Liberal democrats

Writing for the Times, Tim Montgomerie neatly overlays Aesop onto the Labour leadership contest: “The next Labour leader is unlikely to be an Abbott, Balls or Burnham. Gordon Brown’s successor will be a Miliband. But I’m more interested in whether he will be Mr Sun or Mr Wind. Aesop captured the dilemma in a fable. If you want a man to take off his cloak, do you huff and puff and force him to give it up or do you cover him with warmth until he discards it freely? In Aesop, the sun scores a predictable victory. Politics isn’t so easy. Harriet Harman’s blasts at Nick Clegg’s alleged betrayal of

Andrew Rawnsley’s potted hierarchy of the coalition government – and especially its final sentence – is worth pulling out for the scrapbook: “There is still, of course, an inner circle. When not abroad, the first key fixture of the day at Number 10 is the strategy meeting. Its usual attendees include George Osborne, the chancellor; Andy Coulson and Steve Hilton, his director of communications and his senior strategist; Jeremy Heywood, the permanent secretary at Number 10; the prime minister’s chief and deputy chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn and Kate Fall. Note that Nick Clegg is not on that list. He belongs to the next circle of influence around David Cameron.

Nick Robinson’s documentary on the coalition negotiations is just under four hours away, but I suspect we’ve already heard about one of its key moments. As various outlets are reporting this afternoon, Nick Clegg tells Robinson that he had changed his mind about the pace of spending cuts sometime before the coalition agreement. Or as he puts it: “I changed my mind earlier than that … firstly remember between March and the actual general election … a financial earthquake occurred in on our European doorstep.” This matters because the Lib Dem manifesto said that spending shouldn’t be cut (above and beyond Labour’s plans) this year – and that the squeeze

Mervyn King’s evidence to the Treasury select committee has Westminster’s tired tongues wagging this afternoon. King re-iterated his long-held position that market confidence will imperil long-term recovery unless the deficit was confronted immediately. Nick Clegg has said that a personal conversation with King changed his mind on cutting the deficit early. Paul Waugh, Jeremy Warner and James Macintyre have varying takes on the Governor’s remarks and their bearing on the coalition’s formation. I’d just observe that King may have been Cameron and Clegg’s unwitting matchmaker. But equally, no party was honest about cuts during the election. It was the great unmentionable, which would suggest that cutting had to come sooner

Well, Mark Field has certainly got Westminster talking with his suggestion that the Lib Dems and Conservatives might not oppose each other in marginal seats come 2015. It’s the kind of idea that has been sloshing around for a few weeks now, but having it relayed through a Tory MP’s blog post gives it a little extra punch. And so plenty of questions abound. What would this mean under AV? Who would do better out of it? Is it sensible for both parties to effectively make the next election a referendum on the coalition? etc. etc. But one question doesn’t seem to be getting enough airtime: what would this mean

Matthew Parris and Charles Moore are the two of the most eloquent exponents of conservatism. But they represent different strands of conservative thought as their views on AV demonstrate. Matthew argues in his column in The Times today that the Conservative party should let AV pass if that is what it takes to keep the Lib Dems happy. He thinks that the Lib Dems are not only needed to make the Coalition work but that their presence is, in itself, a good thing. As he writes, ‘Lib Dems bring to government a distinct and healthy slant on politics. There is a reactionary component in the Tory make-up; I often share