“A Fairer Country” – Lib Dem Manifesto

Following on from the two big boys the Lib Dems published their manifesto yesterday. Somewhat ironically, the party that’s been the loudest critic of the big banks and their role in the economic downturn chose the heart of the City of London to have their press launch.

The overall message seems to be “trust us”; there is no marketing wet dream slogan to stand behind. The party described this as a “serious document for serious times”. The Lib Dems have been preaching the “change for people” and “building a fairer Britain for a number of years, and quite successfully at times too.

First examination and the party seem to have put a lot of effort into differentiating themselves from the Conservatives and Labour. Perhaps more work on showing how they can actually afford their promises would be nice.

The biggest “bribe” is no income tax paid on the first 10K/year. Add in raising pensions in line with earnings or inflation (why this is not done already just disturbs me) and the usual more police/smaller classes promises and it’s a large hole in tax revenue and additional costs that has to be filled from somewhere.

There is some tax raising proposals in the mix. First was to tax homes above 2 million pounds, followed a levy on bank earnings to help pay for the support they’ve had over the last year. Some tax credits for higher earners were also to be scrapped under the Lib Dem plans.

There are notes about public spending cuts and some nice tables at the back. Restrictions on public sector raises along with stopping the ID card program, not replacing the Trident and a few other things are part of the opposed cuts. Not sure if this adds up to the 15-17 billion a year required to pay for the promises.

Interestingly there were no pledges to keep income tax or VAT at current levels. In fact the manifesto makes it clear that tax raises may be required to reduce borrowings, but that it’s a last resort and the big focus will be on cutting spending. One big point of differentiation was talking directly about the deficit and that the borrowed money has to be paid back somehow.

The public sector savings proposed are substantial and first glance makes it tough to confirm that the numbers add up, this does create something of a credibility issue, but if the party set out to make sure people knew they were different from Labour and the Conservatives they did a nice job.