Evaluation of the UK's Cameron/Clegg coalition

Great Debates
1

The new government has had time to settle in now. In particular, they’ve just passed an emergency budget, hoping to deal with the massive deficit. How do Britons feel about the performance so far of their new government?

I’ll come out and say: I’m pretty impressed, so far. They immediately scrapped ID cards, have today announced a public inquest into the role of the security services in the illegal detention and torture of Britons under Labour, made some effort toward reducing the financial burden of Labour’s legacy (though things like the VAT rise are controversial), and seem to have taken a pragmatic approach towards Europe.

What do other Britons (and interested foreigners) think?

2

It’s a start. But spending is still going to increase from the current £697B to £758B in 2015. I’m expecting another set of cuts after the CSR in November, and a further set in next year’s Budget.

3

They’ve done good things like the ID card but also bad. They are using the deficit as an excuse to pursue an ideological agenda and in doing so they will cause more unemployment and tip us into a double-dip depression by removing demand.

One person’s wage is another person’s income.

My own sector faces a 25% cut, our wages are frozen and our pensions being stolen off us.

Meanwhile the people who caused all this - the banker, the speculators etc - are making out like the bandits they are on the money the rest of us are tightening our belts or losing our jobs to give them instead of languishing in prison or preferably, dangling from a rope like they should all be.

4

We will not enter a double dip recession.

5

I am utterly reassured by this statement.

6

They’re incredibly rare—three since 1854 in the US—and, from what I gather, the last one in America was caused by the central bank setting nominal interest rates at 19%. This fact almost never seems to be disclosed when discussing the possibility of double dip recessions, which seems to be the buzzword of the day, to be honest.

7

The US is unlikely to enter a double-dip recession but it remains a very real possibility for the UK which has been slow to recover from the (first) recession, especially if people react to the VAT hike and cut in various benefits by reducing spending. Or we could simply see the recovery slow to a snail’s pace. Either way, tough times are ahead.

8

Doing reasonably well although - naturally - concerned about details.

From a personal point of view I’m worried about funding for science (pays my wages!), public sector pension cuts (I’ve been paying into a scheme for 30 years and it will be bastard if there is a radical change in what I will get back. I don’t mind paying for longer or contributing more - even with the pay freeze - but don’t bugger about with the benefits), and massive rises in tuition fees (daughter at university hardly gets value for money now).

I think the biggest single error is excluding Health and Overseas Aid from the cuts, therebye making things worse for the other departments. **Mrs Marcus **works for the NHS - as a nurse - and there is no way you can convince me that there is no scope for saving money there.

9

We’re living in interesting times, I think. On paper I am absolutely ideologically opposed to the Conservative party in particular. However the last Labour government bore so little resemblance in some ways to the Labour Party I’ve supported all my life, that I was relieved when the inevitable election result came through. As tagos said, I couldn’t be anything other than cheered by the axing of identity cards. I was also pleasantly surprised by Cameron’s reaction to the end of the Bloody Sunday inquiry, and found myself comparing it to how Blair would have reacted - in my head Blair came out much worse!

My concerns currently are around spending cuts, and we haven’t seen any detail yet. Generally I think the budget incorporated measures I’d expect from a Conservative government: cuts and freezes to welfare and public sector benefits, cuts to taxes for corporations. I don’t agree ideologically with their approach to economic management, but I wasn’t surprised by it. On a personal level, I was expecting to be more hit by the budget than I was - although that will change with the VAT rise of course. I’ve also undergone a change in attitude to that - I always believed that VAT rises penalise the poor disproportionately, but I’ve read things recently which persuade me that’s not the case.

In non-economic terms, I’m very opposed to an arbitrary cap on immigration, irritated by the expansion of the Academy schools programme and horrified by the election of police commissioners. Generally though, in all honesty if I take them on face value they’re doing OK so far.

10

I think the current government shows that political debate is just basically posturing. If the Lib Dems weren’t in government they’d be screaming from the rooftops about cuts and calling the Tories all kinds of unpleasant things but right now they’re fine with everything. They’re sounding pretty good, I like what they’re saying about welfare, cutting government waste and all the rest of it. It’s actions that count though, not words, let’s look at it in a year or so and see what they’ve actually done.

I think that there is massive scope for cuts in government spending, the NHS, the thousands of jobs in the Guardian jobs supplement every week (5 a day coordinators*, diversity trainers and the rest of it, basically tens of thousands on big salaries and gold-plated pensions doing non-jobs), all the workshy scumbags on the dole who need to have their benefits stopped, single mothers who have kids just to get a council house then sponge off the state for the rest of their lives, etc. etc. I’d take an axe to all that then go back a couple of times for anything I’d missed.

