Coalition

Sunday

Gavin Kelly

Breaking the curious silence on upcoming tax changes

This week, Nick Clegg added his name to the fast-growing list of politicians addressing the critical question of living standards. His phrase of choice was ‘alarm clock Britain’, in effect his version of Ed Miliband’s ‘squeezed middle’. It is, of course, a clunking label for what is a serious topic (hardly the first time a politician has achieved such a feat). But quibbles over terminology aside – and as Miliband’s article on Friday confirmed – these are the first serious shots in the political battle to frame the coalition’s crucial March Budget. It is now increasingly clear that at the heart of that struggle will be attempts by party leaders

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How it’s going right for Ed Miliband

Ed Miliband has had three launches in three months – but, much as I hate to admit it, things are getting better for him. His party are now consistently ahead in the polls, so in my News of the World column today I look at what’s going right. Here are my main points: 1) Cameron’s embrace has, alas, proved toxic for the Lib Dems. I have been impressed by Nick Clegg since he entered government. I’d like to see him rewarded for the tough decisions he took, and in more ways than being named ‘politician of the year’ by the Threadneedle/Spectator awards. But it just isn’t happening. The ‘merger’ model

Saturday

David Blackburn

Purple Pritchard

It’s a far cry from the egregious Tory right of Sayeeda Warsi’s imagination. Mark Pritchard, Secretary of the 1922 Committee, has looked at the result of the Oldham and Saddleworth by-election and has concluded that the Tories and Liberals may have to reach an arrangement for future by-elections. He said: “I think this has wider questions for other by-elections that will invariably come along over the next few years, and that is whether we have an open discussion now over whether we have some sort of close co-operation with the Liberal Democrats in Westminster by-elections…a quid pro quo type of arrangement. “It is absolutely clear that every by-election that comes along there

David Blackburn

Ditching Clegg won’t help the Libs

Despite the brave smiles, the senior Lib Dems are wearing long faces. Matthew Parris considers (£) the collapse of the Conservative vote in Oldham East and Saddleworth as a disaster for the Lib Dems, their own vote sustained by an influx of Tory voters. The Tories may not recover that support, but that does not ease the Liberal Democrats’ dilemma. Parris observes: ‘Privately Nick Clegg will have drawn from this the only sane conclusion, but it is one that I’ve found the Liberal Democrats strikingly reluctant to discuss. It is that in the seats where his party stands a chance next time, it must either re-engage the sympathies of its

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Comfortable win for Labour in Oldham East & Saddleworth

And all on a turnout of 48.1 percent. So far as the Lib Dems and Labour are concerned, these numbers probably met expectations. Overall support for Elwyn Watkins has held firm since the general election, but he was always going to struggle to get within 103 votes of Labour once again. While a 10-point victory for Debbie Abrahams is encouraging for Labour, without quite suggesting a tidal shift in the public mood. The 14 percent drop in the Tory vote is a little more striking, though – and it’s telling that Andy Burnham dwelt on it in his response to the Beeb. For their part, the Tories are pointing to

Thursday

James Forsyth

We await their lordships

The May 5th date for the AV referendum is under threat because the bill paving the way for it might not get through the House of Lords in time. The problem is that the referendum bill is linked to the plan to equalise constituency sizes which Labour is steadfastly opposed to. So Labour lords are blocking its progress. One Lib Dem lord complains that the problem is ‘all these Scottish ex-Labour MPs who are behaving like they are still in the Commons.’ Labour is stressing that it would happily allow the bill to be split in two and then vote through the May 5th date. But the coalition won’t agree

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The death of the Lib Dems

The latest issue of The Spectator is out today, and I thought CoffeeHousers might like to read the cover story by Nick Cohen. Its theme is brilliantly captured by Jonathan Cusick’s cover image (left) of the yellow Lib Dem bird shot through its heart with a Tory arrow – but there’s more to it than that. The era of spending cuts is returning us to two-party politics, says Nick, and the Lib Dems are being squeezed out of the equation. Here it is in full: Liberal England dies again, Nick Cohen In 1935, George Dangerfield published The Strange Death of Liberal England, one of those rare histories that survive long

