Liberal Vision

EXCLUSIVE: Nick congratulates Guido Westerwelle

Following Liberal Vision’s celebration of the rise to power of the German liberals, Nick Clegg has now written to congratulate their leader Guido Westerwelle following the superb performance of  the Free Democrats in last weekend’s election.

It’s not on Nick’s or the party’s website yet, as far as I can see.

And the “latest news” from Nick’s constituency website is that - about six weeks ago -  he wrote to congratulate someone called Jessica Ennis, who apparently won the heptahlon at an athletics event in Berlin in the Summer. It appears that she went to school in Sheffield Hallam. You can read his letter to Ms. Ennis here.

His letter to Guido Westerwelle - dated yesterday -  is available in full here. My GCSE German is a little rusty - but I’m guessing it’s all pretty damned positive stuff.

Tags: Guido Westerwelle, Nick Clegg

GUEST POST - Does debt forgiveness prop up despots?

Congo (Brazzaville) is one of the poorest countries on earth and fares badly on most measures of human well-being.  It also has enormous natural resources, particularly oil wealth which could, if used for the benefit of Congo’s citizens, provide the government with revenue to build schools, hospitals and roads.  Yet Congo’s political leadership has captured that oil wealth for their personal enrichment and use it to stifle any opposition.  As this documentary on Al Jazeera explains (see below) Denis Sassou Nguesso has robbed Congo and spends lavishly on himself and his family while ordinary Congolese starve.

This might sound like yet another story from the region - yet as Al Jazeera explains Congo’s corrupt elite have new friends in the US.  Hard lobbying in the US has ensure that some Congressmen are now backing plans to limit secondary debt markets that would allow companies that have bought defaulted Congolese debt to make Nguesso pay.  It is thanks to the legal action by these secondary debt traders that details of Nguesso’s corruption have emerged and stopping this action simply enriches the elites further while betraying the people of Congo.

The UK is now considering similar legislation which would require the forgiveness of all debt to countries like Congo, Sudan, Guinea, Chad, Ethiopia and Eritrea - all of which have awful human rights records and are economically unfree.  Lord Peter Baur once wrote that donor aid is the process of transferring wealth from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.  The same could be said for debt forgiveness and stifling the secondary debt markets to the venal and kleptocratic governments that in no way deserve forgiveness.

Richard Tren is a director of Africa Fighting Malaria, a health advocacy group.

Value for Money?! NHS 10th Worst!!

The Euro Health Consumer Index has ranked the NHS a respectable 14th out of 33 it is revealed today. However, in terms of value for money the NHS only tops the bottom ten in Europe:

Dr. Arne Björnberg, Director of the Euro Health Consumer Index, said: “The UK in 2009 has showed surprisingly negative feedback from patient organisations on the waiting time situation, particularly after government spending on the NHS has been increasing heavily.

“It seems that management of the behemoth NHS organisation is difficult to do under a centralised paradigm.”

The report ranked the NHS 23rd out of the 33 countries on ‘bang-for-buck’, a calculation that tries to take into account the different amounts spent on healthcare in each of the countries.

The report said: “The UK has a less prominent position in the bang-for-buck exercise than in previous years – it would seem that the increased healthcare spend in the U.K. has not yet materialised fully in improved healthcare services.”

Impressively the Netherlands consistently tops the Index.

The LibDem response to Tory “love bombing” should be to “love bomb” Cameron right back

An interesting subtext of the conference season is how Labour and the LibDems intend to attack the Tories and eat into Cameron’s opinion poll lead.

The Labour approach is to claim that the Conservatives will slash frontline services, occasionally peppered with attempts to portray Cameron and Osbourne as detached, aloof, well-heeled toffs (by, for example, having Labour campaigners prance around Crewe and Nantwich in bowler hats).

The “official” LibDem line (i.e. Clegg’s) is to assert that Cameron is a phoney. The LibDems are “the real thing”, while the Tories are an insipid “fake change” alternative.

Chris Huhne toyed with an alternative strategy - but pulled back from labeling William Hague as a modern day, Munich-putsch organising skinhead in his keynote speech. Nevertheless, in Huhne’s widely reported clash on the Today programme with Eric Pickles, he relentlessly pursued the line that Cameron’s Tories haven’t changed and are essentially right-wing extremists.

