Conservative party

The latest issue of The Spectator is out today, and I thought CoffeeHousers might like to read the cover story by Nick Cohen. Its theme is brilliantly captured by Jonathan Cusick's cover image (left) of the yellow Lib Dem bird shot through its heart with a Tory arrow – but there's more to it than that. The era of spending cuts is returning us to two-party politics, says Nick, and the Lib Dems are being squeezed out of the equation. Here it is in full: Liberal England dies again, Nick Cohen In 1935, George Dangerfield published The Strange Death of Liberal England, one of those rare histories that survive long after the author’s death.

Britain is avowedly eurosceptic. But euroscepticism is not homogeneous; there are different tones of disgust. Many decry further political integration; others oppose Europe’s penchant for protectionism; some are wary of the EU’s apparent collective socialism; a few are essentially pro-European but believe too much sovereignty has been ceded; others hope to redefine Britain’s cultural and political relationship with the Continent, as a bridge between the Old World and the Anglosphere; most see Brussels as an affront to elective democracy; and a handful just want out and vote UKIP. So it has always been – perhaps one reason why William Hague’s ‘ticking time-bomb’ has not yet exploded.

As Adam Boulton says, the Oldham by-election has produced another noteworthy moment. And, in this case, it's one of the smaller parties making the splash. In a press conference in the constituency this afternoon, UKIP confirmed that Stuart Wheeler has joined their party as treasurer. This is, of course, the Stuart Wheeler who gave £millions to the Tories during the wilderness year after 1997 – including a £5 million mega-donation in 2001 alone. That Wheeler has made the conversion is unsurprising. He was expelled from the Conservatives, in 2009, for donating £100,000 to UKIP. And, soon after, he wrote a piece for The Spectator explaining why he would be voting for Farage & Co. in the European elections.

David Cameron was on Marr this morning (with yours truly doing the warm-up paper review), talking about the "tough and difficult year" ahead. Others have been through the interview for its general content. What interested me was its economic content: not the most sexy subject in the world, I know, but, as Alan Johnson unwittingly demonstrated on Sky this morning, the Labour Party looks unable to scrutinise the government's economic policy. Anyway, here are ten observations:   1) "Because of the budget last year, we are lifting 800,000 people out of income tax, we're raising income tax thresholds. That will help all people who are basic rate taxpayers." Thanks to the Lib Dems. But it's a great claim, and I'm glad Cameron is making it.

As Tim Montgomerie notes, tonight’s Angus Reid poll asks an interesting question about who voters would support if asked to choose between Labour and a Coalition party. This questions pushes up support for Labour with Labour scoring 45 percent on it compared to 40 percent on a normal voting intention question. The increase in Labour support comes from the fact that 46 percent of Lib Dem voters from the 2010 election would in these circumstances vote Labour compared to the 32 percent who’d go coalition. Polling on a hypothetical should, obviously, be treated with caution. But the fact that the coalition together polls worse than the coalition apart is interesting.

This comment from Nick Clegg – speaking to the Evening Standard today – deserves pasting into the political scrapbook: “Let me be absolutely clear once and for all. The Liberal Democrats will fight the next election as we did the last – as an independent political party in every constituency in the country.” Which is considerably less equivocal than David Cameron and George Osborne have managed recently. When the Tory pair were pressed on the matter towards the end of last month, they said only that they "expect" the coalition parties to fight independently of each other come election time. Not that the Clegg quotation rules out electoral chicanery altogether.

Come back, you insufferable relatives, all is forgiven: the political class has devoted an afternoon to trading insults about who said what about VAT and when. However, there have been some intriguing exchanges amid the New Politics’ latest outing. First, Labour seems to be fighting the two coalition partners as a single entity in Oldham East. Cameron, Clegg and Simon Hughes have received equal measures of opprobrium this afternoon and all have been lumped together. This was always a danger, but, as Fraser noted, Clegg and Cameron invited the manoeuvre by uniting their parties’ central operations in the cause of government. If Cameron and Clegg don’t differentiate in the general, Labour won't in the particular.