Liberal democrats

The Lib Dems walk through the fire

Brace yourselves, CoffeeHousers. Today is the day of the tuition fee vote, along with all the froth and fury that will attend it. The government’s motion will most likely pass through the Commons – yes, even without the support of Simon Hughes – but the wider repercussions are, as yet, uncertain. The main question is what the Lib Dems will achieve by walking through the fire, as Nick Clegg puts it. Will they emerge from the other side, a more credible party of government in the public’s eyes? Or will they just get burnt to ashes? At the very least, the yellow bird of liberty is stuttering this morning. As

Miliband rises from his deathbed

At last Wednesday’s PMQs Cameron kicked Ed Miliband into touch with a debonair swagger. Today anger replaced disdain. The PM’s eye-popping rage is so palpable that some commentators take it for vulnerability or even a hint of self-doubt. Milband has Cameron rattled? Nothing of the sort. Cameron just can’t control himself.   Asked about the Coalition’s higher education policy, he heaped rancid abuse on the opposition leader from a lofty perch. He called him “an opportunist,”  who “posed about social mobility” and was guilty of “rank hypocrisy.” “He saw a big crowd in the Mall,” fumed Cameron, referring to the student protests, “and said, ‘I am their leader I must

James Forsyth

Miliband’s jibes throw Cameron off course

After last week’s PMQs, Ed Miliband needed a clear win today—and he got one. Cameron, who had admittedly just flown back from Afghanistan, didn’t seem on top of the whole tuition fees debate and kept using lines that invited Labour to ridicule the Lib Dems. When Cameron tried to put Miliband down with the line, ‘he sounds like a student politician—and that’s all he’ll ever be’, Miliband shot back that “I was a student politician but I wasn’t hanging around with people who were throwing bread rolls and wrecking restaurants.” It was a good line and threw Cameron off for the final exchange.   The rest of the session was

PMQs live blog | 8 December 2010

VERDICT: Tuition fees, tuition fees, tuition fees. Ed Miliband used only one weapon from his armoury today – but it served him unexpectedly well. The Labour leader scraped a contest that, as usual, offered far more heat than light. His attacks were slightly more cutting, his one-liners that little bit more memorable, and it was all the more remarkable given his dreadful performance seven days ago. It wasn’t that Cameron performed badly. The PM rightly – and, at times, effectively – pointed out Labour’s hypocrisy on this issue. But it all seemed a little flat, as though he was reading from a script that had only just been handed to

Labour stumble into tomorrow’s tuition fee vote

Oh look, Alan Johnson has performed a hasty Reverse Cable. Only a few days ago, the Shadow Chancellor suggested that he didn’t believe a graduate tax – Ed Miliband’s chosen policy – could work. Yet, in a wilting Thunderer column (£) for the Times today, he now claims that “there is a very strong case for a graduate tax.” From unworkable to strong, in only four days. Sounds like a disclaimer for Ikea flatpack furniture, not a policy position. In a separate article, the Times characterises this as a minor victory for Ed Miliband – and so, in some respects, it is. He has managed to rein his Chancellor on

Clegg will vote for fees hike

The wait is over. We have just been told that Nick Clegg will definitely vote for the coalition’s policy on tuition fees. Clegg announced this, according to his spokeswoman, at the meeting of the Lib Dem parliamentary party that is currently going on. He told the meeting that to govern is to choose, and that the coalition had to chosen to invest in early years education rather than in scrapping fees.   Clegg’s spokesperson said that he had urged the party to ‘walk through the fire together’ but that he accepted and respected that not every Lib Dem MP would vote with him. We will, apparently, be told this evening

Compromise time for Nick Clegg?

Where are we with the tuition fee rebellion? Nick Clegg has an article in the FT claiming that the coalition’s policy is fairness codified, but he is running out of time to persuade his own MPs either way. Barring various unlikelihoods, the crunch vote will be held on Thursday. Before then, a handful of PPSs could well resign their bag-carrying roles. And, judging by today’s Sun, a few ministers might even join them (Norman Baker, of course, as well as Steve Webb and Lynne Featherstone). The plan to present a “united front” has already crumbled to naught. What’s left for Clegg, ahead of his meeting with MPs later today, is

Now the Tories have an issue to get stuck into…

While Nick Clegg battles on the tuition fee front, another internal conflict breaks out for the coalition today: prisons. And rather than yellow-on-yellow, this one is strictly blue-on-blue. On one side, you’ve got Ken Clarke, who is controversially proposing a raft of measures for reducing the prison population. On the other, Tory figures like Michael Howard who insist that prison works – and that there should be more of it. Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley, even told Radio 4 this morning that millions of Conservative voters would be disappointed by the coalition’s plans. Clarke’s argument is, as we already know, twofold: i) that we cannot afford to keep

DD joins the tuition fees rebels

Now, there’s a Tory rebel too. David Davis has told the BBC that he’ll be voting against the coalition at the end of Thursday’s fees debate. Those Lib Dems who do vote for tuition fees can now expect to be mocked as being to the right of David Davis. So far, there’s no sign of other Tories following DD’s lead. One friend of his fears that his decision to rebel against the government on this issue makes him look like a serial rebel and will undermine the effectiveness of his interventions on the constitutional and civil liberties issues he cares so deeply about it. But I expect DD’s stance will

James Forsyth

A day of gaffes

You really couldn’t make this up: it wasn’t Michael Moore’s PPS who was on the World at One resigning but someone impersonating him. The actual PPS, Michael Crockart, is still trying to make up his mind. I suggest that he doesn’t try and call in to a radio show to announce his decision. (Who would have thought we have lived to see the day when Lib Dem PPSs have impersonators?)   One has to feel sorry for Radio 4 today. It had the whole Jeremy Hunt business this morning on the Today Programme and Start the Week, and now it’s other flagship news programme has been very publicly duped.  

