I would assign a significant proportion of the wider problems we have in this country, and in particular with politics, on one issue: the effective two-party system.
The Conservative and Labour parties have become so used to ping-ponging power between each other that politicians have become increasingly separated from what is going on outside in the real world. In fact, they've spent so long in each other's company that these days it's hard to tell them apart.
With Labour now just as corrupt as the Tories were after their long time in power, you have to ponder whether this circle of power isn't in fact a descending spiral.
We have a good tradition in this country of a third party coming in around every 100 years and kicking the stuffing out of the other two for being grotesquely self-satisfying. It seems as though we may be reaching that point again.
You can ask virtually anyone on the street these days what they think about Tony Blair – our prime minister – and they will tell you they don't like him and don't trust him. Most of it, of course, comes from the huge lies and continued pretence over the Iraq war.
A particular bugbear for a large number of people – at least those that have actually looked at the fine print – is the issue of ID cards. The number of time that politicians have attempted to force ID cards on this country is staggering. And finally this time it is a paranoid Tony Blair-led government that has got it past the House of Lords.
The Lords, it appears, has taken a pragmatic route – it has hit a compromise on the introduction of ID cards until 2010. It has thrown the ID card bill back no less than four times and it knew that Blair would sooner or later use the Parliament Act – such is his rampant ego and detachment from reality. So the Lords is hoping that the delay will supply sufficent time for people and politicians to look at what these cards really mean and pull the whole Bill apart before it has time to be instituted.
The big thing with both these issues is that Her Majesty's Opposition has been absolutely hopeless in performing its job. The Opposition's job is not to play political football until everyone gets so fed up with the government that they get back in – it is to act in the country's best interests in holding the government to account.
And on the Iraq War and ID cards, the Opposition has failed monumentally. The Tories are only interested in the Big Switch and yet whenever they have a spare minute they despair, apparently without irony, at why the country doesn't listen to politicians anymore.
Which leads me to my main point: it's time the third party came in and shook things up. The LibDems are a bit of a mess but they have one advantage – they aren't afraid to make decisions based on what they and large sections of the country believe, rather than make calculated political decisions on the basis of how it plays against the government.
A very large number of people that I speak to are looking for someone to vote for but don't see than anyone is of much interest. I think the LibDems could remind this country of its history in shaking politics up. And I think it could do that by trumpeting the same two things every single day until the next general election:
1. We will end ID cards legislation
2. We will introduce a 49 percent tax for anyone earning over £100,000
It's that simple. If the LibDems repeat, every single time, that they will repeal any ID card legislation and they do it with enough vigour, suddenly people will start to wonder why they are so exercised about it. And then all the hidden unpleasantries will be forced into the spotlight and, I believe, the UK will realise that this just isn't the way we Brits do things.
The second point is absolutely fundamental. I don't understand for the life of me why the LibDems always half-apologise for this high-tax band plan. They should shout it from the rooftops. Whenever anyone criticises them for causing a “brain drain” or whatever – ask them the question: “Why, do you earn over £100,000?”
Get people asking the question: do I earn £100,000? No. Do I know anyone who earns over £100,000? No. Hang on, who the hell are these people earning over £100,000?
What about a huge bloody billboard: Do you earn over £100,000?
And at the same time why not point out, again and again, that it is only the money people earn **over £100,000** that is taxed at the higher band.
At the same time, the LibDems should go in very strongly about how it is a 49 percent tax. Not, the idiotic 50 percent tax band they have now. No, a 49 percent tax band. And why? Because the LibDems believe that no one should ever have to pay more than half their earnings in tax.
That way, the LibDems have a stated principle, denying the doom-mongers that will argue that first it's 49 percent, then it's 60 percent. No, it is 49 percent and it will never be any more. Done.
And, in case no one had noticed, at least 95 percent of people in this country don't earn over £100,000. And in our democracy, each person has a single vote.
That's my manifesto.