Liberal democrats

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

The big week ahead

After the historic events of the past two weeks, it seems odd to say that the next few days are the most important of the coalition government so far.  But, until the emergency Budget on 22 June, there’s little that will hold quite so much significance as tomorrow’s announcement on spending cuts and the Queen’s Speech on Tuesday. This will be a major chance for the coalition to get more of the public onside for a programme which is set to last years. In which case, it’s unsurprising to read that the government will sweeten the medicine of cuts by hastening through some of its most radical, positive policies before

Charlotte Gore

Have the Tories fallen victim to the Lib Dem Hug of Death?

First, a little bit of history: as recently as last Christmas, I was a member of the Liberal Democrats. I can’t remember why I joined them, and I can’t remember why I left – which strongly implies that I put very little thought into either – but that’s a story for another time. As a member, I was part of a group within the party that wanted to pull it in a more classically liberal direction: a smaller state, lower taxes and greater personal freedom. The idea of a party committed to greater personal freedom, but not greater economic freedom, always struck me as equal parts ridiculous and confused. If

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cameron should seek the common ground

Last weekend, David Cameron had few rebels at all in his party. This week, he has 118. The vote on the 1922 Committee membership was a free vote, of course, so this can by no means be compared to a proper, whip-defying Commons rebellion. But we have seen there are scores who are not prepared to support the leadership automatically. As I say in my News of the World column today it was unnecessary to draw such a dividing line over a party that badly wants the coalition to succeed. True, Tony Blair bossed his party about. But Blair earned the right to when he won a landslide victory. His

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

The axeman speaketh

There’s an entire gaggle of noteworthy interviews in the papers this morning, but let’s start with David Laws in the FT. It’s generally quite hard to draw substantive conclusions about the actual interviewee in political interviews, but I’m sure you wouldn’t come away from this one thinking anything but that Laws is a good man to have in the Treasury right now. Here, anyway, are five observations about what he actually said:  1. Sharing the blame. If people in Tory circles feel that there’s one major consolation to working with the Lib Dems, then it’s that they can share the blame over spending cut.  But, encouragingly, Laws sees this as

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

The civil service talks cuts

Jonathan Baume is fast becoming one of the political celebrities of the LibCon era.  If you recall, he’s the union chief who revealed that the senior civil servants had written letters to Labour ministers in concern at spending decisions made close to the election.  And now he’s popped up again, with more unflattering comments about the previous administration.  Speaking at his union’s annual conference, he said that “new ministers and MPs must begin to display the personal and moral integrity that was so obviously lacking in the previous Parliament, even within the Cabinet.”  Hm, I wonder who he could mean. The most revealing comment Baume makes, though, is about public

Peter Hoskin

Calling Osborne’s bluff

I’ve just read through George Osborne’s speech to the CBI annual dinner last night, and there’s much in there about free markets and tax cuts that will encourage Tory supporters.  But one passsage seemed a little strange to me: “And on the subject of coalitions, let me be absolutely frank. As a member of the negotiating team, we did consider whether we could try to bluff our way into a minority government. But it was David Cameron’s bold vision and Nick Clegg’s great foresight which saw, before anyone else, that that option would be the greatest compromise of all. A weak, unstable government, risking defeat night after night in Parliament.

Peter Hoskin

How the coalition will work

The full coalition agreement, released this morning, is fascinating enough in itself.  Here we have a step-by-step guide for how two different parties will operate together, what they will do, and, broadly speaking, when they will do it.  And, perhaps to ease the general uncertainty surrounding this type of government, it is considerably clearer than party manifestos tend to be.  One thing you can say, at least, is that this coalition appears keen to make itself more accountable. Skimming through the actual document, there seem to be few surprises, and a good handful of reviews designed to punt difficult policy areas into the long grass.  As the Times’s Francis Elliot

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

David Lammy: Why Cameron has triumphed

With Ed Balls and John McDonnell announcing their candidatures for the Labour leadership, it’s clear that Labour’s soul-searching period has now begun in earnest.  Speaking in front of the cameras just now, Balls reeled of the lines that he’s been priming over the past week: “listening … immigration … listening … beyond Blair and Brown,” etc.  While McDonnell was keen to separate himself from the other candidates, describing them as the “sons of Blair and the sons of Brown”. Both of them might care to read David Lammy’s appraisal of where it went wrong for Labour – and where it went right for Cameron – in tomorrow’s issue of the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Bill of Rights would be useless anyway

I would like to defend the coalition from allegations that there has been a deplorable Tory concession on the Human Rights Act. Tearing it up was never in the Tory manifesto. Dominic Grieve, who drafted the Tory plan, is one of those lawyers who is rather passionate about the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and praised it in his maiden speech. I had many conversations with him about this: for Britain to pull out of it, he said, would send an “odd” signal to the countries on the fringes of Europe whom we were trying to pull into our orbit. Grieve’s plan was to propose a Bill of Rights

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Mind the culture gap

Danny Finkelstein’s column this morning is one of the most important things to have been written since the coalition was formed. Danny makes the point that the coalition has no ideas infrastructure in place. There’s nowhere for it to go to get new ideas. Think tanks will rush to fill this void. But as Danny notes, there will also have to be a cultural comfort with the other side. That there isn’t at the moment is demonstrated by the look on Tory MPs’ faces when you debate whether Nick Clegg should be invited to address Tory conference. One of the clever things that the coalition agreement has done is to

Peter Hoskin

Trouble averted or trouble ahead?

