Nick clegg

If you want to know what the Liberal Democrat’s message at the next election will be, read Nick Clegg’s speech to the party’s Spring Conference today. He kept to the refrain that the Liberal Democrats are for a stronger economy and a fairer society and you can’t trust the Tories with society or Labour with the economy. In a sign of the new, more disciplined Lib Dem machine there were no detours from this core theme. Listening to Clegg, you would have had no idea that the leadership had lost a vote on secret courts this morning. Clegg knows that his internal position hasn’t been this strong since the Liberal

Nick Clegg has just battled his way through a rather more grumpy than usual question-and-answer session at the Lib Dem spring conference. Normally, these sessions are an opportunity for the party to let off steam – they’re obviously far more robust than the sort of thing you’ll see in the House of Commons as they involve party members complaining about things that worry them, rather than telling Clegg how pleased they are with the Coalition’s record. And normally Clegg performs well: Q&A sessions are his strength. But this was a more robust session than usual, with considerably more steam: activists weren’t just anxious and keen to grill their leader, they

A crime reporter friend enjoys telling the story of his first black eye at the local Magistrates’ Court. Like so many, it occurred as he was leaving, and bumped into a convicted defendant. The conversation ran along these lines: Man convicted of awkward crime: You’re not putting this in the paper, are you? You can’t do this, it’ll ruin my business. Reporter, in his first job and in a chippy mood: You should have thought about then when you did it, mate. Man convicted of awkward crime’s right fist makes contact with reporter’s eye. I remembered this story this evening as the Lib Dems started their party’s spring conference in

David Cameron needs a Willie. So say the ministers who work most closely with No. 10. It is not a call for shock-and-awe radicalism, but for someone who can help the Prime Minister as the late Willie Whitelaw helped Margaret Thatcher — gliding around Whitehall, pushing forward the Cameron agenda, smoothing over difficulties and ensuring that Downing Street’s writ runs in every department. Whitelaw did the job superbly for eight years; it is no coincidence that things started to go wrong for Lady Thatcher after a stroke forced him to give up his role. But Cameron doesn’t have a Willie. He has the opposite of a Willie: a Deputy Prime

Norman Lamb’s announcement today that the government will re-write regulations on competition in the NHS seals up one source of grief for the Lib Dems ahead of their spring conference this weekend. Activists had been threatening an awkward showdown with the leadership on the section 75 regulations, and instead ministers (its notable that Lib Dem Lamb was sent out to bat for the government today rather than a Conservative) can go to their party and argue that they are keeping check on the Conservatives when it comes to the NHS. But this has a flipside, which is that the row over secret courts will gain more momentum now activists’ minds

It was a successful night for the Liberal Democrats in Eastleigh and a disastrous one for the Tories. The Liberal Democrats held on with a majority a touch over 1,700. While the Tories came third, polling more than a thousand votes behind UKIP who surged in to second place. Labour had nothing to cheer either, coming a poor fourth—a result that makes it hard for Ed Miliband to claim they are a ‘one nation’ party. There’ll be three immediate political consequences of this result. First, Nick Clegg’s position is strengthened. Holding the seat with a majority of more than a thousand, demonstrates that the Liberal Democrats are not in the

Imagine if seven Tory Cabinet ministers had resigned since David Cameron became Prime Minister. Then think about another seven being accused of having covered up alleged sexual misconduct by a senior party official. It would put ‘Back to Basics’ in the shade. It would be the biggest scandal the Tory party had faced. But this, proportionately, is where the Liberal Democrats find themselves today. Of the five Liberal Democrat Cabinet ministers appointed in May 2010, two have resigned — David Laws and Chris Huhne. Another two, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander, are facing questions over the role they played in a cover-up of Lord Rennard’s alleged misdeeds. Given the casualty

In this week’s Spectator, Julie Bindel explores the culture of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ in Parliament. Her piece, “Carry on Westminster”, makes a number of revelations about the way parliamentarians behave towards women in the Westminster village, including the following: Nick Clegg was given a written complaint in March 2011 about Mike Hancock, Lib Dem MP for Portsmouth South. A constituent who told him that he ‘cannot be trusted and is a liability to women, public, and your party’. Not only was there no investigation, but there was not even a reply. When the constituent took her complaint to the party, ‘the Lib Dems did not want to know. If the police

So Nick Clegg is annoyed with those ‘self-appointed detectives’ who are ‘trying to piece together events that happened many years ago’ on the Lord Rennard allegations. It’s not a surprise, really, that the Lib Dem leader is annoyed with journalists at the moment: after all, if it hadn’t been for Cathy Newman’s report last week, the Lib Dems wouldn’t be in this awkward position of having to piece the allegations together themselves through an inquiry. Which says something interesting about the party’s attitude towards the allegations themselves, does it not, given the women involved, irritated by the party’s response to the complaints they say they tried to make, decided that

The Liberal Democrats have a different relationship to the popular press than the other two main parties, both more afraid and more contemptuous. This I suspect contributed to the slightly unwise tone of Nick Clegg’s statement last night. His declaration that ‘I will not stand by and allow my party to be subject to a show trial of innuendo, half-truths and slurs’ was hardly what you would expect from a party leader trying to show humility. One of the reasons that the Liberal Democrats are particularly sensitive to press coverage is the party’s memory of the unraveling of the Cleggmania. Until then, the Liberal Democrats had simply not been covered