Conservative and Lib Dem promises: then and now

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Cathy Newman checks it out 12/05/10
“We are all going to have things we said thrown back at us,” the new PM said today, when asked if he regretted saying his favourite joke was “Nick Clegg” (video here). And you’ve got to hand it to him – he must be the first politician to pre-announce cabinet splits. He said: “If you want to spend the next five years finding Lib Dem politicians who slightly disagree with Conservative politicians about this, or a slightly nuanced policy, you can find lots.”

The new coalition government set out their joint policy statement on key issues today – but how many U-turns have they performed since leaving the campaign trail? FactCheck has been finding out.

Over the team for the analysis

Cutting the deficit
What the Lib Dems said before: The Lib Dems want to make spending cuts – but not until the economy is strong enough. Their manifesto, published just a month ago, assumed this wouldn’t be until 2011-12. Cutting sooner would “undermine the much-needed recovery and cost jobs,” it said. Vince Cable also dismissed the Tories’ planned £6bn of efficiency savings this year as “school boy economics” when they were announced at the end of March. “They haven’t a first clue about how these savings are going to be realised,” he said. “Unless they can say how they will realise these savings, the Tory proposals aren’t worth the paper that they are written on.”
Coalition policy: To start cutting the deficit this year, by making £6bn of “non-frontline” cuts. Cuts to the child trust fund and child tax credits for higher earners are in the pipeline too.

Scrapping the national insurance rise
What the Lib Dems said before: The Lib Dems criticised the national insurance increase planned by Labour as a  “damaging tax on jobs and unfair to employees”. But they said ensuring the health of the public finances was more important, and didn’t believe the efficiency savings the Tories planned to use to reverse the national insurance rise were credible (see above).
Coalition policy: The original Tory policy was bigger – to scrap most of Labour’s increase in both employees’ and employers’ national insurance. The new alliance will just cut the employers’ part of the tax rise.

Immigration cap
What the Lib Dems said before: Clegg challenged Cameron for “proposing a cap but you don’t know what the cap would be” in the second TV debate. “Let’s not pretend that you can put forward these ideas which have got no substance, haven’t been thought through,” he said.
Coalition policy: The Tories’ plan to cap non-EU immigration is being carried through.

Trident
What the Conservatives said before: “I agree with Gordon,” said David Cameron at thesecond leaders’ debate, after Brown had told Nick Clegg to “get real” about the need to replace Trident. “You cannot rustle up a nuclear deterrent at the last minute as the Liberal Democrats seem to think you can,” the Tory leader said.
Coalition policy: The government is commited to the maintenance of Britain’s nuclear deterrent, but “Liberal Democrats will continue to make the case for alternatives”.

Fixed-term parliaments
What the Conservatives said before: David Cameron did indicate he was moving towards the idea of setting the length of a parliament earlier this year but the 25-page “change politics” section in the Tory manifesto made no mention of fixed-term parliaments.
Coalition policy: A Lib Dem win.The next election will take place in five years’ time, rather than at a date chosen by the prime minister. There is a get-out-early clause: parliament could be dissolved before that if 55 per cent of MPs agree.

Raising the income tax threshold
What the Conservatives said before: “I would love to take everyone out of their first £10,000 of income tax, Nick,” said David Cameron at the first leader’s debate. “It’s a beautiful idea, a lovely idea. We cannot afford it.”
Coalition policy: By keeping part of the NI rise and increasing capital gains tax, the Conservative-led coalition has found itself able to afford at least some of it. The tax-free personal allowance will get a “substantial” increase from next year so more of the lowest earners don’t have to pay tax on their wages. It will be increased to £10,000 in the longer term.

Goverment departments
What the Lib Dems said before: Although not a manifesto commitment, the Lib Dems have said the Scotland office and the business department were ripe for the chop.
Coalition policy: Nick Clegg’s chief of staff Danny Alexander is to be Scotland Secretary; Vince Cable will be the Business Secretary.

Voting reform
What the Conservatives said before: Changing the voting system was firmly off the agenda. “We support the first-past-the-post system for Westminster elections because it gives voters the chance to kick out a government they are fed up with,” the Tory manifestosaid.
Coalition policy: MPs will be instructed to vote for a referendum on moving to the alternative vote system, although this doesn’t mean the Tories have to back a yes vote when it comes to putting the choice to the public. Still, AV’s not the full proportional representation the Lib Dems called for – though they have said it’s a “small step in the right direction”.

