Liberal democrats

Huhne, the Lib Dems’ black comedian

Today we got the black comedy follow up to Sarah Teather’s stand-up routine.  Chris Huhne is going to drive down our energy bills! For those of us wondering how families and businesses can afford his expensive climate policies, it is a bit of a joke. The basic issue – as I set out in the new book Let them eat carbon – is that we need to invest an absolute fortune to meet the range of environmental targets that the government has put in place. Citigroup estimated last September that we need to invest about €229 billion (about £200 billion) in the energy sector this decade.  That is far more

Fraser Nelson

Time to leave the EU?

Today’s Lib Dem attack on their coalition partners comes from Chris Huhne, who rails against a “Tea Party tendency” in Conservatives sceptical of the European Union. His premise is that those who are hostile to the EU are a minority. It’s worth digging a little deeper here, because the opposite is true. If you believe that Britain has benefited from EU membership, you’re in a smallish minority – 35 per cent to be precise. Huhne seems genuinely unaware of the depth of feeling out there. CoffeeHousers may be familiar with opinion polls commissioned by eurosceptic groups. But – as we say in the leading article of this week’s Spectator – the

Clegg’s allies turn on Farron

James wrote at the weekend, Nick Clegg’s Orange Book allies fear Tim Farron, the Lib Dem President and standard bearer of the social democrat wing of the party. Yesterday, Farron said that the coalition would “end in divorce” in the months running up to the next general election. That provocative comment followed the barnstorming speech that Farron gave on Saturday, in which he labelled Nick Clegg as the “Leader of the Opposition”. Quentin Letts has echoed the views of many party foot soldiers by saying that this was a leadership pitch for the future by the Party President. Unsurprisingly, the leadership has moved to quash Farron. The Times reports (£): Mr Farron was ordered

Clegg wants to communicate

Communication, communication, communication: that appears to be Nick Clegg’s new political mantra. Speaking to the Today programme earlier this morning, the Lib Dem leader said: “If there is a legitimate criticism to be made of our government, it is that we haven’t articulated that there are things we can do”. He made the same point repeatedly during yesterday’s impressive Q&A with activists: ‘We need to explain, over and over again, what we have managed to achieve in power: the increased the income tax threshold, the pupil premium, the triple lock guarantee for pensioners … Above all we need to say that there is nothing progressive about being bankrupt. Have we

James Forsyth

The coming row over Europe

One of the most striking things about Lib Dem conference has been how up for a scrap over Europe the party’s ministers are. Every single Lib Dem Cabinet minister has, over the past few days, ruled out any attempt to repatriate powers from Brussels. Given that the Conservative party wouldn’t forgive David Cameron not attempting to use any new treaty negotiation to try and regain control of various issues (see David’s blog from earlier), this puts the Prime Minister in quite a dilemma. Personally, I expect Cameron will go for the repatriation of powers. The AV referendum showed that when he has to choose between really angering his party or

James Forsyth

Clegg, on fine form, tells his party to move on

“We’ve got to stop beating ourselves up,” Clegg just told Lib Dem members in a Q&A session. As is traditional at these events, Clegg spent a lot of time trying to explain to his party why the coalition is doing what it is doing. The tone of the event was, perhaps, best summed up by the Deputy Prime Minster telling one hostile questioner to listen to his answer. Clegg, in head-masterly form, started by reminding the audience that if the coalition was not dealing with the defitict of its own volition, the bond markets would be forcing it to and “you can’t do anything  good if you have no control

Fraser Nelson

JFK: a tax-cutting headbanger

Given that Vince Cable was once a lecturer in economics, it’s odd to see him feign ignorance over its basic concepts. Listen to his speech today.”There are politicians on both left and right who don’t [get it]. Some believe government is Father Christmas. They draw up lists of tax cuts and giveaways and assume that Santa will pop down the chimney and leave presents under the tree. This is childish fantasy. Some believe that if taxes on the wealthy are cut, new revenue will miraculously appear.” It’s perhaps worth quoting one such ‘childish’ politician who was articulating this long before Art Laffer doodled on a cocktail napkin. In 1962, John F

James Forsyth

Vince Cable paints the world grey

Even by his own standards Vince Cable’s speech today was noticeably pessimistic. The Business Secretary warned that the post-war cycle of ever-rising living standards has been broken by the crash. There was little in what he said to suggest that he has any optimism about the prospects for growth over the next few years. If Cable’s analysis is correct — and it is shared, at least in part, by several Tory Cabinet ministers — then the politics of the next few years will look very different than we expected. The initial post-election Tory hope of running a ‘It’s morning in Britain again’ campaign in 2015 now seems like a distant

