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Posts Tagged ‘Nick Clegg’

The conventional wisdom is wrong: David Cameron and Nick Clegg are now bound even more tightly together

07/08/2012, 09:00:17 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Another pained press conference from Nick Clegg, another central plank of the Lib Dem’s beloved constitutional reform agenda disappears for a generation.

So farewell then Lords reform, we’ll see you in twenty-five years when all of the politicians who have witnessed first-hand the Lib Dem’s failure on the Lords and electoral reform, have passed from this parliamentary coil.

But, all this was known the moment 91 Tory backbenchers decided to use the Lords as an excuse to attack their leader. The votes weren’t there. The real news from Clegg’s study in sanctimonious defeat yesterday was confirmation of the tit for tat blocking of the Tories’ boundary review.

According to Lib Dem sources, Clegg attempted to mount a damage containment exercise when the extent of the Tory rebellion became obvious, sounding out MPs about the prospect of not vetoing the new boundaries.

As frustrated as Clegg was by the Tories, he privately accepted the position in which David Cameron has found himself. It’s a position Clegg empathises with and experiences himself with his own backbenches.

But the Lib Dem leader had to accept political reality. For all the fanciful recent talk of Vince Cable as a future leader of the party, the message went back to the Lib Dem leadership that there really might be regime change if Clegg did not strike back at the Tories.

The immediate reaction to this spat among much of the commentariat is to conclude that the coalition is headed for the rocks.

Certainly the massed off-the-record ranks of Tory backbenchers have done their bit to promote this notion with blood curdling talk of revenge on Clegg for the boundary betrayal.

But the reality is that the leaders of the Tories and Lib Dems are now bound even more tightly together. Assuming the projections of Tory advantage from the boundary review are correct, then David Cameron will need his Lib Dem coalition partners all the more if he is to stay in office after the next election.

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Clegg blinks

10/07/2012, 07:58:41 PM

Or at least he is trying to blink. Whether his party lets him is another matter. Word reaches Uncut from the yellow side of the fence that the Lib Dem leadership are engaged a tentative operation to defuse the bomb they carefully primed, and pull back from vetoing the Tories new parliamentary boundaries.

It had been assumed that the Lib Dems would take their revenge on the Tories for sinking Lords reform by blocking the new parliamentary constituency boundaries. But, after some emollient words from the prime minister earlier in the day, a commitment to get something through in Autumn and perhaps an extra biscuit with his cup of tea, Nick Clegg wants to work it out with the Tories.

Talk of tit for tat retaliation is being played down as the Lib Dems and Tory press teams try to pin the blame on Labour before the watching gallery of aghast Lib Dem activists.

Clegg still has his eye on passing a Lords reform bill in the Autumn, either stripped down to resemble Lord Steel’s token effort at reform or potentially something more ambitious with a firm commitment to a referendum after the first election to the new chamber but before the second.

Why the emboldened Tory rebels would put down their cudgels in three months is unclear. Certainly there’s no love lost for David Cameron who was being openly ridiculed by jubilant rebels as they celebrated in the bars of Westminster.

But Clegg still thinks he can salvage his legacy with a constitutional bill that could nominally have the prefix ‘historic’ appended, and as a result, David Cameron seems to have been granted the benefit of the doubt from his junior partner yet again.

The next 24 hours will determine whether Nick Clegg can sell his conciliation to the beaten and battered Lib Dems or whether this time, there will actually be a yellow reckoning with the Tories, regardless of Nick Clegg’s dreams of the history books.

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Why on earth are we even talking about Lords reform?

26/04/2012, 07:45:35 AM

by Peter Watt

I have been building up to write this for days now. Because I have been getting angrier and angrier the more I thought about it – House of Lords reform.

What is it that politicians don’t understand here? Voters hardly hold their political masters in the highest regard. Not to put too fine a point on it, they don’t like politicians and certainly do not value them. It may or may not be unfair but they think that politicians are self-serving and live in their own rarefied world.

What voters certainly do not see is a political system that provides a solution to the problems that they experience in their day-to-day lives. In fact many voters are angry and probably blame politicians for many of the world’s ills. To be fair, from the voters point of view there is much to feel angry about. The expenses scandal; an economic crisis that the political class seems immune from; tax cuts for their mates, tax rises for everyone else and ever increasing prices.

And the response of our politicians? That we need even more politicians!

Apparently we need to expend huge amounts of political energy and effort passing legislation that will create 450 new professional politicians. Presumably all of whom will need paying, will need staff, offices and expenses. Who will need to be elected and who will all need to spend their time justifying their existence.

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Let knowledge, not politics, rule the Lords

25/04/2012, 01:30:53 PM

by Jonathan Roberts

For a hundred years discussion of the reform of the House of Lords has provided intrigue, gossip and occasional melodrama. The outrage at new proposals coming from the government backbenches rightly highlights how ‘out of touch’ this diversion from more pressing matters is (like, you know, the economy), but the depth of feeling some Parliamentarians have gives an indication as to why meaningful reform has never happened.

