David cameron

Under cover of discussing the Open Society and its enemies, Nick Clegg today set out his personal agenda for the next year of this government. Indeed, Clegg’s speech to Demos earlier was perhaps the purest distillation of his politics since the big set-piece number he delivered at the Lib Dem conference in 2008. It contained many of the same themes as that earlier speech: ‘social mobility’, ‘civil liberties’, and ‘democracy’. And it added a couple more for good measure: ‘political pluralism’ and ‘internationalism’. The Deputy Prime Minister described these five political impulses as ‘the source of my liberalism’. As for the specifics, there was Tory-baiting to be found in Clegg’s

A few months after the coalition was formed, I went for lunch with a close ally of Nick Clegg. After an hour or so of discussing what the coalition’s agenda would be, this Liberal Democrat said to me: ‘now, David Cameron can’t really be serious about this marriage stuff, can he?’ When I replied that I thought he was, he looked at me with total incomprehension. He then launched into a speech about how no ‘liberal’ could possibly want to see the state promote marriage. This is the thinking that lies behind Clegg’s latest attack on the idea of tax breaks for married couple; it has become an identity issue

The Prime Minister does God. At least, that’s the gist of his first major speech on religion. Actually, the interesting thing is that a Tory Prime Minister feels that he has to make the point that he is a Christian. Other than Michael Howard, who was Jewish, most other Tory leaders could have assumed we’d take it as read that he or she was more or less CofE, including Mrs Thatcher, who was, of course, a Methodist.  Following Richard Dawkins’ remark that the Prime Minister may ‘not really’ be a Christian, Mr Cameron responded: ‘I am a committed – but I have to say vaguely practising – Church of England

With one well-timed jab in PMQs, David Cameron turned much of this week’s political debate – in domestic terms, at least – into a debate about Ed Miliband’s leadership. And how is Miliband responding? Predictably, for the most part. His celebratory speech in Feltham and Heston this morning reduced down to the claim that the result ‘offers a verdict on the Government’s failed economic plan’. And his interview in today’s FT covers much of the same territory. But the FT interview is also revealing in one particular regard: it demonstrates, once again, how Miliband is caught in a strange, undefinable strategy somewhere between attack and defence. This was, if you

The Times has a very interesting story (£) today on page 17. It claims that David Cameron had agreed to inform Nick Clegg if it appeared that Britain was going to be isolated at last week’s European Council. The significance of this is that it suggests that the Lib Dems believed they would be consulted before the government vetoed anything. This news emerges after senior Liberal Democrats have privately questioned why their leader did not insist that Cameron only use the veto once he had Clegg’s explicit agreement. The Times also reports that this negotiating protocol did not envisage a situation where Britain was left in a minority of only

David Cameron was greeted with a full-on, desk banging reception at the 1922 Committee. The applause only stopped when the chief whip told the assembled backbenchers to sit down. The Prime Minister’s message was that the next year is going to be even tougher than the 1979-81 period. He argued that the government needed to be even bolder to show that it wasn’t just a technocratic government but one motivated by a desire to help families who do the right thing, but sadly no MP pressed him on how that fitted with the coalition decision to increase out of work benefits by more than 5 per cent. One other interesting