Will the real Liberal Democrats please stand up?

There are two articles on the Lib Dems and the widely expected VAT rise in next week’s budget that show the party’s dilemmas

The first is from John Rentoul at the Independent on the fate of Australia’s Liberal Democrats after they supported a VAT rise by a Conservative Government Down Under and for many Lib Dems will make uncomfortable reading.

He writes ‘Not long ago, in a country far, far away, there was a party called the Liberal Democrats. They were a party of the centre, concerned about social justice and with the best green credentials of any in parliament. They did quite well in a general election, although they came third behind the two big parties. During the campaign they opposed the Tory policy on tax, but after the election they voted to support it. They never recovered. Eleven years later, they were down to 1 per cent of the vote and lost all their seats.

Welcome to Australia, where I have changed only one detail in this fairytale horror story of Nick Clegg's future. The party that now barely exists after its leaders betrayed its principles is called the Australian Democrats. In the election of 1996, it won 11 per cent of the vote. After the election, it held the balance of power in the Australian upper house, the Senate. Its senators provided the key votes needed by John Howard, the conservative prime minister, to get his Goods and Services Tax through. The GST, equivalent to our VAT, was a hugely divisive issue in Australian politics. Although the party leaders felt they should take a pragmatic position, making changes to the coverage of the tax, the party's members and voters saw it as an issue of principle, and they hated it.

He goes on to say 'Could someone just remind me what the Liberal Democrats get out of the coalition with the Conservatives? The personal allowance for income tax will be raised by a few hundred pounds, a cut that will be clawed back from other bits of the tax system. And the capital gains tax rise, which was Lib Dem policy, has been watered down so much in the pre-Budget haggling that there will be little left by the time George Osborne speaks. The lobby against CGT is one of the most inexplicably powerful in British politics, able to generate so-called news stories in the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph, which suggest that any tax on property or the sale of businesses is a Marxist plot to suffocate the entrepreneurial spirit of the second-home owner.'

The second is from Welsh Liberal Democrats Leader Roger Williams who told the Politics Show today that he does not support a VAT rise.

He called the Tax a "very regressive tax that falls most heavily on the poorest in society"

And went on to say ‘"I don't think this is ideological actually. This is dealing with the practicalities of a terrible situation that was left by a Labour government," he said.

"We have been left with a very large deficit and if we don't tackle that then the first thing that's going to suffer is public services and the second thing that's going is the poorest and most vulnerable in our society."

So will the Liberal Democrats really avoid the fate of other Liberal Parties and Junior Coalition Partners around the world?Any source