Fees vote forced through – protesters and police clash

Yesterday was a most difficult day for the LibDems. They LibDems hit 8% in a poll – their lowest for 20 years – on the eve of the university fees vote. With 11 backbenchers and 17 frontbenchers voting for the policy, with 21 against and 8 abstentions, it looks as though almost three-quarters of Nick Clegg’s backbench MPs did not vote for his policy. It was the biggest Liberal rebellion since 1918 and beyond. Is Clegg to end up like Lloyd George, ultimately the victim of a Tory cohabitation? In the time-honoured fashion of governments who have lost a public argument, Ministers put it all down to difficulties of “communication”. But whatever errors they made since May pale into insignificance compared with the hole they dug beforehand. Like control orders, nuclear power, marriage tax breaks and VAT, tuition fees were always going to be a hot policy potato for LibDems in a Coalition government. – Next Left

MINISTERS forced through a huge rise in university tuition fees last night, despite violent protests in Westminster and a rebellion from Lib Dem MPs. In the first big Commons test for the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, MPs backed moves to allow English universities to charge as much as £9,000 a year by a majority of 21 – with 323 MPs in favour and 302 against the plan. After weeks of agonising, only 27 of the 57 Lib Dem MPs voted for the rise, many having signed pledges before the election promising to oppose any increases. As violence raged outside, all three Welsh Lib Dem MPs defied the leadership. One of the three, Cardiff Central’s Jenny Willott, resigned as a parliamentary aide to Energy Secretary Chris Huhne. – Western Mail

After the Commons vote, a group of protesters breached police defences intent on ­vandalising the Treasury on Whitehall. Reinforcements had to be rushed in to bolster the ring of steel, with officers donning riot helmets and shields. Two men carrying a rock and a steel bar smashed a window on the side of the Treasury building. As they shattered one pane, the blinds were lifted to reveal riot police inside. Outside, officers surged forward using batons and shields. At Trafalgar Square protesters tried to set the Christmas tree alight and pull it down, before police moved in to repel them. As the violence spread through central London, tourists and workers on their way home were caught up in it. – The Mirror

WHO can blame students who can envisage little else but years and years of burdensome debt stretching ahead in front of them for wanting to stage a noisy protest on the night that MPs voted on tuition fees? That is their right, and we would condemn anyone who tried to deny them that right. What they cannot do, though, is take their protest to the disgraceful level seen by millions around the country on TV news last night. Police were injured, students were hurt, and even the limousine taking Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, to the Royal Variety Performance was splattered with paint and had a rear side window cracked. As we have said here before, there will be a great many people around the country who will sympathise with the students’ point of view, knowing that they themselves might never have got their own degree, if they had been forced to hand over up to £9,000 a year in tuition fees. But that support will simply vanish away into thin air if legitimate demonstrations turn violent and descend into the kind of chaos we witnessed last night, with many perhaps wondering if they want the public purse to fund further education for the unruly minority of students who ignore the rule of law. – Liverpool Daily Post

Coulson in court

Andy Coulson, the prime minister’s chief media adviser, has denied in court that he ordered reporters to “practise the dark arts” by illegally hacking phones and “blagging” confidential information when he was editor of the News of the World. Coulson was giving evidence for the first time at the trial of Tommy Sheridan, the former Scottish Socialist party leader, who is accused of lying on oath when he won a £200,000 defamation action against the News of the World in 2006, following a three-year police inquiry. Coming face-to-face with Sheridan – who is conducting his own defence – Coulson told the high court in Glasgow that he had no idea his newspaper had used private detectives to illegally “hack” phone messages from members of the royal family and other targets. He repeatedly denied promoting a “culture” of hacking and “blagging”, where people’s confidential data such as tax details, criminal records or phone bills were illegally accessed, in the NoW’s newsroom. – The Guardian (more…)

Government tries to shore up support for fees vote

Energy Secretary Chris Huhne will miss the vote as he will remain at the climate summit in Mexico. Lib Dem officials confirmed he would remain at the climate change conference in Cancun – it had been thought he had been called back for Thursday’s vote. Another Lib Dem MP, Martin Horwood, who was expected to vote against the fees package, will also remain in Mexico but Conservative climate minister Greg Barker will return to Westminster. Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes told BBC Newsnight he would at least abstain on the vote – but said he had been asked by his local party to consider voting against the plans and he would “reflect” on that request overnight. More than a dozen Lib Dems are expected to rebel, by voting against the plans to raise the tuition fees ceiling from £3,290 to £9,000 a year. They say they have no choice as they signed a National Union of Students (NUS) pledge to oppose any increase. – BBC

TODAY I and my Lib Dem colleagues are being asked to support a big hike in tuition fees. I am a Government backbencher and I support the Government. I also accept that both parties in the coalition have to compromise. But £9,000 fees isn’t a compromise. Nor is it in the spirit of the coalition agreement. If you had asked any of the 57 Lib Dem MPs back in May, when we agreed the coalition, that later in the year we’d be asked to back £9,000 university fees, we’d have laughed at you. We knew that we would have to give up our previous policy on fees, but we were sure that whatever came forward would not involve trebling them. We should never have been put in this position by the party’s leadership. If the Government loses the vote today, it only has itself to blame. Rushing through legislation is never a recipe for good legislation, but to do so when there is so much anxiety and anger would be a huge mistake. – Greg MulHolland MP, The Mirror

Ministers have offered a series of concessions to critics of the Government’s higher education reforms as the coalition sought to head off a major backbench rebellion. Ahead of Thursday’s crunch Commons vote, Business Secretary Vince Cable announced further measures designed to ease the financial burden on students from poorer backgrounds. They included increasing the number of part-time students who would no longer face upfront tuition fees and increasing the threshold at which existing graduates have to start repaying their loans. The move comes as Dr Cable and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg face a revolt among Lib Dem backbenchers intent on honouring a pre-election pledge to oppose an increase in tuition fees. – Press Association

Lib Dems at 8%

Tonight’s YouGov poll for the Sun has topline figures of CON 41%, LAB 41%, LDEM 8%. It’s the lowest Lib Dem score YouGov have ever shown, and as far as I can tell the lowest Liberal Democrat score any pollster has shown since September 1990, over 20 years ago. I’ll add my normal caveats about not getting too excited about a single poll, new extreme highs and lows for parties do tend to be the outliers, but nevertheless, the fact that we’ve got our first 8% for the Lib Dems suggests that their support is still on a downwards trend. It is probably no co-incidence that this comes after several days of the Liberal Democrats internal ructions over tuition fees have been all over the political headlines. – UK Polling Report (more…)