This weekend was my first visit to the city of Liverpool, and although it is difficult to get much of sense of place from the context of a party conference, I had quite a few instinctive Londoner prejudices torpedoed within the first few hours of arriving.
Part of that was the evident forest of cranes and cool buildings along the Albert docks. Part though was the attitude of some of the Liberal Democrat Councillors currently running the City. As part of a party policy review we were lucky enough to sit down with some members of the Regeneration team who explained what had been done since the days where some parts of the city had unemployment rates of 70%, and what they were intending to do in future.
It was less what they said, although the list of projects was impressive, more the attitude and the way they said it that struck home. One of my key worries with politicians, particularly at a local level, is that they become so institutionalised by their positions as leaders and manager of public services that they lose sight of how dependent those services are on a functioning and successful economy.
In Liverpool on the other hand there appears to be a laser-like focus on attracting and retaining new business and becoming a global city once again. Their regeneration programes are not simply about better managed decline through new community centres and enhanced welfare services but building up world-class educational institutions, business parks, transport infrastructure, retail centres and other bodies that generate the tax revenue on which high quality public services depend. Much of this is a result of EU funding.
Their goals were about building a sustainable economy, and restoring aspiration and hope, not just running Save Our {insert failing public service here} campaigns. That I think is refreshing, and quite the opposite of the 'mawkish sentimentality' Conservative Mayoral candidate Boris Johnson's magazine the Spectator accused the city of wallowing in, in 2004.
In that respect the Conference itself was interesting. New party leader Nick Clegg brushed aside the bad press over Europe in the week with good humour, and got on with articulating his vision and policy agenda.
On the vision side he has made it clear the Liberal Democrats will not engage in coalition deals with the other two parties, following the next election, unless there is a serious prospect of constitutional reform. Unusually for a Liberal Democrat he hasn't tied this down to specifics such as changing the electoral system or decentralisation, simply that there should be 'a new kind of politics' and proposed a way of getting there.
Although it is uncomfortably unclear exactly what this means, he's probably right, at this juncture, to be calling for a dialogue on reform not a shopping list. There are numerous ways the UK could be made more accountable to all of us, but to achieve that will require some degree of cross-party consensus not Liberal Democrat purism. In calling for no deals today he is sacrificing short-term careerism for long-term consensus.
Much of the rest of vision reiterated themes raised in his leadership campaign. Personalising public services, resisting Labour's database state, removing barriers to opportunity in health and education, and the green agenda. All were illustrated with very personal examples. This was a good speech.
On specifics the picture was more mixed. Party conference passed a change in our health care policy that will enable locally elected health boards to manage hospitals. A welcome increase in accountability. Not though without a typically parochial spat about whether or not Councillors should be automatically entitled to some places or the whole thing should be run by the local authority. The party's local statist wing is still uncomfortable with the idea that decentralisation means empowering people rather than just empowering local politicians.
The party also experimented a little with using policy for grabbing headlines by calling for a cut in the VAT on fruit juice paid for by increasing alcohol duty. The policy is trivial and makes little sense in the wider context of the party's tax simplification and fairness agenda, but a nice way to articulate how we might cut taxes on goods (like work and shopping) by taxing bads (like booze and fags).
Vince Cable, the party's shadow Chancellor, will also revisit the issue of taxation on high value homes. If his intention there is to do something about the problem of local income tax, in that it transfers income from hard-working young families who desperately need housing while benefiting wealthy pensioners to sit on large houses they don't need, it is welcome. If it's just another piece of tinkering that will encourage the very rich to transfer their homes into off-shore property companies to avoid the tax, and thus achieve nothing, it is not.
All in all then the party is moving carefully towards a more considered vision of what liberalism means in the 21st century and what a Liberal Democrat government would do achieve it. It is an evolution, not a revolution. There will not doubt be more mistakes like last week on the way, but many more successes and good ideas.
The challenge for our aspirational Leader though, is much the challenge for aspirational Liverpool City Council - how to communicate that sense of optimism and real change to the outside world. Mawkish sentimentality for a better-managed yesterday that never was, would clearly be an unhelpful distraction.
Part of that was the evident forest of cranes and cool buildings along the Albert docks. Part though was the attitude of some of the Liberal Democrat Councillors currently running the City. As part of a party policy review we were lucky enough to sit down with some members of the Regeneration team who explained what had been done since the days where some parts of the city had unemployment rates of 70%, and what they were intending to do in future.