Cathy Newman’s verdict
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are proof that it takes two to tango. In their desire to shimmy up Downing Street together, they’ve had to agree on policies they bitterly contested just a week ago. The Lib Dems have had to swallow their words on spending cuts, and immigration, and they’re probably only too happy to think again about scrapping the Scotland Office and the Business Department – now their bums are on those cabinet seats.

But the Tories have had to dance to their coalition partners’ tune on voting reform and fixed-term parliaments. That much is clear. But one thing I would like to know: if Nick Clegg used to be David Cameron’s favourite joke, what was the Liberal Democrat’s favourite gag about his new boss?

Channel 4 Fact Check

“The biggest shake up of our democracy since 1832, when the Great Reform Act redrew the boundaries of British democracy, for the first time extending the franchise beyond the landed classes.” – Fiction says Channel 4 fact Finder

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Nick Clegg MP, deputy prime minister, speech on constitutional reform, 19 May 2010

Cathy Newman checks it out
Hold onto your hats: the deputy PM is promising a democratic big bang – the biggest changes to our political system for nearly 200 years. That’s some ambition.

But does getting rid of identity cards and introducing fixed-term parliaments really stand comparison with 19th-century reforms which extended the vote beyond the landed gentry and abolished the rotten boroughs?

Over to the team for the analysis

The Great Reform Act of 1832 abolished the old pockets where just a handful of voters could send MPs to parliament – and extended the vote to “new” towns such as Manchester. It let men owning property worth more than £10 go to the polls – so still excluding much of the working class, and women.

It was the start of significant empowerment of voters – although a subsequent reform act in 1867 did more to increase the number of people who could actually vote.

Today the deputy PM promised a smorgasbord of parliamentary changes, including giving voters the right to sack their MP, an elected House of Lords, fixed-term parliaments, a referendum on moving to the alternative vote system for general elections, and tightening up the rules on lobbying and party funding.

As part of the political “big bang”, Clegg also set out civil liberties measures such as giving people the right to choose which laws to repeal, getting rid of the ContactPoint children’s database, and scrapping ID cards, and promised more power to the people and less centralised bureaucracy.

So does this add up to the biggest shake-up in nearly 200 years?

Clegg’s claim is more hyperbole than fact, says Professor Justin Fisher, director of theMagna Carta Institute at Brunel University.

“He’s not going to just say, ‘this is quite interesting’ – any new reform is going to want to seem like the best thing since sliced bread,” Professor Fisher said. “But Clegg’s ignoring a number of reforms in the 19th century. You could point to lots of shake-ups which were at least as significant as this today.”

To name a few, the introduction of secret ballots in 1872, or the 1883 outlawing of bribery in elections, meaning aspiring politicians were no longer allowed to ply voters with booze and food.

In 1918, the vote was extended to all men – and there’s the small matter of allowing women to vote, too.

The last government might well be able to make a similar shake-up claim, said Fisher, about the almost complete abolition of hereditary peers overnight in 1998, or the establishment of the Scottish parliament for the first time since the early 1700s – plus the Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies.

You could also argue that some of Clegg’s promises are building on Labour’s foundations, rather than a genuine revolution. Labour promised to bring in a completely elected House of Lords in its 2005 manifesto, for example, and MPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of elected peers in 2007.

And although something like scrapping ID cards curbs the powers of the state, it’s a policy rollback rather than a radical change to a long-standing constitutional principle in the way that, say, giving women the vote was.

A Cabinet Office spokesman said that although there had been significant political reforms in the past, but said that the deputy PM had today outlined a comprehensive package with many different reform elements.

Cathy Newman’s verdict

Nick Clegg might not want to extol the virtues of the political partner he jilted at the altar. But by airbrushing Labour’s democratic reforms out of the history books, the new deputy PM is sounding a bit as though power’s gone to his head.

The aim to transform politics is laudable. But unless he’s got something up his sleeve, giving women the same voting rights as men in 1928 and even Labour’s devolution of power to Scotland and Wales in 1998 were more transformational than anything set out today.

