A Fresh Start for Britain

The party has published a key paper which is to be debated at party Conference in September.

A Fresh Start for Britain sets out our priorities in the run up to the General Election and how we intend to go through the process of prioritising our spending ambitions in the light of the mess the economy is in.

The document set out on the website is, in effect, the introductory section setting out the main themes we want to concentrate on: Creating a sustainable economy, Building a fairer society and Cleaning up politics.

I an confident that it does a pretty good job of setting out a platform that the party can unite around, draws on previous policy development but is at the same tme honest about the reality of the financial situation.

The full document which will go to conference will also include a lot more detail summarising our key policies across the whole range.

Alex Wilcock has written a lot more about it than I will (in fact I think his blog piece may well be longer than the document!) but makes some very good points.

He is right that 'freedom' is not as prominent as it might have been, but readers will be reassured to know that that is not because there are any plans to drop or change our policies on the issue.

He is also right that the real debate will be about prioritisiation. In a tight financial situation, which spending commitments will be included in the actual manifesto? Let the debate begin ...