It was less what they said, although the list of projects was impressive, more the attitude and the way they said it that struck home. One of my key worries with politicians, particularly at a local level, is that they become so institutionalised by their positions as leaders and manager of public services that they lose sight of how dependent those services are on a functioning and successful economy.
In Liverpool on the other hand there appears to be a laser-like focus on attracting and retaining new business and becoming a global city once again. Their regeneration programes are not simply about better managed decline through new community centres and enhanced welfare services but building up world-class educational institutions, business parks, transport infrastructure, retail centres and other bodies that generate the tax revenue on which high quality public services depend. Much of this is a result of EU funding.
Their goals were about building a sustainable economy, and restoring aspiration and hope, not just running Save Our {insert failing public service here} campaigns. That I think is refreshing, and quite the opposite of the 'mawkish sentimentality' Conservative Mayoral candidate Boris Johnson's magazine the Spectator accused the city of wallowing in, in 2004.
In that respect the Conference itself was interesting. New party leader Nick Clegg brushed aside the bad press over Europe in the week with good humour, and got on with articulating his vision and policy agenda.
On the vision side he has made it clear the Liberal Democrats will not engage in coalition deals with the other two parties, following the next election, unless there is a serious prospect of constitutional reform. Unusually for a Liberal Democrat he hasn't tied this down to specifics such as changing the electoral system or decentralisation, simply that there should be 'a new kind of politics' and proposed a way of getting there.
Although it is uncomfortably unclear exactly what this means, he's probably right, at this juncture, to be calling for a dialogue on reform not a shopping list. There are numerous ways the UK could be made more accountable to all of us, but to achieve that will require some degree of cross-party consensus not Liberal Democrat purism. In calling for no deals today he is sacrificing short-term careerism for long-term consensus.
Much of the rest of vision reiterated themes raised in his leadership campaign. Personalising public services, resisting Labour's database state, removing barriers to opportunity in health and education, and the green agenda. All were illustrated with very personal examples. This was a good speech.
On specifics the picture was more mixed. Party conference passed a change in our health care policy that will enable locally elected health boards to manage hospitals. A welcome increase in accountability. Not though without a typically parochial spat about whether or not Councillors should be automatically entitled to some places or the whole thing should be run by the local authority. The party's local statist wing is still uncomfortable with the idea that decentralisation means empowering people rather than just empowering local politicians.
The party also experimented a little with using policy for grabbing headlines by calling for a cut in the VAT on fruit juice paid for by increasing alcohol duty. The policy is trivial and makes little sense in the wider context of the party's tax simplification and fairness agenda, but a nice way to articulate how we might cut taxes on goods (like work and shopping) by taxing bads (like booze and fags).
Vince Cable, the party's shadow Chancellor, will also revisit the issue of taxation on high value homes. If his intention there is to do something about the problem of local income tax, in that it transfers income from hard-working young families who desperately need housing while benefiting wealthy pensioners to sit on large houses they don't need, it is welcome. If it's just another piece of tinkering that will encourage the very rich to transfer their homes into off-shore property companies to avoid the tax, and thus achieve nothing, it is not.
All in all then the party is moving carefully towards a more considered vision of what liberalism means in the 21st century and what a Liberal Democrat government would do achieve it. It is an evolution, not a revolution. There will not doubt be more mistakes like last week on the way, but many more successes and good ideas.
The challenge for our aspirational Leader though, is much the challenge for aspirational Liverpool City Council - how to communicate that sense of optimism and real change to the outside world. Mawkish sentimentality for a better-managed yesterday that never was, would clearly be an unhelpful distraction.
2 comments:
The problem is that you don't need to travel far from the city centre to see that the strategy of the Council simply isn't having a trickle down effect on the city's poorest areas - rather the opposite.
I don't think you can simply concentrate on glitzy, showy examples of economic development - community development has to be part of the picture as well.
I don't disagree Mike, but the main focus must surely be on job creation in the private sector. Public sector / community worker jobs without a real tax-generating economy to support them are treading water at best and destroying jobs elsewhere through high taxation at worst.
Further the figure I've been given for unemployment in Liverpool City Region as a whole is 5-6%. Still higher than the national average but nothing like the 70% that areas like Toxeth suffered in the 80s. Is that not a sign of general improvement?
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