Liberal democrats

If the coalition leaders had hoped that announcing the demise of Lords reform during the Olympics would mean the government would enjoy a slightly easier ride, a poll released this morning by The Guardian suggests they were wrong. The ICM poll found that only 16 per cent of voters now believe the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will stay in partnership until 2015. This has fallen from 33 per cent two weeks ago. Overall, 54 per cent of voters believe the government will collapse before the next general election, and only 19 per cent think the two parties will pull apart a few months before the election in order to campaign

Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is to drop his normally conciliatory voice to attack the Tories at the Lib Dem party conference in Brighton. So what? you may well ask. The mild-mannered Alexander is unlikely to strike the fear of God into his listeners, assuming that anyone beyond the conference hall will be listening, or indeed that the conference hall is full: Brighton being lovely at that time of year. Besides, bursts of splenetic outrage at one’s coalition partners have become a feature of conferences, particularly since last year’s unhappy AV referendum. There is, dare I say it, a suggestion that they are choreographed for the TV

Nick Clegg’s decision to scupper boundary reviews in retaliation for the failure of his Lords reform programme is the very opposite of ‘mature’ government. It is the politics of the sand pit: you have annoyed me, so I’m going to kick your sandcastle down. It’s his way of putting a horse’s head in Cameron’s bed, and the public will be appalled. The coalition has entered a new, destructive phase where Lib Dems will now pride themselves on what Tory measures they can frustrate or destroy (O Levels, profitmaking schools etc). I’ve just been on the Today programme with David Hall Matthews of the Social Liberal Forum, who claimed that Clegg’s

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Nick Clegg’s decision not to support the 2015 boundary changes as a ‘penalty’  for Lords reform not happening is that Downing Street is insisting on pushing on with the matter. I’m told that Number 10 will ‘do everything we can to persuade everyone we can to vote for them.’ When I put it to this senior Cameroon that this was futile given that with Lib Dem ministers and MPs voting against, there was no chance of getting it through the Commons, the source said ‘is it feasible [to get the boundary changes through], yes’. There are two possibilities here. One is that Cameron is

The conventional wisdom about the consequences of the failure of Lords reform is that the Liberal Democrats will wreak their revenge for the Conservatives’ ‘breach of contract’ by scuppering the boundary changes. Over the past few months, the party has taken great pains to link the two reforms, and now that it is clear that the first will not go through, all focus is on the second. There is much that still needs to become clear about how this will work; the biggest question of all being how Lib Dem ministers can vote against the changes without being sacked. But don’t expect the whole party to troop through the ‘no’

In recent weeks, Downing Street has been repeatedly told by Tory MPs that if proposals for an elected element in the House of Lords were brought back to the Commons, the next rebellion would be even bigger than the 91 who voted against second reading. Downing Street, as the Telegraph reported this morning, has now accepted that Lords reform will have to be dropped and there is talk of a formal announcement to this effect as early as Monday. But, intriguingly, I understand that David Cameron does not intend to abandon efforts to get the boundary reforms through. This, as Isabel noted this morning, has the potential to cause a

There are more rumblings this morning on the shape of the next comprehensive spending review, this time at grassroots level within the Liberal Democrats. The Times reports threats from former Lib Dem MP Evan Harris that any attempt to sign up to a traditional spending review will trigger an emergency motion at the party’s autumn conference. The leadership is already well aware of this issue: I blogged last week that a senior party figure had told me that the £10 billion of welfare cuts that George Osborne has predicted are necessary over the next spending review period are ‘just not going to happen’. Clegg and co know that the Lib

One popular prediction swirling around Westminster this morning is that part of the Government’s response to the GDP disaster will be to cut more money from the welfare budget. After all, George Osborne told MPs in his Budget statement that there would need to be a further package of £10 billion cuts in welfare spending over the period of the next spending review, and the IMF has made similar noises, too. But I understand that this is not going to happen because the Liberal Democrats will not let it go through. Sources are emphatic that those at the top – Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander et al – have blocked the

Vince Cable’s decision to speculate publicly about a post Nick Clegg leadership race is a significant moment. To be sure, saying ‘I wouldn’t exclude it’ about running for the job is a long way from launching an actual challenge. But it is not the answer that a politician gives if they want to stop all speculation. There’s long been gossip at Westminster that Cable’s interest in the leadership has revived — and this interview appears to confirm that. It is worth remembering that Cable only didn’t run last time because he thought that the party wouldn’t pick another veteran as leader after the Ming Campbell disaster. So, there’s unfulfilled ambition

James Forsyth’s Mail on Sunday column is my first read every Sunday, and it’s choc full of details as ever. Here is his account of the Liberal Democrat reaction to last week’s House of Lords defeat:   On Thursday morning, Nick Clegg and David Cameron agreed a new phase of the Coalition after what one No 10 insider called ‘the Coalition’s Cuban missile crisis’.  Tensions were so high amid the vote on Lords reform that some feared the Coalition would implode, but things have now begun to ease.  Both sides stress ‘this  isn’t back to the rose garden’, and what is needed is not  ‘an idealised romance but cold, hard

Perhaps what most depressed the Liberal Democrats this week was the sense that the two main parties were rejecting the idea of coalition. One described to me how depressing he found it during the Lords reform debate to watch the Labour front bench revelling in every Tory intervention on Nick Clegg. At the top of the Lib Dems, there’s now a real worry that both Labour and the Tories would try and govern as a minority government after the next election if there’s another hung parliament rather than form a coalition. This would lock the Liberal Democrats out of power.  All of this makes Andrew Adonis’ comments in The Times

Tory MPs clamouring for a new relationship between Britain and Europe were given an amuse-bouche today when William Hague announced a review into the impact of the EU on everyday life. The Foreign Secretary told the House of Commons earlier that the review, which will report towards the end of 2014, ‘will present the evidence and analysis’, adding that it would be ‘for political parties to decide on their own policy recommendations’. The Foreign Office is briefing that the audit was not about identifying powers to grasp back from the EU, but many in the Conservative party certainly hope it’s the start of that process if nothing else. A study