The Guardian summarises the ConDem (new term, and quite appropriate) deal as follows:
Liberal Democrat wins:
• Referendum to bring in an alternative vote system. Coalition members will be subject to three-line whip to force legislation for referendum through, but will be free to campaign against reforms before referendum.
• New five-year fixed term parliaments, an entirely or mainly elected second chamber and a commission to review party funding. According to this plan, the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015.
‚Ä¢ Reduce tax burden on low earners. A substantial increase to personal tax allowance from April 2011 with a "long- term goal" of a £10,000 personal tax allowance. Tory plans to reduce inheritance tax that would have benefited the richest people most have been scrapped.
• New pupil premium to be introduced, steering more funding to schools for every child they take from poor homes to help close class gap in school results.
Tory wins:
‚Ä¢ £6bn cuts this financial year and a reversal of some planned rises in national insurance contributions.
• A cap on immigration with Lib Dem plans for an amnesty on illegal immigration dumped.
• School reforms to introduce more Swedish-style "free" schools.
• A commitment to maintaining Britain's nuclear deterrent .
• No proposals to join the euro and a referendum lock will ensure that any proposal to transfer new powers must by law be put to a referendum.
‚Ä¢ The Conservatives have kept their plan for a £150 marriage tax break. Lib Dems will abstain but not oppose this.
On the claimed LibDem wins:
- The school premium is good.
- The tax move a small step in the right direction.
- Alternative Vote is way, way too limited a reform. It only succeeds in blocking the worse Tory plans.
- Fixed term will come back to haunt this coalition.
But look at the Tory wins:
- Cuts will be rampant.
- The facile commitment to privatisation for an elite is symbolised by support for the schools that Sweden has abandoned because they do not work.
- The waste of Trident continues — utter folly.
- The tax commitment to married couples is simply offensive to those who make other, quite valid, lifestyle choices: a direct subsidy to the middle classes.
- And the Nasty Party won its way on immigration.
I woke up in the night and the reality of this situation flooded over me.
We’re in for a horrid time — but Mervyn King’s words echo in my ear — the winners of this election will not be re-elected for a generation. I continue to think he’s right.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
“•And the Nasty Party won its way on immigration”
Yes, how dare we have a controlled immigration system! How dare that people who have come here illegally shouldn’t be allowed to stay here!
Richard, your ideas have been defeated. Yet again. You must be getting used to losing. Your socialist dream lies in tatters.
It’s not good, but there weren’t a lot f choices. At the end of the day, the people gave more votes to the conservatives than to Labour or the LibDems. The LibLab coalition was never even a starter. They didn’t have enough seats.
The only choices were the LibCon coalition where naturally the Cons get more of their own way because they got 50% more votes than the LDs if nothing else or the option of letting the Cons form a minority govt. I preferred the latter but I can understand the alternative point of view.
Time will tell. Maybe it will be a disaster. Maybe not.
But there is no nice pretty non-Tory outcome from this election. I know some people say that the public would have preferred a LibLab deal. Well, they should have voted for it then!
@James from Durham
James
I agree – Labour could not form a government now
I argued as such from Saturday
It did lose
That’s democracy
But as the sheer nastiness of what the Tories plan becomes apparent the dividing lines in politics will become sharper – and next time there will be only one opposition
And others, like me (I admit) who voted tactically will not do so again
Mind you – we’ll win AV and won’t need to
I guess that’s some comfort
“the schools that Sweden has abandoned because they do not work. ”
Erm, Sweden has abandoned free schools has it?
I’ve certainly seen some muttering that there might be changes to the scheme….but not the announcement that they’ve abandoned them….
I don’t think anyone has a clue as to how this will play out, there’s something wrong with you if you’re waking up in sweats over something Mervyn King said. This might be the most effective government in 50 years, putting through more beneficial legislation to the country than any other, or it might be a disaster; I’d start considering these possibilities more as quantum states rather than fixed points in time, horrid or otherwise.
Neither you or I, Nick nor Dave (or Mervyn) knows what will happen, so I’d suspend these predictions until we do, because you might be worried about nothing at all. I’ve always had an inherent fear of the Tories, but I’m not so sure we’ve got a Tory government; it’s a lot weirder than that and nobody has any useful experience than can shed light on what may happen next, let’s wait and see. We don’t really have any other option; if we start waking in the night seeing horrid futures, people might think we’re deluding ourselves.
Richard, I have to say that I have largely gone along with many of your thoughts, but just recently you have let knee-jerk reactionary emotion get in the way of clear logical and open thinking. The last few days must indeed be very painful for you.
I spent lunch today with a recently retired (but healthy) life-long socialist. He commented that he would never see a Labour Government again in his life-time. He continued to provide his reasoned thinking.
When you next come over to the Isle of Man you’ll have to come for lunch.
Obviously no-one knows how this will play out but as a starting point I’d suggest that Labour’s vote was several percentage points down on this election from what it would have been if they’d had a decent leader. Loads of people didn’t vote Labour because they couldn’t stand the thought of another 5 years of Gordon Brown. And even then, the Tories only managed 36% of the vote, and couldn’t get an overall majority.
I think the coalition will have some kind of honeymoon period (particularly given it has friends all across the media) but when the going gets rough – as it surely will; and once Labour has a new leader and is being nice to those left-wing Lib Dem voters (most of them I think) who didn’t vote Lib Dem just to prop up a Tory govt, we’ll see Labour at around 50% in the polls.
The chap above who referred to New Labour as a “socialist dream” – er… if only?