Politics Archives

Wednesday

18 Sep 2013

Lib Dem conference: Wednesday fringe guide

Every morning throughout party conference season, we’ll be providing our pick of the fringe events on Coffee House. Today is the final day of the Liberal Democrats’ annual conference in Glasgow and the fringes are drying up. But if you are up bright and early, there are still a few worth catching: Title Key speaker(s) Time Location UK skills policies and industrial strategies: why should they be joined up? Vince Cable 07:15-08:30 SECC, Ness Pensions and Welfare Q&A Steve Webb 09:00-10:00 SECC, Alsh 1 Environment Q&A Ed Davey 10:30-11:30 SECC, Alsh 1 If you have any good fringe spots we’ve missed, let us know in the comments thread below.

Tuesday

17 Sep 2013

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Print your own politician

Nick Clegg always rails against the same old politics, identikit politicians and the like. So how will he cope now that tech whizzes have worked out how to print their own politician? This 3D model of the Deputy Prime Minister took seven and a half hours of printing on the Microsoft stand at the Liberal Democrat conference.

Sebastian Payne

Luciana Berger lambasts Ed Davey over inaccuracies in his conference speech

Ed Davey hasn’t had a great conference. First the jokes in the energy secretary’s speech bombed. Then a sign fell on his head on live television (above). Now he’s got Luciana Berger on his case over factual errors. The Labour MP has written to Davey to point out contrary to what he said in his conference speech, questions have been asked by the Labour front bench about climate change. Here is what Berger had to Davey about the ‘untrue claims in your speech to Lib Dem party conference’: Dear Mr Davey, I am writing to you about factually inaccurate statements made in your speech to the Liberal Democrat party conference

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem conference: Nick Clegg to announce free school meals for all infant school pupils

Nick Clegg has had a good party conference, and wants to round it off with an announcement that will leave a warm glow in delegates’ tummies. So he’s announcing free school meals for all children in infant school from next September. This will be a key feature in the Deputy Prime Minister’s speech tomorrow afternoon, and also represents the key trade between the two coalition parties over tax breaks for married couples. The latter is likely to appear in a conference speech or two when the Tories meet in Manchester the week after next, and the Lib Dems have a provision in the Coalition Agreement that they will abstain on

The Spectator

Lib Dem conference: Danny Alexander’s speech – full text

listen to ‘Danny Alexander: There’s no spending bonanza around the corner’ on Audioboo Conference, it’s great to have you here in Scotland. In Glasgow or, as we like to call it in Inverness, ‘the deep south.’ This great city has many claims to fame: its industrial heritage, culture, football, it’s even the home of the new Doctor Who. So, let take me you back in time. It’s spring 2010. We’re in the depths of the economic storm. Greeks rioting on our TV screens. Labour had dug a gigantic hole of debt – the bankers had pushed us in. We were forecast to have the largest deficit in the EU. The

Nick Cohen

Extremists and the mainstream: the case of Comrade Newman

The Chippenham Labour Party has decided that its candidate to contest the 2015 general election will be one Andy Newman. As the anti-totalitarian blogs Howie’s Corner and Harry’s Place have already argued he is almost certain to be the worst politician to stand for a mainstream party. An innocent observer, who believes the British Left’s protestations that it is for workers’ rights and against sexism, racism and homophobia, could go further wonder how such a man could get close to the Labour Party – let alone close enough to run on a Labour ticket. Newman manages the laughably named “Socialist Unity” website: laughable, not just because it engages in vicious

Isabel Hardman

Why Cable’s zero hours contracts crackdown won’t ruffle Tory feathers

What do the Tories make of Vince Cable’s crackdown on zero hours contracts? The Business Secretary’s review has been long-known, but yesterday he announced that he would ‘act against abusive practices in zero hours contracts, like exclusivity arrangements which prevent workers seeking alternatives’. Some read this as an overture to Labour, but from conversations that I’ve had recently with senior Conservatives, I’m not so sure. The Tories haven’t given us many clues on what they do make of zero hours contracts, largely allowing the debate to be framed by Labour, and then leaving Cable to talk about them. But Conservative ministers are not unhappy with tackling exclusivity arrangements, whereby a

