Is the Coalition crumbling?

Despite the brave face Clegg is showing, things are not good in the Coalition and each day more rifts are starting to show.

Already in Scotland the leader of the Scottish Lib Dems has argued with the Tories about their policies on justice and their manifesto for the Assembly is clearly at odds with Coalition policy. Take some of their key points:

1. Create conditions for 100,000 new jobs, supported by at least £1.5 billion of investment freed up by reform to Scottish Water.
2. Cut energy bills and boost green economy with new help to pay for insulation and new investment in renewable energy.
3. Give head teachers more power.
4. Give every child a fair start in life with an Early Intervention Revolution
5. Keep higher education free – no fees and no graduate contribution
6. Improve out-of-hours healthcare across Scotland.

Not exactly in-line with the Tory position of cuts, cuts, and more cuts.

Meanwhile back in England, one of Nick Clegg's closest advisers has threatened to quit unless ministers make changes to a proposed overhaul of the NHS. Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb said the plans posed a major "financial risk" to the NHS, and patient care could suffer. He said he would quit as Mr Clegg's chief political adviser unless NHS professionals were "on board".

While supporting the general direction of government proposals, he feared there was "no evidence" how the new GP-led system would operate.
Also speaking on Sunday, Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander acknowledged there were "issues" in the way GP-led commissioning consortia would operate and be regulated.

More recently, an interim report by a five-member banking commission, headed by Sir John Vickers, is expected to recommend a series of measures to protect banks’ key functions at times of crisis. The moves are likely to cost banks an extra £5billion but are set to be supported by George Osborne, the Chancellor. However, the recommendations will be contested by Liberal Democrat cabinet ministers including Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, exposing a clear fault line at the top of the government. Cable has in the past called for the big banks such as HSBC, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland to be completely split up into retail and investment arms- and Sir John’s report does not go as far as this. A senior Lib Dem source attempted to distance his party from the findings ahead of today’s publication of the commission’s interim report.

Is this an ideological shift? Hardly – it has more to do with May 5th and the Lib Dems playing a sneaky move to try and distance themselves from the Tories. They know they will be trounced at the election if they continue to suck up to the Tories, so they are trying to show they are independent.

We are unconvinced.

The evidence has shown they are so close to Tory policy it is untrue. They supported the increase in tuition fees; they were all set to endorse changes in the NHS and only bailed out when RCN and the BMA voiced their opposition. In addition they have gone along with Tory plans to scrap EMA and the Flexible Jobs Fund. The Lib Dems have even nodded through substantial changes to welfare reform that will cause unnecessary stress to thousands of sick and disabled people.

The Lib Dems committed political suicide when they formed a coalition with the Tories after May 6th and now they are trying to squirm out of their commitment. Well the electorate may not have long memories, but they have a long enough one to remember all the lies and deceptions Clegg has offered the people over the last year.

On May 5th they will pay the price – and the devastation is likely to be near nuclear. The party leadership will have a hard time justifying their alliance with the Tories once the votes are counted.

Who cares about AV

Now I confess I have a very low boredom threshold. I seldom watch TV and last night, whilst millions enjoyed watching Comic Relief, I read, listened to music, played a little myself and painted. Not that I am anti the idea of giving money to charity, I’m not. I just don’t see why I have to endure the idea of watching people who aren’t funny and endure them making fools of themselves for hours .
I admit it, as the years go on, I have become a grumpy old man. One of my pet hates on the blogosphere at the moment is all the fuss being made about AV. Those who are ‘for’ it keep trying to tell me it will save the planet, restore justice to the oppressed, feed the hungry and bring a new level of democracy to our voting system.

On the other hand, the “no” lobby insist any change from FPTP will bring instability, economic and political chaos and the emergence of Beelzebub and the Hordes of the Night.

Call me cynical, but I don’t think either side is really telling me the way it is. In fact, the way I see it is that if we had been allowed to vote AV in the last election, we would have still had a Tory/ Lib Dem coalition, except the Conservatives would have had a few less seats. As for previous elections, well the evidence from what I have read has tended to lean a little more favourably towards Labour, but not by any huge amount.

So, it seems they want us to vote on an election system where one option (FPTP) will result in the election of Candidate A and the other system (AV) will bring the election of Candidate A. If that’s the case,, why bother to change it?

The whole thing just seems like one big joke – with no real choice being offered in the first place. It’s not even as if the population are chomping at the bit and saying they want change. Sure, the Lib Dems have been spouting on about it for years, but until they came to power, they were all in favour of AV. Since Citizen Dave gave a couple of them seats around the Cabinet table they have watered down their views so much, its hard to spot which one of them isn’t a Tory. Gone are all the ideals of true electoral reform and instead they call for a wishy washy voting system that marginally favours their own politics.

The pro-lobby are probably hoping that holding the referendum on May 5th will help their cause, because people will be voting in local council elections at the same time. But let’s not forget that, on average, only about 40% of voters turn out on Election Day. So, whatever the result, it isn’t going to offer a true representation of the “people’s will” anyway.

