Liberal democrats

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Clegg’s little bit of political S&M

Nick Clegg is making life horribly difficult for those of us on the right who spent the last few things portraying him as a figure of fun. He is now delivering the best speeches of anyone in the Cabinet, characterised by a quiet sense of urgency and direction. He’s in the business of making the case for cuts. He spoke to a party that spent much of the last decade attacking Labour from the left. For those delegates, it was a little bit of political S&M. It must have hurt – but they liked it. “We haven’t changed our liberal values,” he said – and then went on justifying Conservative

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Clegg speaks to the hall

Nick Clegg chose to speak to his party not the country today. His address was a justification of his decision to go into government with the Tories and a plea for his party to stick together over the next five, difficult years.   The crucial bit of the speech came when Clegg said of his party ‘maybe we got used to [being against every government that came along] ourselves’ but ‘imagine if we had turned away. How could we ever again have asked the voters to take us seriously?’ Clegg’s point was that opposition was not an option and ‘this country could not have borne five more years of Labour’.

Peter Hoskin

Clegg shades the coalition yellow for his Lib Dem audience

It’s hard to know quite what to make of Nick Clegg’s speech just now. It never really soared as a piece of oration, but he skipped quite expertly across all the issues that might concern, delight and enliven a Lib Dem audience. And so we heard about how much the Lib Dems are contributing towards government; about how the cuts are a prerequisite for fairness; and about how the party will maintain its independence. On the whole, this was coalition politics shaded yellow. But Clegg managed to drop in a few unadulterated sweeteners for his audience – including a dig at the “still illegal” Iraq War. The overall response was warmer than he

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Clegg’s Lacklustre Speech

As rallying cries go, “Stick with us” lacks a certain something. But that’s how the Liberal Democrats roll and so it was that Nick Clegg was forced – or believed himself forced – to deliver a disappointingly defensive speech to the party’s annual conference this afternoon. Perhaps that’s what he needed to do. This was Operation Reassure Sensitive, Confused, Liberals. This being so it wasn’t quite the valiant proclamation of Orange Book liberalism I’d have wanted to see*. Nevertheless, there were times when Clegg was unecessarily defensive, even about being in government. Rather than challenge his party, Clegg played nice. Perhaps this too was necessary but it left one noting

Peter Hoskin

Clegg speech live blog

1653, PH: And that, aside from Clegg’s stroll around the crowd, is that. There’ll be further analysis on Coffee House shortly. The applause continues… 1652, PH: Clegg ends with a flourish: “Stick with us, and we will change Britain for good.” The crowd is on its feet. 1651, PH: Is Clegg moulding his party as the party of coalition? He says that the next few years may make the case of “liberal, pluralist politics”. 1650, PH: Clegg says that if AV triumphs in the referendum next year, then “the clapped-out system of first-past-the-post will be gone for good.” 1648, PH: A return to the theme of the beginning of the

Peter Hoskin

A yellow spanner in the works

The teaching unions, it seems, haven’t been wasting their time in Liverpool: the Lib Dem conference has just passed a motion opposing the coalition’s free schools agenda. Even though the result throws up the bizarre image of, as Guido puts it, “Lib Dems voting against liberalism,” it comes as little surprise. As Fraser reported last night, there’s a tidal opinion in Lib Dem circles that these school reforms are little more than an attack on hardworking local authorities. A pity that Sarah Teather’s message about the “dead hand of local government” didn’t filter downwards sooner.   The concern now is what this actually means for the free schools programme. On

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Lib Dems face the public

The most brutal session the Lib Dems will see is the studio audience currently assembled by Victoria Derbyshire for her Five Live phone-in. It’s a rare event in conference time, where the general public are put into contact with the politicians. The result is normally a bit of a bear pit, and for that reason it’s become one of my favourite conference events – I’m in the audience, in the rather beautiful Liverpool Maritime Museum. And poor Danny Alexander is in the bearpit. “This is toughest job I’ve ever had,” he said at the offset. Erm, yes – the competition being his time as press officer of the Cairngorms National

