Coalition

Saturday

James Forsyth

Clegg urges his party to face reality

The cultural change Nick Clegg is trying to bring to the Liberal Democrats was summed up by one exchange during his Q&A with party delegates. One delegate, a member of the Federal Policy Committee, got up and said how conference had “sent the government a message” with its decision to amend the coalition’s health reform plans. To which a visibly exasperated Clegg replied, “you’re part of the government.”   Clegg was uncompromising in his message that the party has to accept the realities of coalition government. After he had dismissed a series of questions about whether he was too close to Cameron, Clegg said — only half-jokingly — to the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Lib Dems vote to amend Lansley’s NHS reforms

Lib Dem conference has just overwhelmingly voted to amend Lansley’s NHS bill. In the end, the Lib Dem leadership simply accepted the amendments because it was so clear they were going to pass. Evan Harris, the former Lib Dem MP, warned that the party would not accept the leadership simply ignoring these amendments. He said “we expect Liberal Democrats in government to follow what we overwhelmingly vote for.” Harris predicted that if they went along with Lansley’s bill, the Lib Dems would be associating themselves with the “retoxification of the Tory brand”.

Peter Hoskin

Balls sets Labour against Clegg (again)

It’s not just the protestors who are rallying against Nick Clegg today. Here’s what Ed Balls has to say about the Lib Dem leader, in interview with the Guardian: “‘Clegg looks an increasingly desperate, shrill and discredited politician, losing both public and party support. People think that if Clegg says something, it cannot be the truth. The Liberal Democrats need to have some real hard thinking about what they stand for’ He says it would be impossible for Labour to govern with Clegg after the election, arguing: ‘I don’t see how Nick Clegg could change direction again with any shred of credibility, or how he could work with Labour now,

Friday

James Forsyth

In protest at the Lib Dems

The Liberal Democrats have, as Clegg’s team like to joke, gone from being the party of protest to the party people protest. Here in Sheffield, at Lib Dem spring conference, there’s a growing group of demonstrators standing just outside the secure zone. They are keeping up a steady chant of ‘Lib Dem scum, Lib Dem scum.’ The authorities are clearly nervous about trouble this weekend. There are a huge number of police out on the streets, a number more akin to a full party conference rather than one of these smaller spring affairs. There is a 10,000 strong demo planned for tomorrow. If there is going to be trouble, it

Daniel Korski

What the Libya crisis means long-term

The multiple crises in North Africa, from the revolution in Tunisia, through the protests in Egypt and to the conflict in Libya, has reinvigorated British foreign policy. In the last couple of years classic international issues have been pushed to the side by a need to focus on economic statecraft. Foreign ministers became less important as finance ministers gained prominence. This will now change, as leaders shift their focus onto the Libya crisis. The UN is again in focus, not the G20. The second change may be on East/West dynamics. Before the crisis, the air was thick with talk of a multipolar world and how power was flowing roughly from

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Clegg’s unedifying slip reveals an underlying truth

Project Merlin, the deal between the government and the banks, was meant to turn the page on banker bashing. But the deputy prime minister is still stuck on the previous page, telling Radio Sheffield today ‘I want to wring the neck of these wretched people’ the bankers.   The language isn’t very statesmanlike and is sure to infuriate many of his coalition colleagues (it is also hardly sensible for the deputy prime minister to be using language which appears to condone violence ahead of a conference where the police are preparing to deal with a riot). But it does reflect a political reality: the banks remain public enemy number one.

Peter Hoskin

Clegg ushers in the next phase of the coalition

What have the Lib Dems ever done for us? That’s the question that Nick Clegg sets about answering in interview with the Independent today — and he does so with righteous vigour. “Brick by brick, policy by policy, decision by decision, sometimes almost invisibly,” he insists, “we are putting in place good policies that will make a long and lasting difference.” He dwells, and rightfully so, on the pupil premium and raised personal allowance. “All these things will outlive the immediate task of dealing with the deficit.” This salesmanship is only to be expected from Clegg, speaking on the eve of his party’s spring conference and in the aftermath of

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Our monetary policy needs sorting — and quick

Today’s decision to leave base rates at an emergency 0.5 per cent — the lowest since the Bank of England was founded in 1694 — shows how Britain is running out of options. Not even Mervyn King would deny that Britain has an inflation problem: global prices may be up, but the UK seems to have been hit worse than almost any major economy, as I blogged yesterday. With food prices up by 6.3 per cent and CPI inflation by 4.1 per cent, what’s happening to prices? The below graph, again out today from a FTSE350 survey, suggests that pay is up by just 0.5 per cent in the private

Daniel Korski

Liberal hawks

From the moment David Cameron started agitating for a no fly-zone, he’s been looking for allies. France and Denmark look like they will support him, with Russia and India opposed and China perhaps willing to abstain at the United Nations. But what about closer to home, inside the coalition? Since the formation of the coalition, every policy has been tested by what will it do for relations between the parties? Oddly, however, there has been no such test about Libyan policy. Newspapers have not been writing about splits, differences and agreements. That may be because Lord Ashdown went on the Today Programme and voiced conditional support for a no-fly zone.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The British Bill of Rights stalls

A British Bill of Rights has long been the Tory leadership’s sticking plaster solution to the problems posed by the ECHR. The idea is that a British Bill of Rights would give this country a greater margin of appreciation in interpreting the convention. But this morning this plan is in tatters.   The long-awaited commission on the British Bill of Rights is clearly going nowhere.  Any commission which includes Lord Lester and Helena Kennedy, two of the Lib Dem appointees to it, isn’t going to improve the situation.   The failure of this commission even before it has started is a reminder that this problem isn’t going to be solved

