Jim McConalogue: The coalition is failing, so let the voters decide its fate

Some Conservatives seem to hold the belief that we must maintain the coalition because it is they who will deal with the deficit.

I believe that is simply not true – the coalition is not dealing with the deficit but is simply using it as a tiring mantra to keep the Government together.

If dealing with the deficit was vital, as the Government continues to maintain, then why have they not dealt with it?

Instead, they have been slashing the jobs of nurses and police officers, dressed up as efficiency savings, in pursuit of private reforms which nobody voted for.

When I say nobody voted for them, I mean they are in the coalition agreement, which is about as much a manifesto as a copy of The Sun (except The Sun would probably get more votes).

The UK has the third biggest budget deficit in Europe. Public sector net debt, even when it excludes financial interventions, was £910.1bn (or more than 60 per cent of GDP) at the end of April 2011. This compares to £765.5bnn (53 per cent of GDP) as at stood at the end of April 2010. In April, for example, the UK government borrowed £10bn which is the equivalent of £333m every single day. How is that controlling the deficit?

The latest YouGov/Sunday Times survey shows that only 35 per cent think the Government is managing the economy well, down from 50 per cent last June.

The “feel-good factor” – the proportion expecting their financial situation to improve over the next six months minus the proportion expecting it to worsen – has deteriorated to minus 56, which is tragic compared with the minus 19 recorded during last year’s election campaign.

Put in context, the survey also found that 54 per cent disapprove of the Government’s record to date – only 32 per cent approve giving a net score of minus 22. Just 23 per cent think “this coalition Government will be good for people like you”, down from 41 per cent last June.

What is the coalition doing with the nationalised banks? Keeping them going. And that costs the British taxpayer.

What is the coalition doing with the financial crimes caused by bankers who helped create this crisis? Letting them off with a wrist-slap banking levy of about £1.9bn, which is £600m short of the £2.5bn outlined by the Chancellor, and less than the £2.3bn secured by Labour the previous year. That again has cost the British taxpayer dearly.

We have a significant British exposure to EU multi-billion pound bailouts, as agreed by Alistair Darling and on which Chancellor George Osborne agreed – on a tenuous legal basis which the House of Common’s own European Scrutiny Committee referred to as “legally unsound”.

We are continuing to be liable for those bailouts up until 2013, with exposure to the failings in the eurozone economies, including Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

The Cabinet has then gone on to ring-fence or increase areas of public spending – particularly for aid – which the two coalition partners can agree on, rather than any areas that may be in the national interest.

As the Taxpayers’ Alliance said of Department for International Development ring-fencing after the Spending Review: “It has the obvious consequences of deeper cuts elsewhere and is usually more about political posturing than the interests of taxpayers.”

At the time, the coalition then increased the DfID resource budget by 37 per cent over the period. If it had chosen to freeze the budget in cash terms over the period, as happened with the science budget, and as the Taxpayers’ Alliance have indicated, it would save £3.7bn.

The coalition chose not to. The automatic coalition defence line on all policy matters – we are dealing with the budget deficit – simply does not add up.

I believe there is a very big and real problem with the deficit. But I just don’t believe in using it as a propaganda tool creating a web of deceit in order to legislate for rubbish, second-rate, Liberal Democrat-made laws to perpetuate a failing coalition.

Coalition MPs involved in the pledge to “deal with the budget deficit” – by purging the nation of police officers and nurses while throwing vast amounts of public money away elsewhere so as to curry favour with the coalition partner – must turn away from the coalition on this basis.

They must stop putting coalition politics before the national interest and key aspects of the British democracy which belongs to their voters. In that way, the solution to the problem will become self-evident: that the coalition must be dropped, a General Election called and a genuine new government formed.

Jim McConalogue is a Westminster-based political analyst.