Fact Check

Osborne’s fiscal policies risks stalling recovery

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The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, received a letter from the Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King today, explaining the latest rise in inflation. Official figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show consumer price inflation increased to 3.7 per cent in April, while retail price inflation rose to 5.3 per cent, its highest rate since July 1991. Consumer price inflation has now been 1 percentage point or more above its target rate of 2 per cent for four consecutive months.

Inflation-figures-18-05-10.jpg

The Governor was able to point to some special factors that have boosted inflation in the UK, including the increase in the standard rate of VAT from 15 per cent to 17.5 per cent in January, record petrol prices and the lingering effects of sterling’s 25 per cent depreciation in 2007-08 (though the last should have just about worked through the system by now).

He also reiterated the Bank’s view, expressed in last week’s Inflation Report, that inflation will fall sharply in the second half of the year. But it is an uncomfortable fact that prices in the UK have been increasing far more rapidly than the Bank, or indeed most other forecasters, expected.

This is important for three reasons.

First, the Chancellor’s plans to make savings of £6 billion in public spending in the current financial year are predicated on the assumption that monetary policy can remain extremely loose well into 2011. If the Monetary Policy Committee thinks inflation expectations are increasing, as a result of high recorded inflation, they may have to rethink the timing of the first moves to reduce quantitative easing or increase interest rates.

If so, the economy could face a simultaneous monetary and fiscal policy squeeze at a time when the recovery remains very fragile.

Second, wage inflation is very low, so high price inflation means real wages are contracting. Unless households are prepared to save less or borrow more – and the Conservatives believe that the opposite is desirable – consumer spending will grow very little, and could contract, in coming quarters.

As a consequence, the economic recovery could fail to pick up momentum and may be at risk of stalling.

Third, Mr Osborne may be contemplating an increase in VAT and/or in other indirect taxes in his ‘emergency Budget’ on June 22. To do so while inflation is already at uncomfortably high levels would be to increase the risk of weaker growth in the short-term and of higher inflation expectations in the medium-term.

Not a good first move as Chancellor.

It is, perhaps, natural for a new Government to want to be seen to be putting its own stamp on economic policy as soon as possible – but the economic situation in the UK is very delicate and argues for extreme caution in coming months; the less that is in the emergency Budget, the better.

Left Foot Forward

Have Libdems abandoned those most in need of help?

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by Adam Lent

There is a lot to like in this coalition deal stuff that the Labour Government should have attended to long ago: political reform, cracking down on tax avoidance, regulating and taxing the banks, restoring the link between the state pension and earnings, environmental measures.

But there are three parts of the agreement that must make any serious progressive question the priorities of the Liberal Democrat leadership. Unemployment, the deficit and immigration have all been handed over to the Tories with only moderate qualifications. They are all areas which will most seriously impact on the poorest and most disadvantaged.

The Conservative Party policy on unemployment is very weak, planning to abolish the most effective initiatives of Labour – the Future Jobs Fund and the Job Guarantee – and replace them with half-baked schemes such as a sole trader mentoring programme for young people.

On immigration, the Liberal Democrats humane plans have been ditched in favour of a Tory policy designed to please the tabloids rather than deal realistically or fairly with the issue.

And on the deficit, it seems, the Conservatives have been given carte blanche to start cutting services as quickly as possible.

As a result, these policy areas are now controlled by Conservative Cabinet and junior ministers with the one exception of David Laws at the Treasury.

The Tories are not entirely the Tories of old, it is true, but on these three issues I can see little to distinguish them from their Thatcherite fore-runners who had such an abysmal record on protecting those without work, those reliant on public services or those trying to survive away from their home country.

Liberal Democrats need to ask themselves whether, come 2015, they will really be able to look back and say that their coalition helped those most in need of that help.

“New Labour was a reaction to the 1980s but it was trapped by the 1980s

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The bitter cup of defeat was tasted by Labour‘s senior ranks when they made their way to the shadow cabinet room in the House of Commons. Some of them had to ask for directions. Not so David Miliband. He could remember the way. That didn’t make the destination any more pleasant for the man who had just ceased to be foreign secretary.

“I’d last been in that corridor six weeks before the 1997 general election and we were on the march. It’s a very depressing room. You know then, you’re out. It reeks of the absence of power. Just reeks of it. And there aren’t enough seats around the table for everyone. That hit hard.”