David Blackburn

The threat of a general strike increases

As expected, John Hutton’s review of public sector pensions has recommended that final salary schemes end. Hutton was across the broadcasters this morning, explaining that he was reflecting an “inescapable reality”: “The solution to this problem is not a race to the bottom, it’s not to hack away at the value of public service pensions. It’s to manage the risks and costs sensibly. The responsible thing to do is to accept that because we are living longer we should work for longer.” Beside realism, Hutton’s guiding principle has been fairness. Final salary schemes encourage a “massive cross-subsidy from low-paid public servants to high-paid public servants” to pay for the “sudden

Tom Clougherty

High tax Britain

The government says that the forthcoming budget is going to be all about growth. And rightly so: the economy is still in the doldrums, and without much stronger growth than we are currently witnessing, the coalition has no hope whatsoever of balancing the budget by 2015. But few of the measures being trailed in advance are likely to have much effect, so long as Britain is stuck with a highly uncompetitive tax regime.    International tax surveys highlight just how bad our comparative situation has become. According to KPMG, out of the 86 largest economies in the world, we now have the fourth highest top rate of tax. Even more

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Labour’s inflation pitch

Curiouser and curiouser. We in Coffee House have been saying for some time now that – whatever Mervyn King thinks – Britain has the worst inflation in the Western World apart from Greece. An OECD report out today shows we’ve got it worse than most eastern countries too. Korea, Turkey and Estonia are the only eastern nations with higher inflation: But what strikes me most about today is that food prices are soaring here, to an extent far worse than the rest of the world. This is what voters notice most: putting food on the table is very expensive. As Micawber might put it: annual food price inflation 6.3 per

David Blackburn

The hunt for Hague’s mojo

All hands to the Defence Select Committee this afternoon, for questions about the nation’s security apparatus. Of course, most onlookers were not remotely interested in the answers. For them, this gathering was convened to see if William Hague might regain his “mojo“. He didn’t get the chance. This was Letwin Hour. Or Letwin’s Two Hours, to be precise. After a difficult fortnight for the government, the brain behind Cameron’s premiership high-jacked proceedings. In insouciant tones, he explained the manifold complexities of the government’s security policy to the committee. Real terms defence spending is likely to increase after the next spending round and Trident will be replaced; both are a response

Matthew Hancock-Mp

Abel fights back

One of the hardest tasks of any opposition is to gain the trust and credibility to run the economy. After what happened over the last few years, Labour have an enormous credibility gap. Ed Balls’ decision to oppose any measure to deal with the deficit has reduced Labour’s economic credibility still further. So too has the two Eds’ decision to make attacks based on mis-truths, like denying there was a structural deficit before the election; or attacking the coalition for cutting bank taxes, when it is actually putting them up; and like backing another bonus tax, despite opposing it at the election, and despite Alistair Darling’s careful explanation of why

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A tasty contest

Today’s PMQs was full of verve and bite. A welcome change after last week’s washout. It’s all getting a bit tasty between Ed and Dave. The Labour leader opened with Libya and after making ritual noises about wanting to support the government’s foreign policy he admitted he found it hard not to voice his ‘concern about incompetence’. Nice tactics there. Pose as a statesman and stick the blade in under the table. But Cameron wasn’t standing for it. ‘I don’t want to take a lecture from Labour about dealing with Libya and Gadaffi,’ he said furiously. And the cheers from the Tory benches redoubled when he called for Labour to

Ed Holmes

A second national debt that needs to be dealt with

Public sector workers will be waiting nervously for John Hutton’s pension review, due out tomorrow.  It is likely to mandate extra pension contributions of around 2.5-3.5 percent of pay and new ways to make entitlements grow more slowly.  Policy Exchange advocated a similar solution in a report published last year.  Predictably, the TUC is up in arms. It says that public sector pay is not significantly out of line with the private sector – despite all the evidence that it is. The main reason why those in the public sector get a better deal is their pensions. These add up to the equivalent of 44 per cent of public employees’

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 9 March 2011

VERDICT: A turgid sort of PMQs, where most of the quips were clumsy rather than cutting. Cameron probably won it by virtue of one of the few direct hits – his line about Ed Miliband knifing a foreign secretary, aka MiliD – and because Miliband failed, really, to prod and aggravate the coalition’s wounds over Libya. The Labour leader’s main attack – over the competence of the coalition – was clear enough, though, and could have some purchase depending on, erm, how competent the coalition is. As it is, Cameron’s hint that he still has the occasional cigarette will probably capture the spotlight. 1231: And that’s it. My quick verdict

David Blackburn

It’s all in the language

Sue Cameron’s FT Notebook is always laced with delicious vignettes. This morning, she reveals that the new cabinet manual has been withdrawn temporarily because Sir Gus O’Donnell’s Latin grammar is like Pooh’s spelling: it wobbles. What are things coming to when even Sir Humphrey puts the definite article before a Latin phrase? Cameron also reviews yesterday’s shin-dig at the Institute for Government. She reports: ‘Tom Kelly (Tony Blair’s former official spokesman) noted that the coalition was “beginning to learn the hard way that you have to get a grip from the centre”.’ It’s well known that Number 10 is reorganising. The days of the soft-touch have gone. After 9 months

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Ken Clarke contra mundum

What to make of Sadiq Khan and Ken Clarke? As Pete has noted, Khan (and Ed Miliband) empathises with Ken Clarke’s instincts. But, as Sunder Katwala illustrates, Khan’s support is qualified. Khan gave speech last night after which he took questions. One of his answers was as follows: “It’s no use us wanting to cuddle Ken Clarke – I don’t want to cuddle Ken Clarke but perhaps others do – when he is part of a government which has got policies which will see the number of people committing crime going up.” He was referring to alleged cuts to police numbers and devices such as the educational maintenance allowance, as