Liberal democrats

One interesting nugget from Lord Ashcroft’s latest batch of polling is what his focus groups in two seats – Sutton and Cheam, and Elmet and Rothwell – had to say about the parties’ messages. Here’s a quick summary: Conservative: ‘Finish the job and get back on track’. Labour: ‘Vote Labour to save the NHS’, possibly adding ‘and stop the cuts’ or ‘and tax the rich’. Liberal Democrat: ‘Vote Lib Dem to balance the extremes – to split the difference’. Ukip: ‘Leave the EU and control immigration.’ Greens: ‘Vote Green to save the planet.’ Ashcroft was also struck by the cut-through achieved by the Greens’ now-defunct policy of decriminalising membership of

Nick Clegg always seems oddly upbeat when he’s doing interviews about just how badly his party could do in the General Election. Today when Andrew Marr asked him about Iain Dale’s prediction the Lib Dems will lose at least half their seats, Clegg said ‘I really don’t think thats going to happen’ and that ‘we will do so much better than the pundits are predicting’. The Lib Dems currently have 56 seats (the 57th, Mike Hancock, had the whip withdrawn last year), and this election forecast suggests they’ll end up with 27. The sense in the party is that this will be just about OK, but go much lower than 25 and

After Vince Cable was ditched last week as the Liberal Democrat’s main economic spokesman, Mr S is pleased to hear that he still has some titles left to his name. Word reaches Steerpike that a number of staff working with the Business Secretary, who has a PhD in Economics, have been advised to refer to him strictly as Dr Vince Cable in written correspondence. ‘We were a bit surprised that Vince Cable won’t do as that’s what we are used to but it apparently has to be Dr Vince,’ a mole whispers. A Liberal Democrats source says that far from coming as a request from the business secretary himself it’s official guidance that in formal correspondence politicians are referred

Vince Cable will tomorrow lose his job as Liberal Democrat economy spokesman for the election, Coffee House understands. The party is set to announce its team of leading spokespeople for the General Election and I have obtained names in advance. Cable’s demotion in favour of Danny Alexander has been expected for a few months now. The Business Secretary will speak for the party on business. A well-placed source indicates that Lynne Featherstone will continue covering home affairs, Jo Swinson is due a job of some description and it’s likely that Baroness Susan Kramer will continue speaking on transport. However, there will be no role for Kramer’s colleague in the Lords, Baroness

Nick Clegg has clearly had an exciting Christmas. He used his first press conference of the year to talk about people playing footsie, exes leaving late-night voicemail messages, frantic January sales shopping and body parts. He was using all these vivid images, dreamt up while he was working out how to deal with Labour’s ‘decapitation strategy’ in his own constituency, to make a pitch for him to remain in power for as long as possible. Forever, hopefully, but at least after the next General Election. The Deputy Prime Minister warned repeatedly of the risks of ‘having a parliament which is held hostage, every hour and every day and every week,

According to a recent YouGov poll, Nick Clegg has an overall rating of minus 54, making him more popular than the hapless Ed Miliband by just one point. While that wouldn’t appear to be much to celebrate, the Deputy Prime Minister seems to actually be in denial about his own standing amongst the British public. In the first ever joint interview he has given with his wife Miriam, Clegg is asked whether his wife’s ‘huge fanbase’ ever causes an issue given that his own reputation has ‘taken a kicking over the past four years’. ‘I also have a great fanbase,’ Clegg replies, looking rather hurt. In the interview, which appears in

Next year’s general election looks like being the most gruesomely entertaining in years. Entertaining because no-one knows what is going to happen; gruesome because of the protagonists and the sorry misfortune that someone has to win it. All we can say for certain is that the Lib Dems will receive a doing. I still don’t think that person will be David Cameron. In part for reasons previously detailed here. The single biggest thing preventing a thumping Labour victory is Ed Miliband. This is, it is true, a sturdy peg upon which the Tories may hang their hopes but it still may not prove sturdy enough. Not least because, by the standards

MPs are often fond of complaining that they are ignored by senior figures in their parties as orders are passed on from central HQ with no explanation or opportunity for backbenchers to discuss strategy. Yesterday’s mess over Labour’s internal memo advising MPs on tackling Ukip partly explains why that high-handed approach often happens. Emailing strategy documents to MPs is like leaving a toddler in a freshly painted room with a set of marker pens and expecting to come back to find everything in pristine condition. There is a reason why such papers should be numbered, handed out in a locked room for discussion and collected at the end, if you don’t

David Cameron is talking about the ‘great, black, ominous cloud’ that Labour’s economic plans would put over the British economy. Labour is talking about its immigration policies while trying not to talk about a document that suggests it shouldn’t talk for too long about them. The Lib Dems are complaining that the Tories would damage children’s futures. It’s beginning to feel a lot like a general election, even though we’re still quite a way away from it. This is one of the benefits for political parties of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act that is sucking all the life out of Parliament itself. They are now permanently on the campaign trail, even

