It seems the launch of the new Liberal Democrat website is not going very well. Apparently the party of tuition fees and Nick Clegg is ‘untrusted’. ‘What should you do?’, it asks. Lib Dem HQ will be hoping most people do not click ‘Get me out of here!’ come 2015. With their recent overtures to Labour, those that do vote yellow should certainly ‘understand the risks’.
Nick Clegg’s comments on Radio 4 about the possibility of a coalition deal with Labour in 2015 are significant, not because the Deputy Prime Minister is airing the possibility of the Lib Dems striking a deal with the left rather than the right, but because of his shift in rhetoric. Clegg was perfectly clear in his ‘No, no, no’ speech at the party’s 2013 autumn conference in Glasgow that the Lib Dems could do a deal with either party and would tone down the excesses of a Tory or Labour-led government. But his language back then annoyed some people. He said: ‘Labour would wreck the recovery. The Conservatives would give
Just when the Lib Dems thought the Lord Rennard row had calmed down, the peer announces that his lawyers have demanded that he be reinstated as a member by Thursday, or he will take legal action. His spokesman has confirmed that a ‘pre-action protocol’ has been sent to the party which notifies it that certain individuals will be sued if Rennard’s suspension is not lifted. Contrary to some reports, neither party president Tim Farron nor any other individual is named in the letter: it is simply notifying the party that individuals responsible will be sued for costs as the Liberal Democrats cannot be sued as a party. It is highly
What are the Coalition parties going to do for the next few months in the run-up to the general election? Judging by the way the Liberal Democrats have behaved this week, they’re going to spend a great deal of time talking about Michael Gove, which isn’t encouraging for anyone who got a little bored of that particular ding-dong around the time of the childcare debacle. They’re certainly not planning to do much in the way of legislating, either. At today’s Business Statement in the House of Commons, Angela Eagle mocked Andrew Lansley for announcing very little in the way of government business: ‘I thank the Leader of the House for
‘I know a few people who could arrange just that,’ remarked a Tory MP this morning on reading Danny Alexander’s remarks in the Mirror that the Conservatives would reduce the top rate of tax to 40p ‘over my dead body’. He told the newspaper: ‘The top rate of tax has been an issue of late. Labour wants to take it back up to 50p, I think the 45p rate is the right place to be. I wouldn’t go to cutting below 45p – that would happen over my dead body. It’s better to say we are going to stick where we are.’ It’s worth pointing out that Alexander only means
The row between the Lib Dems and Conservatives over Ofsted has taken a curious turn this morning, with Lib Dem MP David Ward, not particularly well-liked by the leadership, appearing as a party spokesman on the Today programme. Given this is about someone’s fixed-term contract not being renewed (any voters who are bothering to pay attention to this row will wish a similar fuss was made when the same thing happened to them), it is, as Fraser said on Saturday, an entirely manufactured row designed to appeal to that very specific group of voters Nick Clegg is trying to court. But this row does raise an interesting question about the
David Laws’ attack on his former BFF Michael Gove is leading the news bulletins today, and rightly. Its wider significance lies in that the Liberal Democrats have decided it’s time to start picking fights not just with Tories in general but Michael Gove in particular. So Gove, having offered all that hospitality to David Laws, finds the guy he thought was his clansman wield the dagger on the instructions of his commander. This isn’t quite Westmister’s equivalent of the Glencoe Massacre, but the dynamics of the coalition have changed – in precisely the way that James Forsyth outlines in his political column this week. The LibDems’ support halved soon after
The Tories and the Liberal Democrats are increasingly going their separate ways. But they’ll stay in government together until the election is called. As one Whitehall Lib Dem told me recently, ‘We’re not in a coalition now. We’re just cohabiting’ During the immigration bill, it was striking how Tory Ministers abstained on the Raab amendment while Lib Dem ministers voted against. Indeed, if there had been more votes, there would have been more coalition splits for the government had agreed to suspend ‘collective responsibility’ on various amendments. Oddly enough, though, this distancing is one of the reasons why the coalition looks likely to go the distance. In this week’s magazine,
[audioplayer src=’http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_30_January_2014_v4.mp3′ title=’James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the state of the coalition’ startat=1275] Listen [/audioplayer]Without any fanfare or formal announcement, the government has moved into a new phase. ‘We’re not in a coalition now. We’re just cohabiting,’ says one Liberal Democrat. ‘We’re a sexless couple. We live in the same house but sleep in separate bedrooms.’ The two parties are governing together but pursuing increasingly separate agendas. As this Lib Dem source puts it, ‘They’re doing what they want and we’re doing what we want.’ This separation is a product of the fact that both sides want to fight the next election as distinct parties. This is particularly imperative
There were a million people who voted Labour in the 2005 general election but not in 2010, when the party fell from a 66 majority to 48 seats behind the Tories. Thanks to the Lib Dems’ spiteful rejection of boundary changes that would have helped their coalition partners, the 2015 poll is already rigged in Labour’s favour by about 30 seats, so the number of floaters who have to be won over to give Miliband and Balls a working majority is likely to be well down in six digits rather than seven. No doubt Labour’s pollsters know how many to the nearest thousand, and have them segmented and profiled to
You just knew Lembit would make an appearance sooner or later, didn’t you? I only noticed this morning, reading back through some of the weekend papers I’d missed. Anyway, as the Rennard scandal spreads ever wider within the Liberal Democrats, step forward minxy Hannah Thompson, a former ’schoolgirl activist’. According to Hannah, when she was seventeen Lembit Opik somehow acquired one of her shoes and, referring to her as ‘Cinderella’, wouldn’t give it back until she kissed him. Who’d a thunk it. On another occasion he also invited the young lady to share a mudbath with him. Who could resist that? A mudbath with Lembit? And also – of course
When I was promoted to being editor of a programme at the BBC, back in the late 1990s, my line manager came and talked to me in a deeply mysterious manner for a number of troubling minutes. He was wary and elliptical and I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. There were things you could do as a deputy editor, he told me, that you couldn’t do as an editor. But he didn’t tell me what those things were, those things which I now couldn’t do. I just sat and nodded wisely. Only later did I realise that this was his ‘Don’t shag the staff’ speech. That was
More unwanted drama for the Lib Dems. Portsmouth South MP Mike Hancock’s son has been filmed allegedly assaulting a photographer outside his father’s home, with Hampshire police saying that ‘a reporter received an injury to his nose’. The alleged assault by Hancock’s 37-year-old son comes just as the MP is suspended from the Lib Dems following a leaked report into claims of sexual misconduct towards a female constituent. Mr Steerpike can only begin to imagine how delighted the Lib Dems will be to hear about this latest episode.
