The coming General Election hopefully won’t be held at the very last possible minute, because not even Brown would be that stupid… would he? To be remembered as the Prime Minster that had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of office, like a gambler chasing his losses needing to be thrown out of a casino?
Lib Dem Voice features a guest Op-Ed piece about the question of the Lib Dem’s position in Hung Parliament, pointing out that the media’s agenda for the Lib Dems will be “who are they going to support? Labour or the Conservatives?” and this noise will drown out absolutely everything else.
Put simply, the easiest way to destroy the Lib Dem party in the next election is for an ‘informed source’ to leak information that Nick and Vince are planning to do a deal with Gordon Brown to keep him in power.
That’s it. That’s all it’d take. Such is the vulnerability of the ‘no comment’ strategy. There is no more important communications challenge facing this party than getting this issue solved quickly and definitively.
Ruling out supporting Gordon Brown’s Labour would go a long way.
“There’s no blank cheques, but it’s clear supporting a 4th term Labour Government is unthinkable for us – not after the mismanagement of the economy, culture of spin and deceit and the abuse of civil liberties. A vote for the Lib Dems will never, ever be a vote for Labour” said Ann Counterfactual earlier today.
…could be political dynamite. What better way to drum up a bit of “if the Tories can’t beat Labour in your constituency, we urge you to hold your nose and vote Lib Dem” from all the newspapers except for the Daily Mirror, who will be riding donkeys wearing underpants on their heads cheering on a 4th Labour term.
Poor sods.
But the story would then become, “so what are your conditions for working with the Tories.”
Back to where we started? Not quite. It would give us an opportunity to give our main policy priorities. Our platform might actually get heard.
This, combined with a desire to increase the basic rate tax threshold to £10,000, along with a ‘do less, but do the essentials better’ approach to public services, along with urgent reform to civil liberties… and we’d really be onto something. Dance, Vince, Dance.
Ann Counterfactual said, “One important part of refiring the economy has to be putting money back in people’s pockets. Most people want healthy public services, but if we can’t afford those services then we simply can’t afford them – no ifs, no buts – we have to live within our means if we really want to help anyone at all.”
and
“Look at how Council Tax ruins the lives of the most vulnerable pensioners and tell me how you think tax is a good thing? Sometimes the tax itself does more harm than good.”
I think I’d actually explode if I heard something like that.
The Lib Dem leadership are doing sterling work promoting tax cuts as something that can help “The Poor”, and it’s true – they can. Reframing these sorts of policies as something that benefit ordinary people, not just the rich and the mighty, is something we should be proud of, not afraid of.
By acknowledging that taxes are a burden, even if we currently only care (on paper) about the burden on groups not traditionally targetted with a ‘hey, would you like to pay less tax?’ message, is an important moral victory for liberalism.
It’s baby steps but perhaps people like me should applaud and welcome these steps rather than flame people for not going far enough.