However I’m not sure that this is the right time to cut spending. I’d do what I’d outlined in the paragraph above but then spend the money improving the country’s infrastructure in ways that would create big economic benefits in the future, road, rail, education etc. etc. I don’t think now is a good time for governments to cut spending when we’re most definitely at risk of a double dip ( we haven’t had many but we’ve never had a recession as bad as the current one except in 1929 and there are a whole list of problems that we don’t normally face in recessions that I outlined in another thread a couple of days ago). I’d like to see governments take advantage of cheap money till the economy is definitely showing signs of robust growth.

EDIT : * 5 a day coordinators for the non-Brits are a bunch of people employed by local government to try and encourage the public to eat five portions of fruit and veg every day. No shit.

11

Why that in particular? On this side of the pond we do things like elect prosecutors and judges (neither of which I agree with) as well as county sheriffs (who don’t have police powers in all states).

12

How many of those non-jobs are central government jobs and how many are funded by local authorities?

13

No idea. There’s a huge amount of central and local government jobs that could be cut though. Exactly how much central government pays towards local government budgets I’m not sure either but come on, there isn’t a vast number of nonproductive public sector jobs that couldn’t be cut easily?

14

It’s the overt politicisation of policing that scares me. I’m not naive enough to believe that the current system of appointment of senior police officers has no political dimension, but this option is another degree again. I think that the person responsible for shaping policing strategy in a particular area shouldn’t have their attention on what will play best with their constituency, but should be concerned with how best to use their resources to uphold the law as it stands and to protect the public. I guess I don’t want policing strategy decided so directly by the same group of people (the great British public at large) whose fear of crime seems to be increasing at the same sort of rate that actual crime is decreasing.

Plus it seems like it’ll be unnecessary expense and another layer of bureaucracy.

15

Labour certainly don’t seem to have any means to challenge the proposals - all the arguments the come out with sound whiny and bitter, and all Cameron needs to do is point out that 1) it was their fault in the first place, and 2) half the austerity measures had been proposed by Labour anyway, just without the metrics behind them

16

David Cameron gave a very interesting talk at TED this year, whcih will give you some insight into the way he thinks about governing.

You can watch it here.

It’s very interesting in that he seems to be working towards a hybrid of left and right thinking. Which pretty much also describes his new coalition government.

Basically, he’s saying something the green movement has been saying for quite a while - quality of life is composed of a lot of things other than GDP or how much money you have. GDP doesn’t tell you how good parents are to their children. GDP doesn’t tell you if people are leading fulfilling lives. GDP doesn’t tell you if marriages are happy. GDP doesn’t tell you if people are being discriminated against or having their rights taken away.

This obviously fits in with his anti-stimulus, pro-austerity approach. But it also fits in with the focus greens and many of the left have on stability, sustainability, and a desire to get away from a focus on materialism.

He works it all into the information age and the internet, and how so much of what we value in life is continually moving ‘off the books’ and out of the ‘real economy’ into cyberspace, where individuals are creating value through interactions that are not financially measurable.

I’ve been thinking about this for some time, actually. I wonder how much of the retrenchment in demand that we’re seeing isn’t the result of an actual reduction in demand for real-world goods that has nothing to do with economic conditions, but with changing preferences. Pre-internet, the only way you could improve your standard of living, or your ability to see the world, or your ability to communicate with others or learn new things was through purchases of goods and services. If you wanted to be social, you went out to a bar or a movie or you went bowling or did some other activity that had tangible costs. You needed more income to be able to do things. And of course, status is a primary driver of demand - the need to keep up with your peers, to have the newest fashions, etc. And that sort of status simply does not exist on the internet.

As more people move more of their lives online, this is no longer true. Personally, I find my own demand for things like new cars, vacations, boats, and other trappings of middle class life to be decreasing every year. I spend most of my leisure time with my family doing fun things at home, or prowling around the internet. My vehicle is 8 years old, and while I could afford a new one, I really don’t care.

Are any of you feeling the same way? Is your demand for real-world luxury goods declining?

Anyway, Cameron’s point is that governments can and must find new ways to bring value to people other than just cutting more cheques and providing more expensive services. And he has some ideas for that. It’s worth checking out his talk.

17

The cuts to housing benefits and especially the disability living allowance are really nonsensical and harmful – two different disabled friends of mine (separate households) will be facing homelessness if/when they go through.