Steerpike: The Lib Dems’ free school fight, Dignitas on Scotland, and more

Some politicians don’t read their own manifestos. And some don’t even read the names of their own parties. When it comes to academy schools, the Lib Dems are struggling to comprehend ‘liberal’ and ‘democratic’. A Suffolk school earmarked for closure was rescued by campaigning parents who invited a commercial operator — International English Schools UK — to take over its administration. Rather than celebrate, Nick Clegg was hopping mad. He apparently regards the profit-making IES as blasphemers against his ideology. A few months ago IES leafleted homes in Twickenham and Teddington offering ‘a new choice of education from September 2014 when IES welcomes the first pupils to a brand new primary school’. They may regret having distributed the pamphlet so widely in Vince Cable’s constituency. Sure enough, IES Twickenham was not among the list of free schools due to open in 2014. If you want to kill off reforms that are liberal and democratic, you can rely on the Liberal Democrats.

Dignitas is celebrating its 15th birthday this year. Everyone’s invited. There’ll be arsenic cake and an exciting game of pass-the-pill-bottle. The Dignitas website carries startling news for voters in Scotland. The SNP wants to help you die. A cuddly MSP named Margo MacDonald, representing Lothian, is keen to make suicide legal for Scots who’ve had enough of life under her party’s administration. Dignitas reveal that her assisted suicide bill will include ‘elements of the practice of accompanied suicides in Switzerland’. But staff at Dignitas, in their haste to send out the birthday invitations, have overlooked the fact that the MacDonald’s consultation ran out of time at the end of April. In other words, the bill died of natural causes. Perhaps canny Alex Salmond has decided to delay the voter-cull until after the independence referendum.