Today Nick Clegg has called the IFS Report on the coalitions CSR cuts 'distorted' and a 'nonsense'. One should perhaps put aside the fact that when it was politically expedient Mr Clegg (and Mr Osborne) had a bit of higher opinion of the IFS than they do now, after all we all know about Nick's damscene conversion since May and perhaps the collapse of a Greek think tank has given him cause to see lunatics throwing shite at graphs where once he saw an independent authoritative body. What are his grounds for his criticism? He states:
"I think you have to call a spade a spade. We just fundamentally disagree with the IFS. It goes back to a culture of how you measure fairness that took root under Gordon Brown's time, where fairness was seen through one prism and one prism only which was the tax and benefits system. It is a complete nonsense to apply that measure, which is a slightly desiccated Treasury measure. People do not live only on the basis of the benefits they receive. They also depend on public services, such as childcare and social care. All of those things have been airbrushed out of the picture by the IFS."
This of course is true, people do not live through the 'prism of tax and benefits' alone, life is much more complicated than that. However the IFS isn't talking nonsense as Nick says, in fact in the words of the most deluded group of people in the world since One True Voice were told they'd make it as teeny bop twats, they agree with Nick. This isn't what they are saying, they are saying that changes to the tax and benefit system are regressive. Nick's claims are NMFRP. Not My Fucking Remit Pal. Their claims about the figures are as true as Nick is lanky, and Dave is laminated. Of course they don't take in the whole bloody picture. They're not fucking meant to, and anyway Clegg's claims that childcare and other funding will make up for cuts to the poorest seem slightly dubious at a time when councils are cutting 7.1% a year from their budget, education spending is despite being ringfenced going down in money per pupil and his own feted premium is now just shuffling money around the schools system. Since Nick's remarks a plethora of ministers have trotted out a similar line to Nick, though one which is even flakier. Chris Grayling has stated that welfare reforms will mean more people in jobs. On the whole Coalition types have made an one basic argument against statements like the IFS's: It doesn't take account of the fact we're fucking brilliant, and everything's going to be ok. Essentially Nick Clegg's singing the lyrics to Money Can't Buy Me Love but in the pub singer style.
Where he's wrong is in the importance of an analysis like the IFS's and as I'm sure he must know, the daftness of his objection. The strength of the IFS is that it's independent. It looks at cold hard figures, all things being equal, which words like 'regressive' and 'progressive' taxation refer to. Clegg is essentially saying that the IFS should build into their analysis the fact that he's right. That would be brilliantly independent wouldn't it Nick? Secondly we have the oldest political mistake in the book (apart from killing your father to marry your mother perhaps.) This is to claim that announcements are achievements. Has the benefit reform got anyone back into work yet? No didn't think so. Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and co. are free to argue that this may happen, but should it be built into an independent statistical analysis? Lastly there is the fact that if one includes not just benefits in kind but their social consequences one opens up a bear pit for notions of 'fairness' . How for example will 30% in policing affect the poorest who live in the most crime ridden areas? Won't cuts to legal aid possibly leave some counting massive costs as the courts are closed to them? Will the coalition's policies bring the poor out of poverty by starting a new mass industry of 'I hate Nick' T-shirts and 'Osborne is a cunt' wallpaper? The TUC has produced a report saying that if one includes benefits in kind the poor will pay 15 times as much as a % of income as the rich. Now of course their report could be wrong, these are issues more complex than what must be going through Lib Dem Activists consciences at the moment but it shows how one could in fact argue quite the opposite. That is why the IFS report is important, because it doesn't contain the politics, it doesn't have the trumped up claims, it looks at simple figures, a basic starting point. One which shows that all other things being equal the poorest do pay the most. Instead of calling the report 'nonsense' Clegg should be putting forward his political arguments as to why these figures are the case, and how his government will compensate those who lose out with these mythical better services, rather than calling them nonsense like a child trying to claim it hasn't wet the bed when there's piss dripping evereywhere. That or he could persuade his Tory mates to get that tax money off Vodafone, that might be able to change the sheets.