Peter Hoskin

Five more things you need to know about the IDS reforms

Last November, I put together a ten-point summary of IDS’s benefit reforms – so why add five more points now? Two reasons. First, it’s worth dwelling on what, I believe, will be one of this government’s defining achievements. Second – and far more prosaic – the Insistute for Fiscal Studies released a report on the matter yesterday. The following points have all been harvested from that document, and represent the IFS’s judgement, so to speak. Only one judgement among many, but one that warrants some attention. Here goes: 1. Who gains and who loses (in financial terms)? This question courses through most of the IFS report, and stands out in

Wednesday

James Forsyth

An important test for the Lib Dems

Tomorrow’s vote in Oldham East and Saddleworth is the first big event of the political year. It is a marginal seat that Labour just held at the last election, beating the Liberal Democrats by a touch over a hundred votes. But the by-election has been caused by the Lib Dem candidate taking the Labour MP to an election court over false statements which has placed particular pressure on the Liberal Democrats to perform well. The polls at the weekend had Labour romping home. But the Liberal Democrats are confident that they will run Labour close, talking about a margin of a thousand or less. If the Lib Dems come a

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Exclusive – Adonis: I back Gove

Is Michael Gove’s school reform a hideous distortion of the Labour Academies programme, as Ed Balls put it, or the fulfillment of that agenda? Until now Lord Adonis, the architect of the Academies programme, has kept silent on the issue. But he’s interviewed in The Spectator tomorrow by Matthew Smith, editor of Attain magazine. Here is a brief extract: ‘Ed Balls has declared Gove’s plans for academies as ‘a total perversion of Labour’s policy, which was about turning round under-performing schools in disadvantaged areas’. Adonis’s response is rather different.  ‘Neither I nor Tony Blair believed that academies should be restricted to areas with failing schools. We wanted all schools to

Peter Hoskin

Eric Illsley announces his resignation

With the Labour party motioning to unseat him, and David Cameron and Ed Miliband speaking out against him, it was always likely to end thus for Eric Illsley. The receipt offender has just issued this statement: “I would like to apologise to my constituents, family and friends, following my court appearance, for the distress and embarrassment caused by my actions that I deeply, deeply regret. I have begun to wind down my parliamentary office, following which I will resign from Parliament before my next court appearance. I will be making no further comment.” Which leaves us with the prospect of a by-election in Barnsley Central, probably in May. It’s one

James Forsyth James Forsyth

An ill-tempered exchange

The first PMQs of the year was a bad tempered affair. The Prime Minister had clearly decided that attack was the best form of defence, hurling insult after insult across the despatch box. He accused Ed Miliband of being a ‘nothing man’, told him that his Shadow Chancellor can’t count and that he doesn’t count and mockingly brought up Miliband’s brother. But Cameron didn’t do anything to politically detoxify the bonus issue, which is going to carry on haunting this government, note that Lloyds — partly state owned — is going to award its boss a £2million pound bonus. Miliband also scored when he pointed out just how different Cameron’s

Peter Hoskin

Dave and Boris, united in anger

A potent Tory tag team in the Sun today, as David Cameron and Boris Johnson join pens to take on the unions. The tone of their article is as blunt as anything we’ve heard from them on the matter, particularly the Prime Minister. “Let’s call these threats what they are,” it says about the prospect of strikes during the Royal Wedding and the Olympics: “nothing more than headline grabbing to score political points”. And it continues to deliver a warning to union bosses: “you can try to drag this country back to the 1970s, to a time when militants held our country to ransom, but you will not succeed.” It’s

