Danny Alexander on coalition tensions, the economy, and ginger-hair

I’ve interviewed Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, for this week’s magazine. It’s a long, wide-ranging conversation, covering coalition relations, the economy, Liberal Democrat election strategy and ginger-hairedness.

In terms of today’s news agenda, there are a couple of lines to pick out. Alexander stays firmly against the idea of cutting the 50p top rate of tax any time soon.

At a time when the whole country faces serious financial challenges, the priority needs to be people on low and middle incomes.

Alexander also suggests that the Lib Dems will fight the next election calling for further tax cuts at the bottom of the earnings scale. The party is already implementing its policy of raising the personal allowance to £10,000 over the course of this parliament. Alexander thinks it should be even higher.

I don’t see why, in the next parliament, we shouldn’t be trying to get to a situation where people in a full-time job on the minimum wage are paying no income tax at all.

That amounts to a personal allowance of around £12,500.

On another issue making headlines at the moment, Alexander fires a warning shot across the bows of Tory eurosceptics. When asked whether he thinks the crisis in the eurozone is an opportunity to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with Brussels, he was adamant:

We should be redoubling our effort, not looking at this as an excuse to further an agenda of weakening our ties.

He also insisted his Tory colleagues in government would not acquiesce to their backbenchers’ anti-EU demands:

I haven’t heard anyone within government express that view and I think it’s completely wrong.

I went on to ask him if he thought David Cameron, George Osborne and William Hague had been on “a journey” towards greater pragmatism in terms of Britain’s relations with the EU. He thought a long time before answering with a cautious affirmative.

In the history of Britain’s role in Europe, if you go back to aftermath of the Second World War, Conservatives in government recognise that their job is to advance Britain’s national interest and Europe — the European Union — provides an important forum for doing that. I don’t think this government is any different in that respect.

True, perhaps. But not what a lot of people in the Tory party want to hear.