James Forsyth

The Lib Dem rebels make themselves heard

Here in Westminster we are all brushing up on the names of Lib Dem PPSs, as we try and work out who might quit the payroll vote over fees. The latest is that Michael Crockart, PPS to Michael Moore – who is himself the most anonymous Lib Dem Cabinet minister – looks set to walk. But one of the better known Lib Dem ministers has now put his head above the parapet. Norman Baker has told the BBC that quitting over fees is one ‘option’ but he hasn’t yet made up his mind. (Oddly enough, these comments seem to have been made on the South East edition of the Politics

What will the Lib Dems say at the next election?

The rapidly increasing likelihood that the Lib Dem payroll vote will vote to increase the amount that universities can charge in fees to £9,000 is a reminder of how different the next election is going to be. The Lib Dems will not be able to stuff their manifesto with eye-catching but unrealistic commitments designed to grab votes from this or that interest group. The experience of coalition means that their policy positions will receive far more scrutiny than usual and have to be defensible. Already, those around Clegg talk of a very different kind of Lib Dem manifesto at the next election. They drop heavy hints that the empty gestures—like

The mundanity of espionage

And the most curious political story of the day has to be the one about Mike Hancock’s 25-year-old parliamentary researcher, Katia Zatuliveter. If you haven’t seen it already, she is facing allegations of spying for the Russians – and looks set to be deported as a result. It’s the first time that a Commons employee has been arrested on charges of spying since the Cold War thawed out twenty years ago. There’s some lively colour in this tale, but the full picture is, as yet, shaded from view. For his part – as per the video above – Hancock has denied that Zatuilivter is a spy. But the only Cabinet

Fraser Nelson

The Passion of Nick Clegg

You almost feel sorry for Nick Clegg this week, with the tuition fees vote in prospect. Being hated is difficult for LibDems because they didn’t expect it. Not so with the Tories. As a conservative, you usually realise early on that you’re going to be a small fish swimming against the current of fashionable received wisdom – and that will involve various tribulations. Like having to persuade your non-political friends that you do not advocate slaughter of the firstborn, and that there is a difference between believing in empowering people, and wanting to let the devil take the hindmost. If you turn up to the Islington Conservative Carol Concert (as

The Lib Dem tuition fee confusion continues

Who knows how, and whether, Vince Cable is going to vote in next Thursday’s tuition fee decider? Not even the man himself, it seems. A few days ago he suggested he might abstain for the sake of party unity. Yesterday, he told his local paper that “I have a duty as a minister to vote for my own policy – and that is what will happen.” And yet this morning’s Guardian has a “party source” saying, “a final decision has not been made. It is still possible Vince could abstain.” At least we haven’t heard that he might vote against the proposal – although, at this rate, I wouldn’t be

Woolas loses his appeal

Phil Woolas has lost his appeal against the election court declaring his victory in Oldham East and Saddleworth. As I understand it, Woolas has not exhausted his legal options and could take the whole matter to judicial review. Word is that no decision will be made on a by-election until it is known whether or not Woolas will appeal.   Interestingly, Woolas was accompanied to court today by John Healey, the shadow Health minister. Healey is extremely popular with his Labour colleagues, he came second in the shadow Cabinet elections, and his decision to stand by Woolas today is a sign of where the emotional energy in the Parliamentary Labour

Who got good value-for-money in the general election?

Coffee House has wrung today’s party expenditure figures through the calculator to produce the colourful graphs below. As the headings suggest, they show how much was spent by each party* for every individual vote and seat they won in the general election: *That is, each party that received over 100,000 votes. Excluding Northern Ireland-based parties.

PMQs live blog | 1 December 2010

VERDICT: A freewheeling, swashbuckling sort of performance from Cameron today, that was encapsulated by a single line: “I’d rather be a Child of Thatcher than a Son of Brown”. Sure, that may not go down too well with lefty Lib Dems nor, indeed, many Scottish voters. But, in the context of PMQs, it was a rapier response to Ed Miliband’s sclerotic lines of questioning. Why the Labour leader chose to completely ignore today’s Mervyn King quotes, and sift unpersuasively through the footnotes of the OBR report, I’m not sure. In any case, the plan didn’t work at all. This was yet another PMQs which generated more heat than light, but

The Lib Dems need to get their act together on tuition fees

There have been a huge amount of police out in Westminster today. After being caught off-guard by the student demo a few weeks back, the cops are now leaving nothing to chance.   But if the police have now got their act together, the same cannot be said of the Liberal Democrats. They are currently considering whipping their MPs to abstain on tuition fees despite the fact that the government’s policy is one that has been crafted by a Lib Dem Secretary of State, Vince Cable, and a Tory Minister of State, David Willetts.   If the Lib Dems were to abstain, it would play to the worst stereotypes of

James Forsyth

The money that didn’t swing the election

Before the election, the Tories used to regularly, and with a certain justification, complain about how the vast majority of money that Peter Mandelson’s department was dishing out to businesses via the Strategic Investment Fund went to those based in Labour constituencies. Not a single Tory-held seat benefitted from this £601.5 million of spending. Indeed, 84 percent of the constituencies that benefitted from this money were Labour at the time. But new research on the election result shows that this money doesn’t seem to have made voters much more loyal to Labour. In the 25 seats that benefitted from the fund the swing against Labour was 12 percent. This is