Tim Hardy

Nick Clegg recently gave a rousing speech at the National Liberal Club in London.

He emphasised the strengths of the Liberals as

The first party to identify the dangers of an overleveraged banking system. The first to advocate radical political reform. Consistent in our defence of civil liberties. Principled in our defence of the international rule of law. Outspoken in correcting our woefully imbalanced tax system. Radical on the need to make Britain environmentally sustainable. Brave in standing up to failed populism on law and order. Determined to use childcare and education policies to break cycles of deprivation handed down from one generation to the next.

The Conservatives are dismissed succinctly as spin masters who will never change their spots, a party -

at ease standing shoulder to shoulder in the European Parliament with bigots, climate change deniers and homophobes.

In my view David Cameron has done a relatively good job at re-branding the toxic legacy he inherited. But no amount of airbrushing can make conservatism progressive. It’s just not in their bones.

And Labour’s failure is given short shrift:

I can remember Peter Mandelson saying “judge us after ten years of success in office. For one of the fruits of that success will be that Britain has become a more equal society.”

It’s been twelve years. The gap between rich and poor has widened. We have more children in prison than anywhere else in Europe. If you’re poor you’re still far less likely to go to university than if you’re better off. If you’re a woman you’ll still probably be paid less for doing the same work as a man. If you’re a child born in the poorest neighbourhood in my City, Sheffield, you will probably die 14 years before a wealthier child born down the road….

Liberals believe in the raucous, unpredictable capacity of people to take decisions about their own lives.
Whereas for us power should be shared, for Labour it is to be hoarded. And as night follows day, monopolies over power in both the economy and in politics end badly; this government ticks all the boxes: Captured by vested interests; hence their continuing failure to clamp down on greed in financial services… And driven solely by an obsession to cling on to power.

If you are one of the generation of voters who are too young to remember the Conservatives but know only too well how badly your hopes have been sold out by the Labour Party, then consider the Liberal Democrats as a viable alternative. However bad Labour may have been, the Conservatives will be far worse.

What justice is there in this: that a nobleman, a goldsmith, a banker, or any other man, that either does nothing at all, or, at best, is employed in things that are of no use to the public, should live in great luxury and splendour upon what is so ill acquired, and a mean man, a carter, a smith, or a ploughman, that works harder even than the beasts themselves, and is employed in labours so necessary, that no commonwealth could hold out a year without them, can only earn so poor a livelihood and must lead so miserable a life, that the condition of the beasts is much better than theirs? For as the beasts do not work so constantly, so they feed almost as well, and with more pleasure, and have no anxiety about what is to come, whilst these men are depressed by a barren and fruitless employment, and tormented with the apprehensions of want in their old age; since that which they get by their daily labour does but maintain them at present, and is consumed as fast as it comes in, there is no overplus left to lay up for old age.

“Is not that government both unjust and ungrateful, that is so prodigal of its favours to those that are called gentlemen, or goldsmiths, or such others who are idle, or live either by flattery or by contriving the arts of vain pleasure, and, on the other hand, takes no care of those of a meaner sort, such as ploughmen, colliers, and smiths, without whom it could not subsist? But after the public has reaped all the advantage of their service, and they come to be oppressed with age, sickness, and want, all their labours and the good they have done is forgotten, and all the recompense given them is that they are left to die in great misery. The richer sort are often endeavouring to bring the hire of labourers lower, not only by their fraudulent practices, but by the laws which they procure to be made to that effect, so that though it is a thing most unjust in itself to give such small rewards to those who deserve so well of the public, yet they have given those hardships the name and colour of justice, by procuring laws to be made for regulating them.

“Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that they have so ill-acquired, and then, that they may engage the poor to toil and labour for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they please; and if they can but prevail to get these contrivances established by the show of public authority, which is considered as the representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws

Sir Thomas More, Utopia, 1516