Exclusive (for now): Bloggers Interview with Nick Clegg Part I: Stimulate Growth by Cutting Taxes

This blog is closed and has moved to http://Charlottegore.com. See you there!

I'm not your typical Lib Dem. I drive to the Sheffield Cathedral, location of yesterday's Yorkshire and Humber Regional Conference in a hideously polluting Mazda MX-5 and, arriving in Sheffield I go straight to a McDonalds to get something to eat.

Painful memories of the last time I'd bumped into Nick were running through my mind. Would I be reduced to a giggling mess again? Pull yourself together, Charlotte, I told myself. That was a long time ago. Nick is now leader, and has been for a while now. I'm different too. I haven't spent the previous couple of months writing a blog gushing with praise for the man, trying desperately to persuade fellow members that he should be a leader.

This time I would try to reveal something about how he thinks, something I didn't already know.

I meet my fellow bloggers, the delightfully happy and relaxed Jonathan Calder, the lithe and sharp Joe Otten - a fellow blogger's interview virgin, and one rather peculiar furry creature called Millenium and his two "Daddies", Richard and Alex - both of whom seemed a bit intimidated by me. I'd would have tried to put them at ease but I was feeling distinctly uneasy myself. Should I really be here?

Nick arrives, in full 'I've just given a speech' mode. He seems full of pep today. We say hello: He shakes my hand and... phew. No giggling mess. Mission accomplished.

We walk through the conference centre part of the cathedral through the throngs of gathered Yorkshire and Humber based Lib Dems currently eating and plotting, plotting and eating. The business of regional party organisation seems very sociable indeed. Perhaps that's a part of the party I'm missing out on, being a grumpy, disconnected blogger. We enter a tiny little room with tiny plastic chairs, and the important business of warming up begins. Nick asks us all where we've come from. I makes me wonder: Are we like members of the public to him? Or ordinary party members? How should political leaders relate to bloggers? We are, after all, self appointed commentators who, in fact, nominated ourselves to attend this interview.

But we begin with Joe, who wanted to know whether or not our policy of tax cuts was still a good idea in light of the economic crisis. "Our policy of tax cuts for the poor was causing all sorts of discomfort for the Tories and their policy of 'the Cupboard was bare' was looking a bit foolish" he says. "But a lot of people are saying you can't offer tax cuts to people now, and the Tory position is picking up"

Nick fires back: "I think it's exactly the reverse. The one thing people instinctively know you can't do as you head into a recession is jack taxes up. If you want to stimulate growth, one of the ways - not the only way - but one of the ways is by cutting taxes."

Hallelujah. This is going to go well.

"Every economist will tell you," Nick continues, "that if you provide top down tax cuts to people at the top as the tories have done with their only tax proposal on inheritance tax, it doesn't help the real economy because they just salt away the difference. Bottom up tax cuts do help, they're socially just, they're clear and they help stimulate spending on the hight street because people on low incomes can have the money to spend it, so the economic logic has got greater."

But what about the Tory position?

"The Tories have backed themselves into a diasterous cul-de-sac."

Oh?

"There's no evidence that the Osbourne's message is filtering though. They've plummeted in the polls in terms of economic competence - hardly evidence of a message getting through to the public. They have basically said to themselves that their only purpose is to blame it all on Gordon, and that to do that they need to constantly go and on about how's he's spent too much in the past, therefore that allows us no flexibility to do anything now."

So they're wrong then?

"It's economically illiterate, because they're going on about government debt when the real issue in the british eoncomy is astronically high levels of private debt," he tells us.

"Government debt is a compariative science. how are you compared in your Government debt to other Government's debt is often the crucial thing, because that's what leads to runs on currencies. So I think they're wrong economically, they're picking the wrong target, they're fighing over the wrong bone - government debt. The real problem is private debt. People have got themselves into terrible, terrible trouble. One of the ways you help people get out of debt is putting money back in their pockets."

So Nick condemns the Tory's position as a Council of Despair that won't work with the voters. That's alarming from an 'anyone but Labour' point of view, but in the long term it may be best for Britain to live through the consequences of a 4th Labour term. They need to see for themselves just how bad things can get, just how wrong they are.

Joe isn't so happy though, and probes further. The Tories are saying you shouldn't loosen fiscal policy at a time like this!

"They're not even saying that," Nick replies. "They've simply accepted that borrowing going up."

Joe reminds points out that the Tories are trying to reclaim a reputation for being sensible on the economy, implying that by swimming against the stream might make us look irresponsible.

Nick doesn't hestitate. He's well briefed on this subject, which makes it all the more surprising that we've not heard all this from him before. "Of course you have to be fiscally responsible, but you do that over the cycle. But you've got to get growth going. That is the priority now."

"You don't rewrite every pound and pence of your public spending plans in the middle of a vertical decline of the National economy. That's something for when you go to the country in a General Election. What we're doing, quite rightly, is saying that in addition to value for money, accountability, we also need to question whether public spending is stimulating the economy."

He then goes on a bit of a shopping list of stupid Labour projects that waste bags of cash, which he describes as "daft."

"At precisely the time when millions of British families..." - They're back! - "...are tightening their belts, how government spends our money should be subject to even more scrunity than before."

I feel myself beginning to see the tightrope that modern political leaders must walk. Nick clearly feels that Labour and the Conservatives have completely the wrong solution for this economic crisis. They don't just have to amuse a couple of readers on a blog - they have to appeal to literally millions of people, where everything you say puts off as many people as it attracts. People are easily turned away and attracted with very great difficulty. The risks for going against "conventional" wisdom is too great. Our relative silence on this issue in the mainstream media may well be a defensive position.

Richard changes the mood a little by asking about old Twinkletoes. If Gordon Brown offered him the job of running the economy, he'd take it, yes?

"I don't think there's any question of that happening," Nick says and I breathe a sigh of relief. Every time Vince, as chancellor, would have to support ID cards as a result of collective cabinet responsibility... a thousand kittens would die of spontaneous and irreversible heart ache. It could not be allowed to happen. "If Gordon doesn't have the troops in the Labour Party to provide proper Government for this country, he knows what to do: Call a General Election. Vince has said it himself: We're not going to let ourselves be picked off by a Government that can't provide it's own answers, or it's own people."

Nick looks uncomfortable with this question though. It would not be the last time one of the "Two Daddies" puts Nick on the spot today.

"Nick," I say. "Here's an interesting question for you."

He turns to face me. I can feel it... the desire to giggle. It's growing. I choke it back. I've been mulling on my question for a week, going through lots of different possibilities. What could I ask that would help me find out something new about the Clegg's approach to politics?

To be continued in Part 2.

This blog is closed and has moved to http://Charlottegore.com. See you there!