Liberal democrats

Monday

Daniel Korski

Who should get what?

In February I pontificated about the composition of Cameron-Clegg government – to general ridicule. The blogpost looks increasingly prescient now that David Cameron seems to be favouring a formal deal with the Lib Dems. Assuming that Lib Dem MPs will sit around the Cabinet table, what ministries should they get? The assumption is that the Lib Dems want six Cabinet post and will probably end with no more than four. The Conservatives cannot give up the Chancellorship, Education or the FCO – departments that are important for the leadership, its worldview and its reform agenda . Nor is it easy to see a Lib Dem in Defence or someone like

Peter Hoskin

So now we know how Boris feels about coalition government

Aside from a few quips about Walls sausages and Meccano, Boris has kept his views relatively private since the events of last Thursday.  But you can always count on the Mayor of London to open up for his Daily Telegraph column, and, today, he does exactly that.  Here’s his take on a Lib-Con coaltion – which, to my eyes, seems more than just a little bit dismissive: “The Lib-Con negotiations are still going on, in a foretaste of the Belgian orgies of tedium and paralysis that proportional representation will inflict on the country. Everyone is trying politely to work out exactly how many Cabinet seats to give a party that

Alex Massie Alex Massie

What A Carve-Up: The Glittering Prizes Awaiting Cameron and Clegg

These are interesting times, aren’t they? Interesting but scarcely simple. Nick Clegg may have suggested that a deal must be done by close of play, Monday if it is to be done at all and all the signs may still point to David Cameron coming to an arrangement with the Liberal Democrats but, clearly, difficulties remain. How could it be otherwise given the complexity of the situation and the stakes? Policy is the least of the problem. If one accepts that the old left-right labels are increasingly outmoded and that the defining divide today is between the centralisers and the localists, between the liberal and the statist then, theoretically at

Sunday

Martin Bright

Confession Time: I Voted Labour

I left the Labour Party in 1994 and re-joined on May 6th 2010. There, I’ve said it. I had always intended to vote Liberal Democrat in this election, but changed my mind in the polling station. It seems I wasn’t alone.  I couldn’t ever quite buy in to the New Labour project, but I would like to be involved in whatever it is that happens next.  Unlike others on the left, I would not be horrified by a Conservative/Liberal Democrat government, although I would be happier with a grand coalition/government of national unity. I voted Labour with a heavy heart. My local MP, Lynne Featherstone is exemplary and the local

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

A rolling Westminster drama

Another extraordinary day in Westminster. A deal looks likely to be agreed by Clegg and Cameron tomorrow morning, put to backbench MPs in the afternoon and then Brown will advise the Queen to send for Cameron on Tuesday. (Brown may choke on those words, but if he says ‘send for Ed Balls’ I don’t think she will fall for it.) This evening at 6pm, the handful of Tories MPs who are in London met Cameron at the Commons to discuss the coalition talks. Rumours still fly but as I understand it a deal has been reached where the LibDems will vote for Tory cuts – thereby fulfilling Vince Cable’s pledge to

David Blackburn

No Lib-Con deal for at least 24 hours

William Hague has just emerged from the Cabinet Office and spoken of the ‘positive, constructive and substantive talks’ between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Discussion has encompassed political reform, reducing the deficit, banking reform, regulation of small businesses, environmental issues and civil liberties. Hague says that a further meeting will take place at some stage in the next 24 hours. ‘That meeting,’ he added. ‘Will concentrate on deficit reduction and economic stability’. The language of the statement suggests that an informal pact is more likely than a formal coalition. It is surely indicative that the follow-up talks aim to secure economic stability in the interests of the country, rather

Daniel Korski

Don’t forget the Party, David

Days, perhaps only hours away from the expected announcement of a Con-Lib deal, the Tory party rank-and-file is getting increasingly restive. Many MPs and party activists do not feel that Team Cameron has been sufficiently attentive to them and their concerns. They look longingly at the Lib Dems, whose democratic set-up enables MPs and party members to make their views known to Nick Clegg and the leadership. In a Tory party that has always favoured single-minded leadership, the options for representing rank-and-file views are few, particularly as the chairmanship of the 1922 committee remains vacant. As a result, many senior MPs have been reduced to calling hacks to find out