Then he strikes a more upbeat note for Labour after the party’s second-worst defeat since 1918: “What’s interesting is that it wasn’t a funeral at the shadow cabinet meeting. It was a group of people determined to fight back.”

Miliband was the first to declare that he wanted to head that fightback and became the early bookies’ favourite, not always a good omen, to win the contest to be Labour’s next leader. There has been a paradoxical cheerfulness in the party’s depleted ranks of MPs. He finds it explicable: “The polls had us third for a significant part of the election campaign. That’s a near-death experience. If you’re in a car crash and you think it’s going to do for you, but actually break your leg, a bit of euphoria is understandable. We’ve got to be clear that now is not a time for euphoria.”

In southern England outside London, Labour has shrunk to 12 seats: “It was a bad defeat.” The scale of the party’s reverse will really be driven home, he thinks, when the Commons meets this week and Labour MPs find themselves greatly outnumbered by the coalition composed of Tories and Lib Dems.

Miliband soon dials up more reasons to be cheerful. He is an innately optimistic character as well as a clever one, and a man who needs to persuade his party not to despair.

“Our party activists and our voters are amazing people. In the midst of this barrage of money and media, they stuck with us. This party is not walking into the history books. It’s determined to be a 21st-century party. The fight and the determination and the resilience of the party members, supporters and voters is a great thing. Also there’s energy because we’ve 260 MPs. That’s a 1992 level of MPs, not a 1983 level.”

The “coalition of contradictions” gives Labour both a responsibility and an opportunity to “forge a progressive alliance within the Labour party of all shades of progressive opinion”. But he is not among those in his party who complacently assume that they only have to sit back and wait for the Con-Libs to fall apart.

“We underestimate this coalition at our peril. The Tories have always been about power. Clegg has revealed that actually he’s about power as well. After decades of moral sanctimony from the Liberal Democrats, we can now be absolutely clear that when push comes to shove they’re happy to drop child poverty and the job guarantee.

“But the determination they’ve both shown is something we underestimate at our peril. Because there’s no inevitability about the pendulum swinging. And we are going to have to be very canny about how we position ourselves. The electorate aren’t going to be studying us carefully in this period but they’re going to notice how we behave. And if we go back to yah-boo politics we’ll make a big error.

“We’ve got to be ready for it to fall and we’ve got to be ready for it to go long. It’s very, very important that we have a fighting opposition, not fighting with ourselves but fighting the government where appropriate. And that we’re an alternative government. Whoever is elected is going to have to be a credible prime minister.”

That is a strong strand of his pitch for the leadership: as the most senior former cabinet minister in the running, he will give Labour the most authoritative voice.

Before the party can be renewed, it must make an accurate assessment of why it has just lost: “This was a change election and we were not the party of change. I said in my conference speech last September that ‘future’ is the most important word in politics and we did not convince our fellow citizens that we were the party of the future.”

Some blame him and other senior Labour figures for not replacing a very unpopular leader. The “bottler” label was first, if not really fairly, hung around Miliband’s neck when he did not challenge Gordon Brown in 2007. “I wasn’t ready,” he says, and goes on to defend his subsequent reluctance to try to unseat Brown. Some members of the last cabinet believe voter aversion to Brown cost Labour as many as 40 seats. Miliband does not try to dispute that, but he argues it would be a major mistake to ascribe the scale of the defeat entirely to the failings of one man.

“I think anyone who believes that the result was just because of the leadership is kidding themselves. Gordon spoke very movingly about discovering his own strengths and his own frailties. But anyone who tells you that all we’ve got to do is change the leader and then everything will be fine is wrong.”

Labour failed to win a fourth term because “we all said we needed to renew but we didn’t sufficiently. People felt we were late to the game on issues like political reform. Antisocial behaviour – we lost focus on that. Immigration, late to the game with the Australian points system. Social care, late to the game.

“We were too timid on the role of government in the economy. We were too slow to see that climate change was not an environmental issue. It was an economic, security, foreign policy issue.

“We got told that political reform was a middle-class issue and we basically stopped. We did the freedom of information, human rights act, devolution of Scotland and Wales, London. But we basically got frightened off. It was at best half a political revolution. Maybe a third. We should have done the House of Lords, for goodness’ sake.”

