very hopeful, and LD MPs were on Cabinet committees and similar. But apart from a very early surge, nothing.
Clegg said before the election when appealing to former Labour voters "it's not you betraying Labour, it's they who betrayed you", and he was right.
Sorry, that doesn't wash. Tories couldn't look at the books because they weren't in office and couldn't look at them. But LAbour's only just left office, has had full access to the books for 13 years, and, um, Osborne's published them anyway as part of open government process.
Labour could offer alternatives. If they were good enough, they could actually break the coalition.
As it is, they're strengthening LD resolve to stick with it, as they're not giving any other choice.
If AV comes in at the next GE, they'll need to appeal to 2nd preferences to get anywhere. In many seats, they'll need to appeal to LD supporting swing voters anyway.
I Really think this is a tactical error. Sure, the Govt should be attacked, opposed, etc. But concentrating pretty much all their fire on the junio partner and alienating them completely, which is what they're currently doing, is daft.
The first part is inevitable, it's called rebuttal, Labour keep saying that the LDs are betrayers, but it was Labour who refused a deal. Can't have it both ways.
Latter makes tactical sense, LDs can only win in a seat if people believe they can win, emphasising second place on pretty much every leaflet is standard practice. If Labour hadn't broken their electoral reform pledge of 1997, it'd be different, but...
You are, at least, being constructive, and I do appreciate that, and I completely agree on many points about the bloody awful negative points within the budget. But there are good points, and the bad points were lessened, and that's due to LD influence.
That's what I signed up for after all, it's how coalition politics works.
no subject
I have difficulty with this criticism of Lab not going for a coalition. I truly don't think it was because they weren't prepared to negotiate on policy. Brown realised the game was up, and it would be politically impossible to cling on in a coalition of the minor parties. They had to refuse to deal if a coalition involving the biggest party was a possibility. Perhaps the LDs would have prefered a LibDem/Lab coalition; personally I think Clegg preferred the idea of working with Cameron (and I can understand that - Brown beong notoriously difficult to work with ...)
The issue of 13 years ago we've talked about before - I hold my hands up and have nothing to say. But Labour being skullduggerous after 1997 doesn't excuse a single Lib Dem vote for Tory nastiness now. The Lib Dems will need to take a view about what is necessary yet painfull, which they must of course support, and what is Tory vileness being introduced under a coalition fig-leaf. The former makes them look statesmanlike, and I think the freeze on CB comes under this heading - no-one wants it but it's probably the least-worse option. The latter I think will come home to roost - the changes to TC backdating and reduction in JSA I would class here. There isn't anything that can be done, as I understand it ... support for the emergency budget is a requirement of the coalition, but people on the left (in both the labour and liberal traditions) have long memories.
With regard to Lab and the books - sure they know where we are now but they don't know where we'll be in 12-18 months time, that was what I meant.
no subject
I think Clegg did prefer working with Cameron, definitely over Brown, and I know I personally favoured it anyway (not a secret that one), but the Parliamentary party, especially Vince, definitely preferred a Labour deal if at all possible; I think that would've been even more electorally suicidal than the Tory deal, but...
When I spoke to Vince at the special conference, his disappointment with Labour not negotiating at all was palpable, he really wanted to see if a deal was possible, and really wanted to try and make it work, but the Labour negotiators pretty much said "this is the manifesto, take it or leave it", whereas the Tories gave ground. Lots of ground.
The idea that we could get a better deal on policy from the Conservative party scares me, even without the qualms about legitimacy and similar.
The big problem is of course British governance traditions. We know there've been lot of behind closed doors negotiations. What we don't know is how much vileness was stopped by that already. I suspect quite a lot, but won't know until the memoirs are published.
But yes, being in opposition does make it harder to make decent policy. What really bothers me is they hadn't got anything prepared already, despite saying in the last Budget they'd make massive cuts (nearly as big as the Tories are making, just timed slightly slower).
What were those cuts going to be? I know why they didn't announce them, and I know they want to make hay attacking everything now, but the open government consensus politics fan hates it; all ideas should be on the table, not just those from the governing party.
Ah well, plus ca change.
no subject
I suspect this will be the eventual epitaph for this coalition government, but I doubt it will wash with the British people.
no subject
Which, given how horrible bits of it are, is scary...
no subject
no subject
PLDP seems to have bought into the "urgent deficit problem" myth - it's not urgent, it is important but it is not the most important problem facing the UK - economic growth is.
And we, the public, are being rolled using the classic Sir Humphrey gambit - we must do something, this is something, therefore we should do this. I'm still wondering about whether we should do something and suspect, at this stage, not.
The PLDP has allied itself with a bizarre religious cult which sacrifices people's lives to a mystic deity known as "Market". And however much of other people's suffering they offer, "Market" demands more.
You could consider what the Labour party is doing as an intervention for a cult member if you like.
no subject
Yes, agreed. And if that's the actual objective, Labour in general and Harriet Harman in particular are going completely the wrong way about it.
If you want the LDs to cross the floor at the first major vote, then you'll need to tempt tehm very strongly, by really attacking the stuff in the budget they won't like (of which there's lots), proposing an alternative solution that's workable, and making it look like the LDs made the wrong choice.
In other words, attack the evil Tories, and be friendly towards the LDs. There is zero chance of their current strategy working, at all.
So either Labour are blitheringly stupid (and no matter how little I think of Harman, I don't think she's stupid), or they don't want to break the coalition, they're just playing long game politics for the next GE.
If they genuinely think their current tactics will work, they completely misunderstand the way LDs think. That's probably true anyway, their assumption of support and accusations of 'betrayal' based around their arrogance seem to indicate that.
I don't disagree with you about growth being the most important factor, but Osborne, with advice, has decided the risk of much higher interest rates, which he thinks is serious, is a much more important problem.
I don't think I agree, but those more qualified than me, including the Labour appointed BoE governor and Vince, seem to agree.
As things stand, there's nothing to be done. And Labour don't seem to want toa ctually change things, maybe they want the Coalition to fail so they can try to win big and stay in power for ever, so they're risking 5 years of economic hell.
We'll see, I guess.
no subject
I suspect this will be the eventual epitaph of this coalition government, but I doubt it will wash with the British people.
no subject
no subject
Right? Different question, definitely not in some of the Housing Benefit stuff (cutting to 90% after a year is just nasty).
But those are cases that can be opposed, or reversed when the effect is obvious--if applied as written, it'll cause homelessness, ergo they'll be forced to make changes, as homelessness increases other costs. But persuading Boy George of that point probaly needs to be "I told you so" rather than "we predict this" :-(
no subject
I mean, yes re housing, I find that extremely problematic and also stupid. But I actually meant something slightly different, sorry.
no subject
Osborne I think is motivated by debt, the Bank governor says it won't hurt growth too much, but that there's a risk of much higher interest rates, which will. Which is what seems to motivate Vince.
If not cutting now will force interest rates up, then that is a bigger threat to growth, and it's growth that matters most.
no subject
In general, this government feels very different from a Conservative government would have been. It's not my fantasy, but I think it's probably the best we were going to get.