nick clegg's vision

My colleagues at the human rights charity are in a frenzy of excitement about Nick Clegg. Cleggomaniacs, to add to their Obamamania (still!). Clegg's vision is even being posted round the office to illustrate the great white hopes of this great white well-educated, well-spoken and well financially endowed young man:

"I believe every single person is extraordinary. The tragedy is that we have a society where too many people never get to fulfil that extraordinary potential. My view – the liberal view – is that government’s job is to help them to do it. Not to tell people how to live their lives. But to make their choices possible, to release their potential, no matter who they are. The way to do that is to take power away from those who hoard it. To challenge vested interests. To break down privilege. To clear out the bottlenecks in our society that block opportunity and block progress. And so give everyone a chance to live the life they want."

So here are a few articles and nuggets to suggest the clear blue sea between the Deputy Prime Minister and his new coalition partner is not so very clear (though very blue):

Praise from the Torygraph:

the two main contenders for the Lib Dem crown are Nick Clegg, the party's home affairs spokesman, and Chris Huhne, the environment spokesman who was runner-up to Sir Ming at the last contest.

They, and indeed almost all the others whose names are now being dropped, both contributed in 2004 to the now celebrated Orange Book, a work of political philosophy of which I fear we shall be hearing a great deal in the weeks to come.

The book was about "reclaiming liberalism". It had a sensible and attractive theme running through it. This is, after all, the inheritor party of Gladstone, Cobden and Bright. In its DNA is to be found a belief in free trade and free markets. Tactfully, and with surprisingly little shock being caused, these ancient doctrines were dusted off, and suggestions made about their possible relevance to the future governance of Britain.

Mr Clegg is felt to be more of a "Tory" than Mr Huhne. This is not just because he once worked for Leon Brittan, but because his belief in traditional liberal values of the sort adopted by Margaret Thatcher in her economic programme is thought to be rather strong.

His detractors call him "Right-wing", an absurd phrase at the best of times, and probably ludicrous in his case.

From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643387/Lib-Dems-would-be-better-off-...

Clegg praises Margaret Thatcher:

The Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg today praises Margaret Thatcher and says her desire to take on vested interests must be replicated in Britain.

In an interview with the Spectator, Clegg says he has come to view Thatcher's victory over the unions as "immensely significant" and goes further than the Conservative party in courting economic liberalism, by saying he would end the structural deficit with 100% spending cuts, as opposed to the 80% cuts the Conservatives have proposed.'

from http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/11/nick-clegg-praises-margar...

Clegg in the Spectator:

Each year, the government is borrowing £180 billion. Mr Clegg thinks that, once the economy recovers, the gap will be ‘to the tune of £80 billion or so’. So how do you fill this gap? Labour would do so with one third tax rises and two thirds cuts. The Tories would have one fifth tax rises. But Mr Clegg says the Lib Dems are the most radical of the lot: they propose no tax rises at all. ‘We’re saying “purely spending cuts”, and for a number of reasons. If you want the economy to grow, you must stimulate demand. Any economist will tell you that the best way to do this is by giving tax breaks to the people who tend to spend more of their money they receive.

Age, he claims, has taught him the point of Lady Thatcher. And, indeed, he now seems to see her as something of an inspiration. ‘I’m 43 now. I was at university at the height of the Thatcher revolution and I recognise now something I did not at the time: that her victory over a vested interest, the trade unions, was immensely significant. I don’t want to be churlish: that was an immensely important visceral battle for how Britain is governed''.

from http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5831523/clegg-heir-to-thatcher.thtml

David Laws (Clegg's chief negotiator), the Orange Book, and breaking up the NHS:

A plan to break up the NHS and introduce a national health insurance system was proposed yesterday by a senior Liberal Democrat MP as part of a "manifesto" for reclaiming the free market Liberal agenda.

In a book [the Orange Book] that will reignite concern within the party about a left-right divide and infuriate many activists, David Laws, the MP for Yeovil, argues the Government should no longer run the NHS "on a daily basis" and it should compete with the private sector.

from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/move-to-the-right-and-brea...

Regressive taxes, cuts, and workers' rights

Tim Horton and Howard Reed show quite how regressive Liberal Democrat Tax policy truly is. Households in the second richest decile would gain on average four times the amount than those in the poorest decile. Labour has created tax credits instead of raising income thresholds, so as to be able to target help to those who need it most. Nick Clegg loves to tell voters that he would redistribute money through the tax system. But it seems he would do so by taking from the poor, and giving to the rich.

The Liberal Democrat plans for cuts are even more aggressive than the Conservative’s. The Conservative Party proposes to reduce the deficit with an 80:20 ratio of public service cuts to tax rises. Nick Clegg has claimed that the Lib Dems would end the structural deficit with 100% spending cuts. This means that overall; the Lib Dems would slash 20% more from public spending than the Tories. Clegg’s call for “savage cuts” is not just a reaction to economic circumstance of the day, but part of an ideological conviction resting on smaller government. The end of child tax credits are merely the tip of an iceberg.

The Liberal Democrats have in recent years been increasingly hostile to workers’ rights. Whoever wins the next election, industrial disputes and actions will certainly be on the agenda for the government. In reflection on the miners strikes, Nick Clegg praises Margaret Thatcher as his inspiration and claims that he now sees how “immensely significant” the defeat of trade unions was. The much revered Vince Cable tells the Mail that BA staff are “pampered”. Both, along with almost all of the Lib Dem front bench, are signatories and contributors to the right wing “Orange Book” which proposes free market reforms to the employment market and liberalisation of the pensions system.

from http://www.newturn.org.uk/articles/2010/04/a-progressive-consensus-the-l...

Vince Cable, the economic guru

Perhaps the peak of [Cable's] pre-political career was a two-year spell as chief economist for the oil giant Shell in the mid-1990s.... Cable joined Shell in 1990; he was appointed chief economist in 1995, the same year as the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other leaders of the southern Nigerian Ogoni ethnic group were executed by the Sani Abacha military government. This was after a wave of state-sponsored violence in the south. In May, campaigners accused Shell before a court in New York of complicity in the violence in order to protect its oil interests. The following month, in an out-of-court settlement, Shell agreed to pay the victims' families $15.5m, but refused to accept legal responsibility for the nine deaths.

So has Cable ever spoken out against the firm? The journalist Mark Lynas, who interviewed Cable when he worked at Shell, remembers him as being deeply evasive and avoiding all questions about Saro-Wiwa. Lynas is astonished at Cable's transformation into Britain's favourite politician. "I don't know how anyone could have stayed at Shell during that period and slept at night," he told me. "Because of Shell, I've always questioned his judgement on human rights."

I asked Cable's spokeswoman if he would like to comment on Shell's payout to the victims' families. She told me that "he does not feel that he knows enough about the latest developments to be able to comment"

from http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2009/09/mehdi-hasan