And the pigs and the men looked just the same... What Edwin Starr and Orwell tell us about the Lib Dems

" The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which." (George Orwell, final paragraph of Animal Farm)

What are the Lib Dems for?

Let’s be charitable (oh, go on!), most people who voted Lib Dem thought that they would get a more honest approach to policy that is usual in the UK bipartisan system. Some people in Wales voted for Lib Dem policies appeared to be left-leaning. Bearing those things in mind – the public perception of honesty and a left-leaning social policy, are we seeing the birth of a progressive force in UK politics to reward all that hope?

Let’s take honesty first.

On Trident, Tuition Fees, even their totemic policy of Electoral Reform, they have rolled over and all that for the sake of sharing 20 jobs in Government among fifty odd MPs. They’ve contradicted themselves on the imposition of a Secretary of State for Wales by supporting the appointment of Cheryl Gillan. Their policy of reducing tax on the first £10,000 earned will be adopted but over five years – if the government lasts that long.

And what of the Welsh leadership of the Lib Dems? During the election campaign, I took part in a question and answer session at Coleg Sir Gar in Llanelli. The Lib Dem candidate, as ever was missing but had sent his boss, Kirsty Williams. Time and again, she claimed that obtaining fair funding for Wales was a key concern of hers and her party and that a fair share of the cake could only be obtained by the Lib Dems.

So, how can her position possibly be squared with this week’s announcement by the ConDem coalition that Wales will receive no more funding at all? The cuts will bite as deeply as the Tories insist and with no fair funding to mitigate the worst effects. Some would say that when your party’s leadership in London ignores your position so blatantly, there is only one honourable thing to do…

But irrespective of the fate of individual politicians, are we seeing a new progressive politics? Many of the policies that the Lib Dems have dumped, were precisely those that appeared to define them as left of centre. Most tellingly of all, the first decision of the ConDem coalition was to cut a further £6 billion from public spending, on top of those cuts already announced by Labour.

This tells us where the balance of power lies in the ConDem coalition. The Lib Dems had been certain that deep cuts would threaten economic recovery– something that we in Wales, with our small private sector and our dependence on public sector jobs - understand very well indeed. Leading economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, David Blanchflower and even Thatcher’s economic guru, Patrick Minford agree that the only sustainable way to deal with a deficit is to ensure economic growth. The Lib Dems used to understand that too. But Vince Cable, the new Business Minister now jokes about his own duplicity to the staff of the department he had sought to abolish (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8680746.stm). So now we know that the Lib Dems have thrown away their moral compass and that for crumbs from the Tory table.

The General Election forced the hands of the Lib Dem leadership to make a defining choice. Their choice was to move the centre of UK politics to the right. Only two weeks into this coalition, nobody can spot the difference between Liberals and Tories.

Libs? Huh? What are they good for? Absolutely nothing.