Liberal democrats

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s public debate with his backbenchers

So, did Cameron say anything particularly noteworthy during his interview on the Today programme?  In truth, not really.  Most of the answers were of the “let’s wait and see what in the Budget” variety.  The ratio of spending cuts to tax rises: wait and see.  Plans for hiking capital gains tax: wait and see, and so on.   The only answers that weren’t determined by the Budget seemed to be his racing tips for the sports bulletin.  You can hear them here. But that isn’t to say the interview wasn’t revealing.  For much of it, Cameron was quizzed about the objections that David Davis and John Redwood have raised to the

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Gove must guard against the vested interests

Polly Toynbee was on ‘mute’ on Sky News in my office, the remote wasn’t working, which is frustrating because I’d love to hear how someone mounts a passionate defence of why local government should have monopoly control of state schools. Very few things in politics are indefensible, but a system which doles out sink schools to sink estates is one of them. When Michael Gove was a journalist, he described comprehensive education as the greatest betrayal of the working class. And now, as Education Secretary, he is outlining a system that will give the poor the same choice of schools that the rich have. Who on earth could be against

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tactical considerations over the timing of the AV referendum

A referendum on AV was the concession that Nick Clegg felt he needed to get a coalition deal with the Tories past his party. But the referendum poses obvious dangers to the coalition, just imagine the sight of Nick Clegg and the leader of the Labour party sharing a platform to denounce the Tories’ ‘reactionary’ opposition to electoral reform.   The Guardian this morning reports that the Lib Dems are pushing for this referendum to take place in May 2011 at the same time as the Scottish and Welsh elections. There is, as the article notes, a huge benefit to the Lib Dems in getting this referendum in early before

Daniel Korski

German lessons

Angela Merkel’s fall from favour is something David Cameron ought to bear in mind as he looks for lessons to guide his term in office. The German chancellor could do no wrong when she was first elected. A new “Iron Lady”, she was seen as a giant among pygmees. Tony Blair was leaving the scene, Nicolas Sarkozy had yet to be elected, the newspapers swooned, the voters applauded. Mrs Merkel was respected in the US and Europe. She made her unwieldy coalition with the Social Democrats work, almost singlehandedly picked the NATO secretary-general and ruled over EU meetings. Now, EU commission president Jose Manuel Barrosso is (rightly) calling her “naïve”

Tuesday

Martin Bright

So Who’s the Senior Partner in this Coalition?

The choreography of the new coalition is designed to make this look like a partnership of equals. But I’m increasingly convinced that Nick Clegg pulled a masterstroke here. This really is a joint premiership. Someone suggested I take a look at the full coalition document  on the Cabinet Office website to see just how much the Liberal Democrat leader had wrung from his Tory counterpart in the negotiations. The most striking phrase is: “… will be agreed between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister”, which litters the document. The “I agree with Nick” slogan used by the Lib Dems during the election campaign has thus become embedded in the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Loving the Liberal Democrats in a Hung Britain

Over at ConservativeHome Paul Goodman suggests that Nick Clegg be invited to address the Conservative Party Conference this year and, in general, that the Tories need to do more to get to know their colleagues in government. He’s right. And here, via John Rentoul, is John Curtice to help explain why. Professor Curtice suggests that this most recent election ought not to be considered a freakish result and that even if the voting system remains unaltered hung parliaments are probably as likely as not for the foreseeable future. If that’s the case – and even with redrawn constituency boundaries it seems quite probable that at least some of the factors

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Laughs, politics and sincerity

The opening of the Queen’s speech debate is, traditionally, a light-hearted affair. Peter Lilley opened up with a rather witty speech. He compared the Liberal Democrats to the bastards of the Major Cabinet, it is better to have them inside the Cabinet pissing out than outside the Cabinet pissing in. He went on to warn the new Prime Minister that the appropriate response to John Major and Gordon Brown’s microphone troubles is not to turn your microphone off but to keep ‘your receiver switched on to hear legitimate concerns.’ David Cameron would be well advised to heed this tactfully-expressed advice. Lilley ended with a heart-felt plea to bring the troops

Peter Hoskin

The debate begins in lively fashion

The initial exchanges of the Queen’s Speech Debate have just come to a close – and, I must say, it was all rather jolly.  Harriet Harman came prepared with gag after gag about the Tories’ “marriage” to the Liberal Democrats, while David Cameron had a few about Harman’s actual marriage to Jack Dromey.  There was much laughter, good-natured jeering and cat-calling.  So – business as usual. Underneath it all, though, there was a substantive clash between the two sides.  In a spritely performance, Harman wisely avoided an “investments vs cuts” style attack, instead charging the coalition with not having a mandate for many of its political reforms.  Whereas Cameron accused

Peter Hoskin

What Harriet Harman can do for us all

Today’s the day, I suspect, when it will really hit home with Labour that they are now in Opposition.  Attacking a government’s legislative agenda isn’t something they’ve had to do for 13 years.  And while you could say that the Brown machine acted as an opposition in government – geared to destroy its rivals – this is different terrain, with different priorities.  It will fall to Harriet Harman to lead the charge from 1430 onwards. The FT’s Jim Pickard has some sensible advice for Labour’s stand-in leader.  But the crucial point is this: “It will be tempting to slam ‘Cameron and Clegg’ for ‘taking £6bn out of the economy’ and

Peter Hoskin

The Queen’s Speech: full text

Via PoliticsHome: HER MAJESTY’S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH TO BOTH HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT TUESDAY 25 MAY 2010 MY LORDS AND MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS My Government’s legislative programme will be based upon the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility. The first priority is to reduce the deficit and restore economic growth. Action will be taken to accelerate the reduction of the structural budget deficit.  A new Office for Budget Responsibility will provide confidence in the management of the public finances. The tax and benefits system will be made fairer and simpler.  Changes to National Insurance will safeguard jobs and support the economy.  People will be supported into work with