A recent email from Samantha Cameron started an intriguing debate in the Prime Minister’s social circle. It was an invitation to a Christmas party at Chequers and word quickly spread on the Notting Hill grapevine that the PM was convening an unusually large gathering of friends at his country retreat. So, the guests wondered: were they being asked around because the Camerons were having a last hurrah at Chequers, sensing that they would be evicted by the electorate? Or was the bash being thrown because they were in celebratory mood, convinced that the political tide has turned their way? This confusion is understandable. We might only be three months away

Nick Clegg is taking Prime Minister’s Questions today, which will at least force the Lib Dem leader to turn up to a major Commons session, rather than bunking off to Cornwall. It’s not just good timing in terms of sorting out Clegg’s truancy rate, but also because Coalition ministers have been taking public pot shots at one another for the past week. Labour will want to exploit those divisions, but Clegg is unlikely to find many Tory backbenchers rallying to his cause, either. The behaviour of the Lib Dems has reminded a lot of Conservatives of their desire to sack the Lib Dems from the Coalition – a desire they

Jeremy Thorpe, the former leader of the Liberal Party, has passed away aged 85, after suffering from Parkinson’s disease for many years. Thorpe will unfortunately be best remembered for the affair that ended his career, involving a former male model and a shot dog. The Spectator’s Guide to Political Scandals explained what happened: ‘Thorpe was a dashing young Liberal MP, elected in 1959 aged 30. A former president of the Oxford Union, everything was falling into place for him. But in 1961 he met Norman Scott, a troubled individual who would plague Thorpe for the rest of his life. Scott claimed that Thorpe had sex with him, an act that would have been illegal at the

One notable absence on the government frontbench during the Autumn Statement today was Nick Clegg, who is in Cornwall today. The Deputy Prime Minister is in Cornwall today, visiting a number of different places, all of which seem to be in Lib Dem constituencies. A source close to Clegg points out that he already knew what was in the Statement, that Danny Alexander was there, adding: ‘He just sits there so he would rather get out in the country and talk to people about what the Autumn Statement means for them.’ It’s quite impressive that it has taken Clegg so many years of sitting on the government frontbench and trying

How did an amendment brought by a Lib Dem backbencher to an uncontroversial bill wind up with the government sustaining its first proper defeat? Today Greg Mulholland’s changes to the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill which would allow pub landlords to buy beer from whatever company they liked rather than the company who owns their premises passed 284 votes to 269. The Times’s Sam Coates reports that the minister responsible for the Bill, Matt Hancock, was seen grovelling to the Prime Minister for the defeat, which everyone involved regards as entirely unnecessary. This is the first proper defeat because it is the first time the government has lost a vote without

Lynne Featherstone is to return to the Home Office to replace Norman Baker as Minister of State for Crime Prevention, Nick Clegg has announced. This is interesting because Damian Green named Featherstone as one of the ministers who worked effectively rather than caused trouble. The minister herself said this afternoon that she has ‘always had a very constructive relationship with Theresa May’, so perhaps the deliberate strategy of antagonism is over for a while. At least we know what the Tories think of Baker’s departure. At Treasury Questions today, George Osborne slipped in a cheeky reference to his former Coalition colleague, saying: ‘There’s now a vacancy, because the hon. member

Norman Baker has resigned as a Home Office minister tonight. Baker has quit, blaming the difficulties of working with Theresa May and the squeeze that ministerial office has put on his time for his decision to go. Baker describes working with May as like ‘walking through mud’.   Baker’s departure is not to be lamented. At the Home Office he has been pushing for the decriminalisation of drugs, a thoroughly dangerous policy that would be disastrous for society. Baker claims that this is evidence-based policy making, and cites the Tories failure to follow this evidence as one of his reasons for quitting. Indeed, his resignation is, in a way, the

Speaking at a south London primary school this morning, Nick Clegg firmly reiterated the Lib Dems’ equidistance between the two other major parties. Before an assortment of public-sector workers, Clegg attacked the potential ‘reckless borrowing’ of Eds Balls and Miliband, as well as George Osborne asking ‘the working poor to bear the brunt’ of cuts. ‘In the centre,’ he said, ‘my party, the Liberal Democrats, we believe in sound public finances, supporting strong public services.’ Stop me if you’ve heard this before. What was (sort of) new was Clegg stating that, ‘once we’ve balanced the books, clearing the so-called structural deficit, the Liberal Democrats will increase public spending in line

At his press conference this morning, Nick Clegg told Jason Groves, ‘Do you really think Washington is going to bother picking up the phone if we can’t even punch above our weight in our own back yard?’ This must be one of the most absurd bits of political hyperbole in recent years. There’s an argument to be had about whether or not Britain would be less influential in Washington if it left the EU. But the idea that the Americans wouldn’t bother to even pick up the phone to a country that’s a permanent member of the UN Security Council is just risible. One of the real problems for pro-Europeans