Nick clegg

We are now closer to the 2015 election than the 2010 one. We also expected by now to have the coalition’s mid-term review, the document that will set out its priorities for the second half of its term in office. But its publication has now been delayed until January. This is because the debates about what new policies to include in it are still going on. The quad—David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander—met on November 1st to discuss various ideas for it. They were, as I report in the Mail on Sunday, joined by Oliver Letwin and David Laws for this meeting with the Cabinet Secretary Jeremy

One issue that is in the background of nearly every political conversation at the moment is the Leveson Inquiry and how David Cameron will respond to its recommendations when it reports in the next few weeks. What Cameron does will do a lot to shape the political and media mood between now and the next election. Cameron is keen not to be seen to pre-judge the matter, hence his warning to Tory Cabinet Ministers recently to watch what they say about it, and is playing his cards close to his chest. But those close to him are well aware that there’s a danger that Miliband and Clegg—who have The Independent

With the prime minister abroad flogging jets to tyrants, Nick Clegg was left to play the statesman at PMQs. He was opposed by Labour’s Harriet Harman. Once a plucky and hard-working performer, Harman is now entering her Elvis-in-Vegas phase. She can remember the words but can’t find the feeling. She accused the Lib Dem leader of various atrocities. Sacking policemen. Doing the dirty on tuition fees. Vandalising the Surestart scheme. Nobbling mums with extra taxes. But her meandering phrases were so vaguely scripted, and so feebly delivered, that she might as well have stitched them into a sewing sampler. Clegg had all the time in the world to sharpen up

Nick Clegg and David Cameron still can’t agree over the future of the boundary review, and their continuing stalemate led to legislation on individual voter registration being shelved indefinitely in the House of Lords. An amendment to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill tabled by Labour’s Lord Hart and backed by Lib Dem Lord Rennard would have delayed the changes until 2018 – in line with Nick Clegg’s pledge of revenge this summer that the review be delayed until after the 2015 election. The problem is that Cameron didn’t know about the amendment until his staff read about it on Paul Waugh’s blog, and he apparently lost his rag with

Nick Clegg this morning fell into the usual ‘all or nothing’ fallacy on Europe. He said: ‘As soon as we start talking about repatriation, we descend into the in-versus-out debate.’ But the Deputy Prime Minister is wrong: the in/out debate is already underway, and rather than seek to defend the unpopular status quo, Nick Clegg should back renegotiation as the best option for those who wish to put the UK’s membership on a stable democratic footing. But instead of attempting to address the causes for the EU’s unpopularity, the inflated budget, democracy deficit and bureaucracy etc. Nick Clegg sought to channel the debate into his own in/out debate where the

When Nick Harvey was sacked in September’s reshuffle, leaving the Ministry of Defence without a Liberal Democrat minister, anti-nuclear campaigners and the SNP claimed the move put the future of the review into alternatives to the current Trident nuclear deterrent in doubt. To underline the review’s security, the party announced at the start of its autumn conference two weeks later that Danny Alexander would lead it instead. But though the review may be continuing, it appears rather insecure in one crucial respect, which is whether anyone will actually pay it the blindest bit of attention. Today Philip Hammond announced a further £350 million of funding for the design of a

David Cameron had lunch with Herman van Rompuy in Downing Street today to discuss the UK’s position on the EU budget. Despite the Prime Minister’s tough talking in public about his determination to veto any real-terms increases in the money available for the multi-annual budget, the Downing Street spokeswoman refused to confirm that there was in fact any mention of this threat at today’s meeting, which Nick Clegg apparently popped into briefly. She said: ‘Discussions focused on the multi-annual budget. Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister made clear the Government’s position that we do not support a real-terms increase in the EU budget. They reiterated that at

Nick Clegg is giving a speech this evening in which he will try to re-sell the Liberal Democrats as friends of business. Admitting that he hasn’t ‘said enough’ about the party’s pro-business policies, he will tell the guests at Mansion House: ‘Many in the corporate world do not – automatically – see the Liberal Democrats as natural allies. Perhaps that’s because, most recently, we’ve rightly earned ourselves a reputation as loud critics of corporate irresponsibility… Not least in financial service following the crash in 2008. Yet, historically, the Liberal Democrats are a party of industrialists and small business… And, since coming into government, we’ve been taking decisions, day in, day

Conor Burns, the Conservative MP who resigned from the government over Lords reform, is livid with Nick Clegg’s smug declaration that the Liberal Democrats are not going to abstain from the Tories’ vote on electoral boundaries but actively vote with the opposition. It’s revenge on Burns and his cohort of true blues for killing the yellows’ beloved Lords reform bill earlier in the year; and it suggests that the rulebook has gone out the window: ‘It appears to prove what many have long feared: it’s one rule for the Conservatives, who have to resign or be sacked to vote against the government, and another rule for the Deputy Prime Minister who just

Britain’s national debt is rising faster than any of the basket-case Eurozone countries that George Osborne is so fond of disparaging but here’s the thing: only 16pc of voters realise that debt is going up. Why? Are they all thick? Or could it be that our political class is systematically misleading them? I’m inclined towards the latter. The odd debt vs deficit slip is forgivable. But ministers do seem to trying to exaggerate – even lie about – what they are doing to the national debt. And I’m afraid that Nick Clegg is my Exhibit A. The Deputy Prime Minister was recently caught out telling Essex factory workers that his

British politics is returning to normal. The two-party system is back. That, it seems to me, is the chief conclusion to be drawn from this year’s conference season*. The opposition have been supplanted by Labour and we’re back to the familiar sight of watching the Conservatives and Labour knock lumps out of one another. It is not just that the Lib Dem conference seems to have taken place months ago (though it’s partly that) but that the guest list for the next general election has been agreed and Nick Clegg’s party isn’t on it. The Liberal Democrats? Who they? For a long time now, the government has been weakened by the

This conference season marks the half way point to the next election and we can see the political battle lines becoming clearer. The Tories, as their new poster campaign shows, intends to hammer Labour as the party that has learnt nothing from its mistakes. The argument of the coalition parties, which Nick Clegg previewed in Brighton, will be that the world has changed but Labour is stuck in the pre-crash era with its borrow and spend economics. Ed Miliband for his part wants to run as the man who is ‘on your side’. Today’s policy announcement taking aim at pension charges and the energy companies are designed to resonate with

I’ve written about the deceptive attraction of wealth tax in my Telegraph column today, and I wish I was wasting my time. Once, you could say it was an idea so flawed that it stood no chance of getting into government. In the coalition era, there is no such thing.  Tory ministers will wave through an idea they regard as nuts because the Lib Dems want it, and that coalition is about compromise. Political horsetrading has supplanted rational economic debate, and if the Lib Dems want a wealth tax there is a horribly high chance that Osborne may give way — as he almost did over Mansion Tax. Not because

Nick Clegg’s conference speech wasn’t designed to be a barn burner. Instead, it was meant to tell the party that there’s no turning back, that they now have to become a Liberal, centrist party of government. The Clegg camp believes that up to 3 million of the 6.8 million votes they won at the last election might be gone for good. So, the party needs to go and find new voters. They believe these are to be found in the centre ground among those who don’t want to, as he put it, to ‘trust Labour with their money again’ and have doubts about whether the ‘Tories will make Britain fairer’.