Nick clegg

In the past few years, Nick Clegg has come to blows with his party activists at his annual conference question-and-answer session over the policies his party has had to support while in government. The Deputy Prime Minister has, at times, grown rather grumpy as the grassroots harangue him on issues they wish he’d show more of a backbone on. But he’s just emerged from today’s Q&A entirely unscathed. The only point of difference was over assisted dying, which is a free vote for MPs anyway, and which Clegg disagrees with. But the Deputy Prime Minister didn’t even need to defend what his party did to activists. There are a number

The Lib Dem message in Glasgow this week in simple, you can’t trust either Labour or the Tories to run the country on their own. On Marr this morning, Nick Clegg said that the country was being offered a ‘dismal choice’ between ‘sticking your head in the sand’ with Labour or ‘beating up on the poor’ with the Tories. Clegg was determined to get his anti-Tory lines out there. He accused George Osborne of a plan to ‘savage unprotected public services’ and again and again attacked the Tories for being ‘economically extreme’ and supposedly wanting to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. He also drew another red

Lib Dem conference rallies are always a little like spending Christmas with a family you don’t know: quite baffling but rather endearing. There’s the uncle who tells the same jokes every year (Paddy Ashdown, telling the conference that he’d been asked in the street by a ‘little man’ whether he ‘used to be Paddy Ashdown’ – mercifully the members found it hilarious, again), some confusing singing (an award-winning a cappella group who kept the delegates giggling by singing ‘stuck in the middle’), a bit of sweariness (Ashdown, again, claiming the Libs were ‘too nice’ and didn’t have any ‘proper shits’) and things that just don’t make sense unless you’re part

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_2_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman review the conference season” startat=604] Listen [/audioplayer]Normally, the last party conference season before an election clarifies matters. But, so far, this one has not. Instead, it has merely compounded the factors  that make the next election so difficult to call. The reason why people are reluctant to predict a Labour majority despite its current poll lead and the structural factors in its favour, is that it trails on the economy and leadership by margins that would usually be considered terminal. Its conference didn’t address these problems successfully. Indeed, with Ed Miliband forgetting the section on the deficit it has compounded them. But the

First we had Mrs Miliband redefining her role from elusive lawyer to political campaigning wife; now we have another once shy ‘leader’s wife’ tweaking their public profile. The Liberal Democrats get very grumpy if you refer to Miriam González Durántez as Mrs Clegg, but the Dechert LLP lawyer is described as the ‘wife of Nick Clegg’ by Mumsnet for the launch of their Mumsnet Book of Animal Stories. None of the other contributors to the book – including Anthony Browne, the former Children’s Laureate and Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts – have been defined by their spouse. Brave…

David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are combining forces and heading to Scotland tomorrow to make the case for the UK. Here’s their joint statement: ‘There is a lot that divides us – but there’s one thing on which we agree passionately: the United Kingdom is better together. That’s why all of us are agreed the right place for us to be tomorrow is in Scotland, not at Prime Minister’s Questions in Westminster. We want to be listening and talking to voters about the huge choice they face. Our message to the Scottish people will be simple: “We want you to stay.”‘ The presence of the three party leaders

After the panic in Westminster over the weekend about the Sunday Times‘ poll putting ‘Yes’ in the lead came the something-must-be-dones. David Cameron said he would ‘strain every sinew’ to fight for a ‘No’ vote. But today his official spokesman was quizzed on the suggestion that he might have pulled out of a planned visit to Scotland this week (James reported in his Mail on Sunday column yesterday that the Prime Minister would stay down south this week ‘to leave the coast clear for Labour’). The spokesman said: ‘The Prime Minister will be in Scotland ahead of the election…There has been no change to the plan.’ Even in the summer,

