Lib Dems - not a serious political party

Matthew Bowles has an interesting CAPX take on the Lib Dems. It is familiar in that we know we shouldn't take Lib Dems seriously, but also a worthwhile reminder that the Lib Dem smoke and mirrors approach to reform is standard across the UK political arena.

   

The Liberal Democrats don’t understand growth

• The Lib Dems' hare-brained scheme to abolish the Treasury is style over substance
• Britain has an abundance of pro-growth rhetoric, but an extreme shortage of pro-growth policies
• If their last manifesto is anything to go by, the Liberal Democrats are determined to throttle growth

The Liberal Democrats have announced that they want to abolish the Treasury and replace it with a new ‘Department for Growth’, supported by a separate department for public spending. On the face of it, this sounds radical, even refreshing. Britain’s economy has stagnated for over a decade, productivity has broadly flatlined (especially in the public sector) and living standards have barely recovered since the 2007/08 financial crisis. If the Treasury really is part of the problem, why not scrap it?

But as with so many Lib Dem policy announcements, the ambition dissolves on contact with detail. Strip away the rhetoric and the proposal looks less like a serious growth strategy and more like a rebranding exercise, which leaves the party’s underlying policy instincts firmly intact. Simply having a department for something doesn’t make it so.

The whole piece is well worth reading because so many political proposals are merely rebranding wheezes like this one, a standard way to evade reform rather than (clutch those pearls!) actually carry it out. 


The truth is that Britain does not suffer from a lack of growth rhetoric, but from an excess of anti-growth policies. High marginal tax rates, a labyrinthine planning system and endless red tape have combined to suppress economic dynamism for years. Addressing that would require political choices that governing parties of all stripes have shied away from in recent years.

None of this precludes reforming the Treasury. But reform must follow strategy, not substitute for it. Otherwise, the overarching risk is that Britain ends up yet again with the same policies, and the same stagnation, just administered by a shinier department with a more fashionable name.