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem conference: The subtle clear yellow water between the coalition parties

Aside from the usual outright bashing of the Conservative party, the Liberal Democrats do want to put some clear yellow water between their party and their coalition partners on subtler issues. They don’t just want to talk about the ‘Tea Party Tories’, as Vince Cable did yesterday, but also about some of the different decisions they would like to take after the 2015 election, if they have their way. To that end, when Danny Alexander appeared on the Today programme, as well as slapping down Vince Cable’s talk of an early coalition break-up, he repeated Nick Clegg’s hint that the Lib Dems could ringfence NHS and education spending into the

Sebastian Payne

Lib Dem conference: Tuesday fringe guide

Every morning throughout party conference season, we’ll be providing our pick of the fringe events on Coffee House. The Liberal Democrats’ annual conference has entered its fourth day and again, there are plenty interesting sessions with key Lib Dem throughout the day – be sure to check out for the traditional Glee Club if you fancy watching a surprising number of MPs singing your favourite liberal tunes: Title Key speaker(s) Time Location New thinking on the welfare state Steve Webb 07:15-08:30 Crowne Plaza, Castle 3 UK Automotive: Supporting growth through industrial strategy Vince Cable 08:30-09:00 Campanile, Monet 2 What is social housing’s purpose and how should we pay for it?

Monday

16 Sep 2013

Douglas Murray

A refreshing attempt to renew conservatism, boycotted by the Tory leadership

Apropos of the current issue’s excellent cover story (‘The End of the Party’) about the hollowed husks that are today’s party conferences, I spent Saturday at the 2nd Conservative Renewal conference in Windsor. It was an interesting day, not least because what was intended to be a genuinely open meeting, though dominated by Conservative party activists, was boycotted by the Conservative party’s own leadership. Organised by Adam Afriyie and the Windsor Conservative Association and sponsored by the Conservative Home website, the keynote speaker was the former President of the Czech Republic, Vacláv Klaus. Other speakers came from a broad range of the conservative grassroots movements including the TaxPayers’ Alliance, Migration Watch and

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem conference: Vince Cable says Coalition could end before 2015

Cabinet colleagues’ concerns over the housing bubble and immigration was only one facet of Vince Cable’s fringe interview this evening. What he told Steve Richards about the Coalition was also highly significant, and the biggest example of his freelancing to date. Where Cabinet colleagues have previously insisted that this Coalition is built to last, Cable said it was ‘certainly possible’ that it could end before the general election, although he wouldn’t be drawn on the circumstances in which that would happen, or which issues could cause him to leave the Cabinet. ‘I think President Obama has illustrated very clearly in recent weeks the dangers of parading your red lines,’ he

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem conference: Vince Cable says Tory Cabinet colleagues are worried about housing bubble

‘People think that I’m quite blunt,’ joked Vince Cable to Steve Richards at a fringe event this evening. The Business Secretary was being interviewed on his job, his relationship with Nick Clegg, and coalition politics, and he certainly made no effort to tone down that bluntness. There were ‘senior Conservatives’, he said who were also concerned about the prospect of another housing bubble. In the Cabinet? ‘Yes – and outside,’ he replied. He said: ‘We are already discussing this in government, it’s an issue I’m not the only person who is concerned. There are senior Conservatives…’ These sorts of discussions were part of Cable’s emphasis on ‘sustainable’ growth, which he

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem conference: Nick Clegg narrowly wins 45p/50p tax vote

It was so close that they had to count the votes in the conference hall, and even then, the Liberal Democrats only backed Nick Clegg on retaining the 45p tax above a return to the 50p rate by four little votes – 224 in favour of the 45p, and 220 in favour of the 50p. It’s difficult to bill this narrow result as a real victory for the Lib Dem leadership, but at least it means that Clegg has won all four of his confrontations so far with his party – and this tax vote was expected to be a loss. It was interesting how many of the speakers in