The Lib Dems’ war on wealth

Vince Cable will address the Liberal Democrat conference later on today. Tim Farron’s indulgent speech yesterday is a tough act to follow, but Cable has chosen a subject to titillate delegates: curbing high executive pay, bolstered by the popular mantra of no more reward for failure. He signalled his intention yesterday in an interview with the Sunday Times, with further details in the Guardian. The Business Secretary will try to ensure that workers and shareholders are represented at directorial level. He will also strive to diversify the membership of remuneration committees to include union reps and low grade employees. Finally, he will push for greater pay transparency in top companies,

In Birmingham, dreaming of opposition

The intrigue of the Liberal Democrats’ conference has centred on the party’s split personality. A Sunday Times/YouGov poll disclosed that as many as 50 per cent of Lib Dems believe that it was wrong to go into coalition in the first place, leading one to assume that only the small clique of ‘conservatives’ around Nick Clegg is keeping the Lib Dems in government. There is a still a strong feeling that going into coalition was the right thing to do for party and country. Lib-Dems who think otherwise, I’m told, “should seriously question [their] logic” because there was no alternative. However much that is true, Lib-Dems still miss opposition. One

A Drugs Question for David Cameron

Though scarcely the main thrust of James’s most recent post, this is still notable: Lib Dem conference delegates have just provided the press with a nice easy story, they’ve voted to set up a panel to look at the legalisation of cannabis and the decriminalisation of all drugs. I know James is tweaking the press corps just as much as he is enjoying the Lib Dems living up to their reputation on these matters. Those wacky dope-fiends in the grow-your-own-pot party! Nevertheless, could it be possible that the sandal-wearing geography teachers (sorry, this stereotyping thing is contagious) are right? I mean, are the drug laws defensible in either moral or

James Forsyth

Alexander distances himself from the Tory bashing

Lib Dem conference delegates have just provided the press with a nice easy story, they’ve voted to set up a panel to look at the legalisation of cannabis and the decriminalisation of all drugs. But away from the main hall, Danny Alexander has just given an interview to Andrew Neil in which he has distanced himself from the almost incessant Tory bashing going on at this conference. When asked whether he agreed with Simon Hughes’ description of the Tories as ruthless extremists, he replied “I wouldn’t engage in debate in that way.” Alexander said that, contrary to the Jasper Gerard book, there will be no new coalition agreement to cover

James Forsyth

Farron brings the hall to its feet

For Lib Dem modernisers there are few more depressing sights than how conference reacts to a Tim Farron speech: he serves up social democratic red meat and they absolutely lap it up. Farron, the party president, delivered one anti-Tory jibe after another. He declared that the government would be an ‘absolute nightmare without’ the Liberal Democrats in it, boasted that Nick Clegg was ‘leading the opposition’ as well as being deputy Prime Minister and accused the Tories of believing it was ok for the super-rich not to pay tax. There were also a slew of attacks on ‘the reactionary Tory drivel’ that the Tories have supposedly sprouted since the riots.

James Forsyth

The real 50p split

Nick Clegg’s interview on Andrew Marr this morning subtly shifted the Lib Dem position on the 50p tax rate. When Marr asked him what he would do if the George Osborne commissioned HMRC study showed that it raised no money, Clegg replied ‘then I of course think we should look at other ways in which the wealthiest pay the amount that we’d expected through the 50p rate.’ So, in other words, he’ll accept its abolition if something else is put in its place. But, crucially, Clegg wants any replacement to raise not what the 50p rate actually raises but what it was supposed to raise. This presages the next debate

Teather pledges to double the pupil premium

Assorted acolytes from the teaching unions are padding around the Lib Dem conference, fomenting discontent around activists who are opposed to the coalition’s adoption of academies and free schools. Officials from NASUWT and the NUT have pricked the airwaves with tales of concern and frustration. Education minister Sarah Teather addressed the conference earlier this morning and she was unrepentant. She eviscerated Labour’s record on education and, by extension, the system that has been dominated by the teaching unions. She also pledged to double the pupil premium next year to £1.25 billion, which will allow schools to increase their expenditure on tuition, parental support, after school clubs and so forth. The

Clegg on Marr, a few highlights

Nick Clegg was in combative mood on the Andrew Marr show earlier this morning; he railed against the press and the Daily Mail in particular. It wasn’t exactly an illuminating session, but here are some highlights: Clegg on the Mail: “Can I put this mildly? I really wouldn’t believe a word you read in the Daily Mail. This is the paper that called me a Nazi. They and other papers have got a bee in their bonnet about the coalition. They come up with drivel every single day. I’m in this because I believe it’s the right thing to do…I want to see us succeed in the coalition and beyond…Miriam