Liberal democrats

The Budget negotiations within government are now underway. The quad of Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and Alexander held a meeting last week to discuss their priorities for the Budget on March 21st. They’ll continue this conversation over a working dinner tomorrow night. Already, we know that the Liberal Democrats main priority will be to get the personal allowance as close to £10,000 as possible. As The Sunday Times reports, they’re suggesting paying for this by taking away various reliefs for higher-rate taxpayers and closing some of the loopholes in the tax system. I also understand from Liberal Democrats close to Clegg that they’re also interested in some new green taxes.

We will soon find out whether the coalition meant what it said about empowering parliament. The BIS select committee has rejected the government’s preferred candidate for the post of the head of the Office of Fair Access. The committee concluded that it was ‘unable to endorse the appointment of Professor Ebdon as the Director of OFFA and we recommend that the Department conduct a new recruitment exercise.’ But Vince Cable, the business secretary, is said to be keen to override the committee’s verdict. Number 10, which has never been keen on Ebdon, is opposed. As I said on Sunday, the circumstances behind Ebdon’s name going forward are straight from The Thick Of It.

The coming release of Abu Qatada on bail is going to put bellows under the whole debate about the European Court of Human Rights. In his recent speech to the Council of Europe, David Cameron rightly protested about a situation with terror suspects in which ‘you cannot try them, you cannot detain them and you cannot deport them.’ We will now find out how quickly Cameron is prepared to act on this issue. If Cameron wants to makes changes to the Courts and the Convention, then he is going to have to get agreement from every member of the Council of Europe. There’s no guarantee that he’ll be able to get this and it will take an awfully long time.

House of Lords reform is one of those subjects that make most people’s eyes glaze over. But it is going to dominate the next parliamentary session. The Queen’s Speech will include a bill for elections in 2015 for 20 per cent of the seats in the Lords using a ‘Proportional Representation’ voting system. This bill will take an age to get through the Commons, where it has to start if the coalition is to use the Parliament Act to push it through, let alone the Lords. One of the things that’ll be fascinating to watch is how large a Conservative rebellion there is on the issue. There are already Tory MPs mobilising to block the kind of Lords reform that Clegg wants.

Today’s papers make clear just how damaging the next phase of this whole Chris Huhne business could be to the Liberal Democrats. The danger is that because this story is a very human drama it cuts through to the public in the way that some minor dispute over policy would not. The Mail, for instance, reveals that Nick Clegg’s wife Miriam called Vicky Pryce as soon as the news broke about the charges saying ‘If you need somewhere to stay, if the kids need support, we’re here’. Patrick Wintour is surely right when he writes that the concern for the Liberal Democrats ‘must be the consequences of a drawn-out court case.

Neither David Cameron nor Nick Clegg is a fan of Chris Huhne. The Prime Minister would, by all accounts, shed few tears if Huhne had to step down.   But I suspect that the deputy Prime Minister will be hoping that tomorrow does not bring any adverse developments for the Energy and Climate Change Secretary. If there were to be charges, Clegg would be placed in a very difficult position. He would, despite his efforts to hide behind the Cabinet Secretary, have to decide whether the man he narrowly beat to the Lib Dem leadership could stay in post. This would be a lose-lose situation for Clegg for obvious reasons.   Now, it should be stressed that Huhne denies any wrongdoing. Also beware of anyone making any confident predictions about what will happen tomorrow morning.

With HMS Dauntless and now Prince William gliding across the Atlantic to reinforce Britain's claim on the Falklands, there's no denying that tensions with Argentina have been raised. But let's not get carried away. As Admiral Sir John Woodward reminded us last week, the latest round of defence cuts rules out, or at least undermines, a British counter-invasion. The deployment of our shiniest boat is, in reality, the sum total of what Britain can do to scare off any invasion. And there could be another barrier to the government's hawks, other than resources: namely, the Lib Dems. Nick Clegg did try to rally support for our cause on a trade mission to Brazil eight months ago, but it’s unlikely Cameron's partners are enthusiastic for this sabre-rattling over the Islands.