Liberal democrats

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Hughes in the ascendant

The indications are that Simon Hughes will become Lib Dem deputy leader. Politics Home reports that Hughes is backed by 29 of the party’s 57 MPs, which make him the outright winner in the race with Tim Farron. Hughes also received the backing of 60 percent of party activists on the Lib Dem Voice website. The Tories will be both wary and pleased at this development. Hughes is left-wing, determinedly so, and among those who favoured a deal with Labour. Rumours abound that Cable’s resignation was contrived to promote Hughes, who is also said to be livid at being excluded from government - an Ashen-faced Hughes was spied shaking his head during the Queen’s speech debate. Animus and ego make for toxic coalition politics.

David Blackburn

The novelty factor

Nick Clegg was run-through when he and Jim Naughtie last crossed swords. A different outcome today – the deputy Prime Minister was composed, defending the coalition’s tight agreement. Naughtie was in ‘we’re lolling in a cafe on a dusty street, a donkey brays at the dying sun' mode, and never pressed Clegg.   First, Clegg assured Naughtie that government continued without David Laws, and he echoed John Redwood’s and William Waldegrave’s point that Chief Secretary is a political job in which the author of the coalition agreement, Danny Alexander, has every chance of excelling. Naughtie didn’t mention Lib Dems’ hypocrisy on expenses, which might have shaken Clegg. CGT tapering came next.

Monday

David Blackburn

Stop the press! Danny Alexander didn’t break the law

There’s something Galsworthian about Danny Alexander, the man of property. A downy press secretary for the Cairngorm National Park bought a south London hovel in 1999, re-designated it his second home in 2005 when he became an MP, and the Bright Young Thing then sold it in 2007 for £300,000. The dashing Cabinet Minister's recent mortgage claims of £1,100 per month suggest an existence amid more salubrious environs – Volvos, delicatessens and Oxfam. Alexander didn't cheat his way to Cheam, or wherever he lives. ‘There is no suggestion that Mr Alexander has broken any tax laws,’ opine the authors of this morning’s expenses expose.

Saturday

David Blackburn

David Laws resigns

It was inevitable, but this is hugely regrettable as Laws is a star performer and I feel he has been the victim of a media gay-hunt that belongs to a bygone era. The sums of money involved are slight in comparison to some, and there are arguments that other ministers should resign for having committed similar or worse offences and for having shown markedly less contrition. But it is refreshing that a minister would resign over a personal transgression with haste and dignity.  His successor is understood to be a Lib Dem, probably Chris Huhne or Jeremy Browne. Huhne made his money working on hedge funds so he is a more or less a like for like replacement.

David Blackburn

The transparency revolution

David Cameron has made his first podcast since becoming Prime Minister. There are a couple of noteworthy points: he didn’t name-check any Lib Dems (a slight if perhaps telling oversight); and he reiterated his call for a ‘transparency revolution’, allying accountable public services with a new style of open politics. The coalition will 'rip-off the cloak of secrecy... and rebuild public trust in politics.'  Oh the difference a day makes. Recorded on the train down from Yorkshire yesterday, pithy catchphrases such as ‘by the time we've finished, they (politicians) will have far, far fewer places to nowhere to hide’ sound a little insensitive today. But I’m nit-picking. It’s an excellent spiel: clear, direct and contrite.

David Blackburn

Can he stay or must he go?

Paul Waugh and Matthew D’Ancona are debating whether David Laws will stay or go. D’Ancona is plain that Laws must go; Waugh wonders if this is an ‘Ecclestone moment’ and that Cameron and Clegg will dig in. John Rentoul agrees with Waugh. Laws’s situation looks bleak, and Andrew Grice concludes that Laws is no longer master of his fate. But it is not hopeless and Laws can survive. Laws is indispensible to the coalition - especially with left-wing Lib Dems Menzies Campbell and Simon Hughes increasingly intent on dissent. Second, who would replace him? There’s more talent on Virgin TV than there is on the blue and yellow benches, and the government cannot afford instability at the Treasury with the emergency budget looming.