I don’t think either Huhne’s or Clegg’s approach is likely to work.

The problem with Nick’s approach is two-fold.

Firstly, it suggests that the LibDems and the Tories are merely differently brands of a very similar product. We’re Coca Cola, they’re Pepsi. We’re Guinness, they’re Beamish. We’re M&S, they’re Mr Byrite.

I bang on relentlessly about the need for us to appeal to soft Tories, but I think we need to do this by offering a superior product not merely by arguing about brand superiority.

Secondly, the electorate don’t know enough about the LibDem product for them to be able to pick up these “real” and “fake” distinctions. If the LibDems were a fizzy drink, the public probably wouldn’t think of us as Coke, they’d think of us as Panda Cola. The makers of Panda Cola don’t advertise that they are “more real” than Coke (partly because - like the LibDems - they don’t have much of a budget to advertise at all).

Chris Huhne’s approach is also flawed. The voters might not be sold on Cameron, but they do believe he is a pretty moderate bloke who has decontaminated the Tory party.  “New Tories, New Danger” will be as ineffective in 2010 as the Blair red eyes advert was in 1997. Portraying Hague as a krypto-Nazi just doesn’t chime with where the public are and, anyway, isn’t remotely true.

So, my (risky) approach would be to love bomb the Tory leadership right back, in an attempt to open up clear daylight between Cameron’s frontbench and the more antediluvian elements of the Conservative party.

If Eric Pickles is attempting to seduce you on early morning radio, don’t shout down the microphone that he’s sitting there in a Gestapo outfit and an armband (apologies for the ghastly image that conjures up). Say how delighted you are that Eric and Dave are 100% fully committed to Britain’s ongoing membership of the European Union, but that you’re a mite concerned that this internationalist sentiment is not universally shared by his fellow MPs.

If the Tory leader has just been on television hugging a hoodie, explain how pleased you are that the Tory leader is embracing more liberal approaches to crime and punishment, but you hope he’s also weeding out the “flog ‘em, hang ‘em” wing of his party.

Support for Cameron amongst the electorate is wide, but shallow. This point is made endlessly by those arguing that the next election is still wide open. But enthusiasm for Cameron within his own party is pretty fragile too - amazingly so given their poll lead after a dozen years in the wilderness. Many think that splits and divisions will come to the surface within days (or even hours) of Cameron entering Downing Street. We’d be doing the electorate a great service by exposing these splits before polling day rather than waiting for them to naturally emerge afterwards.

Tags: David Cameron

Guest Post: Labour hail the Minimum Wage

It seems Nu-Labour are just desperate to remind us of all their ‘good’ policies. Probably because there is an election coming up and they’ve destroyed the economy, public finances, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Education system…

Anyway, one of the ‘good’ policies they wish to remind us of is the minimum wage. Which was recently promoted by Jack Scott on Labour List…

Next week, the minimum wage will rise to £5.80. Since it was first introduced in the teeth of Conservative opposition, the minimum wage has risen by 81.25%, far outstripping a decade of low inflation. Does anyone believe the Tories would have raised it above inflation so consistently?

Since its introduction, Labour has also legislated to ensure tips do not count towards the minimum wage and that there are the toughest powers in Europe for rogue employers who break the law. The

Conservatives voted against the introduction of the minimum wage and its strengthening, which went through Parliament last year.

In addition, David Cameron opposed longer maternity and paternity leave and flexible working – so much for Cameron’s compassionate conservatism.

Only a Labour government can truly protect workers’ rights. The minimum wage remains one of Labour’s most powerful expressions of our values in action. I am immensely proud of the difference it makes to the lives of the UK’s million lowest paid workers.

For socialists and Nu-Labour the minimum wage is a traditional, social good. It takes profits from evil capitalists and shares it among the workers. Hurrah!

However, in reality it is debatable whether the minimum wage is a social good. In fact I would argue it isn’t. And they’re are two main reasons for this.

The first and most obvious is that it raises the cost of business — unnecessarily — as businesses are forced to raise the wages of low skilled employees. And this is an important point. Because while it may seem that there are lots of evil capitalists out their making huge sums of money by exploiting workers the truth is very different. The majority of businesses are SMEs which make very small profits. So whenever costs of business go up these businesses are under threat as their profit margins are much smaller than the ones enjoyed by the Tescos of this world. And of course this therefore puts many jobs at risk.