Steerpike

A bridge too far for Ian Katz

More adventures in television from new Newsnight boss Ian Katz. Fresh from his truthful-if-embarrassing slating of Labour’s Rachel Reeves, I hear that Katz has upset another Labour big-wig, Alistair Darling. Apparently, Katz wants to shoot a Scottish referendum debate on a real bridge (presumably the 130-metre Union Bridge in Berwick) between Scotland and England. After the debate, he proposed that members of the audience would ‘vote with their feet’ by walking to either end of the bridge. Darling, who is leading the pro-Union campaign, was not sold on the idea of unionists walking to the English side of river to show their support. PS: Another BBC source says that Katz ‘wanted to

James Forsyth

Lib Dem conference: The Lib Dems hope to keep their identity crisis hidden

This Liberal Democrat conference is demonstrating that the last election result was actually a relatively simple one for the Liberal Democrats. The parliamentary arithmetic meant that the party only had to decide whether it wanted to be in government or not. No one in the party could accuse those who backed the idea of being ‘closet Tories’ because there was no Labour option. Most Liberal Democrats, and particularly older ones, instinctively — and rather unthinkingly — rebel at the suggestion that they might actually want to govern with the Tories. Paddy Ashdown’s rage at The Observer on Sunday morning was over the fact that he felt the headline ‘Paddy Ashdown says

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem conference: Clegg’s confident Q&A

Nick Clegg was in a jolly good mood this afternoon when he strode into the conference hall for his question-and-answer session. His success (which may be halted shortly when conference votes on tax) in three votes over the last two days n nuclear power, tuition fees and the economy meant that he could be confident when taking questions from activists that they were largely for, not against, his vision. He took the opportunity to remind activists that the Lib Dems hardly campaigned on an anti-austerity platform in 2010, saying: ‘It’s not a thing that’s been imposed on us by the Conservatives, we went in with our eyes wide open to

Alex Massie

A Cheap Parcel of Rogues

What price a Scotsman’s vote? About £500 apparently. Beneath a headline claiming ‘New poll gives Yes campaign hope’ The Scotsman reports that support for independence, as measured by ICM, rises to the giddy heights of 47 per cent if voters are told that they will be £500 a year better off in an independent Scotland. If this seems a disappointingly mercenary reason for voting Yes the same poll finds that many supporters of independence have their price. Only 18 per cent favour independence if, hypothetically, it were to leave you £500 a year worse off. The Incorruptible 18 per cent! Almost everyone else, it seems, has a price. Upon such things does the

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem conference: Vince Cable undermines Clegg’s ‘reasonable party’ strategy

Another year, another speech by Vince Cable attacking those nasty Tories. After his rather undignified to-ing and fro-ing over the economy vote that left him looking confused and selfish while Clegg emerged looking rather bold and statesmanlike, the Business Secretary had just half an hour before he returned to the conference hall to speak again. The consensus seems to be that he made a fool of himself by not deciding what it was he should do. And given that even Tim Farron rallied behind the leadership, delivering an impressive speech in favour of Clegg’s position when he’s often more than happy to brief against his colleague, Cable hardly looked collegiate.

The Spectator

Lib Dem conference: Vince Cable’s speech – full text

listen to ‘Vince Cable’s speech to the Lib Dem conference 2013’ on Audioboo Friends. It is a special pleasure to speak to Conference in the city where I had my political baptism of fire. Glasgow is a great city and Glaswegians are warm, hospitable and humorous. But Glasgow has experienced one party, Labour, rule for decades. And I was part of the Labour political machine here in the 1970s. On one level it worked. Insanitary slums were razed to the ground. We built 30,000 new social homes for rent in a decade – 5,000 in one year, a scale unimaginable today. There was also an unhealthy tribalism and a Tammany

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem conference: Clegg vindicated in confrontation strategy as he wins economy vote

So after all the fuss, Nick Clegg did manage to win his vote on the economy: both on the amendment proposed by the left-leaning Social Liberal Forum, and on the motion itself. The Lib Dem leader put in a forceful performance when he summed up the motion at the end of the debate. Some of the contributions were rather heated, notably from Gareth Epps and Naomi Smith of the SLF, but on the whole the debate was more about the economy itself rather than the leadership’s behaviour, which will also have come as a relief to Clegg and co. And if that debate was a bitter row, as it had