Many of those failings he ascribes to New Labour being a product of the party’s “searing experiences” in the 1980s which prevented it from being bolder either about challenging the status quo or changing how politics is done: “New Labour was a reaction to the 1980s but it was trapped by the 1980s. Anyone who thinks that the future is about re-creating New Labour is wrong. I think we’ve got to use this period to decisively break with that. What I’m interested in is Next Labour.”

It will not be escaped quite that easily. He rose as a protege of Blair; two of his competitors for the leadership were special advisers to Brown. Miliband is emphatic that this does not mean the wars of the TB-GB era are fated to be replayed by a new generation. “The whole thing about Blairites and Brownites is just wrong and gone and over because the policy agenda has changed fundamentally.”

He prickles a little when we suggest it is a weakness that the contest is between apparatchiks of the Blair-Brown era. “David Miliband, Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Jon Cruddas, Andy Burnham… we’re our own people. We’re going to treat the electorate as adults and we should be treated as adults.”

He claims to be relaxed that his younger brother has entered the fray to turn this into the first leadership contest involving siblings: “Family is more important than politics. He’s very talented. But I love him. We’re not going to put that love at risk.”

They were close as children, he says believably, but not competitive, he claims less plausibly. If Ed wins, “of course” David will happily serve under his younger brother. He does not much like the suggestion that Ed is more accomplished at displaying the common touch: “People have to make their own judgment about the two of us. It’s better not to talk about it. It’s better just to do it.” It is on this subject that the normally fluent former foreign secretary is at his most closed down.

Do they disagree on things? “Of course we do. We’re not twins. We’re not clones.” But on what they disagree he will not say. He expects their mother, a staunch Labour member, to avoid choosing: “She’s not an abstaining type, but I think she’ll be abstaining this time.”

It will not, though, be a case of Labour being offered any leader it likes as long as he’s called Miliband. Ed Balls is taking “soundings” before deciding to run. The Miliband brothers certainly love each other a lot more than either of them do the former children’s secretary. When we suggest they can gang up on that rival, he chooses to laugh rather to deny it.

Another highly likely contender is Cruddas who performed very well in the last deputy leadership contest. Aware that some on the left, where Cruddas is popular, regard Miliband with suspicion, he says: “He’s taught me a lot, Jon Cruddas. He’s been talking about housing for a long time. He’s been talking about community organising for a long time. He’s fought the BNP. I think uniting different talents is an important job. Because it’s not ideologically riven, this party. There’s enough shades to make it interesting but I don’t see incompatibilities.”

That offers not so much an olive branch to the left as an olive grove.

When it is time to have his picture taken, he points to an oil painting given to him by his wife and asks: “Do we want these naked women behind me? Is that good?” The photographer thinks not.

The pictures taken, he tells one of his young sons that he will read him a story, but it will be “nighty-night time at half past six”.

As one of Britain’s youngest foreign secretaries, David Miliband swaggered the world stage in the company of Hillary Clinton. Now his sway is reduced to deciding on bedtime for his boys. If and when he and his party wield power again will depend on whether the contest for its leadership really does begin Labour’s renewal.

Where does the Labour Party go now?

Sunder Katwala, general secretary of the Fabian Society
Labour lost the election – so has spent a week on a rollercoaster ride through the classic stages of the grieving process. Denial, as the exit polls and new Commons provided an arithmetical hope of staying in. Bargaining, over a Lib Dem deal and anger at the “vote Clegg, get Cameron” Tory-Lib Dem coalition outcome. Can Labour arrive at acceptance? Parties that lose democraticelections must acknowledge that they deserved to do so.

Will Labour now have a proper debate about its record and future? Not if the only question is which Miliband brother to vote for as the next leader. An open (and indeed fraternal) leadership contest is essential, after the 2007 coronation, but concluding this too quickly would be a big mistake. The Conservatives twice failed to have any proper inquest into election defeats: only in 2005 did Michael Howard provide more time and space. (That is also why David Cameron, not David Davis, won.)

Labour, too, should run its leadership contest through the autumn – using the party conference as a debating showcase – and take the chance to bring many more people back to Labour to take part. That will take a different, more open party culture and to restore its instinct for civil liberties too.

