Peter Hoskin

Simon Hughes and the deputy leader’s pulpit

My, what a busy character Simon Hughes is at the moment. Seems like hardly a day goes by without some fresh observations from the Lib Dem deputy leader – and he doesn’t even rest on a Sunday. Today, there are two Hughesbites worth noting down, both from an interview with Sky. The first:

“We should have no preference at the next election between the Tories and Labour and other parties. We are going to stand on our own.”

And the second:

“Our party is committed constitutionally to standing in every seat. We will be standing in every seat at the next election. There will be no deals, there will be no pacts…”

So, no ruling out a LibLab coalition and no electoral pacts. Tim Montgomerie and Jim Pickard offer sharp analysis of those claims here and here, to which I would simply add that this is yet another example of Hughes’s curiously disproportionate power within the coalition.

It seems unlikely to me that Nick Clegg is as certain as his deputy leader about how the next election will operate. But he can’t hit back, lest it be taken as a sign the Lib Dems are going to bind themselves even more tightly to the Tories. So, in the meantime, Hughes gets free rein to act as the “voice” of the Lib Dem footsoldiers.

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