Should it be a two-way street?

I went to the Lib Dem conference in 2004. It was in Bournemouth and it was my first ever political conference. I hasten to add that I was sent there officially by the Tory party – but I came back having filleted a few ideas from the mish mash that they had proposed.

Sadly by that point the Tories’ overall direction was pretty much set in stone. This time though it could all be so different.

Let’s go back to the rationale for Eric’s love-bombing. If someone cares about civil liberties, social mobility and opportunity, aspiration, the environment… they could vote Lib Dem and risk having a Labour government (especially if Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and Ming Campbell get their way). Or they could vote Conservative this time and make sure that there’s a loud and decisive voice saying to the Tory party ‘THIS is what we want’ and we expect you to deliver.

So that’s one side of the equation. What about the other side? Should the Conservatives be looking at some of the Lib Dems’ policy ideas?  I think so. Not all, not many, but some could have some roots in sensible ideas.

In an ideal world, we might want to look at their proposals to take all income under £10,000 out of the tax system. Apparently that would cost £22 billion, so won’t be happening tomorrow.

But – maybe, like Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare proposals, the upfront cost actually saves the Exchequer money in the long run. For example, people earning under £10,000 a year will get at least some of the 50-odd types of benefit currently on offer. As we all know only too well from the spectacularly untrustworthy EU accounts, every time you administer money, you lose some of it.  So maybe leaving it where it began – in people’s pockets – means it will achieve more than it could by going to the government and then back again.

I don’t know. I don’t know the figures. But in principle, I think this is an idea we could look at, especially if introduced with the IDS proposals. It’s simplification, it’s giving people more responsibility, it’s removing complicated backwards and forwards – it’s very new Tory.

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