Government and Money: Does Clegg really know the scope of what he is saying?

Clegg’s speech on political reform is most welcome, but I do wonder if he really knows the implications of what he is saying. If he does, I suspect he is withholding from view significant curbs to genuine reform.

Let me outline why I believe this is so.

First, let us look at the scope in his own words:

One: we will repeal all of the intrusive and unnecessary laws that inhibit your freedom.
Two: we will reform our politics so it is open, transparent, decent.
Three: we will radically redistribute power away from the centre, into your communities, your homes, your hands.

He says “all”, but then again he will be the one to determine “unnecessary”. I suspect Labour thought all those rules “necessary” for their purposes. The statement is therefore meaningless to me. We will have to see the detail and, more importantly, actions, to determine if this statement means what it implies (for it in truth says nothing).

As to redistribution of power, if Clegg was sincere the first shift would surely be to repatriate powers that have been handed over without consent to Brussels. Begin with that “localism” before regionalising England and emasculating Westminster.

I'm a liberal.
My starting point is always optimism about people.
The view that most people, most of the time, will make the right decisions for themselves and their families.
That you know better than I do about how to run your life, your community, the services you use.

We can only make those decisions if we are not chained by the wrist and ankles to everyone else in our community, and by this I mean a plurality of provision with no barriers to entry and no subsidy or preferential treatment. Unless we have such plurality, all you do is change one form of tyranny for another. To be frank, I do not believe Clegg wants plurality, but does consider it good enough to “allow” us to “have a say” in how monopolistic State services are “run”. That is NOT enabling us to make the right decisions and it removes one of the most powerful driving forces for improvement that comes from individual choice - choice to refuse.

In terms of the Panopticon, again the punch is meant to look like it lands, but it could just as easily be pulled:

We won't hold your internet and email records when there is just no reason to do so.

Who defines the “reason”? A meaningless statement again. We need to ensure the need for a warrant to gain access to such information. Maybe this is the intention, but you would have thought it would be worth mentioning. Without such a safeguard, all it does is provide a veneer of respectability. Let us wait and see.

And, we will, of course introduce safeguards to prevent the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.

Maybe the best “safeguard” would be to add it to the list of laws to be repealed?

But I now move onto the really earth-shattering point, one which I do not believe Clegg has realised – money and vested interests.

Much of it serves a hugely important function, allowing different organisations and interests to make representations to politicians.
But let's get real: this is a £2bn industry, where, according to some estimates there are MPs who are approached by lobbyists a hundred times every week....
And that activity needs to be regulated properly and made transparent.
Which we'll do, for example, by introducing a a statutory register of lobbyists.
As long as money plays such a big part in our politics, we are never going to curtail the tyranny of vested interests.

I really do not believe Clegg understands how broad “money” and “vested interests” truly is in this context.

“Money” is, in this context, “Government Spending of Taxpayers money”. “vested interests” are all those who receive it, or are likely to.

Money in itself cannot cause damage from lobbying, for when I spend my own money I am “lobbied” by advertising companies. It is my own decision to spend. I cannot be bribed with my own money. However, if someone is spending another’s money, the lobby can divert some of that to the arbiter or a cause the arbiter supports and corruption then occurs. If another decides who gets someone’s money, the benefactor need not concern themselves with the person paying for it all.

Money is only a problem when it is not spent by the person earning it. This is a big problem for Government and one could say exponentially worse for “Big Government”.

We saw an example of this very problem as Clegg left the hall at the end of his speech. Clegg was booed by students protesting about a perceived threat to the EMA (Educational Maintenance Allowance). There you have it, a vested interest. Plain as day. Those receiving EMA have a vested interest in maintaining it. They will lobby Government, protest, disrupt.

As the cuts come, as they must do, we will see countless groups who want their rice-bowl preserved. Yes, the corporate lobbyists are a big, big problem and largely the fault of the State wanting to commission and regulate too much. But bigger problems facing us are the vested interests of those directly dependent on the State machine itself.

If the State refuses to play ball with, say, Capita, what is Capita going to really do? If it does not play ball with the vested interests of public sector workers, that is something else and I do not need to go into any detail about what can and, regrettably, is almost certainly going to happen in that direction - widespread industrial action.

If Clegg truly wishes to deal with vested interests caused by the money in government, he has to grasp a bunch of nettles.

First he must understand that we have to reduce the scope of the State in terms of what it commissions and also what it regulates. Regulation is like motherhood and apple pie to vested interests. It embeds incumbents, puts up barriers to entry and favours the big vs the small, and we know the big organisations are the ones most capable of exerting influence in a lobbying environment. Supervision is a very different kettle of fish to regulation and that would be a small but important shift.

The less the State does, the less money it spends and the less money for the taking. The less it commissions, the more the private sector has to compete openly in the market. Compete, not for some monopolistic contract tender with a public body – and the State prefers monopolies, it being one -,but moment by moment, person by person, choice by choice in real time. It hates that, for it means it has to work hard and justify itself. Winning a cosy contract is far, far easier. Few, if any, new upstarts or innovators with their pesky disruptive technologies are going to get a look-in in a State tendering process.

If Clegg truly believes what he says, he has to realise that the State must not only reduce the amount it commissions and gatekeeps, but should also back out of direct provision and micromanagement of Health and Education and a lot more besides.

Once you get plurality and independence, lobbying in those sectors changes enormously. Individual entities are responsible and accountable for their decisions directly. Unlike under a State monopoly, they have no guarantee of custom and another provider not daft enough to adopt an expensive or unpopular solution, will steal a march on them. In addition, the workforce is no longer employed by the State but by a plurality of independent entities. That vested interest is no longer able to interact with an entity spending other people’s money, but directly with their local employer that is spending the direct receipts from customers. Localism, Nick. It will make the interactions and negotiations far less coercive, more responsive and more rational. Those who think not better try and explain how the oppose is true!

There are plenty of other areas which cannot be so easily disentangled from the State machine, and that means the vested interests need to be dealt with at even closer range, but dealt with they must be.

So, if Nick Clegg is serious about tackling the influence of money on Government, he has to significantly reduce the size, scope, influence and income of the State. Not just centrally, but at every level. There is no sustainable way to reduce the influence otherwise. The State has to reduce not by £6bln here or £3bln there, but, very rapidly, by hundreds of £billions. The timing is very good to do this, for it is also absolutely necessary purely from a funding perspective.

Though he saw some of the vested interests heckle as he left at the end of his speech, have the scales fallen from his eyes for him to truly see them for what they were?


Unfortunately I doubt it. I think Nick believes it is only “nasty business” that lobbies, distorts and negatively influences Government and thus robs the taxpayers of their hard earned income.

Let us wait and see.

UPDATE: Within the speech Clegg touches on party funding, but offers no solution. It is known that there is a desire to have State funding of Political Parties by the bankrupt or near bankrupt big three. If so, that would surely be a issue of "money" involving the "tyranny of vested interests" (the incumbent parties) that "want Government to stay closed, opaque, easily captured". All what I have said above about vested interests would apply to the main Parties. If Clegg is sincere, he will reject any moves to increase State funding and, in contrast, should move to end it so Parties must earn their income from their members and other donations. Do not hold your breath.