The most significant improvement in modern times came early in the Labour Government with the removal of the vast majority of hereditary peers. Even this change, which was so obviously appropriate, caused Tony Blair a huge headache. To impose genuinely radical reform will result in something closer to a debilitating migraine.

It is easy to forget that the current make up of the House of Lords was specifically argued against in the Parliament Act itself – where it is described that the current regime should be only a temporary measure until peer elections were fought. Bearing in mind that income tax, introduced by William Pitt the Younger, was supposed to be a temporary measure, one could be left with the impression that there is nothing more permanent in government than a system originally labelled as ‘temporary’.

But the parties should not race towards House of Lords elections. The UK is not suffering from an absence of democracy – quite the opposite, with parish, district and county elections every four years, European and parliamentary every five. Soon we will be adding mayoral and police elections to the mix and I have a sneaking suspicion American-style school boards won’t be far behind. This voting business is really rather regular – and with turnouts being as dire as they are, one has to question whether the public really is crying out for yet another dreary Thursday morning trip to the village hall.

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What on earth is going on with politics at the moment?

19/04/2012, 07:00:53 AM

by Peter Watt

Does anyone know what is going on out there? Really? Until a month ago it was all so much simpler.

The Tories didn’t really have a coherent tale to tell but then nor did anyone else so it didn’t really matter all that much. They bumbled along making mistakes and generally looking incompetent. But crucially voters had been persuaded that they were dealing with an out of control deficit that Labour had caused.

And that was the end of the discussion.

Anyway, they had David Cameron and he looked and sounded prime ministerial, made tough decisions and even diplomatically bashed the Germans and French. No matter how bad it got, he was their trump card. And Labour, not to put too fine a point on it, had its own problems: perceptions of economic incompetence and a leader who was still finding his feet as far as voters were concerned.

But then came the budget and suddenly the Tories and David Cameron are wobbling.

All that bravado and self-confidence appear shaken to its core. Instead of charting a route to sunnier times the budget looked elitist, favouring the rich. And worse it looked muddled as its measures unravelled and established more and more losers.

Ed Miliband gave one of his finest performances in the Commons after Osborne’s budget speech. The discomfort on the faces of David and George was there for all to see, and on the benches behind them you could see doubt.

Over 4 weeks later the budget is still the issue of the moment, and at issue is the Government’s credibility. George Osborne appears to have disappeared and no one on the Government side seems overly keen to defend the finance bill. Certainly not David Cameron; he seems intent on avoiding answering any of Ed Miliband’s questions at successive PMQ’s.

Ed’s victories at the despatch box have rattled Cameron. And the more rattled David Cameron gets the less prime ministerial he looks and sounds. His attacks become more and more sneering, dismissive and personal and his lack of attention to detail becomes ever more obvious. It’s not attractive.

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The Lib Dems’ amazing adventure

09/04/2012, 07:00:05 AM

by Ben Mitchell

Once upon a time there was a political party who believed in something. Who stood for something. Who held views other parties rejected. Who campaigned on issues that weren’t always universally popular.

They then had a leader who grew and grew in stature. Who charmed and won over the electorate in a series of pre-general election televised debates.

But, unfortunately, for said party, this never translated into votes on polling day. Blame our antiquated voting system they raged. We sympathised.

But then, when all seemed lost, along came a smart and convincing salesman offering them the chance of a lifetime. This jolly, chirpy, chappy, waved the prospect of power-sharing under their disillusioned noses.

What’s more, this guy looked and sounded very much like our guy, thought the party faithful.

They hit it off instantly. The public were taken aback: two sworn enemies jumping into bed with each other; governing together? But, their politics are so different. How will they ever get anything done, asked a sceptical media?

Won’t they bicker and argue constantly?

But, they didn’t. In fact, they seemed to quite like each other. A lot. That other bunch aren’t so bad after all, they thought to themselves. We’ve been unfair to them all these years.

Anyway, the party thought, we’ve still got our beliefs and our principles. We’ll never sacrifice them.

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Two years, two David Camerons

04/04/2012, 03:22:51 PM

by David Talbot

Another day, another big society re-launch. The surest sign that this government is in trouble is when they wheel out the big society for another spin round the news cycle.

It was all so different just three weeks ago. Then, a confident Cameron stood next to President Obama in the rose garden at the White House. Under the Washington sun the two leaders peppered each other with lavish praise. It harked back to the mood and setting of where this government began.

Almost two years before, Cameron strode out with the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, basking in the warmth of the Downing Street rose garden. The easy rapport between the two men was as self-evident as it was the government’ initial strength.

Though their first press conference has long-since passed into Westminster legend, the political significance is not to be underestimated; Cameron had risked his career – Clegg his party.

The 12^th of May will see that modest milestone pass, two years to the day that Clegg and Cameron announced the creation of Britain’s first peacetime coalition since the 1930s. Cameron, against a visibly decaying Labour party, had failed to deliver an outright Conservative majority. At his weakest he had made a “big, open and comprehensive offer” to secure a parliamentary majority, and his position as Conservative leader.