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Scotland Will Save England From PR

That’s right. There’s a genial irony here. The very same Scottish MPs whose election helped prevent the Conservatives from winning a majority will be the men – and they are mostly men – who will prevent electoral reform. Those English voters who think it unfair that the great phalanx of Labour MPs returned from these chilly northern climes exercise an undue (in their eyes) influence upon the affairs of state might also pause to reflect that the people who will prevent electoral reform may well be those same Scottish Labour members. Not that this stops the deluded left from dreaming of some grand so-called progressive alliance. They’re all at it

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Liberty Government? Also: Clegg is Not Kingmaker

No, not a libertarian government, but an alliance between liberal Tories and Orange Book Liberal Democrats is arguably the closest thing we can get to it. Peter Oborne has a splendid column in the Observer today which makes the key point: Indeed the prime minister and his supporters are wrong to argue today that the Liberal Democrats and Labour have far more in common than Lib Dems and Conservatives. Ideologically, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats share one massive idea. They are both doctrinally suspicious of central government. They favour localism, decentralisation, individual freedom and accountability. The want to destroy the big state and all of its paraphernalia: bureaucracy, secrecy

Saturday

Alex Massie

Let’s Talk About Tax

We know that europe and perhaps electoral reform will be difficult for the Tories and Lib Dems to agree upon. So let’s talk about something else: tax. Cameron’s email to Tory members today strikes just the right tone and says most of the right things. It makes it clear that he thinks there’s a deal to be done and, importantly, reminds the membership that the Tories will have to give some things up too if the partnership is to be stable enough to last at least two years. That’s important because it’s one way of building trust and convincing the other party that you’re serious. So, on tax, I’d suggest

Daniel Korski

Cameron’s Clause 4 moment

David Cameron never really had a Clause 4 moment. True, the Conservatives never believed anything so absurd as socialist economics. But the fact that he never had a genuine dust-up with his party made many voters think that he had rebranded but not reoriented them. In the end, it made many would-be supporters wary of voting Tory. Now, the Tory leader may have a Clause 4 moment thrust upon him by virtue of the Lib Dem talks. For if a Con-Lib pact is to be made, it will include a lot of things the party finds unpalatable. Like Tony Blair’s experience with the Labour Party over the Clause 4 discussions,

Peter Hoskin

Clegg laps it up

Ooh, a touch of drama just now, as Nick Clegg addressed the 1,000 or so protestors calling for voting reform in Smith Square.  He said that the demonstration was “wonderful,” and got big cheers for saying that PR is “in the national interest”.  But there were no hints, either way, about how the Lib-Con talks are going, or whether PR was a dealbreaker – which may have left the people shouting “Don’t sell out!” a little dissatisfied.  For all the banners and flags, this one will still come down to the decisions of men in suits, behind oak doors. UPDATE: The Beeb’s Laura Kuenssberg tweets that the protestors are moving

Peter Hoskin

Where are Labour’s manners?

For all the feverish political activity in Westiminster today – and beyond the occasional voting reform protest – there’s a strange, impermeable calm to the situation.  Everything is going on behind closed doors, and everyone is remaining relatively tight-lipped.  Signs are, we may have to wait a couple of days before any light breaks through the fog of discussion and counter-discussion.   One thing, though, is already becoming increasingly clear: 13 years of tribalism haven’t done Labour much good when it comes to cross-party negotiations.  There are, of course, the rumours that Gordon Brown had an – ahem – “unconstructive” meeting with Clegg last night.  But I more have in

Martin Bright

Time for a National Government? (Revisited)

