Liberal democrats

Brendan Barber’s champagne habit, and other stories

The Tory conference was so forgettable that it’s hard now to remember it took place earlier in the week. But, for what it’s worth, here are my conclusions from the whole conference season: 1. The search for Osborne’s growth strategy has been called off. This ‘leadership’ theme was short for ‘leadership in the crisis, which we’ve now decided is inevitable’. Printing £75 billion will be  prelude to printing £400 billion, the inflation tax is back. Osborne perhaps thinks this new magic gold will bring economic recovery. So did the Emperor in Faust, when the devil suggested that printing money would avert fiscal crisis. This scheme ended in tears in Goethe’s

The Cabinet cat-flap continues

The Ken Clarke and Theresa May cat-flap has sparked up again this morning, with the Justice Secretary accusing the Home Secretary of using “laughable child-like examples” to attack the Human Right Act. In some ways, it’s hard to take a political row about a cat particularly seriously. But this back and forth between May and Clarke is actually exposing something very important: the Liberal Democrats are not the only brake on Tory radicalism. At the moment, lots of Tory ministers – up to and including the Prime Minister – like to imply that they’d be doing far more on Europe, immigration and the Human Rights Act if it wasn’t for

The human rights smokescreen

Today’s papers resound with the news that Theresa May is resisting Liberal Democrat opposition to close the loophole over the “right to family life”, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This change, it is argued, will ensure that foreign criminals are deported so that the courts protect, as David Cameron put it, “the United Kingdom”.  The announcement is a carefully choreographed step to differentiate the Tories from the Liberal Democrats. Dr Evan Harris, the self-anointed king of the Lib Dems in exile, told the BBC this morning: ‘It’s actually a useful tool because it enables Nick Clegg to say the Human Rights Act (HRA) is here to say

Miliband v Clegg: now it’s personal

It’s safe to say that Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg don’t get on. Even before he was elected leader, Miliband told the New Statesman he would never work with the Lib Dem leader: “Given what he is supporting, I think it is pretty hard to go into coalition with him.” He refused to share a platform with Clegg in the AV campaign, and then attacked him in Newcastle with a list of promises he accused the Lib Dems of breaking. All along, the plan has been to turn those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 against Clegg and lure them over to Labour. Whether it’s working is hard to tell.

Labour and the forces

The main event at the Labour conference this morning has been a long debate on Britain’s place in the world, featuring Douglas Alexander, Harriet Harman and Jim Murphy – shadow foreign secretary, shadow DfID secretary and shadow defence secretary respectively. The debate touched on liberal intervention, soft power and human rights; there was even a video message from Aung San Suu Kyi. But Murphy’s extended homily on the military covenant was the centre piece of the discussion. Murphy revealed a plan to allow servicemen to join the Labour party for just £1 and he also pledged to defend the pensions of retired servicemen and their widows from cuts, saying that reducing payments was

Labour tries to make its mark

Global events may soon relegate Labour conference to the News in Brief sections of newspapers, especially as it appears that G20 finance ministers are preparing for Greece to default and for contagion to spread to other parts of the Eurozone. So, the Labour leader has wasted no time as Labour conference opens. In interviews with the Observer and the Sunday Mirror, he revives his tactic of presenting himself as an insurgent, the man to “rip up the rulebook”. He makes a pledge or two: the headline grabbing idea is a cap tuition fees at £6,000 per year, paid for by reversing a planned corporation tax cut on the hated banks. This blatant

The Lib Dem conference closes

As the Liberal Democrat leadership leaves Birmingham, it is a contented bunch. Their conference has gone as well as could be expected. There were no embarrassing defeats for the leadership and no gaffes by any of their ministers. But conference was yet another reminder of how much of a gap there is between where those around Clegg want to take the party and where the activist base wants to go. When I asked one of Clegg’s allies about this discrepancy, he told me that the important thing to remember was that the membership, who elect the leader, take a different view from the activists. As evidence of this, he cited

What Clegg failed to mention

Nick Clegg’s speech will be remembered for its visceral attack on Labour. But it was remarkable for other reasons, notably for what he neglected to say. Clegg said next to nothing about his government’s flagship education and welfare reforms. Only the increase in the pupil premium budget received a mention, as did the new ambition to send “at risk” children to a two week summer camp. This oversight was odd, especially for a leader who talks so much about social mobility. As Coffee House has illustrated on numerous occasions, the academies programme (which was supported by the Liberal Democrats in opposition and throughout the coalition’s opening negotiations) is dramatically improving

James Forsyth

The Lib Dems’ long-term assault on Labour

Listening to Nick Clegg’s speech today, there was little doubt which party he’d rather be in coalition with. There were some coded slights at the Tories’ expense—the emphasis on how the Lib Dems had been ‘fighting to keep the NHS safe’ and his commitment that the Human Rights Act was here to stay—but they were nothing compared to the full frontal attacks on Labour. Clegg derided Miliband and Balls as the ‘backroom boys’ before warning the country to ‘never, ever trust Labour with the economy again.’ This line reveals something very important, the Lib Dem leadership believes that the more the economy is in trouble the more important it is

