Is it time to take the Lib Dems seriously?

By Contributing editor Emily Hohler Sep 19, 2008

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The Liberal Democrats "discard leaders like other people chuck out their old socks", says Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. But Nick Clegg looks pretty safe. At his debut conference in Bournemouth this week, he focused most of his fire not on the Tories – the Lib Dems' traditional target – but on the Labour party. This has "huge implications" for British politics. Clegg believes Labour's model of top-down social democracy has run its course, and a number of " frontbench heavyweights" are behind him, says Nicholas Watt in The Guardian. The Lib Dems voted strongly to support Clegg's "landmark" Make It Happen document, which would pave the way for £20bn of public spending cuts and allow the party to cut 6p off income tax.

We haven't had the chance to take the Lib Dems this seriously for 15 years, says The Independent on Sunday. The odds of a hung parliament at the next election are higher than anytime since at least 1992, when John Major was returned by a narrow margin. Clegg, his Treasury spokesman Vince Cable, and his Home Affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, are an impressive bunch, and the "central thrust" of Clegg's tax policy – to cut income tax, especially for the lower-paid, and introduce green taxes – is right. Clegg's acknowledgment that some of Labour's public spending is wasteful suggests he, alone among party leaders, has understood what "at root, is wrong with our economy", says Simon Heffer in The Daily Telegraph: we are living beyond our means.

Clegg's attempts to "carve out a position" that is distinct from the Tory urge to "shrivel the state" and Labour's "compulsion to central control" is also practical, says Rawnsley. But the irony is that by repositioning his party to the right, he is probably helping Cameron across the threshold of No 10. Not necessarily, says The Independent on Sunday. A hung parliament is a real possibility. Clegg, Cable and Huhne may well sit in a future Cabinet. If so, they'd be "likely to contribute to a better government than either of the larger parties could produce alone".

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Published in Economics | More articles by Emily Hohler

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