David Blackburn

The Treasury Secretary, his secret gay lover and the coalition’s first scandal

Even a general election could not shorten the expenses crisis’s shadow. The Telegraph has the scoop that David Laws apparently abused the second home allowance between 2006 and 2009, claiming tens of thousands of pounds for rooms owned by his long-term partner. MPs have been banned from leasing accommodation from their partners since 2006. Spice is added to the scandal in that Laws escaped exposure during last year’s witch hunt because he did not disclose that his landlord, James Lundie, was also his lover. Laws and Lundie have been involved since 2001; their attachment was kept secret from family and friends. Laws’s defends his actions as being designed to guard against revealing his sexuality.

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Sir Menzies Campbell: Cameron and Clegg look like brothers

Surprise, surprise – Menzies Campbell doesn't sound 100% taken with the coalition in interview with Andrew Neil on Straight Talk this weekend.  This is, don't forget, the man who encouraged the Lib Dems to seek a deal with Labour at the last minute.  And here he claims that he "would have found it very difficult to make the kind of arrangement with David Cameron that Nick Clegg has obviously found so easy."  He adds that: "...there is this determination to make [the coaltion] work and nowhere is that more obvious than in David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

Peter Hoskin

Cameron creates cover for cuts

David Cameron's speech today was, in many respects, the one he needed to make: the clean-break speech, which trashed Labour's record on the economy while also outlining how the coalition would deliver us to the sunny uplands. As it happens, it was also quite effective: a blend of policy specifics and punchy rhetoric.  And while we'd heard many of those specifics before – corporation tax cuts, reduced regulation, carbon capture, etc. – they cohered here as they rarely have done before. The most earcatching apsect of the speech, though, was the emphasis Cameron placed on government intervention.  Yes, there was a solid core of small state fundamentals.

Peter Hoskin

Laws unto himself

Wondering why David Laws put in such a convincing performance when defending the government's cuts at the dispatch box on Wednesday?  This little detail from Allegra Stratton's excellent profile of him might help explain: "A friend confirmed that for the past six months, as the official Lib Dem party line decided on by Vince Cable was no cuts, Laws had been telling friends he believed the markets wouldn't tolerate it. 'He has been saying privately the cuts have to start straight after the election,' they said.

Peter Hoskin

Was last night’s Question Time a preview of how the coalition will deal with the media?

All kinds of hoohah about last night's Question Time, for which Downing St refused to put up a panellist because of Alastair Campbell's involvement.  If he was replaced with a shadow minister, they said, they would happily get involved.  But, as the excutive editor of Question Time explains here, the Beeb wasn't prepared to go along with that.  So Campbell got to lord it up in front of the cameras. For the reasons outlined by Guido and Iain Dale, it was probably a slight mis-step by the coalition – but not one, in itself, that will have any important rammifications for them or the public.  For while it's not the government's prerogative to decide on the entire Question Time panel, it is their prerogative to choose whether or not they join it.

Peter Hoskin

Encouraging early signs for the coalition

Was the delayed ballot in Thirsk and Malton a referendum on the coalition government?  If so, the result released in the early hours of this morning will greatly reassure David Cameron and Nick Clegg.  The Tory candidate Anne McIntosh won the seat with 52.9 percent of the vote (up from 51.9 percent in 2005), and the Lib Dems came second with 23.3 percent of the vote (up from 18.8 percent).  Labour were pushed way down into third place on 13.5 percent (down from 23.4 percent). So, over three-quarters of the vote for the two coalition parties. I'd be hesitant to draw any firm conclusions from a one-off election, conducted under unusual circumstances.

Thursday

Peter Young

To increase capital gains revenues cut rates, don’t increase them

To address the deficit, George Osborne will probably have to raise taxes. This is a grim truth to which most people are reconciled. But raising taxes and raising revenue are two different things. If the Chancellor is serious about closing that deficit, then he would doubtless be interested in the idea that a Capital Gains Tax raise from 18 per cent to 50 per cent might be a chimera tax. That is to say, one which raises no money at all. Worse, in fact, the odds are that tax revenues will fall and the deficit will be made worse by this tax rise. The international evidence is absolutely clear. As sure as night follows day, tax revenues go down when CGT rates go up.