Not that this will stop either side when the result is declared. If the “Yes” lobby win they will hail it as a positive result for democracy and if “No’s” succeed, they will argue their campaign has been vindicated – this is even though as many as two-thirds of the electorate may not vote.

The whole thing is boring and let’s faces it, pretty meaningless. The end product will largely be the same whatever the result and will put back the real opportunity for true electoral for a generation. Courtesy of Clegg selling out the people will not have the opportunity to consider the Single Transferrable Vote – the one option that could have changed the face of British politics.As it is, Clegg wants us to keep the same corrupt system, or replace it with a mechanism that will guarantee votes for extreme parties will be far more status than they deserve.

No wonder Cameron gets on so well with him.

So, on referendum day which way will I vote? Well in an ideal world, I wouldn’t, but the facts of the matter are that I will go to the polling station to vote against my local Tory councillors. As a result the election officials will almost certainly give me a voting slip for the referendum. Now, I have never spoiled a ballot paper in my life – it always seems a total waste of time. So, I will have to choose – and neither of them appeal to me.

I guess in the end I will probably go along with AV, but not because I like it. I don’t, but I like FPTP even less. I have spent large chunks of my life calling for electoral reform and have been an advocate of STV for over 40 years. To have it taken away from me by a fellow supporter of the system (Nick Clegg) is an unforgivable act of treachery.

I hope history rewards him appropriately with the argument that he was probably one of the weakest leaders the Liberal/ Social Democratic movement have seen since the days of the Whigs.

If the Lib Dems have any sense of self-respect they will dump him and the other quislings in the Tory Cabinet at the earliest opportunity

Do politicians really care?

Well now we have it from the horse’s mouth – the middle classes are going to suffer too. According to Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, the middle classes are unaware of the scale of government spending cuts that will hit them this year.

In other words, Tory England is going to hurt about as much as it does for us oiks, who survive on a day to day basis. No great surprise there! The news comes hot in pursuit of other reports that Birmingham City Council is to axe 7,000 jobs as part of their cuts programme.

Birmingham has always been a candidate for mass redundancies, particularly as the Council is Tory-led, with significant back-up from the Lib-Dems. In fact, the Council has never been noted for its care for its workforce (see a more detailed report here) and these announcements will have a profound effect on working people in Birmingham.

Clarke is right to point out they will suffer as a result of these cuts, but he should have told the whole truth – everyone will hurt, and in a very big and painful way. So, why did he isolate just the middle classes? Easy, you only have to look at the fact he gave the interview to the Daily Telegraph to find your answer. He is desperately trying to shore up Tory votes and where better to reach out to middle class Tories than in their very own rag?

In three months time local elections will fall again and good money is on a landslide loss of seats for both Tories and Lib-Dems. Look at any map and see which councils they run and you quickly realise the close links they have with the middle classes – Woking, Westminster, Stafford, Basingstoke and Shrewsbury and Atcham – not exactly poverty crisis points dominated by an ‘underclass’ of poor.

But wouldn’t it be nice if one day a Tory or a Liberal Democrat politician were to turn around and fight for the rights of the working classes? Of course that’s not going to happen – after all, what does David Cameron, have in common with the average worker, or single parent. His estimated (albeit disputed) personal wealth of £30m places him in a totally different league. Indeed, in his Cabinet, Cameron has eighteen millionaires, including Nick Clegg, although in his defence, little Nick only owns about £1.8m.

All of this led Sadiq Khan to suggest these rich Tories were unable to empathise with the average worker. Speaking to James Kirkup of the Daily Telegraph, he said:

That they are rich is relevant because of the lack of empathy. I’m not saying that they can’t empathise – but they just don’t get it.

For them, tightening your belt is taking two holidays a year instead of three . . . or having one au pair rather than two. I think it is a problem if you have a cabinet that doesn’t understand the real challenges that people face. If you have a background that is one-dimensional and have not had the life experiences or understood what sacrifice means to ordinary punters, I would say it is difficult.

But Khan needs to be careful. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has an estimated personal wealth of around £4m, Ed Balls is the son of a professor, and attended a fee-paying school; Harriet Harman went to St Pauls and her aunt is a countess; and Shaun Woodward is a multimillionaire with homes in several countries.

In short it seems none of the party leaders have much in common with any of us working folks. They all live in safe financial cocoons, with chauffeur-driven transport, where foreign holidays are expected and their annual clothing budget is probably more than the average person pays in a decade.

Not sure about my readers, but I haven’t been away for a holiday for three years and when I did, it was to Devon (don’t knock it – gorgeous county and wonderful people). Last year I spent approximately £100 on clothing – and that includes socks and underwear. I don’t drive, so I have to rely on busses and my monthly pass costs me £40. I was looking forward to getting an older person’s bus pass soon, but my local area seem likely to scrap that.

I’m not complaining about my life – more would be nice, of course, but I am happy with things the way they are. What angers me is when politicians try to tell me they know what its like to be me. Or how those with far more money than me tell me they know what is like to worry about money.