Peter Hoskin

Slapping down the pact

Here’s one of the most striking leitmotifs of the Lib Dem conference: how party figures are rushing to slap down talk of an electoral pact between themselves and the Tories. Vince Cable was at it yesterday, writing in the Independent on Sunday that: “Our parties remain totally independent and will compete in future national and local elections.” And Nick Clegg is expected to repeat that message, with even less equivocation, in his speech today. To some extent, this isn’t surprising. The Lib Dems could hardly go around beating the drum for a pact, some five years before polling day. But the 100 percent certainty of their denials still jars with

David Blackburn

Clegg’s Liberal Moment

Last year, Nick Clegg told the party faithful that Britain was about to embark on a ‘Liberal Moment’. He gave them some of that good old religion – civil liberties, the abolition of tuition fees, arresting tax evasion. A year on and it’s a case of plus ca change. The Lib Dem conference hums to the patter of tuition fees and tax evasion. Much is being made of the disquiet among the grass roots about spending cuts, but this was the party that opened last year’s conference with the promise of ‘savage cuts’ and Vince Cable produced a detailed dossier of savings. Spending cuts were inevitable then and are necessary

Sunday

Alex Massie

Answering The Lib Dems’ Scottish Question

Pete mentions Tim Montgomerie’s suggestion that a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition at Holyrood could be the most likely result at next year’s Holyrood elections. As Tim puts it: One thing I’ve worried about for sometime is the implications for the Coalition of bad results for the LibDems in next year’s Scottish elections but it is perfectly possible that Labour – like in 1999 and 2003 – will go into another Holyrood coalition with the LibDems. This double coalition deal could be an important tool for Clegg to keep his Left happy and for the new Labour leader to open the door to a future LibLab deal at Westminster. Well, anything is

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Live-blogging from the fringe: “Whose schools are they anyway?”

So where will the tension be at the Lib Dem conference? Easy: the free schools agenda. Clegg backs it, and when David Laws took over the agenda he backed Gove’s market-based reform. But the teaching unions are in a fight to the death against it. The Gove agenda would put power in the hands of parents, whereas it currently rests with unions and local authorities. The latter two have beaten everyone who has spoken about reform, from Callaghan to Thatcher to Blair. But Gove represents an existential threat. Luckily he is in coalition with the Lib Dem MPs, with whom both unions and local authorities have massive influence. The NUT

Peter Hoskin

The Lib Dems’ Scottish question

If you’re looking for a spot of LibCon strife that might actually mean something, then how about Tavish Scott’s interview in Scotland on Sunday? Judging by what he says about David Cameron, the leader of the Scottish Lib Dems clearly isn’t one for coalition niceties: “I suspect that (David Cameron) doesn’t even think about Scotland. It is not even remotely on his radar screen. He has a Scottish Secretary, and that’s that.” With the Scottish general elections drifting into view, there’s little doubt that Scott is dissociating his Lib Dems from a Tory party that is unpopular and – as Alex has frequently noted – inept north of Carlisle. But

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Clegg gets through his Q&A untroubled

There were no explosions during Nick Clegg’s Q&A with Lib Dem members. Some unease with the dynamics of the coalition was expressed: a questioner who asked why the Liberal Democrats were getting the blame for the cuts and the Tories the credit for policies Lib Dems had brought to the coalition got huge applause, but there was nothing approaching a revolt.   Clegg expressed a lot of dissatisfaction with both the Labour party and the media, he even name-checked Polly Toynbee at one point. He accused Labour of being in “a near state of apoplexy and hysteria” and indulging in “a betrayal myth”. He claimed that when it came to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Alexander’s arguments