David Blackburn

Clegg: time to air our differences

Why vote Lib Dem? Even Nick Clegg is now asking that question. After 8 months of broken pledges, deep cuts and atrocious polling (due to reach its nadir tomorrow in Oldham East and Saddleworth), Clegg worries that his party is losing its identity. Speaking to the Guardian, Clegg reveals that he hopes to arrest decline by expressing publicly his private differences with David Cameron. This is not defiance from Clegg but a statement of positive intent. Taking brave decisions, he says, has proved that the Liberal Democrats can govern and that coalition works; the government’s strength is sufficient to withstand disagreement. That’s all very well, but Clegg needs more than

Tuesday

David Blackburn

The new faces of Tory euroscepticism

Britain is avowedly eurosceptic. But euroscepticism is not homogeneous; there are different tones of disgust. Many decry further political integration; others oppose Europe’s penchant for protectionism; some are wary of the EU’s apparent collective socialism; a few are essentially pro-European but believe too much sovereignty has been ceded; others hope to redefine Britain’s cultural and political relationship with the Continent, as a bridge between the Old World and the Anglosphere; most see Brussels as an affront to elective democracy; and a handful just want out and vote UKIP. So it has always been – perhaps one reason why William Hague’s ‘ticking time-bomb’ has not yet exploded. Time passes and Britain

Peter Hoskin

Mixed attitudes towards the cuts

Forget the voting intentions, the real action in YouGov’s latest poll comes in the supplementary results. There, as Anthony Wells suggests, are attitudes towards spending cuts that will both perturb and hearten the coalition. Let’s take the bad stuff first: “Asked if the government’s cuts will be good or bad for the economy only 38% now think they will be good, compared to 47% who think they will be bad. In comparison between October and December last year it was roughly even between people thinking the cuts would be good and those thinking they would be bad. On whether the cuts are being done fairly or unfairly, 57% now think

Mats Persson

Opposing the EU Bill

The EU Bill is back in parliament today, amid speculation that Cameron has a Europe-fuelled rebellion on his hands. Despite the talk, the chances are that the Bill will go through Parliament wholly unscathed in its first test.   Today’s debate is about the so-called ‘sovereignty clause’ – or Clause 18 – within the EU Bill. Of the Bill’s 17 pages, the clause only takes up four lines, but has still managed to cause the most fuss (the vast majority of the text relates to the EU ‘referendum lock’).   The government claims that Clause 18 confirms that EU law “is only recognised by virtue of the authority of acts

Peter Hoskin

The broken Lib Dem pledge that didn’t provoke riots

Coalition politics sure does throw up some peculiar situations. Take today’s vote on the EU Bill. As part of the horse-trading that’s going on around it, Tory Eurosceptics have put forward a series of amendments to mould the Bill more to their liking. Of these, the most striking is Peter Bone’s suggestion that Parliament should legislate for a referendum, not on this minor constitutional change or that, but on whether we should leave the EU altogether. So far, so unsurprising. But the curious part of all this is that the Lib Dems once offered an in-out referendum on Europe themselves. If you remember back to the row over Lisbon, Clegg’s

Martin Bright

The Blairite permanent revolution

I find myself asking the question again. Why did the Coalition decide to cut and reform at the same time? In terms of raw electoral politics it cannot be explained. If Cameron and Clegg had come to power promising not to tinker further with the health service and the education system, but simply to manage the cuts they would have had a much easier ride. Welfare reform is a different matter – popular in principle but devilishly difficult when it comes to the detail. Matthew d’Ancona captures the scale of change well in his Sunday Telegraph column: ‘At breakneck pace, the Coalition has set in place blueprints for fiscal recovery,

Peter Hoskin

The coalition decides to accept the flak over bonuses

The truth, as they say, is out: it doesn’t look as though the coalition will be doing much about bankers’ bonuses after all. According to this morning’s Times (£), it’s a case of the Tories getting one over the Lib Dems – and particularly Vince Cable – by not pushing down with more taxes on the City. But that, I suspect, is only half the story. The other half is that the coalition never had much in their armoury, but harsh rhetoric, in the first place. If they want the banks to start lending to business again, then their most substantial hope has always been a trade-off over bonuses. Which