Yesterday I toured around the power companies, because if I stayed with my current supplier I would have to pay £12 more a month. If Messrs Cameron, Osborne, Clarke and Clegg can tell me they did the same I will sit back and shut up.

Until then I have a right to be angry.

Pricing universities out of reach

When I was 18 I wasn’t very interested in studying, so the idea of going to university never really raised its head. In those days, like many of my generation, all I wanted was a few beers of a night and the chance to meet lots of girls. So I went to work in a job I hated, on a salary that offered no real opportunity for expansion and with no real career prospects.

Fortunately ten years later my thinking had changed and I applied to do a degree. Now I was never one of those academic elite who felt able to go to Oxbridge. I was closer to one of those oiks that went to what they now call a new university – in those days we called them polytechnics.

I was very grateful for my place and particularly relieved that I was given a full grant and even a few pounds extra because I was a mature student. Had I have been forced to pay student fees there is no way I could have afforded to go. I was a husband and a father (though I was to be divorced just weeks before going to ‘the poly’.

I studied hard, managed to obtain a good degree and went on later to gain a teaching qualification and a master’s degree. Because of circumstances I had an employer who paid for both of these postgraduate qualifications – again if I had been forced to pay the fees myself I would not have been able to afford them.

I am in no doubt I have been very fortunate.

Today I hear Oxford will probably charge £9,000 a year for tuition fees to study at their illustrious university – slightly less than the annual salary of someone on a statutory minimum wage and substantially more than the amount a married couple receive on the dole.

For someone like myself, who went back to education later in life this huge hike in fees is a disgrace and divisive. It will mean very few working class people will be able to think about going to Oxford or any of the other ‘red bricks’– even if intellectually they would be able to cope with the standards required.

So we have a situation, thanks to Cameron and Clegg, where the working class, and particularly those who are out of work, can never aspire to entering the portals of academia. Effectively they have made learning beyond the financial reach of the poor, the underprivileged, the unemployed, the disabled and ordinary working class folk with families who want to return to education.

Oh, and what about the single mothers who want a chance to develop their lives once their baby is old enough to be handed to a childminder?

It is an absolute disgrace and epitomises the divisiveness of this government – where the ‘haves’ can get the opportunities, and the ‘have not’s’ are forced to struggle through life, trying to make ends meet. No doubt Cameron would prefer the kind of society epitomised in the book “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist”. As society where the privileged have all the finer things in life and the working class scrape an existence, fighting a daily battle to survive

No guesses as to which side of the fence Clegg and Cameron want to sit on!

Is the Party over?

Over the last few days a number of commentators have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that Osborne’s budget was regressive, attacked the poorest sector of our society and is destined to force another 1 million people out of work. All this at a time when this country is still reeling from the effects of a banker induced recession.

It wasn’t the fault of the poor, the single parents, the people in social housing, students or the low paid that this country went into recession. Nor was it their fault that the structural deficit is now so high. Yet, with typical Tory ambivalence, Osborne has targeted the weakest sectors of society to pay for the indulgences and mistakes of the richest.

And where are the Lib Dems? Apparently nowhere. Last week Simon Hughes indicated that some Liberals would table amendments to the budget to make it fairer – unfortunately, he has now tried to back pedal from this and looks likely to now toe the line. I recently read in Pat McFadden’s blog the following, and I attach it here purely because it describes what is happening so correctly.

The picture of Simon Hughes issuing warnings about the future reminds me of that Monty Python sketch where the knight is having his arms and legs chopped off and after being rendered limbless says something along the lines of , “right, any more of this and I’m going to get really annoyed”.

So where are the Liberals these days? What has happened to their supposed radicalism? Was it really so easily bought? Sixteen years ago the Libs were call for £10 million to be pruned off the civil list; today they support the Conservatives and keep it intact. In the post war years the Liberals called for greater levels of industrial democracy and compulsory profit sharing; but in the budget their direction changed – away from workers and towards the bosses. No doubt their iincrease of the threshold of £2m on which capitalists will pay just 10% capital gains tax, instead of the main rate of 18% was undoubtedly well received by the fat cats in the City.

Remember, this is the party that over the years has fought for penal reform, legalising cannabis, an end to student loans and local taxes. If the Liberal Democrats ever had any ounce of radicalism in their soul (and this now has to be questioned) it died the moment they signed the coalition agreement. Now all we have is real Tories and wannabe Tories ... and sooner or later we will see the two parties either amalgamate, or large numbers of Libs leaving to join their natural home in the Conservative party. The few left will either join Labour or try and sit in the centre ground under the still struggling Liberal party.

Evidence for this was apparent from Ed Miliband’s YouGov survey which now shows only 16% of the electorate support Clegg and his followers. Over the coming months, as the cuts start to bite this downward trend is certain to continue and bring about their demise.

As someone who started their political life in the old Liberal party and then moved to Labour, I will not mourn them.