Amidst the economic doom and gloom (though all the forecasts are always wrong so who knows how things will look by 2015?), the politics of the coalition government remain interesting. So Danny Alexander’s performance on Newnight tonight was very interesting. The Chief Secretary of the Treasury told Jeremy Paxman that the Liberal Democrats were committed to the new spending and borrowing plans announced by George Osborne yesterday. Furthermore, the spending cuts announced for the first two years of the next parliament (though said plans can only be aspirational since they cannot, surely, bind the next parliament?) would be part of the next Liberal Democrat manifesto.
I doubt Tim Farron or Simon Hughes or even Vince Cable think this a good idea. Nevertheless, Alexander has committed his party to a further £30bn in cuts in the next parliament. This is brave, impressively loyal or foolhardy and, quite possibly, all three. I daresay Alexander can be disowned but the importance of the politics of all this should not be discounted.
At the Treasury and, I bet, in Downing Street they are preparing for some kind of non-agression pact with the Lib Dems at the next general election.
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