Liberal democrats

David Cameron is playing down the effect the Royal Wedding will have on the 5th May elections, especially the AV referendum. Fleet Street’s having none of it however. On the one hand, Benedict Brogan can already hear the pops of champagne corks in the No to AV campaign offices. He reasons: ‘One consequence of the Royal wedding will be to make it even more difficult for AV supporters to get their campaign motoring in time for the referendum.’ On the other, Alex Barker makes the case for the Lib Dems’ Yes to AV campaign. He has a three point-plan, centring on low turnout following reduced campaign time. This, he thinks,

After being pre-empted by the morning newspapers, Ken Clarke’s statement this afternoon contained nothing that was unexpected. “We’ve paid the money so we can move on,” he said. And he went on to emphasise that the Guantanamo payouts are not an admission of culpability, but rather all about sparing the public’s money and the spooks’ time. More striking were some of the responses from Clarke’s coalition stablemates. Take Tom Brake, the Lib Dem MP for Carshalton and Wallington, who suggested that the government wouldn’t have made the payments if the UK didn’t have a case to answer. Or Andrew Tyrie, who claimed that this underlines “a period of what appears

Tim Farron is a name to remember. Farron has just been elected Lib Dem president and is widely regarded as the brightest hope of the party’s left. Farron is a political natural. He won his seat from a Tory in 2005 and from endless campaigning has turned into as near as you get to a Lib Dem safe seat. At Lib Dem party conference, Farron was a late replacement for Charles Kennedy at the pro-AV rally and delivered the best speech of the night.  At the annual conference Glee Club, a bizarre sing-song that is a throwback to the days when there were very few Liberal MPs, Farron rapped. It could have

David Laws’ eagerly awaited account of the coalition negotiations contains some great lines. Peter Mandelson’s declaration on being told of the Lib Dem’s desire for a mansions that ‘surely the rich have suffered enough already’ is classic. While William Hague’s description of the Conservative party as an ‘an absolute monarchy, moderated by regicide’ is a candidate for the dictionary of quotations. But politically the thing that struck me about it most was what it tells us about Ed Balls. Balls had worked with Gordon Brown for years and had been one of the most ardent Brownite. Yet it was Balls who effectively pulled the plug on the idea of a

Over at the FT’s Westminster blog, Alex Barker asks why it is that David Cameron’s expensive personal pledge on pensioner benefits has survived the spending review while Nick Clegg’s personal pledge to scrap tuition fees, which would have cost roughly the same amount, has been spectacularly ditched. As Alex argues, one reason is that Clegg himself was not particularly attached to his pledge on fees. Indeed, he had tried to change the policy several times in opposition. The other is that George Osborne, who is the Tories’ chief election strategist as well as the Chancellor, is determined to protect the Cameron brand. When one right-winger made the case to him

One consequence of coalition and the student fees row is, as Nick Clegg said this morning, that the Lib Dems will be more careful about what they sign up to at the next election. This will create political space for a party that is prepared to advocate populist but unrealistic policies such as abolishing tuition fees. I strongly suspect that Labour will choose not to occupy this space, appearing credible will still be the most important thing to them. So, this raises the question of who will try and move into this slot? UKIP aren’t ideologically suited to it, although Farage is a canny enough operator that little can be

Writhe, squirm, cringe and cower. The Commons wanted to inflict ritual punishments on Nick Clegg today for his broken pledges on student fees. The plan nearly succeeded. With Cameron in China, (finding out what happened to our manufacturing base), Clegg took his place at the dispatch box opposite Harriet Harman.    Long practice has given Harman some skill, and even self-possession, at the dispatch box. She had an exceptionally easy target today. As she stood up to give Slick Nick a roasting, the streets around parliament were swelling with angry university-goers waving photos of Clegg signing his fateful election pledge on fees. The LibDem manifesto was being burned in public.

The longer we go before a date is set for the Oldham East and Saddleworth general election rerun, the better it is for the coalition. This delay allows the Tories to give the Lib Dems a head start; Nick Clegg’s party can pour resources into the seat while the Tories do very little until a date is set. There will be a Tory candidate in this election, but I doubt that a Tory victory would be a cause for celebration at CCHQ or in Number 10. The Tory leadership knows that a bad result for the Lib Dems would make their coalition partners jumpy and make it harder for the