Liberal democrats

Of course no Budget announcement would be complete without some customary ‘banter’ from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. With George Osborne’s leadership chances seen to be dwindling, he did his best to show that he had got his ‘mojo’ back. Clearly free of any guilty feelings over how things turned out for the Liberal Democrats in the General Election, Osborne couldn’t resist a taking a pop at the beleaguered party as he discussed his plan for pensions: ‘For the past year, we’ve consulted widely on whether we should make compulsory changes to the pension system but it was clear there was no consensus. Indeed the former pensions minister, the Liberal Democrat Steve Webb said

After Simon Hughes lost his seat in the general election, the Liberal Democrat stalwart went from Justice Minister to unemployed overnight. Happily the former Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats has since managed to find work, recently being appointed to cover maternity leave for the Open University’s head of public affairs Laura Burley. However, Mr S understands that Hughes’ new role is the cause of much amusement in the Commons. Parliamentary staffers report receiving calls from Hughes — who built a reputation over the years for being one of the Commons’ more sanctimonious figures — asking if MPs will be attending events relating to the Open University. ‘We usually receive these calls firming up RSVPs for

With Nick Clegg now a mere backbencher, his former staff appear to no longer feel the need to protect the Liberal Democrat from negative publicity. Today Clegg’s former campaign manager Ben Rathe has written a blog in which he reveals what happened when his search for a location for Clegg to give a speech — at the Liberal Democrat conference in 2013 — went spectacularly wrong: ‘It was the Liberal Democrat Conference 2013, and my role back then was planning all of the visits that Nick Clegg was doing over the course of the 5 days in Glasgow. This included finding somewhere suitable to announce a new 5p charge on plastic bags,

The Liberal Democrats’ track record with female party activists has suffered in recent years after Lord Rennard was accused of sexual harassment. While the party have done their best since then to deal with the claims against the Lib Dem peer, they now face accusations of ‘gendered abuse’. Steerpike understands that one of the party’s rising stars has stepped down from her role on the Federal Executive — the governing board of the Liberal Democrats — claiming that the party is not currently a safe place for women of colour. Kavya Kaushik has written a post on her personal blog explaining her reasons for quitting the party. In this she criticises the Lib Dems, accusing

Last week brought into focus how Labour is in complete and utter disarray. After the Home Secretary’s statement on the draft Investigatory Powers Bill, Andy Burnham wholeheartedly agreed with the government on the need for extra powers for spy chiefs. Then, about five days later, a letter was released by Burnham’s office saying that after closer inspection, he had a couple of ‘concerns’. Whatever you think of the Conservatives, they at least have a principled position on this: anything the spy agencies want, they get — regardless of the privacy implications. The Liberal Democrats on the other hand strongly believe that our agencies must make the case for new powers and

There are only two occasions in my life where I have had lengthy, in-depth debates about where grown adults should sit. One was planning my wedding. The other was PMQs. The reason for the second discussion was raised by Nick Clegg on Newsnight yesterday when he said that sitting mutely next to David Cameron at the weekly session may have been his worst mistake (for clarity I suspect he meant in presentational terms rather than his biggest mistake in government as a whole). There is quite a bit of validity to this point. Most people still get their political news from the evening broadcasts, and every Wednesday they saw Clegg sitting

Ukip is gathering for its autumn conference in Doncaster, with Nigel Farage delivering the keynote speech later today. Unlike last year’s shindig, which saw the defection of Mark Reckless from the Tories, this year’s conference is likely to be less eventful — for one thing, the party has failed to grow its presence in Westminster. Even its members appear to be demotivated — the Telegraph reports that attendance is ‘significantly low’ and has offered cut-price tickets to entice Kippers to come along. A party spokesman acknowledged: ‘Last year conference was straight after a big election victory for Ukip so it’s not wildly surprising that numbers are down’ Now that an In-Out referendum is on

Tim Farron’s speech to the Lib Dem conference seems to have gone down well with those in the hall, which probably means that it did the trick, given this was his first conference as leader and the party’s first conference since its defeat. But given Farron wants to rebuild his party by appealing to those who no longer feel that Labour is their home, or those who worry that the Tories are going a bit further than they’d like, his speech wasn’t quite as effective as it could have been. Sure, he delivered it well – particularly when he was talking about housing and the refugee crisis, where he became

As the Liberal Democrats try and find a place for themselves in politics following a disastrous election result, the party can at least pride itself on having the most musical party conference. After their Lib Dem Disco over the weekend, a Lib Dem Glee Club is at conference today: Alastair Carmichael leads #ldconf in song… Glee Club goes crazy pic.twitter.com/uqFckm8KDl — Sophy Ridge (@SophyRidgeSky) September 22, 2015 Sky News’s Sophy Ridge, who is covering this year’s Lib Dem conference, says there is a ‘Glee Club’ karaoke song book dedicated to the late Charles Kennedy. In this, they list a range of classics for which they have rewritten the lyrics to reflect

Nick Clegg has stepped back into the limelight today and he’s been pretty chirpy about his party’s time in government – and its prospects for recovering from its election downfall. In his speech to the Liberal Democrats annual conference in Bournemouth, the former Deputy Prime Minister was full of happy thoughts about his party’s time in government — which resulted in 49 MPs losing their seats and its vote share to just eight per cent: ‘Those achievements in Government, in turn, wouldn’t have happened without you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Each and every one of you. Whether you liked or loathed the coalition. Whether you were exhilarated or

David Cameron might not be remembered as the best prime minister in modern British history but he will probably be remembered as the luckiest. Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour party is proving worse — or, for the Tories, better — than anyone could have imagined. His wrecking ball is busy destroying everything that was built by Labour’s modernisers. He does not lack authenticity, belief and passion — but his beliefs are ones which would be more at home in a 1920s plenary meeting of the Moscow Soviet than in contemporary British living rooms. The Chancellor sees Corbyn’s leadership as a chance to further blacken Labour’s name. The

In this year’s dissolution honours, the Liberal Democrats were awarded 11 peerages, three more than their total number of MPs. Since this brought the party’s roll call of Lib Dem peers to 112, sceptics have been quick to point out that this number appears to be at odds with the party, which had previously prided itself on reforming the ever-growing House of Lords. Happily the whiffs of hypocrisy haven’t stopped Lib Dem peers from grumbling about the crowded upper house. Yesterday Lord Rennard — the Lib Dem peer who was readmitted to the party last year after facing suspension over allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards women — decided the time was right to call for

Smart political operators are often the stupidest people. In conventional Westminster terms, it was smart of Labour’s Chuka Umunna to say last night that everyone in Labour should work with Jeremy Corbyn. Received wisdom expects us to applaud Umunna as he bows his head to conventional pieties and says Labour should get down with the kids, ‘celebrate’ the Corbyn-supporting yoof, ’embrace’ them and ‘harness’ their energy to revitalise Labour. We are expected to nod sagely as political journalists tell us that Umunna is calculating that ‘if Corbyn, the clear frontrunner, is to fail, Umunna’s wing of the party must not have done anything to make it responsible’. Clever move, we

As well as it being rather amusing that a party officially committed to the abolition of the House of Lords has stuffed a few more of its grandees into the Upper Chamber, it’s worth looking will be wearing the ermine. There seems to have been a bit of a desperate hunt to find people. The MPs who lost their seats or stood down might be fair enough. But some party figures are scratching their heads rather at the appointment of one party member who was a councillor for just four years. Shas Sheehan did also stand as a parliamentary candidate (and lost, twice), but then so have many others in