What to make of the Lib-Dems? The only major party (if you can still call them that) with a sane policy on Brexit but with a manifesto that makes it hard to imagine their being elected.
Brexit: A second referendum once the terms are clear. This one’s a no-brainer really, as the other parties will probably discover when the time comes. The problem is likely to be that, while the Lib-Dems can continue to call for it, someone else will actually need to do it. What they haven’t been able to do is create a credible rallying point for Remainers. Had they done so, they might have been in line for government instead of trying to become the ‘official opposition’.
The big headline for the Lib-Dems, once Europe is out of the way is the extra penny on tax. This sounds as realistic an approach as any to the problems of social care and the NHS but it’s hard to imagine the voters volunteering to pay when Labour are promising that only rich people will and the Tories want to send the bill to the dead.
Lib-Dem proposals for the NHS and Social Care broadly seem good. They want to integrate the two systems and making the raising and monitoring of spending on health and care transparent seems to make sense, as much because they aren’t promising a disruptive revolution as for any other reason.
Like the other parties, the Lib-Dems want to focus on education. They’re very precise on what they want to do for school and pre-school education, less so for universities (‘a review of higher education finance … to consider any necessary reforms) and adult education (‘aim to meet all basic skill needs … by 2030’).
On the economy, the Lib-Dems make some excellent points in criticising the Tory record since 2015. The Tories ‘risk the long term future … by limiting vital spending on infrastructure ad creating an over-reliance on consumer spending fuelled by debt’. Their own proposals are less earth-shaking - ‘major capital investment’ and elimination of the deficit, together with more taxes collected more effectively. There are also proposals to make pay more transparent, to promote worker participation and ownership, and for regional development and devolution.
There’s some well-intentioned stuff on the Green agenda – home insulation, low carbon energy and ‘green jobs’, waste reduction and better use of resources. A whole chapter deals with supporting families and communities – free child care, house building, young person’s bus discounts, devolution, culture and sport.
The Lib-Dems are also focussing on some of their traditional values of openness and internationalism. They want to roll back the state, improve crime, policing and the sentencing system, be open to the world, accept refugees more readily, contribute to aid and international efforts. They would like proportional representation (of course) and more devolution at national and local levels.
As always with the Lib-Dems, one gets the feeling that their heart’s in the right place. They mean well but the overall impression from reading the manifesto is that they lack clarity and focus. There isn’t a clear single message and, even on Brexit, this is very much a rearguard action.
What they should have done was to say clearly that, if elected with a majority, they would pull the plug on Brexit. Constitutionally, in the UK, parliament is the final authority and a general election trumps a referendum, so they would have been within their rights and, if every Remainer voted Lib-Dem and the Brexiteers split between Labour and Tory, they would have won.
That isn’t where we are, though. As things stand, it looks as if any substantial Lib-Dem resurgence is a pipe dream. A vote for the Lib-Dems may well turn out a protest vote and a protest vote is a wasted vote.
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