Danny Alexander’s announcement of a £900 million clampdown on tax avoidance, evasion and fraud is designed to reassure Lib Dems that the coalition’s policies are fair, that it isn’t balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. In a deliberate echo of George Osborne’s comments about welfare, Alexander said that the years when people could treat tax avoidance and evasion as a “lifestyle choice” were over. This Alexander announcement is a preview of what we’re going to see at this conference, a series of sweetners to show the party that the Liberal Democrats are influencing government policy. But Alexander also tried to gird the party for the challenges ahead,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How I learned to stop worrying and rate Nick Clegg

If Nick Clegg was a weak-willed, crowd-pleasing charlatan the the front page of yesterday’s Independent would not have read “Clegg: there is no future for the Lib Dems as a left party”. Turning up to a Lib Dem conference and saying there’s no point in being a party of lefty protesters is like William Shatner telling delegates at a Star Trek convention to “get a life”. He wants them to be a mature party of reform – many of them prefer to throw stones. His stance at conference is certainly courageous. And it fits a theme. For weeks now, Clegg has been surprising those (myself included) who did not take

Peter Hoskin

The Lib Dems get their lines right

So far, so effective from Nick Clegg and his coalition colleagues. They seem to have three key messages for the party faithful in Liverpool – i) c’mon, let’s enjoy being in government, ii) we are achieving something in government, and iii) the cuts are necessary – and they’re broadcasting them in bulk. Clegg himself is interviewed in the Observer this morning, stressing how the coalition has “helped release the inner Liberal in a fair number of Conservatives”. There’s a good serving of Danny Alexander, primed, as he is, to take on the trade union militants. And even Vince Cable is striding the parapets for the LibCon cause, with a piece

Saturday

James Forsyth

Votes and jokes at the Lib Dem conference

The pro AV rally at Lib Dem conference demonstrated the problem with the AV campaign: they don’t think it is the best system. Pam Giddy, chair of Yes! To Fairer Votes, described it as “a small but important upgrade to our electoral system”; hardly the most inspiring campaign slogan. The Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson declared that “in an ideal world … there’d be a majority for STV”. Nick Clegg received a standing ovation and his speech went down well. He joked that one benefit of being in coalition with the Tories was “that he could no longer be accused of being the poshest man in the room” and that

David Blackburn

Alexander’s no apologist

Nick Clegg opened last year’s Lib Dem conference with the promise of ‘savage cuts’. The party shuddered at the idea and they’re unnerved by the reality. Those savage cuts lour over what should have been a glorious conference for Clegg. Vince Cable stalks with insidious intent these days, so Clegg has called on Danny Alexander, of whom there is nothing of the Tory, to insulate him from internal criticism over economic policy. Alexander has given the Guardian a preview of his arguments. He’s unapologetic: the coalition has achieved more in 13 weeks than Labour managed in 13 years. A sovereign debt crisis has been averted by swift action, but there

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The coalition must make its case

The Lib Dems’ week in the sun has started and Nick Clegg has marked the occasion by giving a series of interviews. David has already noted the one in The Independent, but Clegg’s one with The Sun where he talks about playing tennis with Cameron at Chequers and assembling IKEA furniture together is perhaps more revealing of where his heart lies. But this coalition is going to be made or broken by whether it can persuade the public that dealing with the structural deficit and reforming the four great public services are the right things to do and that the coalition is doing them competently. As Charles Moore says in

David Blackburn

Clegg: there is no future for the Lib Dems on the left

Nick Clegg has opened the political season with a very singular statement: ‘There is no future for us as left-wing rivals to Labour. Clegg urges his internal critics to be patient: the future could be yellow if the coalition is maintained. It’s a gamble. Immediately, Clegg has alienated those who abandoned Labour for the Lib Dems and his explicit disavowal of ‘left-wing’ politics will have the social democratic wing of his party reaching for their hat and coats. But, Clegg has planted his colours on politics’ crowded centre ground, recasting his party’s identity as an economically liberal and socially liberal centrist movement. Bargaining that the era of majority government is