Liberal democrats

On any normal day, a missive from Tim Farron to George Osborne – urging him to axe the planned rise in fuel duty – would be striking enough. On a day when the Lib Dems finished sixth in a by-election, it has a whole lot more piquancy to it. I’m not saying that the Next Lib Dem Leader™ is trying to cause trouble, or even hastening to shore up support. He has, after all, been dutiful in defence of the coalition this morning, and he has been highlighting fuel costs for some time now. But Lib Dem backbenchers clearly have some demands for the government – and now’s the time

Nick Clegg’s speech in Luton today on extremism is a challenge to large parts of David Cameron’s remarks on the subject in Munich just last month. Indeed, even the venue of the speech can be seen as a rebuke to Cameron who was attacked for giving a speech on Islamic extremism on the same day that the English Defence League was marching in Luton. Cameron’s speech, which was one of the best of his premiership, argued that ‘the ideology of extremism is the problem’ and that terrorism’s ‘root lies in the existence of this extremist ideology’. In the key section of the speech, Cameron declared: “As evidence emerges about the

There’s a quite remarkable op-ed by Paddy Ashdown in The Times (£) today which goes public with a lot of the griping about Liam Fox that one heard behind the scenes at the time of the Strategic Defence Review. Ashdown remarks that the ‘problem with the SDSR was not speed, but lack of political direction.’ He then details how ‘Sir David Richards, then head of the Army and now Chief of the Defence Staff, had to bypass the whole process (and his Secretary of State) to appeal to the Prime Minister to avert catastrophe in the Army.’ Before concluding that: ‘The decisions made in the SDSR, with some notable exceptions,

The AV referendum campaign began in earnest today. Not without justification, the No campaign argue that AV is a Lib Dem cause, an innovation designed to make ensure they are always the power-brokers. The alternative vote, so the No camp’s argument runs, obscures political transparency and weakens the voice of the people. The argument originates from the preludes to the formation of the Jenkins Commission in 1997. Not so bad for the Tories – leading article, The Spectator, 6 December 1997 Proportional representation is a political gamble with lasting office as the stake and the prize. Mr. Ashdown supports a change in the voting system because he thinks it would

Tomorrow both Clegg and Cameron will give speeches on AV, Clegg for and Cameron against. They’ll be very civil about their disagreement. But the truth is that one of them has to lose in this vote and the loser will have a very unhappy party on his hands. As Steve Richards points out in The Independent today, there’s been a lot more talk of the consequences for Clegg of AV going down than of what happens to Cameron if it passes. But Cameron would have almost as many problems if it passes as Clegg would if it failed. Fairly or not, a large number of Tory MPs will blame Cameron

Tomorrow’s New Statesman speculates that David Laws is about to return to government. Kevin Maguire reckons that it is significant that Laws is turning down invitations to events after an unidentified date in mid-March. Laws is still awaiting the verdict of the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, but he is expected to be exonerated. Preparing for a return to government, he has been writing sharp columns in defence of the coalition’s economic policy and expanding into future policy areas like the 50p rate and increased spending on the pupil premium. But Laws has also been keeping close to Clegg in recent months, tasked with building a strategy for the next election –

It is odd to think that in just a few months we’ll be having only the second nationwide referendum in our history and no one is particularly excited about it. This is largely because the plebiscite is on AV, an unloved voting system that is a half-way house between first past the post and a proportional system. (Just imagine the level of conversation there would be if the vote was to do with Europe not electoral reform). At the moment, the yes side has a growing lead in the polls http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/3115. But, given the vast number of undecideds, this could change very quickly. The No campaign, though, will have to

Restoring individual liberty has long been a Liberal Democrat aspiration. Nick Clegg has pursued the cause in government; with mixed results it must be said, particularly on control orders. But Clegg is unperturbed and today he is introducing the Freedom Bill. He previews its contents with a typically clear piece in today’s Telegraph. The measures are extensive. Pervasive CCTV is to be curbed; ContactPoint, the database containing the personal details of every child in England, is to be switched off. These liberal measures accompany those that have already been taken, such as scrapping the ID cards. Essentially, his argument is distilled into this neat paragraph: ‘We are looking at liberty

The resignation last night of Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat’s Treasury spokesmen in the Lords, over his criticisms of Project Merlin is more important than it might appear. Despite not being a coalition minister, Oakeshott is one of the bigger figures in the Liberal Democrats and is extremely close to Vince Cable, who skis with him. There is a certain nervousness in coalition circles that Oakeshott’s departure over Project Merlin could be a forerunner of Vince quitting over the government’s response to the Vickers’ review on banking. But it should be said that these fears are based more on hunches and suspicions than anything else. Oakeshott has been irritating Clegg

Cleggologists will mark down the Deputy PM’s speech today as a typical effort. There was basically nothing in it that was new – but Clegg still put it across with more punch, and more persuasively, than most of his colleagues could manage. All of the slogans and pre-announced policies added up to something that sounded, fleetingly, like a plan for growth. Although we’ll still have to wait for Vince Cable’s review to see the outlines of that plan shaded in. Clegg’s main point was straightforward enough: that the government has to, and will, go beyond deficit reduction to stoke the embers of the British economy. He then ranged across everything

Open any mass-circulation newspaper and you will find plenty of insider’s information about the Tory party. But precious little is known about their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats. After decades in the political wilderness, most editors reasoned that it wasn’t really worth their while finding out what the party thought. After all, what difference did it make?   Well, times have changed. What the party thinks, what it does, and, crucially, what it won’t do, really does matter. So to help us here at Coffee House, Julian Astle, a friend of the Lib Dem leadership and director of CentreForum, the liberal think tank, has agreed to answer a few questions.