I know I'm at risk of turning into a Lib-Dem apologist here. Maybe its my true colour coming out or maybe its a desire to re-dress a two-sided debate, but today I feel like responding to Labour peer Lord Adonis' appeal for Lib-Dem voters to vote Labour to keep the tories out. He claims that Labour and the Lib Dems share a lot of common ground politically. Is this true?
Interesting exercise to do if you have the time - use something like Vote for Policies to look at the different parties policies blind and try and work out which one is which. It takes a bit of playing around to actually discover the real answer, but its an interesting exercise. My observations from doing it:
1) In most cases you can tell which policy belongs to which party.
2) The party most often confused with Labour in terms of policy is not the Lib-Dems, but the tories. The language is often different but the suggestions often the same.
3) The party the Lib Dems policies are most likely to be confused with, is not Labour, but the Greens.
4) The one area I did find it harder to tell Labour from the Lib dems was Democracy and this is due to Gordon Brown's eleventh hour Road to Damascus conversion to the PR drum the Lib Dems have been banging for years.
The one area they do seem to have common ground vs the tories at the moment, is of course, the National Insurance debate. You can find some interesting analysis on the BBC website of the economic claims and efficiency savings. I agree that the real debate is not on whether the figures add up but in fundamental ideological differences of approach on whether you pay for things by public spending or by private wealth generation and trickle down economics. I've never been convinced by the trickle down argument (private wealth generation tends to lead to private wealth accumulation by the few). I also remain completely unconvinced that the tories can get anywhere close to the savngs they're talking about without affecting front-line services. I think front-line services are already being affected by Labour cutbacks. The tory plans will make things worse.
4 comments:
Not really to do with your post, but still worth a look: http://www.voterpower.org.uk/edinburgh-south
B
Interesting link, Ben. Thanks. It backs up the argument for PR, but not totally sure I agree with the argument all votes not for the winning candidate are somehow wasted. Seems to me to be an argument not to vote in a lot of constituencies, which would be a bad idea.
The place for PR is in the second elected house. That could then work like the US, where every county / region gets 5 representatives no matter how large - e.g. Outer Hebrides gets the same as London - and then PR gives us reps. Like MSPs and MEPs.
That way we still get someone who is directly elected by the people and a bunch of politicos who broadly match the public consensus...
Thanks for the comment Dan, but not sure I agree with you. Something needs to happen to change the House of Commons. The two party system isn't working, more and more people are getting disengaged from the mainstream of British politics, something needs to happen to change that. There's a perceived wisdom that a hung parliament leads to bad government, but the evidence of the last thirty years says that big majorities lead to lazy, arrogant and disconnected governments. Change the whole system.
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