Liberal Democrats MPs really will say anything to get elected.
Liberal Democrats MPs really will say anything to get elected
With the General Election looming, many Liberal Democrat MPs are understandably trying to distance themselves from the toxic coalition in the hope that it may help them hold on to their parliamentary seat next May.
In fact, it looks like some may be willing to say anything to disassociate themselves from Cameron and Osborne, including flatly contradicting things they’ve said in the very recent past.
Cue David Laws, Liberal Democrat MP for Yeovil and former deputy to chancellor George Osborne.
According to David Laws, speaking today, the chancellor’s spending plans are a ‘political suicide note’. As Laws put it:
“This will be seen to be a very extreme and very right-wing suicide note because all those people who care about the education service, about the police, about the armed forces … will see that the plans they have put forward are hugely damaging and dangerous.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Yet this flatly contradicts words which came out of the mouth of the very same David Laws a mere two years ago.
In a 2012 interview with the Telegraph, Laws boldly outflanked the Tories on the right by arguing that the share of the economy accounted for by the public sector ought to be cut back to 35 per cent.
Public sector spending has hovered at around 40 per cent for decades, but jumped to 49 per cent in 2010-11 on the back of a rise in welfare outgoings triggered by the global financial crisis.
But for Laws, speaking in 2012, this was unacceptable; he wanted further swingeing cuts more drastic even than those planned by George Osborne. As Laws mused:
“The implication of the state spending 40 per cent of national income is that there is likely to be too much resource misallocation and too much waste and inefficiency.”
So why the sudden change of heart?
We would certainly never dream of suggesting that Liberal Democrats MPs will say anything to get elected.
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
42 Responses to “2012: MORE CUTS. 2014: FEWER CUTS. Will the real David Laws please stand up?”
Leon Wolfeson
That’s a gross insult to the politicians of the 1860’s. (For reference, I’m talking about Disraeli and Gladstone)
The Reform Act 1867 (abolishing rotten boroughs and extending the franchise), Elementary Education Act 1870 (universal education to 13),Trade Union Act 1871 (legalising unions)….
…a lot of progress was made in those days. On the other hand, the modern Neoliberals, not just the Tories, are regressives whose austerity is rolling back wages and they’re all highly moralistic against the poor to a degree which wasn’t found even in mid to late Victorian England, and advocates of spying on the people.
1760, I’d give you. (George Grenville, with the Stamp Act, etc.)
Leon Wolfeson
“[note, not tougher on welfare recipients]”
Oh rot. It’s an attempt to differentiate without difference. She’s been very moralistic on the poor, pushing magic-jobs-tree rhetoric, when the reality is we won’t have anything like full employment while her party embraces austerity.
Labour has committed itself to the benefits cap, which means large drops in benefits. That’s the only way Labour will manage to “cut” benefits, they’re not using rent caps, promising to allow council borrowing for council housing or other effective means of cutting rents, etc.
(Sure, they’ll outlaw some kinds of fees, but that means those fees will be rolled into rents)
Leon Wolfeson
“strengthening the non-Blairite wing”
You can’t hold up what effectively does not exist as a political force. As long as we have FPTP, and the Coalitions of which the main “parties” are…
Tom
The distinction is pretty clear. One cuts the money available to people, the other doesn’t. The cap doesn’t say anything about the level of individual benefit entitlements (they could even go up), but rather about total expenditure, which would go down if people no longer needed to claim (i.e. were being paid properly).
Leon Wolfeson
Get real – Labour have committed to the benefit cap. The Tories spending on welfare would have breached the cap, if it had already been in place, as a LFF article discussed a little while back.
The reality is that Labour are committed to austerity, which means the need for welfare is going to climb as wages inevitably fall (that’s what austerity DOES), but they will be imposing a hard cap which means massive cuts to levels of welfare which have already been ruled to be illegally low.
There’s absolutely no evidence that Labour are interested in cutting away the massive workfare and other schemes which consume billions, and even if they cut *all* that way the trend in wages means that benefits will still need to be lowered under the cap.
Labour have refused to even consider basic measures like allowing local councils to borrow for council house building, refused to consider rent caps…put a CAP on what they’ll raise the minimum wage to to a very unambitious level for the next Parliament…
A leftist government would be considering things like restructuring the energy markets to break up the vertical monopolies (Ireland did it, although I dislike their specific solution), a compulsory living wage (if not a Basic Income), the aforesaid rent caps and council house building…etc.
Labour’s still wedded to neoliberalism, and has talked about cracking down on the poor, moved right on immigration issues, etc. – and the benefits which have already been limited to well under inflation are going to be slashed massively again because of the caps, cutting spending still further, which will cause further knock-on effects, and….it’s a downward spiral.