Liberal democrats

It is significant that Iain Duncan Smith wouldn’t resist further cuts to the welfare budget in the 2015/16 spending review. This makes him one of the supporters of the National Union of Ministers movement. The Times reports that he has prepared a package of additional cuts, although I understand this doesn’t involve new ideas such as a freeze on welfare payments, but ideas trailed extensively pre-Autumn Statement such as the removal of housing benefit for the under-25s, and a limit on child benefit to two children for new families. The question is more whether the Liberal Democrats would look at these cuts again, when they made their opposition very clear

Tonight brings two major developments in terms of Tory policy on the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Courts of Human Rights. The Mail on Sunday reports that Theresa May is close to announcing that under a post 2015, majority Tory government Britain would leave the Convention. All the articles of the Convention would be incorporated into a British Bill of Rights. But no one would be able to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. This would end stand-offs such as the one over prisoner voting where the Strasbourg Court is telling parliament it has to enfranchise convicted inmates. Under this system, the Supreme Court in

The result might be in, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing useful polls can tell us about the Eastleigh by-election. What swayed the voters? Why did they vote as they did? And — perhaps of most interest — how might they vote next time? Yesterday, Lord Ashcroft’s polling operation phoned 760 Eastleigh residents, 654 of whom had voted in the by-election. All sorts of warning labels need slapping across the figures: they aren’t weighted, so are subject to a much higher risk of selection bias than other polls, and even if the sample were representative and random, the margin of error would be 3.5 points (and higher for subsets of

The Liberal Democrats have been beset by scandal in government. First there was the resignation of David Laws. Then there was the whole Chris Huhne business. And now there’s Lord Rennard and his alleged activities and the question of what the party hierarchy knew about them. But one thing unites all these stories: they all happened when the Liberal Democrats were in opposition. Indeed, no Liberal Democrat has yet had to resign for anything they’ve done in government. Their problem, as I say in the magazine this week, is that they are now paying the price for all the things they did when there was very little scrutiny on them.

In this week’s Spectator, Julie Bindel explores the culture of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ in Parliament. Her piece, “Carry on Westminster”, makes a number of revelations about the way parliamentarians behave towards women in the Westminster village, including the following: Nick Clegg was given a written complaint in March 2011 about Mike Hancock, Lib Dem MP for Portsmouth South. A constituent who told him that he ‘cannot be trusted and is a liability to women, public, and your party’. Not only was there no investigation, but there was not even a reply. When the constituent took her complaint to the party, ‘the Lib Dems did not want to know. If the police

By-elections are catnip for the media. But they are also, almost invariably, subject to greater scrutiny than they can reasonably bear. Only occasionally do they herald a new era or political realignment. Eastleigh is unlikely to prove an exception to that general rule. True, as Brother Payne suggests, Labour’s likely dismal showing may demonstrate that Ed Miliband’s still struggling to “connect” with southern voters but – though as a Miliband Sceptic it pains me to say so –  I’m not sure we should make too much of this. Similarly, UKIP’s good showing is likely to be over-interpreted too. So, for that matter, will the Conservatives’ (predicted) failure to win the

A scandal broke in the Socialist Workers Party a few weeks ago after a woman member claimed a Trotskyist tribune of the working class had taken time off from promoting world revolution to rape her. The SWP did not behave as any decent person would and advise the woman to contact the police. In its paranoid mind, the criminal justice system conspires to discredit true revolutionaries, if given half a chance. Instead of involving detectives and judges, the party’s disciplinary committee set itself up as a kangaroo court, and “tried” the man it would identify only as “Comrade Delta”. The minutes show the paranoia with great clarity. One of the