Nick Clegg.........my hero!

Well. For those of us who campaigned hard against Trident, today's news is just the best! The frustration so many of us had about the debate, the resultant motion and the fudge we ended up with, has now been replaced with pride and relief. Throughout his leadership bit Nick often made reference to our need as a party to be "risky and radical" something that on FPC I take every opportunity to remind him, here is a demonstration, if one were needed, of his preparedness to do that.

However, I do trust we will have a motion to conference, however happy I am with Nick's decision, the fact remains that our official party policy is made by conference and I can hardly bleat about other policy being made on the hoof and not expect that Nick ensures he has the backing of the party. It is one of our USPs that our membership still has the final say on party policy - long may it remain!

To quote Nick Clegg - Hold your Horses!

There has been a rather tetchy debate going on over at LDV, so I thought I would put me 10penneth in. In The Sunday Telegraph today they tell us that Mr Clegg has announced that he will cut £20 billion from public spending, which will be ploughed into tax cuts for middle earners. "We are now in a process of identifying what I believe will be the most radical package of tax- cutting measures for people on middle incomes," Now, as others have pointed out, I don't remember Nick having this as one of his objectives in the leadership campaign. Also he is going a lot further than what is promised in Make it Happen. I have no problem with Nick showing his leadership, but I do believe if he is going to pick a fight with a large cohort of the party now is not the time to do it.

As I have said before, I backed Nick because in terms of nearly all his objectives I am totally on the same page. But that doesn't mean I think his methodology is right. Of course no one can be against tax cuts in principle, but please please let's not make the means to an end an end in itself. What is it we want to achieve, what is our number one objective? If it is just "cutting taxes" then why bother with any public services at all? If it is about redistributing the tax burden in order to address the inequity that sees the poorest paying the highest proportion of tax, that is a noble aim. But that isn't what he is saying.

I would argue that if we did a proper cost benefit analysis of all public expenditure we could make long term gains that could be ploughed back into reducing inequality. Of course there are savings to be made, the vast sums spent on consultants, PFI, privatising public services, Trident. But I don't see these highlighted in Nick's proposals. Are we seriously suggesting that there is not a need for greater investment in neglected services? That we honestly think all our public services are adequately funded?

So, to quote Nick back to himself, my plea to him is "hold your horses!"