Politics

The Lib Dems are in an amusingly sweary mood this weekend at their conference, with Danny Alexander telling the Sun on Sunday that he’s p****d off with the Tories for stealing his tax policy, and Lord Ashdown talking about shits and bastards last night. Vince Cable today promised ‘more colourful language’ about his coalition partners in the speech that he will give later in the conference. Perhaps Nick Clegg is planning to develop his ‘No, no, no’ speech from last year to tell delegates about all the times he’s had to tell the Tories to eff off in the past four years, though he seems oddly delicate about return fire,

Every Conservative should wish the Liberal Democrats a successful conference in Glasgow this week and not from any misplaced sense of coalition loyalty. The poor souls are on a pathetic 7 per cent in the polls, against 23 per cent in the general election. The Tories’ embrace has proven toxic for them. Yes, it was daft of Nick Clegg to agree to the (absurd) Tory ring fencing of health at the expense of his tuition fees pledge – and yes, he has paid the price for this historic misjudgement. Did he think people would ever forget his making promises like this one? But no Tory can be happy that he has

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

[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

[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]Two things have been puzzling Tory high-ups in Birmingham this week: does Nigel Farage have another defector in his back pocket, and why is the Tory party in such a good mood? Many expected that a second MP defecting to Ukip would have plunged the party into the slough of despond. One influential Tory, though, has an explanation for what’s going on. ‘The mood here is so upbeat because people think we’ve got Labour beat.’ He is, however, quick to add, ‘It is Ukip that is the problem.’ This is the paradox of British politics at the

Jesse Norman was permitted three minutes for his speech to the Commons in last Friday’s debate. But the contribution from the Conservative MP for Hereford & South Herefordshire was one of the more important backbench interventions — and no less important for being wide of the debate’s focus. The House was being invited to support British intervention against the Islamic State. Mr Norman’s speech was about whether the invitation was even appropriate. As he put it, ‘A convention has started to develop that, except in an emergency, major foreign policy interventions must be pre-approved by a vote in Parliament.’ The MP thought this unwise. I disagree. Or half-disagree. But ­Norman’s case