He produced a masterful political coup, not so much a coalition as a political chokehold on the Liberal Democrats. He needed them badly, but never showed it. Without them he might have stumbled on for a few months, and then risked the uncertainty of another election.

Those few days must seem like a life time ago given the past two weeks. The Budget, the funding scandal and the manufactured fuel crisis have risked destroying years of work under project Cameron.

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Labour needs to wake up to the threat of Nick and Dave’s very civil partnership

14/03/2012, 12:00:50 PM

by Kevin Meagher

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” remarked Bert Lance, the former Carter-era official. His homespun phrase, much emulated since he coined it in 1977, is intended to ward off the siren demand for change for change’s sake.

That very same advice now rings in the ears of Liberal Democrat ministers as they ponder what state their party will be in at the next general election. Don’t change what doesn’t need to be changed.

Frankly, as most Lib Dems must realise, it would be easier to sell the Sun in Liverpool than hold many of their marginal seats. How can their ministers hope to stay in the style to which they are undoubtedly now accustomed riding a dying horse into the 2015 election?

Let’s fast forward three years. David Cameron will surely – and reasonably – hope to win a big working majority at the next election; this is his obvious Plan A. But continuing with the coalition will be his close-run Plan B. His worst of all worlds would be to win with a small Tory majority. The last thing he wants is to be reliant on his party’s backbenches or, even worse, his rank and file, as John Major was following his general election victory twenty years ago.

For the Lib Dems – trailing in single digits in most polls – their very salvation lies in preserving the status quo. Their worst of all worlds is to see a return to binary politics with Labour and the Tories carving up British politics once again. That appears a distinct possibility with the Lib Dems now seriously looking over their shoulder as UKIP threatens to usurp them for the third party slot.

They should seek payback for holding their collective noses and backing Cameron over issues like tuition fees, austerity and NHS reform in the shape of a semi-formal electoral pact. Their candidates go into the next election with their nominal Tory opponents defending a joint record, so why not a joint ticket as well?

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Welcome to the 2010s: the era of reactive, populist, say-anything politics

22/02/2012, 12:00:59 PM

by Rob Marchant

What has David Cameron done so far, which has marked him out as a prime minister? The answer is, surprisingly little, as John Rentoul observes in the Independent on Sunday: “…the Prime Minister seems unformed. He is adroit at reacting to events, but not so good at making them happen.”

But that does not mean he is unpopular (despite lots of potential reasons for this to be so), or that he will lose the next general election. It is just an example of an era, post-2010, which has seemingly been defined by a lack of seriousness of purpose on the part of the major parties.

Cameron has scored a few political successes. He has done what few would have predicted: he has put together, and held together, a coalition that has lasted nearly two years and will quite likely last five.

He has been successful, thus far, in winning public support for his eminently populist handbagging of his EU partners, although only time will tell whether he was wise to do so. He is generally felt to have had a “good war” in Libya.

But as regards defining a domestic policy direction for his government, he has relatively little to show: an austerity program, showing strength but courting unpopularity; and education reforms which are competent and probably modestly positive with the public, although mostly despised by Labour. The rest is largely either a blur, with no significant impact made, or a mess.

Now compare and contrast with his coalition partner. Clegg made a textbook populist pitch before the election, “an end to politics as usual”, before demonstrating eighteen days later, via the person of David Laws, that he represented just the opposite.

Being a junior coalition partner encourages populism, because of one’s limited impact on events and the inevitable going along with large numbers of things which you do not like. There’s not much else you can do: hence the rubbish about “alarm clock Britain”, Clegg’s desperate and probably doomed scrabbling around for a distinct identity for his party.

And lastly - in the order in which the media currently treat the three parties – we come to Labour. Miliband at times seems populist, but it is not in the sense that most people would recognise. And this is because his populism is mostly directed inwards, at his own party, and what they want to hear.

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The polling that explains why Andrew Lansley is safe

13/02/2012, 07:00:36 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Dead man walking. That is one of the more polite descriptions of Andrew Lansley’s current state of political health.

His bill is an unmitigated disaster. This mish mash of compromises and quangos is trapped in the quicksand of parliamentary process, generating ever worse headlines for Lansley and the government.

Yesterday he suffered perhaps the greatest indignity to date: Simon Hughes ventilating on the right time to shift the health secretary.

Setting aside the nonsense at the heart of what the Liberal Democrat party president was saying – that Lansley should be moved only after the damage has been done when a bill that Hughes himself describes as not the one “we wanted”, has been passed – even hard Labour hearts will have felt a little sympathy for Andrew Lansley having his career dissected by Hughes at his most sanctimonious.

So the conventional wisdom is clear. Lansley is finished.

In one sense, this is right. The secretary of state for health will be moved, but then in the long run so will most of the cabinet. Where many commentators will be wrong is on timing.

For all the pressure, Andrew Lansley is still safe in his job. Yesterday’s Sunday Times YouGov poll held the key to why.

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