Liberal democrats

If you were in a particularly soggy mood, you’d almost feel sorry for Chuka Umunna. He’d managed to force Vince Cable into the House this afternoon, to announce the coalition’s plans for curbing executive pay a day earlier than planned, and he must have been feeling pretty swell about it. This was, on paper, the initiative seized; a chance to prise open the Business Secretary’s differences with his Tory colleagues. But, in practice, it was something completely different. In practice, Cable dispatched his opponent with ruthless ease. You might even have found yourself in the unthinkable position of cheering him on. A large part of it was Umunna’s petty, needling

There are Lib Dems everywhere today, CoffeeHousers, and they’re differentiating like crazy. We had Nick Clegg himself on the Andrew Marr show earlier, waxing lukewarm about Boris Island, and there have been moments of assertiveness from his party colleagues as well. Here’s a quick round-up: 1) Chris Huhne. The embattled energy minister hasn’t taken to the airwaves today, but he is omnipresent nonetheless. A good portion of Clegg’s Marr appearance was devoted to him, with the Deputy Prime Minister stressing that ‘he has been crystal clear that he denies any wrong doing’ — but not quashing the idea that Huhne would lose his job if those denials turn out to

What odds, this morning, on Chris Huhne retaining his ‘Survivor of the Year’ crown at this year’s Spectator Parliamentarian Awards? I only ask because The Sunday Times has dropped its challenge to hang on to its emails with his former wife, Vicky Pryce, about those speeding points. They’ll now be handed over to the police, and shuffled into their evidence folders for this case. The Prime Minister’s spokesman has said that Cameron still ‘has confidence’ in Huhne — but all this does at least raise the prospect of a reshuffle. If the Energy Secretary is found guilty, and had to depart his ministership, then he’s likely to be replaced by

As revealed in Rachel Sylvester’s Times column (£) today: “Richard Reeves, Mr Clegg’s political adviser, draws a graph that plots ‘Government unity and strength’ against ‘Lib Dem identity’ as two lines, one going down and the other up, between 2010 and 2015. The lines cross in 2012. ‘Every minute of every day between now and the election we will turn up the dial on differentiation,’ says a strategist.” So I’ve pasted my own version of the Reeves graph above to, erm, get it on paper, as it were. Of course, it’s not surprising that the Lib Dems — or, indeed, the Tories — would do more to distinguish themselves as

This morning’s Guardian scoop about Michael Gove’s suggestion that the nation should present the Queen with a new Royal yacht for the Jubilee is the talk of Westminster. But the full correspondence indicates that Gove was not proposing any taxpayer funding for a new Britannia.   Gove refers to ‘David Willetts’s excellent suggestion for a Royal Yacht’. This proposal was made in a letter from Willetts to the Prime Minister on the 5th September, which was copied to various colleagues. Willetts writes that Rear Admiral Bawtree sees The Future Ship Project for the 21st Century ‘as a potential replacement for the Royal Yacht Britannia’.   Willetts says that ‘The proposed

Political cultures differ. In Iran, for example, hyperbole is expected in all political conversations. So slogans always call for ‘Death to the US’, and nothing less. In Britain, of course, the use of language is more even-tempered, but other rules apply. Blaming the civil service for failure is considered OK, but charging an individual official, even a Permanent Secretary, for the same is considered off-limits. If a minister were to try it, then he’d be accused of trying to pass the buck on towards defenceless officials. But, as Camilla Cavendish points out in today’s Times (£), failure is often also the fault of senior officials who, despite problems in the

Miliband survives! That news should steady Labour nerves. For today at least. Their leader has the knack of turning near-certain defeat into absolutely-certain catastrophe, but he bumbled through PMQs this afternoon without suffering a serious setback. He has so little ground from which to attack the government that he had to lead on a niche issue. Rail fares. He asked the prime minister why the operating companies have managed to hike prices by 11 per cent on the busiest routes. Cameron: ‘Because of a power given to them by the last Labour government.’   With that lethally terse response the PM sat down. To his credit, Miliband wasn’t rattled. But

James has already blogged the Sunday Telegraph’s interview with David Cameron, but some other things stand out from it — and not just the PM’s unthinking attack on Ed Balls either, for which he has since apologised. Take these paragraphs on tax, for instance: ‘The Prime Minister effectively rules out any move towards a “mansion tax” — a levy on high-priced properties proposed by the Liberal Democrats — or indeed any new tax on wealth. “I don’t believe, generally speaking, we should be looking at endless additional taxes.” However, he signals that the 50p top rate of income tax, on earnings above £150,000, will remain for the time being, despite

Tucked away on page 15 of today’s Times, there’s an insightful story about Lords reform (£) by Roland Watson. And it’s insightful not just for the new information it contains, but also for the familiar truth it confirms: reforming the House of Lords is going to be one helluva difficult task. You see, while both halves of the coalition committed to a fully- or ‘mainly-elected’ upper chamber in their respective manifestos, only one half of the coalition is particularly eager to force it through now. As the Times story says, Nick Clegg’s proposed Bill has already endured a ‘serious re-writing’ to make it more palatable all round, but even so:

Who can be toughest on the ‘undeserving rich’ is shaping up to be one of the main political battlegrounds of 2012. David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s comments today on tax avoidance are an attempt to get ahead of this debate.    Clegg, though, is keen to make this issue his own. As I say in the politics column this week, he is planning a big speech later this month on ‘responsible capitalism’. He will use it to argue that there need to be more checks and balances within companies and call for more shareholder power over executive pay. One Cleggite tells me, in reference to the Labour leader’s conference speech