The second — and most important — reason is that the minimum wage will never actually raise the value of labour. It is impossible to raise an asset’s value by simply declaring it has a greater value. Or at least it’s not possible to do this for very long. The reasons for this should be obvious. It is because the factors that influence value — such as supply/demand — don’t actually change simply because of some government declaration.

For example imagine it was decided that bakers were the most important part of our economy and that they were being underpaid for their fine work. The government therefore sets a National Minimum Bread Price of £3 per loaf. Sounds great for the bakers. But this action is unlikely to make bakers better-off or happy. Instead it will probably cause people to buy less bread. Because in real terms the bread has become no more valuable — so why will people pay more for it?

And the same rules apply for the value of labour. One of the main consequences of the minimum wage is it makes low skilled workers less employable. Because unless your skills/labour are worth £5.80ph or above, who will employ you? No-one. You’d have to be a very poor business man to employ someone who’s work was not worth the money you paid them.

People should be very hesitant to support the minimum wage. Because while it sounds nice on the surface it has a number of drawbacks. It jeopardises business profitability — which risks jobs. And it makes many of the low skilled unemployable. Which means they may never acquire the experience or skills that will help them gain higher wages in the future.

Ultimately if people want to improve the lot of the lower paid it can only be achieved by generating more wealth. And that cannot be achieved by placing undue burdens on business or creating limitations to employment. So if you are a Nu-Labour supporter I think you need to search a little harder for those ‘good’ policies that you are trying to remind us of.

Rob Waller sits on the NCC of the Libertarian Party and regularly posts for the LPUK South East Blog.

Classical liberalism, hung Parliaments and coalition government…is Germany a glimpse of our future?

The LibDems’ sister party in Germany - the free market, socially libertarian Free Democrats - are the real winners of their country’s general election. Their all-time high vote of 15% - secured on a platform of low tax, less regulation and more personal freedom - has propelled them back into power.

Although Merkel’s Christian Democrats slipped backwards slightly in the polls, the FDP’s strong showing allows her to remove the dead hand of the left-leaning Social Democrats (who were slaughtered)  from the federal government. Liberal leader Guido Westerwelle and his colleagues stand on the brink of wielding real clout - and ministerial office - in the EU’s most powerful nation.

I recall Westerwelle leading a delegation of Free Democrats to a LibDem Shadow Cabinet meeting in Westminster in 2006. I can’t remember what the main business of the meeting was, but the FDP’s guest appearance was tagged onto the end - slightly unceremoniously. A real highlight, however, was a LibDem frontbencher asking Westerwelle whether he wanted the Free Democrats to remain in opposition to the grand coalition of Christian and Social Democrats, or whether he sought to return to government. The German liberal leader was pretty incredulous. With a friendly frown he said that he wanted to return to government as soon as possible, what was the point of being in permanent opposition? A heavily pregnant pause followed.

Three years on, Guido Westerwelle now has serious power, whilst a major breakthrough for the LibDems remains frustratingly elusive.

David Cameron has congratulated Angela Merkel on her “victory”, but I can’t yet find a similar message from Nick Clegg to his liberal counterpart.

This might be because everyone at LibDem HQ is still recovering from Bournemouth, but it could also reflect the party’s extreme allergic reaction to discussing anything that relates to hung Parliaments or coalitions. If so, that’s a shame because we could learn a lot from the FDP and how a consistent, vigorous liberal manifesto can garner growing popular support and secure high office for its proponents.

So, from Liberal Vision, very heartfelt congratulations to Guido Westerwelle and everyone in the German liberal party.  I hope British liberals can gain confidence and inspiration from your remarkable achievement.

Tags: Free Democrats, Germany, Guido Westerwelle

Evening Quickie: US loosens it’s grip on the Internet

The Beeb is reporting that the “US government is expected to relax control over how the internet is run when it signs an accord with net regulator Icann on Wednesday.”

Earlier this year, the EU called on the US to relinquish its control and Icann to become “universally accountable”. “The US government is the only body to have had formal oversight of Icann’s policies and activities since its inception in 1998,” it said.”The Commission believes that Icann should become universally accountable, not just to one government but to the global internet community.”This is particularly relevant given that the next billion of internet users will mainly come from the developing world.”

