Lib Dems Manifesto Did You know?
In Thursday night's election debate, Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, was afforded the same dignity and airtime as the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. The format created the illusion – and it is an illusion – that the next government will be formed by one of three main parties. It will not. The next Prime Minister will be Conservative or Labour. But Mr Clegg made good use of his opportunity to suggest that the Liberal Democrats were a realistic alternative to the "old parties", as he disingenuously called them (Mr Clegg actually leads a very old party that has fallen on hard times).So perhaps it is time to ask: if the Lib Dems were to form a government, what would it do to Britain? And the answer is: an enormous amount of irreversible damage, possibly more than a returned Labour government. This is not immediately obvious from reading their manifesto, however, because the Liberal Democrats gloss over policies that, if they were laid out plainly before British voters, would cause a meltdown in their electoral support. I do not think we should ever be cowed into silence by fear of controversy," Nick Clegg announced in 2007, when he was home affairs spokesman for his party. In that case, why was there no mention on Thursday night of the very policy on which Mr Clegg pledged to speak fearlessly – the party's proposed amnesty for long-term illegal immigrants? The commitment is buried in the manifesto, though the word "amnesty" is carefully avoided. Indeed, the pastel-coloured, bullet-pointed paragraphs of the manifesto conceal all manner of obfuscation over key Lib Dem policies, not least where the European Union is concerned. The truth is that a Liberal Democrat government would:End Britain's right to opt out of EU regulations governing justice and home affairs;Campaign to drag Britain into the euro as soon as the economy stabilises;Commit the UK to an energy policy based entirely on renewable sources – a plan that would turn us into a peasant economy, as we pointed out this week;Increase air passenger duty enormously;Demand that anyone living in a house worth £2 million or more hand over one per cent of the value to the state – a "mansion tax" that could easily be extended to more modest properties;Abandon Britain's independent nuclear deterrent at a time when rogue states are building their own, and delegate responsibility for foreign policy to the EU;Grant citizenship to illegal immigrants, thus encouraging more people to slip into this country in the hope of a further amnesty.These are bad policies – so bad that even Labour does not support them. As for the less bad proposals, such as those espousing localism, they can be found in better form in the Conservative manifesto. The exception is the centrepiece of the party's programme, a superficially attractive plan to lift everyone earning less than £10,000 a year out of income tax. Whether this would really help the poor is open to question – but what we do know is that Lib Dems would need to find £17 billion a year to pay for it, and that the savings and taxes they have proposed would not add up to this sum even if they were properly thought through, which they are not.Does any of this matter, given that there is not going to be a Liberal Democrat government? Yes, it does. If enough people vote for it, the party may be able to do a deal with Labour to bring in proportional representation. That would consign us to a future of gridlocked coalitions in which Lib Dem ministers were free to enact at least some of their half-baked policies. It is this prospect, rather than Mr Clegg's confident debating style, that should be at the forefront of voters' minds on May 6.
John Todd ● 6046d8 Comments ● 6046d