Politics

This week, Bagehot has devoted his column in the Economist to a popular theme: the ‘shockingly low quality of the national campaigns’ in the AV referendum, typified perhaps by the Yes campaign’s latest funding scandal and the No poster pictured above. Bagehot writes: ‘I came away from a whistle-stop tour of the country pretty impressed by the diligence of local activists, as they try to explain the intricacies of the alternative vote (AV) to members of the public. The national Yes and No campaigns are a different matter, I argue: they have blown a chance to have a proper debate about the nature of British democracy. Judging by my anecdotal crop

Today’s declaration (£) by Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy that Nato’s operation in Libya will continue until Gaddafi leaves power marks a shift in their rhetoric and makes explicit that regime change is the war aim. This has led to calls to recall parliament, most notably from David Davis on the World at One, to debate this change. Parliament merely voted to enforce the UN resolution which was not a mandate for regime change. The government would be well advised to heed these requests. It would be the best way of maintaining the necessary political support for the mission. Now that regime change is the explicit war aim,

Vince Cable’s attack on the PM’s speech today is just the latest elbow to be thrown in what has been a fractious few weeks for the coalition. The immediate cause of these rows has been the need for the Lib Dems to assert their distinctiveness before the May elections and tensions over the AV referendum. The Lib Dems, who feel that their leader is being ‘swiftboated’ by the Tory-funded No campaign, have been increasingly assertive in the last month or so. But there are dangers to this strategy. For one thing, it has eroded trust within the coalition. Ministers are now not being frank with each other because they don’t

David Cameron’s Oxford gaffe is refusing to die down. Whenever I’ve called Tory MPs or other members of the Conservative family in the last few days, it has been the first subject they have wanted to raise. People are genuinely perplexed — and worried — as to why Cameron said what he said. As Pete pointed out earlier, Bruce Anderson — the commentator who is David Cameron’s longest standing media supporter — warns that the Prime Minister is fuelling fears of government encouraged discrimination against the middle classes. Another long standing Cameroon loyalist said to me earlier, that he now worried that Cameron just felt too guilty about his own