It’s a shame that this move won’t mean complete independence from the US government. But it’s good news for the developing world:

Icann is a not-for-profit private sector corporation - set up by the US government - which oversees critical parts of the internet, such as the top-level domain (TLD) name system. Top level domains include .com and .uk. The body recently voted to relax the strict rules on TLDs, meaning companies could turn brands into web addresses, while individuals could use their names. Icann also agreed to introduce domain names written in Asian, Arabic or other scripts.

Let the competition begin in earnest.

Clegg and Cable - could it be like Owen and Steel all over again?

The good news is that the shambolic party conference has not impacted on us in the polls (yet) - the you gov poll in tomorrow’s Telegraph has the LibDems on 20% (+3%), the Tories are down two points on 39% and Labour down one on 26%.

But my worry was not so much that we’d crash because of a few bad headlines, but that our communications infrastructure may not be robust enough to withstand the rigours of a General Election campaign.

Vince Cable’s high profile and popularity should be a great asset at the next election. However, it also raises some difficulties. The Liberal Democrats now have, to some extent, a dual leadership - not wholly dissimilar to that of the two Davids in 1987. The parallel is not a happy one.

By common acceptance, the Alliance campaign in 1987 was the worst of the three parties - and a fair chance of coming second in vote share at the outset was comprehensivley squandered in a confusing tangle of contradictory  messages coming from the mouths of Owen and Steel. With the two men on a punishing schedule - and often at different ends of the country - any differences of nuance were ruthlessly exposed by the media as evidence of fundamental cracks in the SDP-Liberal Alliance.

A similar risk surely applies to the Nick and Vince show in 2010. Of course, the Owen-Steel relationship was characterised by a personal animosity that doesn’t apply in the Clegg-Cable case. But cordiality does not firefproof you against blunders.

Both Nick and Vince have an endearing tendency to say what they think. These are not tedious, automaton politicians who parrot a script. And therein lies the danger. One can imagine it now - Nick is in Manchester expounding, say, the need for savage spending cuts, while Vince is in Cornwall saying that cuts certainly need not to be savage, but will have to be serious. In the heat of an election campaign, a small distintion in emphasis or the choice of slightly different adjectives will be all the press pack need to start running stories of LibDem chaos and confusion.

Modern communications technology (they didn’t have mobile phones or the internet in the dark days of the late 80s), should help mitigate this risk. On the other hand, the very nature of today’s relentless rolling news media means exponentially greater opportunities for gaffes.

One thing’s for sure - we’ll need much better co-ordination of messages than was evident in Bournemouth. Three or four weeks of such confusion would dash any realistic hope of gaining support as the election campaign progressed.

UPDATE 9pm, 26th September: Perhaps conference mayhem is what the public want to see! ICM have the Tories on 40% (-3%), Labour on 26% (+-0)% and LibDems on 23% (+4%). If Labour’s conference is a funeral and the Tories get into a lather about Lisbon, maybe these numbers will hold up next month.

Tags: Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, Vince Cable

The answers I want from my Tory candidate in Battersea

Jane Ellison is my Conservative PPC in the uber-marginal seat of Battersea (Labour majority 164)

If the Tories don’t win here, Gordon Brown will have been re-elected - probably with an increased Parliamentary majority.

So, I read Ms. Ellison’s “Reporting Back” leaflet with interest.

In some ways, it’s a great mimick of LibDemmery.

There’s all sorts of pictures of Jane at all sorts of civic functions.

She helpfully tells us that the leaflet was paid for and distributed by Tory volunteers (is Michael Ashcroft a volunteer?)

Painfully, there’s a list of helplines on the inside front panel of the leaflet. Covering everything from a graffiti hotline to advice on influenza. They even tell you the telephone number for National Rail Enquiries  (it’s 08457 48 49 50  just in case you haven’t mastered google yet)

Balancing the books doesn’t seem to figure though. So, Ive dropped her a line.

Well, I tried to.

But unfortunately www.janeellison.net is down at the moment, and so my email bounced. I had to send it to heretohelp@wandsworthconservatives.com

Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Jane,

Thanks for your August/September newsletter, which I’ve now read in its entirety.

I am most concerned - given the country is hurtling towards a debt of £1.4 trillion - that there wasn’t very much information about the cuts you will be advocating if you’re successful as the local Conservative candidate and/or the Conservatives form the next government.

