Politics

Nick Clegg’s tuition fees nightmare was never going to be over after the Commons vote. Nick Clegg’s tuition fees nightmare was never going to be over after the Commons vote. Even if every Liberal Democrat MP followed him into the ‘aye’ lobby, it would still not change the party’s policy on the issue. That fight goes on. The Lib Dem Federal Policy Committee has already shown that it plans to make the Deputy Prime Minister go several more rounds. It declared recently that the abolition of fees remains party policy, whatever its leader might say. At the next Lib Dem spring conference, a motion will almost certainly be tabled (and

When The Speaker called a division, the Labour side roared a passionate No while the coalition benches delivered a rather muted Aye. I did not see a single Lib Dem open their mouth at this point. Instead, they sat on their benches looking emotionally exhausted. Even those Lib Dems who have been proved right in their warning about the party’s position on fees—notably, David Laws and Jeremy Browne—appeared downcast.   In the end, the government won but with a much reduced majority. 21 Lib Dems voted against the coalition, as did six Tories. Simon Hughes abstained despite Ed Miliband’s entreaties to come with him into the no lobby.   This

The Big Society never really went away as a theme, but it certainly became a less insistent catchphrase after the general election. The Tories were no doubt stung by the ambiguous response their invitation to government, and felt that the early days of coalition government were not an opportune moment to reheat their central election message. Months went by where the words “big” and “society” barely made any contact at all. That changed with David Cameron’s conference speech, of course. And, since then, the Big Society has been back, loud and proud. Only this week, Philip Hammond was talking about a “Big Society approach” to dealing with the snow. Nick