We may learn little if, before anybody has properly studied this complex election, everybody just says what they thought already, repeating their favourite leftist or New Labour mantras, about losing C2s over immigration, or failing to inspire with Labour values.

So we must not be frozen in a timewarp debate about whether we stay “New Labour” or not. New Labour achieved a great deal – but that was a long time ago. A broad winning majority for the Britain of 2015, not 1995, means imagining and mobilising the next left, not trying to reconstruct the last political generation.

Tessa Jowell, MP for Dulwich and West Norwood
We lost the election in the marginal constituencies along the M1, M2 and M6, the spinal cords of middle England.

In 2010 there was nothing much to lighten the hearts of those who had flocked to vote for us in the heady days of 13 years ago. We had huge achievements to our credit – new hospitals, rebuilt schools, renewed infrastructure, rising standards in education and health, all undeniable – but voters don’t thank you for what you’ve done; they rightlywant to know how you will make their future better.

In an adverse economic climate, in the face of a largely hostile press, and against the easy claim that it was time for a change, our account of a Labour future was timid. We were hearing, but not listening to, people’s fears about migration, immigration and housing shortages.

The election results were spotty, and what stood out were the results of MPs who worked hard in their constituencies, championed local causes, knew their patch intimately, worked to make real lives better, and listened and responded to what local people had to say.

While politics may be becoming more presidential at the top, it’s solid campaigning and community work year round in the constituencies that will hold the line in a bad year and advance the cause in a good one. From this also come the best ideas for the future, authentic and rooted in real lives.

For the future, how we do politics will be as important as what we do. But to own the future we must stop and listen, and admit in humility that the answers will be found in the values we have always believed in and articulated in the mouths of the people we hope once again to serve.

Chuka Umunna, newly elected MP for Streatham
I wouldn’t wish Conservative government on my constituents, but we are where we are and opposition gives Labour the chance to refresh and renew, which eluded us in government.

Clearly there is much to be proud of and we must build on our achievements. But we also made mistakes and lost the election: we need to acknowledge that and explore why, in a cool, calm way, without entering into some factional blame game.

In some respects, the generation of politicians ahead of me came to be defined by their loyalty to one of our last two leaders – now both have moved on. Unshackled by the travails of office, the leaders-to-be can tell us what they are all about. As a humble new MP, I’m excited at the prospect.

There should no rushed coronation, beauty contest or stitch-up. In Harriet Harman, we have an excellent caretaker leader in place – this affords us the time to have a proper debate, so as many people as possible should throw their hats into the ring.

The scale of transformation required to resolve the economic, democratic and environmental crises is a challenge. How do we go about tackling them? We want to know the answers each leadership candidate is offering.

Moreover, the contest gives us a golden opportunity to become a mass membership party once more. Anyone joining now will be able to participate in the contest. To those who left the party over the years – in some cases drifting to the Lib Dems in the hope of finding something more progressive – we should say: come back and shape the future direction of the Labour party so you feel at one with it again

Fiona Millar, journalist and former adviser to Cherie Blair
The Labour party has a real opportunity. We can’t shirk the fact that we lost but, for all the slick Clegg/Cameron rhetoric, this will be a socially conservative government, made up of people who won’t use the public services they are cutting and are not really concerned with fairness and equality. Many Liberal Democrat voters feel betrayed. We should encourage them to join us and build a much broader coalition.

We must do better at defending our record in government and explaining it in language people understand. We all have policies that we didn’t agree with, but overall the Blair/Brown governments did much good. Where were the big arguments about childcare and family-friendly working in the election campaign?

We need to build on the best of the last 13 years and politely park the worst. I fear the leadership election will be quickly styled as yet another battle between the “modernisers” and the “dinosaurs”, with pressure for us to start second-guessing where the Tory/Libs will go and become a “Cameron-lite” party. That would be a disaster.

I’d like to see an end to the idea that we can run everything like a private market. People want high-quality, flexible, local, accountable public services, good enough to be used by all. Personally I want policies that genuinely help the poorest children. I am sceptical about the pupil premium, which doesn’t address the fact that about 80% of a child’s life chances are determined by their circumstances outside school. Labour began as a party of aspiration. That is still so, but it needs to be explicitly married to progressive values.

Observer