You seem to have a number of spending pledges in your pamphlet, for example:

1. Improved maternity provision

2. Return of health services to Bolingbroke Hospital

3. Requiring all new health centres to offer longer, flexible hours and walk-in services

4. Extension of the tube network into east Battersea

5. Forcing rail companies to provide longer trains and extended platforms

You also mention one tax issue - the rise in business rates (which you oppose).

I assume you can deliver all of the above spending commitments by raising other taxes?

From what I can ascertain, it seems you support less tax and more government spending at a time when the United Kingdom is practically bankrupt.

I was wondering if you could give me an indication of what cuts you would like to see in public expenditure?

Which current expenditure projects would you like to see axed?

I was also a bit bemused to see a list of telephone numbers on the inside panel of your leaflet – all from quangos dealing with everything from influenza to graffiti.

I’d understood that the Conservatives were going to slice back on quangos.

Which of the quangos listed in your leaflet do you think should be abolished?

I look forward to your early reply.

With all best wishes,

Mark

Tags: Battersea, jane Ellison

Greg Dyke gets it…so should we…

Back from Bournemouth, and having caught up on my much-needed sleep and given myself time to reflect on the events of the week, my first offering (hopefully not my last, but we’ll see)  is this.

 Get Greg Dyke involved in Lib Dem policy on constitutional and democratic reform NOW !

If not spokesman then roving ambassador/tzar /advisor …something… Please.

Having listened to him speak at the Liberal Vision Fringe meeting “Moats, Mortgages and Mayhem” he is clearly not only one of the most eloquent speakers on the subject - but one of the most passionate. HE JUST GETS IT. ….

“The evidence that our democracy is failing is overwhelming…yet those with the biggest interest in sustaining the current system, the Westminster village, the media and particularly the political parties, including this one, are the groups most in denial about what is really happening”

He not only “gets it” - HE SAYS IT STRAIGHT. ….“

“…most MPs can’t do their jobs…. When I was director-general of the BBC I regularly appeared before select committees and often had quite dumb people coming and giving me tough questions….How can those people question you now? How can someone who’s flipped their mortgage possibly sit there and start asking me about expenditure at the BBC? Because you just come back at them. I think some (MP’s) are completely undermined by this. They should go because they can’t do the job”

 

You see, his speech was not just an analysis of what is so wrong with the current system - but a damn compelling recipe for putting it right… ”…halving the number of MPs….electoral reform (some form of Proportional reform)…an elected House of Lords…the abolition of the whips system…moving parliament out of Westminster into a building fit for 21st century politics ” etc..

On Sunday’s London Politics Show  Mark Littlewood suggested that one area that the Lib Dems could and should do more is on the area of democratic and constitutional reform. I think he is spot on. This is not the same old moan about how unfair the current “first past the post” system is ( that no one cares about).

This is bang-on topical. That chimes with people’s anger and frustration with Westminster politics.The expenses scandal exposed all the flaws of the current political system. And the frustration and anger with all politicians and the whole political system can still be felt on every door step, every day. People have not forgotten about it , even if the media dont talk about it anymore.

Nick Clegg showed his understanding of the public mood when he “broke with tradition” to be the first party leader to call for the Speaker Michael Martin to go and when he made the suggestion that Parliament should abandon summer recess to sort out the mess left in the expensesgate wake.

But, we seem to have stopped there….

I may be wrong but I did not hear any promise to clean up politics, reinstate the balance of power in favour of the people, bring the political system kicking and screaming into the 21st century, in the Leaders speech on Wednesday. Perhaps it was there - but if so it was buried.

My suggestion to Nick is this. Let us be the party of constitutional and democratic reform. Build this in as a fundamental plank of our election strategy. People should know that we hear the country’s demand  for a fundamental wholesale change to our democratic system - and spell out WHAT we would change and WHEN.  

And Greg Dyke is quite simply the best advocate of democratic and constitutional reform that there is.

Nick, please, take up this fight. And get on that phone to Greg. Persuade him to take up the Lib Dem banner on this. He may well, of course say no. BUT. If you can get him to say yes..the nation will thank you for it. And so will the party.

Tags: constitutional reform, electoral reform, expenses, Greg Dyke