LIB DEMS SPRING NO SURPRISES

The Lib Dems launched their manifesto today, and I've now read it. (It's online here.) Not a lot to get excited about, I'm afraid: what you'd expect on Iraq, Europe and constitutional reform plus promises of a new 50 per cent top rate of income tax and abandonment of council tax, the Department of Trade and Industry, tuition and top-up fees and the Child Trust Fund (Gordon Brown's savings handout to 18-year-olds). Some of the fiscal policy is daft: there's no good reason to tax income rather than wealth at local level, and I can't see what's wrong with the Child Trust Fund. But there's nothing here to stop Labour supporters voting tactically for Lib Dem candidates where the Lib Dem is best placed to beat the Tories (click here).