If there is one lesson to be drawn from the television debates, it is that people have grown tired of politicians slagging each other off. David Cameron promised an end to “yah-boo” politics, but the institution of parliament makes this near-impossible in practice. However, while parliament is out of action, there just might be the possibility of creating something genuinely ground-breaking: a government of national unity. I first suggested this idea in the New Statesman during the 2008 Labour Party conference: “If the financial crisis is as serious as many in the government suggest, then extraordinary times require bold solutions. There is an argument for saying that the Prime Minister should

Alex Massie Alex Massie

It’s Time to Hug a Lib Dem

Ben Brogan says that all the talk of the Tories offering three cabinet positions to the Liberal Democrats is premature. I dare say it is. Nevertheless this is a blog and speculation is good for blogging. I rather think we’d have a better* government if Nick Clegg was Home Secretary, David Laws put in charge of Welfare Reform and Lord Ashdown sent to the Ministry of Defence. This latter clearly won’t happen but, whatever you think of his past, Ashdown is an asset who ought to be used by the new government – even if we end up with a minority Tory ministry. But the Tories ought not to be

David Blackburn

It’s obvious that Brown’s the impediment, why doesn’t Labour strike?

Well, Brown the Statesman was a short-lived incarnation. The BBC reports that Brown and Clegg exchanged ‘angry words’ yesterday evening and that Brown delivered a characteristic private political conversation: ‘a diatribe laced with threats’. Clegg and Brown simply cannot work together. This inability to put aside personal differences is far from magnanimous of both men, but it is plain that Brown no longer commands the authority to shape the nation’s future. If there’s no hope of a Lib-Lab coalition with Brown at the helm, then the knives will be sharpening – again. From Labour’s perspective, delaying the inevitable would be fatal as it gives Cameron more time to negotiate with

Friday

David Blackburn

The need for speed

The markets have spoken, and they’ve done so with menace. The FTSE 100 closed down 138 points, which, though not a complete disaster, is far from encouraging. You might argue that the multinationals that comprise the FTSE 100 are more affected by the fortunes of international markets and commerce. Whilst that’s true it must be conceded that there is little comfort in the FTSE 250, a figure that provides a closer expression of domestic economic confidence, which closed down by 410 points. At the time of writing, Sterling, another bellweather indicator, is mired. The Pound is worth $1.47, and at one point it was at its lowest level against the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

A deal that would kill Gove’s agenda at birth

While both the Conservatives and LibDems support the idea of Swedish schools, a Lib-Con deal could kill the agenda stone dead. David Laws is proposing to allow local authorities to have the power to veto new schools – which would, in effect, mean no rollout. As we all know, this could strangle the Gove school agenda at birth. Local authorities, whether Labour or Tory, will hate the idea of competition in the provision of education. The local authorities and teachers’ unions are incredibly powerful, and defeated Thatcher, Adonis and Blair. They have also nobbled the LibDems to the extent that, I understand, David Laws believes that he could not get

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Do the Deal, Dave

Tories are supposed to be pragmatists. That’s why they’re the traditional party of coalition in this country. On that front, it is interesting to see that John Major is suggesting that, to advance the cause of stability, Cameron should offer Clegg a number of cabinet seats. This seems sensible and, happily, would also improve the quality of the cabinet since, lord knows, there are a good number of Tories who ought to be kept well away from the Red Boxes. More interestingly still, it was notable today how both Dan Hannan and Douglas Carswell were warm on the idea of a coalition and even, if necessary, some kind of electoral

Peter Hoskin

Cameron offers the hand of coalition to the Lib Dems

Woah, I didn’t think Cameron would go that far.  In his statement just now, the Tory leader started off by talking about minority government, as one might expect.  But he soon skipped past that, and onto what sounded like a more formal coalition with the Lib Dems.  He called it the Tories’ “Big Comprehensive Offer”. This offer trumped the one that Brown put forward ealier by virtue of its clarity.  Where Brown had hints and innuendo, Cameron had an itemised list of policies and specifications.  And so the Tory leader set out the areas where he wasn’t willing to compromise with the Lib Dems: Europe, cutting the deficit and immgration.