Coalition

Some eyecatching numbers in today’s FT about how many free schools we can expect, and when. According to Department of Education officials, there will be about 12 of the new schools in 2011, another 50 in 2012, and around 100 in 2013. The paper dwells on how this falls short of the Tories’ pre-election rhetoric. And it’s true: the original idea was for around 3,000 new schools across nine years. So, 162 schools across three years hardly looks like fluid progress towards that goal. This needn’t be a bad thing, of course. As so often, quality not quantity will determine the lasting success of this reform. But it’s still striking

The Sunday Times (£) has news that Nick Clegg will not front his party’s ‘Yes to AV’ campaign next May. This makes sense. The deluge of abuse he received in Bristol yesterday was another indication that many have fallen out love with Clegg. The Lib Dem leadership fear that if Clegg heads the campaign it will descend into a referendum on Clegg and his decision to form a coalition with the Tories. That will probably transpire in any event, especially if Labour opposes the introduction of AV, which it looks set to do. It makes sense to protect the embattled Lib Dem leader from as much collateral damage as possible.

Nick Clegg faced a stormy Q&A session this afternoon and he isn’t in David Cameron’s league as a performer. He struggled through tough questions on VAT, DfID, a transaction tax, AV and the appointment of Philip Green. His answers were garbled, though he did stick to the government’s script. There was, however, one particularly damaging exchange. Clegg was heckled by a man who thought the coalition ‘lacked a mandate for its rather brutal social policies’, and added that Clegg should get out of the coalition before it was ‘too late.’ Clegg’s response was limply pugilistic. ‘You’ve obviously got an axe to grind.” He went onto say “it’s not in my

What to make of the Charlie Kennedy to defect to Labour rumour? Well, judging from the people I have spoken to this evening, the rumour seems premature. There’s no sense that a defection is imminent and a Lib Dem spokesman was emphatic in his denial of the story earlier. But it does seem that Kennedy has spoken with Labour figures about how unhappy he is with the coalition. These conversations, though, appear to have been more of the crying on the shoulder variety than any kind of formal defection talks. A former leader leaving the party would obviously be a significant blow to the Liberal Democrats. But the fact that

As Channel 4 reminds us, there have been two major trends in recent opinion polls. First, the precipitous decline in the Lib Dem vote share. And, second, a solidification of the Labour position, such that some polls even have them as the biggest party in a hung parliament. Predictably, this has stirred the omnipresent Simon Hughes, and some other folk around Westminster, into talking about a LibLab coalition. Which is why Ed Miliband’s comments in the New Statesman today are so eyecatching. He tells Jason Cowley and Mehdi Hasan that he couldn’t go into the coalition with the Lib Dems if they were led by Nick Clegg. He’s got problems

The Liberal-Conservative administration deserves to pass its 100 day probation. It hasn’t done much yet, but it has said some of the right things and sounds like it might even get round to doing a few of these things at some point in the not-too-distant future. I’d pretty much accept that from a new staff member, so I guess I should be half-pleased that I seem to be getting this level of performance from my government. The coalition partners were right to shelve their timid pre-election rhetoric about the size of the hole in the public finances. The Liberal Democrats’ implausible insistence that cuts shouldn’t start until next year was