Liberal democrats

The last few days have seen the Tory party losing its collective head. Number 10 hopes that the publication of a draft referendum bill will begin to restore order. If this bill had been published by the leadership a week ago, it would have looked like a bold move. Today, it appeared panicky. But it is now out there, and any Tory backbencher who comes high up in the private members bill ballot on Thursday has a chance of guiding it through. I suspect if a vote could be won on second reading, the parliamentary dynamics of this debate would change yet again. What’ll be intriguing is to see how much the Tories campaign on this. David Cameron has already sent out an email to party supporters.

In a firecracker of an interview on the Andrew Marr Show, Michael Gove confirmed that if an EU referendum was held today he would vote out. But he followed this by saying to James Landale that he backed the Prime Minister’s plans to renegotiate and hoped that a satisfactory form of membership could be agreed. Significantly, Gove indicated that David Cameron would set out the Conservative ‘negotiating platform’ before the next election. This has been a key demand of Euro-sceptic Conservatives but one that Cameron has resisted. He is reluctant to provide anything akin to a renegotiation scorecard. Gove’s intervention changes the terms of debate.

335: total councillors lost by the Tories 291: seats gained by Labour 124: losses sustained by the Lib Dems 139: seats gained by UKIP 147 UKIP council seats after today's results 10 councils lost by the Tories 2 councils gained by Labour 13 councils now in overall control, up 8 17: the largest gain by UKIP in any council, in Kent 24: the most councillors gained by Labour in one local authority, in Durham 6,505: Emma Lewell-Buck's majority as the new Labour MP for South Shields, down from 11,109 achieved by David Miliband in 2010.

I know the Liberal Democrats are trying to take credit for anything they like the sound of, but their rewriting of history is getting out of control. It seems that they have claimed Gladstone as a 'Liberal Democrat' on the Downing Street website. I doubt that even Mr Gladstone could make Thursday's elections any easier for Clegg & Co - assuming that Mr Gladstone, who was once Tory MP for Newark and held sound views on economic management, would help.

Talk of a by-election in Portsmouth South has been growing, fuelled by allegations against MP Mike Hancock. And, in a speech to the parliamentary press gallery lunch yesterday, Nigel Farage claimed Ukip could win it. The reasoning is simple: Ukip are on the up, and they came within 2,000 votes and 5 percentage points of a win in Eastleigh, so surely they can go over the top in another Hampshire by-election where the Lib Dem incumbent has had to step down amidst a scandal. Of course Ukip could win — but its chances may not be as high as that reasoning suggests. Indeed, Farage himself seems to think his party would be more likely than not to lose. He said 'I would think that the odds on Ukip winning it would be 2/1, 3/1 at Ladbrokes and elsewhere.

When Cabinet met this morning, ministers didn't discuss the Communications Data Bill, which the government hopes to get into the forthcoming Queen's Speech. But there is a growing sense in Westminster that it won't make it out of the Commons alive - if it even manages to make it into the Commons. Here are three different scenarios for what could happen to this controversial piece of legislation: 1. The Bill fails to make it into the Queen's Speech. Discussions about the legislative programme for the next parliamentary year are taking place at the moment.

This poster will, I am sure, have the Lib Dems hopping about with fury. The Tories have hi-jacked a key Liberal Democrat policy: raising the personal allowance. Perhaps this is what lies in wait for the Lib Dems as 2015 approaches: the Tories steal all of their good ideas. If that happens, perhaps a merger of the two parties (or at least elements of the Lib Dems) will become more likely. Who knows? Anyway, the blurb that accompanies the poster shows that an attempt is being made to fashion the Conservative Party into the party of work. The poster reflects that positive aim; a dramatic improvement on the divisive and crude rhetoric of ‘strivers’ and ‘shirkers’, which the Spectator’s latest leading column denigrates.

A conundrum for ambitious Liberal Democrats who have seen their CVs blighted by the scandal surrounding former party Chief Executive Lord Rennard. Though the portly peer denies all allegations of sexual impropriety with a stream of female staff, that has not stopped party hacks and flacks, both past and present, tinkering with their résumés. With his all-encompassing role as Chief Executive and general overlord of the party for nearly two decades, a reference from Rennard must have seemed like a golden ticket on CVs in the endless revolving door between politics and lobbying.

Ed Miliband’s interview with The Times today is striking for the language he uses about the Liberal Democrats. There’s no attempt to follow up last week’s Clegg, Miliband outflanking of Cameron with a love bombing of the deputy Prime Minister. Instead, there’s an emphasis that it would be ‘very difficult to work in a future Labour government with somebody who has taken the opposite position in a Tory government’. There are no warm words for Vince Cable either: “He flirts with the right position but doesn’t consummate it." I think this reveals two things. First, Miliband knows that the coalition is surprisingly solid; it is not going to collapse anytime soon whatever the differences over press regulation.

Nick Clegg gave his 'sensible' immigration speech this morning. He started off by agreeing with Labour's Yvette Cooper that politicians shouldn't enter an 'arms race of rhetoric', and then spent a considerable part of the speech either attacking Labour or backing a policy that his own colleagues had previously attacked: a security bond system for immigrants from 'high-risk' countries to cut down on people overstaying their visas. It's also a policy that Theresa May backs. And what he doesn't back anymore is the idea of an amnesty for illegal immigrants, which was a big Lib Dem policy in 2010. Clegg said: 'But despite the policy's aims, it was seen by many people as a reward for those who have broken the law. And so it risked undermining public confidence in the immigration system.

If you want to know what the Liberal Democrat’s message at the next election will be, read Nick Clegg’s speech to the party’s Spring Conference today. He kept to the refrain that the Liberal Democrats are for a stronger economy and a fairer society and you can’t trust the Tories with society or Labour with the economy. In a sign of the new, more disciplined Lib Dem machine there were no detours from this core theme. Listening to Clegg, you would have had no idea that the leadership had lost a vote on secret courts this morning. Clegg knows that his internal position hasn’t been this strong since the Liberal Democrats entered coalition.

Further to Isabel’s post this morning, I understand from a senior coalition source that the two parties have now reached an agreement on how to handle Tuesday’s vote on Labour’s mansion tax motion. The Liberal Democrat leadership has assured their coalition partners that they’ll back a government amendment to it. This amendment will concede that the coalition parties have different views on the issue. The only question now is whether the speaker John Bercow will call it. I suspect that this agreement has been helped by a desire to limit coalition tensions post-Eastleigh and pre-Budget. There is also reluctance on the part of the Liberal Democrats to get dragged into playing Labour’s game.

A crime reporter friend enjoys telling the story of his first black eye at the local Magistrates' Court. Like so many, it occurred as he was leaving, and bumped into a convicted defendant. The conversation ran along these lines: Man convicted of awkward crime: You're not putting this in the paper, are you? You can't do this, it'll ruin my business. Reporter, in his first job and in a chippy mood: You should have thought about then when you did it, mate. Man convicted of awkward crime's right fist makes contact with reporter's eye. I remembered this story this evening as the Lib Dems started their party's spring conference in Brighton with a rally for International Women's Day.