Mike Hancock has been suspended this afternoon as a Liberal Democrat councillor following the leak of the report into his conduct. The report, which was published in a redacted form, does not make comfortable reading at all, with some very unpleasant allegations from the constituent about his behaviour towards her, including that he forcibly kissed her, ‘asked for a wank or a quick suck’ and that he asked to be ‘the first one to road test drive’ her after a hysterectomy operation. You can read the report, sections of which have been redacted, here. Its author, Nigel Pascoe QC, has already expressed his concern about the redaction: ‘I have now
Well done Lord Rennard for not saying sorry. I thought at first that he should, just to get the whole thing over with, to partially placate those monstrously transgressed women who may once have had their personal space ‘violated’ by the bloke. But that was wrong. Stick to your guns and tell them to get stuffed. The Met Police found no case to answer when they investigated these allegations. An internal Lib Dem inquiry headed by a QC found similarly, despite Nick Clegg’s hope that it would nail the poor bugger and give him a convenient escape route. Now that the inquiry has said no action should be taken against
It’s been a while since the Liberal Democrats commanded quite so much media attention or quite so much space on the front pages. If all publicity were good publicity, the volume of coverage that the party is receiving from the Rennard scandal would do wonders for its poll rating. But that’s not how it works, and particularly not when your top brass has spent months trying to tell voters that the Lib Dems are so very grown up, mature and thoughtful that they’d make any government better. It’s a little more difficult to see this party as the special secret ingredient in a good coalition when all the talk is
The Tories have always denied rumours that they might give their coalition colleagues an easier ride at constituency level in the 2015 general election. But even though all three parties are very much on an election war footing now, the Conservatives have, strangely, yet to select candidates to fight two of their favourite ministers. The constituencies for Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander currently have no candidates, along with 28 others (including MPs the Tories aren’t quite so keen on working with in Coalition, such as Lynne Featherstone), while the other 27 have candidates in place. Alexander is easy to work with in the Treasury (I reported before Christmas that he’d
As the bell announcing the afternoon sittings in Parliament rang across Westminster, the Lib Dems announced that Lord Rennard will have his membership of the party suspended pending a new disciplinary procedure for failing to apologise to the women who he allegedly behaved inappropriately towards. A spokesman said: ‘Nick Clegg made clear last week, and again this morning, that it would be inappropriate for Lord Rennard to resume the Liberal Democrat whip unless he apologises. Lord Rennard has refused to do so. ‘The Regional Parties Committee, which oversees disciplinary procedures under the English Party membership rules, today decided to suspend Lord Rennard’s membership of the party pending a disciplinary procedure.
Nick Clegg has in the past few minutes made clear that unless Lord Rennard apologises for his behaviour towards women in the party, he will not regain the Liberal Democrat whip. A party spokesman said: ‘Nick Clegg is of the view that as long as Lord Rennard refuses the very reasonable request from Alistair Webster QC to apologise that it is inappropriate for him to rejoin the Liberal Democrat group in the House of Lords. Nick has communicated this to the Chief Whip and Leader of the House of Lords group. ‘In addition, a growing number of party members have come forward to make representations to the party that Lord
Alistair Webster QC has decided that the threshold for disciplining Lord Rennard for sexually inappropriate behaviour could not be met, and that the allegations could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Webster’s statement can be read on Lib Dem Voice, as can a statement from Lord Rennard. It is the stomach turning arrogance with which Rennard says he will return to the fold that makes the blood boil the most. No apology, no contrition, just a brazen told-you-so attitude, as if nothing has happened. His legal representative, Lib Dem peer Lord Carlile, does him no favours either. Carlile has condemned the party membership for their response to Lord Rennard, and said