Nick Clegg had a stab at being René Magritte on the Today programme this morning, telling us that a disagreement between the two coalition parties over anti-terror measures that were sort-of announced yesterday was ‘not some argument between two political parties’. It was clear from the way the Deputy Prime Minister described the additional measures for TPIMs that the Lib Dems accepted David Anderson’s demand that the government do more, but that only the first option, the expansion of exclusion zones, is something that will wash. Relocation powers, the key power removed from control orders when the Coalition scrapped them, would prove far more controversial, even though the Tories are

The talks between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives on the anti-terror measures that David Cameron will unveil this afternoon have finally finished. There are a few more details to be thrashed out – crossing of Ts and dotting of Is rather than major policy decisions – but the two parties are basically there. That the talks have only broken up with just over an hour to go until the statement shows how contentious these measures have been in the Coalition. David Cameron’s press conference, in which he set out the heightened threat, was partly a softening-up exercise to push the Lib Dems into accepting what the security and intelligence

This morning Nick Clegg announced that the Liberal Democrats want to ban judges from sending those convicted of possessing illegal drugs to prison. This policy may make sense around the dinner tables of the liberal elite, but it would be a betrayal of Britain’s poorest communities who would suffer as a result. It would, for instance, render neighbourhoods less safe by giving a green light to drug dealers. Nick Clegg assumes it’s easy to tell dealers and users apart, but nothing could be further from the truth. There is no set quantity of drugs that automatically leads to someone being charged with ‘intent to supply’. Unless the suspect admits guilt

So all three party leaders agree that it’s worth rushing through emergency surveillance legislation. While David Cameron and Nick Clegg were holding their rare joint press conference, Ed Miliband released a joint letter with Yvette Cooper in which he said ‘we have been guided by our firm conviction that it is essential to maintain the security of our citizens and also ensure people’s privacy is protected’. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister both needed to make the case for the emergency legislation today but Nick Clegg also needed to make the case for his support for it, given he had rejected the full Communications Data Bill. He supports the

‘I’m like any parent,’ says Nick Clegg (Deputy Prime Minister, privy councillor and universally derided leader of the Liberal Democrats). Speaking to the Radio Times, as any old parent might do, Average Dad Nick pleaded with his offspring: ‘The first, most visceral instinct you have as a parent is you want to protect your children, and politics is a very rough business you know. It’s absolutely not for the faint-hearted or the thin-skinned, so I wouldn’t likely recommend to my children to go into politics.’ Pity. Mr S was getting rather misty eyed at the prospect of young Miguel or Antonio seeking high office in order to restore the family name. Who will

I know that it is unfashionable to feel sorry for Liberal Democrat MPs. Nevertheless there are times when, contemplating their unhappy lot,  it seems appropriate to feel the odd pang of pity. The latest polling from Lord Ashcroft furnishes one of these rare moments. He asked punters who they would like to see form the next government. As you would expect 77 percent of Tory supporters want a Conservative government while 14 percent actually rather like being in coalition with the Lib Dems and would be quite happy to see that arrangement continue. The picture is much the same amongst Labour voters. 80 percent say they want Labour to govern

George Osborne’s commitment to a third high speed rail link in the future has gone down well this morning with a nice spread of business groups, northern MPs and Conservatives worried about the Tory appeal (or lack thereof) in the North. It has even gone down well with Nick Clegg, who has released a statement welcoming the Chancellor’s commitment, while of course arguing that the Lib Dems got there first. Clegg’s spokesman said: ‘Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats have led the charge in government to rebalance our economy so that it benefits 100,000 square miles of the country, rather than just one square mile in the City of London.

Danny Alexander doesn’t suntan well, but he looks more freckly than normal when we meet in HM Treasury.  He’s just back from the seaside town of Nairn in the Highlands, where, as the most senior Scot in the Cabinet, he’s been sent to fight in the front line of the Battle for Britain. People were queuing to sign up to the Better Together campaign, he says, and he has high hopes of defeating Alex Salmond on 18 September. It all added up to something rather rare for a Liberal Democrat: the feeling of being on the winning side in an election. As Chief Secretary to the Treasury, he has been