Coalition

I have for a long time been sceptical of the idea that the AV referendum will damage the work of the coalition — even once the recriminations start to fly. Having seen it up close, I know how much effort both Tory and Lib Dem ministers actually put in to keep each other informed of their work and policies. Tory-led Departments often consult Lib Dems. And the PM and the DPM seem to have a better relationship than most of their predecessors had. They are certainly more ideologically aligned than Tony Blair was with John Prescott. Now Sam Coates says in The Times (£) that things are hitting the skids,

Chris Huhne’s decision to threaten the Prime Minister with legal action — as I mentioned earlier — is particularly curious because he must be well-aware of the conflicts of interest at work in the Yes campaign. After all, his partner, Carina Trimingham is a director of Yes! and the Electoral Reform Society. She has been involved in this referendum from the start. And Mr Huhne must, therefore, know why Conservatives, and plenty of others, feel nervous about the relationships between the Electoral Reform Society who are running the Yes campaign and their business arm, Electoral Reform Services, who are financing the Yes campaign. I have just discovered, for example, that

The AV referendum: it’s enough to make you long for the life to come. As James notes, this Easter Sunday has been shaken by the Lib Dems’ righteous fury over the conduct of the campaign. Many will think this anger synthetic, but its virulence is striking nonetheless. Gone, it seems, is the bonhomie of earlier days, when ministers were surprised by how amenable they found each other. Perhaps they will now put aside childish things and trust in their better judgement. The AV furore is beginning to relegate the local elections, which might concern the government because these elections are paramount to its reform of local government. Councillors and officials

Judging from the front page of tomorrow’s Independent on Sunday, the coalition’s relationship troubles are escalating. The paper’s front page blares, “Clegg rages against Cameron ‘lies’”. Even accounting for the license headline writers takes, this shows just how fraught things are inside the coalition at the moment. The Liberal Democrats feel that the Tories have let the No campaign go too far in its’ attack on Clegg and so feel they are no longer bound to be respectful about their coalition partners. Vince Cable’s message in today’s Guardian sums up the sense of many Lib Dems that they’d rather be in coalition with Labour than the Tories. There is a

The news that the European Union has decreed that its Budget be increased by 4.9 percent in 2012 ties a knot in the stomach, as I ponder an Easter weekend spent in Margate rather than Majorca due to austerity. As Tim Montgomerie notes, the government is taking this opportunity to assert its euroscepticism. Stern communiqués are being worded; stark warnings are being issued. Behind the scenes, the government has joined with the Dutch, its closest ally on the Continent, to confront the avaricious Commission. Patrick Wintour reports that the French will also oppose the proposed Budget, and the Austrians, Danes, Swedes, Finns and Belgians are expected to lend their weight

Barack Obama’s budget plan has become a political debating point on this side of the Atlantic. Ed Balls set the ball a-rolling in an article for the Guardian this morning, which effectively claimed that the President isn’t planning to cut the deficit as quickly as George Osborne is. “The truth is that it is Osborne himself who is isolated,” is how he pugnaciously put it. But the Tories’ Matthew Hancock has since responded — on Coffee House, as it happens — arguing that, actually, the Obama Plan is simpatico with what Osborne is doing. By way of hovering above the red-on-blue scrap, we thought we’d put together a comparison of

As the chances of AV passing diminish, the Lib Dems are complaining with increasing volume about just how directly Nick Clegg is being targeted. Up to now, they have kept their concerns about what, they are calling, the swift boating of Nick Clegg relatively private. Last night, Chris Huhne said that he was “shocked that coalition partners can stoop to a level of campaign that we have not seen in this country before”. This morning, Paddy Ashdown has follow up on his phone call to Nick Robinson with a demand that David Cameron disassociate himself from the No campaign’s attacks on Clegg. This isn’t going to happen. Indeed, I suspect