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s public debate with his backbenchers

So, did Cameron say anything particularly noteworthy during his interview on the Today programme?  In truth, not really.  Most of the answers were of the "let's wait and see what in the Budget" variety.  The ratio of spending cuts to tax rises: wait and see.  Plans for hiking capital gains tax: wait and see, and so on.   The only answers that weren't determined by the Budget seemed to be his racing tips for the sports bulletin.  You can hear them here. But that isn't to say the interview wasn't revealing.  For much of it, Cameron was quizzed about the objections that David Davis and John Redwood have raised to the planned hike in capital gains tax.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Gove must guard against the vested interests

Polly Toynbee was on ‘mute’ on Sky News in my office, the remote wasn’t working, which is frustrating because I’d love to hear how someone mounts a passionate defence of why local government should have monopoly control of state schools. Very few things in politics are indefensible, but a system which doles out sink schools to sink estates is one of them. When Michael Gove was a journalist, he described comprehensive education as the greatest betrayal of the working class. And now, as Education Secretary, he is outlining a system that will give the poor the same choice of schools that the rich have. Who on earth could be against that?

James Forsyth

Tactical considerations over the timing of the AV referendum

A referendum on AV was the concession that Nick Clegg felt he needed to get a coalition deal with the Tories past his party. But the referendum poses obvious dangers to the coalition, just imagine the sight of Nick Clegg and the leader of the Labour party sharing a platform to denounce the Tories' 'reactionary' opposition to electoral reform.   The Guardian this morning reports that the Lib Dems are pushing for this referendum to take place in May 2011 at the same time as the Scottish and Welsh elections. There is, as the article notes, a huge benefit to the Lib Dems in getting this referendum in early before the cuts kick in and the coalition becomes unpopular.

Daniel Korski

German lessons

Angela Merkel's fall from favour is something David Cameron ought to bear in mind as he looks for lessons to guide his term in office. The German chancellor could do no wrong when she was first elected. A new "Iron Lady", she was seen as a giant among pygmees. Tony Blair was leaving the scene, Nicolas Sarkozy had yet to be elected, the newspapers swooned, the voters applauded. Mrs Merkel was respected in the US and Europe. She made her unwieldy coalition with the Social Democrats work, almost singlehandedly picked the NATO secretary-general and ruled over EU meetings.

Tuesday

Martin Bright

So Who’s the Senior Partner in this Coalition?

The choreography of the new coalition is designed to make this look like a partnership of equals. But I'm increasingly convinced that Nick Clegg pulled a masterstroke here. This really is a joint premiership. Someone suggested I take a look at the full coalition document  on the Cabinet Office website to see just how much the Liberal Democrat leader had wrung from his Tory counterpart in the negotiations. The most striking phrase is: "... will be agreed between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister", which litters the document. The "I agree with Nick" slogan used by the Lib Dems during the election campaign has thus become embedded in the constitutional agreement.

Alex Massie

Loving the Liberal Democrats in a Hung Britain

Over at ConservativeHome Paul Goodman suggests that Nick Clegg be invited to address the Conservative Party Conference this year and, in general, that the Tories need to do more to get to know their colleagues in government. He's right. And here, via John Rentoul, is John Curtice to help explain why. Professor Curtice suggests that this most recent election ought not to be considered a freakish result and that even if the voting system remains unaltered hung parliaments are probably as likely as not for the foreseeable future.

James Forsyth

Laughs, politics and sincerity

The opening of the Queen’s speech debate is, traditionally, a light-hearted affair. Peter Lilley opened up with a rather witty speech. He compared the Liberal Democrats to the bastards of the Major Cabinet, it is better to have them inside the Cabinet pissing out than outside the Cabinet pissing in. He went on to warn the new Prime Minister that the appropriate response to John Major and Gordon Brown’s microphone troubles is not to turn your microphone off but to keep ‘your receiver switched on to hear legitimate concerns.’ David Cameron would be well advised to heed this tactfully-expressed advice. Lilley ended with a heart-felt plea to bring the troops home from Afghanistan as soon as possible.