Nick clegg

Treasury questions is one of the more entertaining spectacles on offer in the Commons. There’s the standard banter between George Osborne and Ed Balls – today we saw the Chancellor dub his opposite number ‘the member for Unite west’, with Ed Balls noting in his reply that at least he’d only been heckled by a few trade unionists rather than the entire Olympic stadium. There were new ministers to welcome too: Greg Clark received such a warm cheer that he joked he felt ‘like Boris Johnson’. But the centrepiece of the session was – along with the confirmation that the Autumn Statement will take place on the rather wintery date

Nick Clegg came to the Commons today to both praise and bury House of Lords reform, for this parliament at least. In a light-hearted start, Clegg informed the House that he was here to update it on ‘House of Lords reform or what’s left of it’. But this light-hearted mood didn’t last long. Soon Clegg and Harman were trading blows, with the Deputy Prime Minister accusing Labour of having behaved like miserable, little party point scoring politicians’ in refusing to back the idea of a timetable motion. Things turned really sour when Clegg’s Tory backbench tormentors got to their feet. Malcolm Rifkind, whose speech against had helped sink the bill,

Why does hydroelectric power have such a friendlier image compared to other forms of renewable energy? In this week’s magazine cover, our first ever Matt Ridley Prize winner Pippa Cuckson examines why hydroelectricity is not just bad for the taxpayer, but also bad for the environment. In our View from 22 podcast, Fraser Nelson discusses this hidden scandal: ‘The principle of hydroelectric power, which is great for mountains, does not apply England’s green and pleasant lakes. But that hasn’t stopped the government subsidising this because they love the idea so much…every week three hydro-plants are being authorized which pretty much have the power of a candle. They require huge amounts of subsidy but

When Nick Clegg announced he was giving up the struggle on House of Lords reform, he named a number of policy areas that could fill the huge legislative void left by the collapse of the plans to overhaul the upper chamber. One of them was banking, and the Deputy Prime Minister told journalists it might be worth examining whether it was possible to go further than the Vickers proposals on this area. Today’s Financial Times fleshes out what going further might entail. Vickers had originally proposed banning the retail operation of a bank from selling interest rate and currency swaps, but this was dropped in the white paper on banking

Are the Tories about to do a deal with the Liberal Democrats over political party funding? Benedict Brogan intriguingly suggests that David Cameron might offer a post-Lords reform olive branch to Nick Clegg — the state funding of political parties. In return, the Lib Dems would have to support a future vote on boundary change: His side won’t like it, but it will be presented as Mr Clegg’s price for securing a review that gives the Tories more seats. And some Tories, including Mr Cameron, may be secretly delighted to reduce their reliance on donors who are never slow to voice their frustrations when things go wrong. With party memberships

Nick Clegg’s decision to scupper boundary reviews in retaliation for the failure of his Lords reform programme is the very opposite of ‘mature’ government. It is the politics of the sand pit: you have annoyed me, so I’m going to kick your sandcastle down. It’s his way of putting a horse’s head in Cameron’s bed, and the public will be appalled. The coalition has entered a new, destructive phase where Lib Dems will now pride themselves on what Tory measures they can frustrate or destroy (O Levels, profitmaking schools etc). I’ve just been on the Today programme with David Hall Matthews of the Social Liberal Forum, who claimed that Clegg’s

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Nick Clegg’s decision not to support the 2015 boundary changes as a ‘penalty’  for Lords reform not happening is that Downing Street is insisting on pushing on with the matter. I’m told that Number 10 will ‘do everything we can to persuade everyone we can to vote for them.’ When I put it to this senior Cameroon that this was futile given that with Lib Dem ministers and MPs voting against, there was no chance of getting it through the Commons, the source said ‘is it feasible [to get the boundary changes through], yes’. There are two possibilities here. One is that Cameron is

Ed Miliband’s comments in the Independent today were clearly based on the assumption that Nick Clegg will not be around if and when it comes to negotiating a possible Lib-Lab coalition in 2015. Vince Cable has already thrown his fedora into the ring to be the next Liberal Democrat leader, and Miliband backed the calls for a change of chief in his interview today. ‘I would find it difficult to work with him,’ he said, when asked about Clegg. Clegg cannot go from being Deputy Prime Minister in one government to Deputy Prime Minister in the next: it would look ridiculous. A coalition with Labour would also not suit Clegg’s own political

Vince Cable’s decision to speculate publicly about a post Nick Clegg leadership race is a significant moment. To be sure, saying ‘I wouldn’t exclude it’ about running for the job is a long way from launching an actual challenge. But it is not the answer that a politician gives if they want to stop all speculation. There’s long been gossip at Westminster that Cable’s interest in the leadership has revived — and this interview appears to confirm that. It is worth remembering that Cable only didn’t run last time because he thought that the party wouldn’t pick another veteran as leader after the Ming Campbell disaster. So, there’s unfulfilled ambition

This morning’s press conference by David Cameron and Nick Clegg marked an attempt to scotch all the talk of the coalition moving to confidence and supply sometime before the next election. Cameron declared that he was more committed to the coalition than he was back in 2010. He also stressed that he believed Britain needed stable government ‘throughout this term’, an implicit rebuke to all those Tories talking about a move to minority government in 2014. Nick Clegg, for his part, spoke about how this was going to be a ‘proper coalition government for a full five years’. There was also an announcement that the coalition’s mid-term review will set

Two rather interesting reconciliations are taking place today. Ed Miliband is making the first speech of a Labour leader at the Durham Miners’ Gala since 1989. And Nick Clegg has been trying to charm the left of his party into believing that all is well in the Liberal Democrat world. The latter largely involved Clegg trying to encourage the left-leaning Social Liberal Forum’s annual conference to develop a sort of persecution complex. So the audience was told not to ‘underestimate how much the right and the left want to destroy us’, and to remember that ‘if we aren’t going to stick up for ourselves, no-one else will’. It was difficult,

The look on Nick Clegg’s face as he entered the chamber to hear Sir George Young announce the withdrawal of the programme motion said it all. The Deputy Prime Minister knows that Lords reform is now in the long grass and it will only come out of there if either the Tory rebels back down or Labour agree to a programme motion, both of which are unlikely scenarios. Source close to Nick Clegg say that the Prime Minister informed the Deputy Prime Minister today that he needed more time to build consensus on his own side. The public plan is now to try for a programme motion again in the

Nick Clegg was standing at the despatch box to move the second reading of the coalition’s Lords reform bill. But the reception he got was reminiscent of what used to happen to Lib Dem leaders at PMQs. He was barracked mercilessly by both Labour and Tory benches while his own benches remained oddly silent, only one of his MPs intervened on his behalf.   Watching the Tory benches during Clegg’s speech it was hard not to imagine a considerable rebellion tomorrow night. At one point, the interventions were coming in so thick and fast that Clegg appeared to be almost ducking at the despatch box. The Tories seemed to be