Political Stepford Wives

At the beginning of the conference season I mused on Twitter that these occasions were very tribal, but that I had never been able to work out what defined the Liberal Democrat tribe. I was bombarded by suggestions. Iain Martin bluntly wrote: “What is the Lib Dem tribe? Answer: A lot smaller than it used to be.” Andrew Boff, the Tory London Assembly member said, naughtily: “It depends on who they are talking to.” Peter Beaumont drew on his experience as a foreign correspondent to paint a horrifying picture: “all sandals and penis gourds”. And Max Wind-Cowie pointed out what Nick Clegg himself recognises as a problem: “Perhaps surprisingly an

How’s Clegg doing?

When Nick Clegg speaks today, he can – as usual – rely on a good deal of support from those in the hall. According to YouGov, current Lib Dem supporters support him by a 2-to-1 margin. That’s stronger approval than Miliband gets from Labour voters, although nowhere near the popularity David Cameron enjoys with his own party: 93 per cent of Tories say the Prime Minister’s doing a good job. Among the population as a whole, though, there’s no doubt Clegg is unpopular. But he does at least appear to have stopped the rot – both in his personal ratings and his party’s. As the graph below shows, the majority

The Lib Dems warn the Tories over Europe

The Lib Dems have just had a brief Q&A on foreign affairs. Paddy Ashdown and defence minister Nick Harvey gave staunch their support to the Afghan Mission, but confessed to having misgivings. Ashdown described the Bush administration’s strategy as an “absolute model of how not to intervene, both militarily and politically”. This failure, Ashdown said, ensured that a “victor’s peace” is now beyond NATO’s grasp. Harvey admitted that NATO’s political progress in Afghanistan remained “very slow” despite ISAF’s recent military success; this is scarcely surprising given the litany of bombings and assassinations over the course of the summer. The debate touched on the need to forge new trade relationships and

Clegg’s chance to lead by example

Nick Clegg will deliver his keynote speech to the Liberal Democrat conference later this afternoon. It has been substantially trailed this morning, despite competing for airtime with Nick Robinson’s story about the injection of an extra £5 billion of capital spending into the economy. Similarly to Monday’s Q&A with activists, Clegg is expected to defend the government’s deficit reduction plan and insist that Britain can resist dire global economic trends. It remains to be seen whether Clegg will concentrate on the rest of the government’s programme, especially its radical public service reforms. There is some concern in pro-government circles that he will not. Clegg’s new £50 million summer school scheme

The strange case of the extra £5bn

Strange things are happening between Whitehall and Birmingham. After the IMF downgraded its growth forecast for Britain yesterday, the BBC reported that some government were considering spending an additional £5bn on capital projects: transport links, broadband, housing and so forth: as a stimulus to ward off possible recession. The implication was that the Liberal Democrats were in favour of changing Britain’s economic course and the Conservatives were not. Chris Huhne appeared on Newsnight and quashed the story (30 mins – 33 mins). He said he didn’t recognise the £5bn figure and said there was “no such plan”, but conceded that the government would have to be “imaginative and creative…to get

Farron’s difficult day

I’ve been away from Birmingham today but, even from a distance, it’s clear that Tim Farron has had a rather difficult day. It started with a story in The Times this morning about upset among his fellow MPs about his rhetoric on Sunday implying that the coalition partners would get divorced before 2015 and continued with him getting in a bit of a tangle about his leadership ambitions in interviews with Andrew Neil and Gary Gibbon. Farron’s problem is that he is an obvious candidate to run in any future leadership contest and so the leadership will constantly push him about his intentions. These are hard enough questions for any

Ross Clark

Why mansion tax makes sense

Messy deals and fudged compromises: an inevitable feature of coalition politics. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the resulting policy will always be bad. As a result of grubby negotiations in Downing Street, it looks as if we might just end up with a change in direction of tax policy which should have been made years ago. The battle over the 50 pence tax rate seems to be settling into an uneasy compromise: the Chancellor gets to abolish it possibly in 2013 ­ and in return the Lib Dems get some form of mansion tax, the levy proposed by Vince Cable on homes costing more than two million pounds. Ever the party of

The Lib Dems quietly debate the NHS

Chris Huhne’s tough guy act aside, the major event in Birmingham today was the Lib Dems’ NHS debate. When Andrew Lansley’s contentious NHS reforms were derailed earlier this year, Liberal Democrats claimed the credit and senior party strategists believe the leadership must carry on broadcasting that message at any and every opportunity. The party seems to agree. Grande Dame Shirley Williams, eminent backbencher John Pugh and health minister Paul Burstow all crowed in unison that these reforms would look far worse but for the Liberal Democrats’ intervention. Williams and Pugh commended Burstow’s success in tempering reform while the absent Nick Clegg was also warmly applauded for his efforts. But the panel, and the hall,