Liberal democrats

The Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather has decided to stand down at the next election. I realise that this will not be a popular view on here, but I think that’s a great shame. She has been an unflinchingly principled, honest and always thoughtful MP; in essence it is the nature of the coalition which has convinced her that modern politics is a foul and dispiriting business. There’s a case to be made that she’s in the wrong party, mind, but that’s the only real criticism I could level at her. She’s been attacked for her decision in the Daily Mail by that screeching agglomeration of recycled opinions and epic

Sarah Teather’s decision to stand down at the 2015 election won’t surprise many people who know what a battle the Lib Dem MP would have had to hold onto her Brent Central seat. Her majority is only 1,345. But her public reason for standing down is interesting, too, even if some may suspect that the battle for Brent held more sway. Teather is an example of the Liberal Democrat party getting used to government, and, in the politest way possible, growing up. Her anger at some of the party’s policies has led to her feeling ‘desolate’, she told the Observer: ‘If you have fallen out with your party, if you

Conservatives have been returning to their Westminster offices this week to find the wind behind them. Something suddenly seems to be going right: there’s good news on the economy, jobs and immigration and Labour seems to be in gentle meltdown. The idea of an outright majority in a 2015 election suddenly seems a lot more plausible. Which is why ministers and advisers are so dismayed at reports last week that David Cameron was planning for a second coalition after 2015. Just when a Tory election victory seemed possible, the Prime Minister has been mulling over a change in party rules so that MPs could vote on a new coalition agreement.

So both the Lib Dems and the Tories have yielded to the inevitable, and passed on the Joan LB Edwards donation to the Treasury. Their responses were swifter than even critical friends might have expected. The Lib Dems were first out of the starting blocks in the race to the moral high ground by announcing they’d be writing a cheque to the Treasury. But before Nick Clegg even had time to start recording a new autotune version of ‘I’m Sorry’ about how ‘we took a donation that we couldn’t possibly keep (but frankly could have done with given the state of the party coffers)’, the Tories decided they had to

A Conservative Home poll, which found that a majority of activists believe that the coalition is good for Britain, is the latest little boost for David Cameron, so says Paul Goodman. The Tories are having a good the summer; confidence is building. Yet there is, as numerous commentators and MPs are keen to stress, some way to go before the party can think of a majority. This means that the Lib Dems, who are likely to hold the balance of power in any future hung parliament, deserve some attention. There is not much meaty polling about the attitudes of Lib Dem activists; but, what there is, is quite telling:   Clegg and Co (or

Last month, David Cameron convened a meeting of his most important advisers at Chequers. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Conservative party chairman were all present, but there was little doubt who was in charge. The Australian strategist Lynton Crosby was dominant, doling out orders and drawing up ‘action points’. One of those in the room recalls: ‘Lynton was fantastic. He made sure there was an agenda, that everyone stuck to it.’ It might seem odd for an Aussie to be telling the British PM what to do, especially in this most English of settings, but it’s mainly because of his nationality that the ‘Wizard of Oz’ gets to

The Trident Alternatives Review hasn’t even been published and already the Conservatives are attacking any proposals the Liberal Democrats might have cooked up to water down the nuclear deterrent. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman told the morning lobby briefing that the Prime Minister has ‘seen no evidence that there is a way of providing an alternative to a like-for-like replacement’ of Trident, while in his Daily Mail article today, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond says ‘there is no alternative to Trident that provides the same level of protection and ability to deter an aggressor’. So the challenge for the Liberal Democrats is to present this review, which has been lead by Danny

MPs from all parties who want a referendum are meeting this week to discuss how to get a pledge into the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos, I hear. The All-Party Parliamentary Group for an EU referendum will meet tomorrow, partly to look ahead to James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill on Friday, but also to draw up a strategy for a referendum commitment from the other two parties. Speaking alongside Wharton at the meeting will be Labour’s Kate Hoey and Lib Dem John Hemming, who backed John Baron’s Queen’s Speech amendment. Labour donor John Mills, who the Times reports this morning as warning that his party could lose the next election

Liberal Democrat leaders are used to having to do more to get noticed than the other party leaders. But it is still striking just how much the Deputy Prime Minister is doing to try and inject himself into the national conversation. Joining Nick Clegg’s weekly phone-in on LBC is a monthly press conference. One of the reasons Clegg is doing all this is to try and drain away the anger created by the compromises of coalition and, specifically, the broken promise on student fees. After 23 press conferences, even the lobby will tire — or so the Lib Dems hope – of asking Clegg about the U-turn on tuition fees,

David Laws’ decision to hand Liam Byrne’s infamous ‘there’s no money’ note to ITV  is intriguing. It suggests that the Liberal Democrat leadership intend to escalate their attacks on Labour. Laws must know the power of this image. For when he first mentioned it at an early Osborne/Laws press conference, Andy Coulson pushed hard for an image of the actual note to be released. Coulson calculated that the note would have made nearly all the front pages and established the image of Labour profligacy in the public’s mind. But Laws, slightly taken aback by the level of interest in the note, refused to hand it over. At the time, friends

The Treasury is keen to downplay any sense of drama surrounding the spending review. On Marr this morning, George Osborne declared that he was ‘confident’ that he and Vince Cable would agree the BIS budget ‘in short order.’ He emphasised that the differences between them were not that large. Indeed, I’m informed that the differences between Treasury and BIS are over capital not current spending, making them easier to resolve. Osborne and Cable have only begun to speak directly in recent days. Up until Thursday, Osborne had been leaving the negotiations to Danny Alexander. Despite Osborne’s protestations, it looks like the BIS budget will go down to the wire. Cable

Both Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg delivered speeches to their party faithful today about being realistic about 2015. Miliband’s speech, briefed as ‘tough’, was the latest in his series of attempts to tell voters that they can trust him: he wouldn’t borrow more than this government… well, no more ‘day-to-day spending’, which is his way of saying he would actually borrow more for capital projects. Clegg wanted to tell his councillors that they can’t see May 2015 as the month when they all get to breathe a sigh of relief and return to their local authority fiefdoms without any of the inconvenience of their party being in national government too.

It is easy to make a case for why all three main parties should do badly at the next election. After five years of austerity, who will vote for the Tories who didn’t in 2010? And how will they stop those dissatisfied with the compromises of coalition from sloping off to Ukip? As for Labour, why would the public want to put them back in charge just five years after booting them out? This question has special force given that the Labour leadership is so identified with that failed belief that boom and bust had been ended. Then, there’s the Liberal Democrats—they’ve alienated their left-leaning supporters and lost their status

Helena Morrissey has published her report on the allegations of sexism in the Liberal Democrats triggered by the Lord Rennard scandal. In short, she concludes that there wasn’t a cover-up, but her report suggests the party was guilty more of a cock-up. She told journalists this afternoon that ‘mistakes were definitely made by Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander and Jo Swinson’, and that ‘I think the party should have done things differently’. Here are the five main points from the 59-page report on ‘Processes and culture within the Liberal Democrats and Recommendations for Change’: 1. The party failed to address complaints properly, but did not consciously cover them up. Morrissey’s report