Peter Hoskin

A day of pomp and positivity

The sun is filtering through the garden at 22 Old Queen Street, and a brass band is marching around St James’s Park: we’re getting the light and the pomp in equal measures for today’s Queen’s Speech.  As for the actual policy, well, we largely know what it’s all about.  There will be proposals for scrapping ID cards, strengthening civil liberties, reforming schools, making the police more accountable, and more.  The emphasis from the government is on handing power back to the people. The question is whether the coalition can make today’s positives balance out the age of austerity.  The stock market today provides a gloomy reminder that their biggest challenge

Peter Hoskin

The media helps the coalition’s fiscal cause

This feels like a watershed moment: a national newspaper devoting its cover to an image of the country’s “debt mountain,” with a small shaded-off area showing how little of it is covered by yesterday’s cuts.  The paper in question is today’s Independent.  And while the cover may not perfectly depict what’s going on with our public finances – yesterday’s cuts will reduce the government’s annual overspend, not the overall debt burden which will keep rising for years to come – it is still a powerful reminder of Brown’s toxic legacy. In some respects, the coalition might not appreciate this kind of focus: after all, politicians don’t much like mentioning the

Monday

Fraser Nelson

A show of Cameron’s adaptability

Great to hear that David Cameron has decided to keep the 1922 committee reinstated. This is a significant, unexpected development – and sign of strength, not weakness. Interestingly, I hear that George Osborne had not been properly consulted about last week’s events: ie the way in which MPs were asked to vote into effectively abolishing the 1922 committee of backbenchers and being strongarmed, Blair-style, by the leadership. Cameron had not intended things to turn out as they did and Osborne, in particular, was dismayed.   I always suspected that last week’s fracas was a simple misjudgment, easily explained under the chaotic events of coalition. Cameron is, I fear, being poorly

Peter Hoskin

Coalition cuts: the IFS’s verdict is in

So, the number-crunchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies have worked their magic and delivered their verdict on today’s spending cuts.  You can find their summary here, although the standout line is that the £5 billion in reduced borrowing implied by today’s cuts is “less than a tenth of the fiscal repair job that Alistair Darling’s March 2010 Budget forecast suggested will be needed over the next few years”.  In terms of capturing just how much remains to to be done, it’s a sobering remark.  But it’s worth remembering that a Labour government wouldn’t have made these extra £6 billion of cuts this year.  So, by the same thinking, they

Andrew Lilico

Undoing the spending of the last government

In the table below, we consider how the budgets of various departments grew over the last Labour government. It spells out the very large rises in Health and Education (together, the rises in these two departments accounted for 61 percent of the total rise in departmental expenditure over the period). And we can see that other departments, such the Foreign Office, experienced cuts. Then, in the later columns, we consider what percentage falls today’s cuts represent and what proportion of the total rises since 2004/5 they undo.  We see that the largest cuts fall on CLG communities, down by 7.3 percent, reversing 74 percent of the rises over the last

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The long haul starts here

Sunshine might have won the day but today was also the start of the age of austerity, as George Osborne and David Laws laid out £6.243bn of cuts. Despite the fact that they were cutting ‘wasteful’ and ‘low priority spending’, both men were keen to insulate themselves against the Labour attack that the coalition is cutting for ideological reason. Osborne said that ‘controlling spending is not an end it itself.’ While Laws stressed that the Coalition would ‘cut with care.’ Within its first fortnight in office, the government has found savings with commendable celerity. But the fact that the whole package was agreed on at 11.45 pm on Friday for

Peter Hoskin

Those coalition cuts in full

Here, via the Guardian Data Blog, is what each department will be contributing to Osborne’s £6.2 billion package of cuts this year: Department Contribution to cuts in 2010/11, £million % of department’s overall 2008/09 spending Business, Innovation and Skills 836 54.60 Communities and Local Government 780 2.12 Devolved Administrations 704 1.09 Transport 683 4.44 Education 670 1.06 Work and Pensions 535 0.39 Chancellor’s Departments 451 0.41 CLG spending by local government 405 1.59 Home Office 367 3.68 Justice 325 3.35 DEFRA 162 5.23 Culture, Media and Sport 88 1.29 Energy and Climate Change 85 4.05 Cabinet Office 79 1.05 Foreign and Commonwealth Office 55 2.85 Law Officers’ Departments 18 TOTAL

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Osborne needs to make the moral case for cuts

Gordon Brown may have been defeated, but you can hear his voice in the broadcast reports this morning about the £6 billion cuts which George Osborne will mention today. The BBC was still expressing this in terms of frontline service cuts – the equivalent of 150 schools, apparently. This was the root intellectual error which sent Britain on the path of fiscal ruin – the idea that extra spending magically means extra, better services. If that were true, Britain should have the best schools on the planet and healthiest population in the world, given that our spending over the last decade years increased, quite literally, faster than any other country

Peter Hoskin

The spending battle begins

Mark the date, dear CoffeeHouser – for this the day when the spending cuts began.  George Osborne is set to give details on his £6.2 billion cuts package later today, but we already know the broad outlines of it all: £900 million from the business department budget, £500 million from chopping down some quangos, £150 million from cutting Whitehall recruitment, and so on.  One encouraging fact is that only £500 million of these cuts will be “recycled” back into the public sector. The rest will go towards getting the government’s annual overspend down. But let’s not pretend that this is anything other than a start.  With the deficit at £160