The Country Must Come First, Not Party Politics
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH – Editorial: For the sake of the nation, a deal should be struck, and quickly.

Nick Clegg and David Cameron face pressure to work out an accord swiftly. Photograph: The Sunday Telegraph
The ideal outcome from last week’s election, as we argued forcefully in these pages, would have been a government – preferably a Conservative government – with the mandate and majority needed to tackle the urgent problems that this country faces. We stressed that the haggling and uncertainty that accompany a hung parliament would make it all but impossible to restore the public finances to order, get a grip on immigration, reform the education system, and much else besides. Yet the absence of a strong government is about to cost us extremely dear in another way, too.

As we report today, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has persuaded other members of the eurozone that they can interpret a clause in the Lisbon Treaty so as to force every country belonging to the EU to contribute unspecified, and potentially unlimited, sums to bailing out insolvent members of the eurozone. It means that to keep the single currency going, in the event of future Greek-style collapses, Britain will have to write a blank cheque.

This cynical, underhand and anti-democratic move has been prompted by the stresses that the colossal budget deficits of the weaker members of the euro – Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy – have placed on the currency itself. Last week, France and Germany agreed that Greece should receive an emergency loan of 110 billion euros. The injection of cash is at most a stay of execution, not a solution to the problem, whose root cause is that Greece, being in the euro, cannot devalue its currency and so cannot make its exports competitive, and thereby earn the money it needs to repay its debts. The obvious solution is for Greece to leave the euro. But that would be a humiliation for Europe’s politicians and bureaucrats, for it would show that the fundamental objection to it – that it could not be viable across countries that are at such different levels of economic development ­– is correct. So, instead, they have decided that in future all the other members of the EU, including Britain, will foot the bill. >>> Telegraph View | Sunday, May 09, 2010

Nick Clegg Is the Candidate of Change
THE OBSERVER – Editorial: The Liberal Democrats offer a prospect of renewal which has been denied them by a grossly unfair voting system

The rotten parliament is dissolved; this week a new one will be elected. Scores of incumbents who fiddled their expenses will be evicted. Many who did not are standing down anyway, too defeated by the public's loathing of politicians to face the campaign trail.

So change is inevitable. Parliament will be full of novice MPs. It might also, if current opinion polls are borne out, be hung.

The Conservatives have spent much energy campaigning against that outcome. They have publicised their irritation that voters could deprive David Cameron of a majority much better than they have explained why he deserves one in the first place.

Mr Cameron warns portentously that a coalition might lead to instability, economic jeopardy and "more of the old politics". Perversely, he also rejects the need to change the current voting system, which has, he says, the merit of delivering clear results. Except this time it might not. What then? Mr Cameron's view is that the system would work fine, if only everyone voted Conservative. This is sophistry draped in hypocrisy. He backs first past the post, while agitating against one of the outcomes that is hard-wired into it. He is campaigning against the voters instead of pitching for their support. He defines change in politics as the old system preserved – but run by the Tories.

The expenses scandal signalled the need for more radical reform. This newspaper has consistently argued that the most effective change would be to introduce a fairer voting system. The current model contains a huge bias towards Labour and the Conservatives, giving them hundreds of safe seats where MPs can complacently ignore voters. Parties then divert money and skew policy towards a handful of tactically important constituencies. Awarding seats in parliament in proportion to votes cast would extend the franchise to millions of people who feel their voices have gone unheard. Deep unfairness radiates out of our voting system and corrupts our politics. This can only be fixed with electoral reform.

If a different system yields more coalition governments, so be it. Mr Cameron ought to appreciate how like coalitions the current political parties already are. Conservative policy expresses the party's agonies in recent years as different factions have competed to graft their priorities on to the leader's mutating creed. >>> Observer Editorial | Saturday, May 01, 2010

The Only Choice for Britain
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH – Editorial: The country needs a Conservative government with a strong majority in order to tackle the enormous challenges it faces, says The Sunday Telegraph

The general election this week offers the country the most significant choice for a generation. Ever since the financial crisis began, it has been clear that Britain faces enormous challenges over the next few years. The new government must stabilise the economy, reinvigorate the private sector and deal with a burden of debt and over-spending that could cripple the public finances. Yet the challenges are not just economic. As our poll today shows, voters are also worried about the consequences of immigration on an unprecedented scale, the state of their schools and hospitals, the weakening of civic society, our military involvement in Afghanistan, and the increasing tide of regulation from Brussels. Such problems demand a strong and vigorous government to tackle them. The question is, which of the parties is best suited to such a task?

Despite the parties' attempts to capture the all-important middle ground, the differences between them are clear. Labour believes that only the state can solve the country's economic and social problems. The Conservatives, by contrast, believe that the growth of the central state is the cause of the problem, not its solution, and want to call upon the invigorating power of citizens and communities. The Liberal Democrats seem to hover uneasily between those two positions: one of the difficulties that Nick Clegg has faced has been to explain exactly where he stands on the critical question of whether we need more or less government intervention in the economy and in our lives.

If you examine the Government's record, there is no doubt that the top-down, target-driven, statist approach has reached a dead end. Since 1997, Labour has added more than a million people to the payroll. Spending has increased by 3.2 per cent per annum, in real terms. Gordon Brown now talks of Tory efficiency savings as irresponsible cuts which will "shrink" or "take money out of" the economy. As David Cameron has rightly pointed out, this is to confuse the economy with the state. Usually, people are better at spending their own money than are officials: it is a basic conservative principle that they should retain as much of it as possible. This also helps stimulate the economy, which is why one of the most convincing Tory victories of the campaign has been their opposition – alongside much of the business community – to the tax on jobs represented by Labour's planned rises in National Insurance.

In defending this position, Mr Cameron has frequently pointed out that there is an enormous amount of waste in government spending that could be cut instead. He is absolutely correct. But efficiency savings, on their own, will not be anything like enough to deal with our abysmal fiscal situation. Mr Brown's reputation for prudence, for making the right decisions on economic issues, has been destroyed by his profligate spending. As a result of the shocking state of our public finances, we face a bleaker economic future than other, similar nations. >>> Sunday Telegraph View | Saturday, May 01, 2010

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