I have criticised Brent Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather for her silence on big issues like the John Kelly Schools rebuild. I suspect she will be also be silent on her Leader Nick Clegg’s desire for “savage” cuts in public services. According to the Guardian on Saturday, these may include means testing child benefit, withdrawing tax credits from the middle class (I will be interested in the specifics on that), a long term freeze on public sector pay and scaling back public sector pensions. They are even rowing back on the “scrap tuition fees” line that they have peddled for so long.
Teather meanwhile is still going round demanding more spending. As Housing spokeswoman she routinely calls for more public sector housing spending out of general taxation. More recently, she has argued that Brent is not getting enough money for schools. Since Brent got the second biggest increase in education spend in England this year that suggests a massive increase in school budgets, which would be simply unachievable. As always with Brent Liberal Democrats, they are saying what people want to hear and avoiding anything that might be unpopular.
Her profligacy in spending promises rather undermines her party’s attack on the Tories for an alleged £53 billion of unfunded spending pledges. If the Liberal Democrats were under more serious scrutiny la Teather would get into trouble for undermining her own party line like this.
Teather’s problem is that she represents a broadly Labour area where Nick Clegg’s semi-Tory approach does not go down well. Nick Clegg can’t, and probably doesn’t want to, want to adopt Teather’s approach. Partly, Teather always goes for easy populism and Clegg is trying to get people to take the Liberal Democrats seriously as a party of government. Secondly, the threat to existing Liberal Democrat seats comes mainly from the Tories. The kind of voters that the Lib Dems need to limit their losses next time round are the sort who like the “shrink the state” rhetoric of classical liberalism.
That really leaves Teather rather out on a limb in her own party.
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