Taking stock of the parties

September 2004

Party activists will be gathering over the next few weeks for that great British political tradition – the Party Conference.

Probably Lib Dems will have the happiest and most united time – having made solid progress over the past twelve months – winning two parliamentary by-elections, achieving our best ever local election results and getting a markedly improved opinion poll rating.

At the Labour conference, I suspect we will get mutterings from many of their MPs as to where exactly Tony Blair is leading them. This follows not only dodgy dossiers on Iraq and the £3.1 billion spent on the war but his failure to listen. People don’t, for example, understand why we can’t have a fairer way to pay for local councils based on someone’s ability to pay. Pensioners don’t understand, after a lifetime of paying taxes, why they can’t continue with their pension books or why their local post office has closed. Students don’t understand how they will afford up to £9000 in tuition fees for a typical three-year degree course. And patients don’t understand why they can’t get an NHS dentist.

At the Tory party conference, I suspect we will get the beginnings of speculation as to who will lead them after Michael Howard. I don’t think that people have forgotten that the Conservatives ran down our schools and hospitals and they still don’t trust them on public services. It was never, in my opinion, a good idea for them to have as their leader a right-wing Thatcherite who was responsible for the hated poll tax.

Over the next few months, the Lib Dems will continue to speak up for a fair deal for council taxpayers, pensioners, students and patients. We will be arguing for freedom from red-tape, so our nurses can nurses and our teachers teach and £5 billion to be cut from central government bureaucracy and invested in front-line services. And I believe that the more people learn what we stand for, the more they will support.