“The biggest shake up of our democracy since 1832.”  That’s how Nick Clegg is describing the legislative package that he’s announcing today.  And, even if that’s pure bravado, there’s certainly plenty of encouraging stuff in it.  Scrapping ID cards; restricting the storage of innocent people’s DNA; and the government is even set to ask the public which laws they’d like to see repealed.  Sign me up. But it’s one omission which is really ruffling Tory feathers today.  There will not, it seems, be an immediate move to supplant or even dilute the European Convention on Human Rights with a British Bill of Rights.  Speaking on Radio 4 this morning, Theresa

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Govern together, campaign apart

One of the things that critics of the LibCon coalition keep coming back to is the question of what will happen in European, local and other elections. Will the two governing parties stand against each other? And how can they differentiate themselves when they support the same policies? To many, it seems like David Cameron and Nick Clegg are suggesting that we all walk backwards – odd, uncomfortable and unlikely to ensure progress. But why is this so odd? This kind of electioneering happens in many other countries. Take Denmark. There, a Liberal-Conservative government has been in power for almost a decade and across several elections, yet the two governing

Peter Hoskin

Bercow remains Speaker, as Parliament reconvenes

David Cameron sat alongside Nick Clegg on the government benches, with Harriet Harman two sword-lengths away as leader of the Opposition.  Even though the coalition has been around for a week now, it took the images from the Commons this afternoon to bring home just how extraordinary recent politics has been.  I mean, even the SNP’s Angus Robertson got to make a speech now that the Lib Dems aren’t a party of opposition.  This, plainly, is going to take some getting used to. They were all witness, today, to the re-election of John Bercow as Speaker.  In the end, it was easy for the Buckingham MP, as the “ayes” heavily

Daniel Korski

William Hague sets out the government’s Europe policy

Those who hate the new Conservative-led government and those who love it seem to be united in one expectation: that Europe policy may be the coalition’s downfall. David Lidington, the able new Europe minister, certainly has his work cut out for him. In the latest of the Brussels journal Europe’s World, Foreign Secretary William Hague lays out the government’s Europe policy, a policy best described as “pragmatic scepticism”: “The EU is an institution of enormous importance to the United Kingdom and to British foreign policy. And although the Conservative Party has seldom shied away from frank criticism when we have thought the EU has collectively been getting things wrong, we

Peter Hoskin

Nadine Dorries’ Kill Bercow email

Via PoliticsHome. If anything sways hearts and minds, then I suspect it will be the name of Sir Menzies Campbell among the “able and willing” replacement candidates: Dear new Member, Many congratulations and welcome to the House. Please forgive me for this generic email being brief and to the point. The first job of the House today is to appoint the Speaker. The Father of the House, Sir Peter Tapsell, will present a motion to the House that John Bercow remains as Speaker. At this point, members will shout ‘Aye’, on this occasion there will also be members from all parties shouting ‘No’. If enough members shout ‘No’, this will

Monday

James Forsyth

The gathering storm over the 55 percent plan

There is a massive difference between rebellious talk and actual rebellion. But some of the language surrounding the 55 percent rule has been striking. When I told one senior MP that David Cameron had said on Sunday that he would whip this vote, the MP shot back defiantly, ‘you whip if you want to.’ David Davis’s intervention on the issue on the World at One was particularly significant. Having called the 55 percent rule ‘just a terrible formula for government’ it is hard to see how he can support the measure. It is also hard to imagine that a man who picks his fights so carefully would have marched so

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Working side by side

George Osborne and David Laws’ press conference this morning gave some hints about the chances of the coalition making it. The Treasury is where, I suspect, this coalition will succeed or fail. If the two parties can keep it together on how to reduce the deficit and how fast to do it, then I expect that they’ll be able to deal with the other issues that are thrown at them. Encouragingly from this perspective, Osborne and Laws seemed comfortable sharing a platform; there were no attempts to score points off each other. It appeared to be a harmonious double-act. But Osborne didn’t refer as many questions to Laws as he

Peter Hoskin

Osborne rolls his sleeves up

Just in case you didn’t see the front cover of the Guardian, let me tell you: it’s a big day for George Osborne.  This, after all, is the day when he finally launches the Office for Budget Responsibility’s audit of the public finances – zero hour for the age of austerity.  Accordingly, then, Osborne has given his first major newspaper interview since becoming Chancellor.  Here, from that, is a quartet of observations for you: Office for Budget Responsibility.  The more I hear about it, the more I like this Office for Budget Responsibility.  Sure, it’s another quango of sorts.  But anyone who has lamented the government’s wildly optimistic growth forecasts,

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Osborne’s Big Choice: how much of our debt to reveal

The cover of today’s Sunday Times spells out what we all suspected anyway: that the Labour government left behind acre upon acre of scorched earth for the Tories to contend with.  There’s the £13 billion contract for tanker aircraft, the £1.2 billion “e-borders” IT project, a £420 million spend on schools, and so on – most of them put in place just before the election.  As James said earlier, Sir Alan Budd’s audit of the public finances is likely to show that things are much worse than the last Budget dared admit. All this throws open the wider question of our debt position.  Even by Labour’s measures, our national debt

Daniel Korski

The life of a Tory MP

A Norwegian MP once told me that every time he thought life on the opposition benches was terrible he would think about life on the government backbenches – and realise how much he enjoyed his job. Life as a government-supporting backbench MP is difficult; if you are not willing to cap your ambition, you have to support the government, keep criticism muted and hope for elevation to ministerial rank in any future reshuffle. It is doubly difficult for the hard-working Tory MPs who lost out on government jobs because of the need to find space for Lib Dems, rather than because of their personal abilities. I can think of at