From our UK edition
Ukip has won its first by-election: Douglas Carswell is the party’s first elected MP. In a stunning night for the party, it also ran Labour mighty close in Heywood and Middleton—coming in just 617 votes behind.
From our UK edition
2.50am Douglas Carswell’s victory speech, after winning a 12,404 majority, was not triumphalist: there was no tub-thumping. Instead, he said that Ukip must be the party of 1st and 2nd generation Britons, that its passion must be tempered by compassion and argued that the era of dominant cartel was coming to an end in everything from banking to politics. listen to ‘Douglas Carswell's Clacton victory speech’ on audioBoom 2.45 Ukip win Clacton, Douglas Carswell is Ukip's first elected MP with more than 60% of the vote 2.35am Result coming very soon now 2.15 The BBC's Chris Mason is reporting that Douglas Carswell will have a 12 thousand plus majority, a quite remarkable result 2.
From our UK edition
Tonight Clacton is set to return the first elected Ukip MP to the House of Commons. The Conservatives have already tried to factor in Douglas Carswell's defection as something they can cope with - and this has been made quite a lot easier by the tribal anger that Mark Reckless provoked when he announced he was doing the same thing. But the consequences for Ukip of having an MP in terms of their appeal to the electorate are not so easily dismissed. They can now tell voters they really are a serious party, rather than a bunch of no-hopers. Nigel Farage sees it as a 'Krakatoa' moment. And one important impact it has had on the political narrative is that it is now much more difficult for critics to say that Ukip peaked in the European elections.
From our UK edition
An opinion poll to be published next week will reveal that Labour leader Ed Miliband is slightly less popular with the public than the vibrant Islamic State commander ‘Jihadi John’ and the late BBC disc jockey Jimmy Savile, and only two points more popular than His Infernal Majesty, Satan. The same poll will also put Labour slightly ahead of the Tories and therefore on course to be the largest party in a hung parliament come next May, with Ed Miliband as prime minister. This is but one reason why the next general election will be the most fascinating within living memory; the pollsters do not really have a clue what’s going on. The Labour party is reasonably popular, but its leader is considered useless.
From our UK edition
‘Payday Lady is not trading at this time,’ says her website, sounding a little like La Dame aux camélias. Indeed (since I could not find her anywhere) the message may indicate that Payday Lady is not just temporarily indisposed, but has given up the game altogether. I’ll be glad to hear from her if she hasn’t. Meanwhile I can report that her rival Cash Lady (who promises she’ll be ‘here to help you’ within three minutes) was still out there — despite having her television ads banned last year — and so were Purple Payday, Pounds to Pocket, Peachy Loans, PayDay Pig and CashCowNow, all at colossal ‘representative APRs’ that look relatively cheap compared with Wonga’s notorious 5,853 per cent.
From our UK edition
The Liberal Democrats might be in the single digits in the polls, but they were distinctly chipper this week. There’s one simple explanation for this, the political landscape gives them hope that there will be another hung parliament and they will be in government again after 2015. But I think there is another factor behind this Lib Dem cheer: they’ve come to terms with what they’ve done in government. Large parts of Clegg’s speech today seemed designed to prepare activists with lines to use on the doorstep. When it came to the tuition fees, the tone was—despite Clegg’s earlier apology—strikingly defiant. He said, ‘when you meet people who still aren't sure about us, ask them this: How will you judge us?
From our UK edition
Nick Clegg delivered an aggressive speech this morning. But will it be enough to keep the Liberal Democrats in government? James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss it in this View from 22 podcast special. James's write-up is here, and Isabel’s is here.
From our UK edition
listen to ‘Podcast: Nick Clegg's speech’ on audioBoom There were no rabbits in Nick Clegg’s speech today. Instead, there was just an unerring emphasis on the Liberal Democrats’ message that they are the only party that will provide ‘a stronger economy and a fairer society’ and that’s why you need them in government. Clegg began by thanking Ed Miliband and George Osborne for setting up the Lib Dem conference so well. He told activists that Miliband (by forgetting to mention the deficit) and Obsorne (by saying he would close the deficit through spending cuts alone) had opened up the political space that the Liberal Democrats need. Indeed, at times Clegg seemed to be drilling activists about what to say on the doorstep.
From our UK edition
Orwell had it that political writing is ‘defence of the indefensible,' and that 'political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.’ For the latest example, look no further than the statement circulated on Tuesday by the Colchester Hospital Foundation Trust, regarding Dee Hackett, who was appointed last November as director of Nursing and Patient Experience. Dr Lucy Moore, Chief Executive of Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust, said: 'I have been talking with Dee over the past few months about her long-term plans. 'By mutual agreement, we have decided to support her to explore various other opportunities.
From our UK edition
listen to ‘Podcast: Nick Clegg's speech’ on audioBoom Before I say anything else, I’m sure I speak on behalf of all Liberal Democrats when I say that our hearts and condolences go out to the family and friends of Alan Henning and David Haines for their tragic loss. These were good men. In the work they did they stood for hope and compassion – the things that everyone in this room believes are more important than anything else. We have to take on the cowards who took their lives. We have to defeat their barbarity to help protect the millions of people who now live under the threat and fear of these merciless killers. Britain will not be intimidated. We will not be divided. We will not allow this brutal organisation to pervert Islam.
From our UK edition
Nick Clegg will, as promised, use his conference speech today to announce waiting time targets for mental health treatments. The Deputy Prime Minister, as part of government efforts to bring mental and physical health onto an even keel, introduce targets for the first time and pledge some (although not very much) more money to help this happen. The announcement is partly future party policy and partly immediately effective government policy. The latter includes £120 million to improve the services so that they match up to these targets, which apply from April 2015. Clegg will tell the conference: 'This morning I announced that next year, for the first time ever, we will introduce national waiting times for patients with mental health conditions.
From our UK edition
The Lib Dems haven't really announced many enormous policies so far at their party conference. Yesterday's speech from Vince Cable was more notable for its loyalty than it was for its focus on 'bolstering' apprenticeship pay and 'clarifying' and 'enhancing' workers' rights. But unless they're planning to go for the 2013 Tory strategy of not announcing something in their leader's speech and then cobbling together an announcement from one throwaway line when they realise the newspapers might not write anything up at all, the Lib Dems do still plan to use Clegg's speech to announce something important. Based on what Norman Lamb had to say yesterday at fringe meetings, it looks as though at least one of the policies the party announces will be on mental health.
From our UK edition
In a sign of his enhanced status in the party, Danny Alexander has been one of the main attractions on the conference fringe this year. This evening, it was standing room only when he was interviewed by The Independent’s Steve Richards. Alexander was on feisty form. He declared that ‘both the other parties are pretty useless’ and that the Liberal Democrats had ‘done a bloody good job for this country’. Marking his own homework, he gave the party 10 out of 10 for being credible and effective. But he said that the Lib Dems had to shout louder to get their share of the credit for the economic recovery.
From our UK edition
The Lib Dem conference is always a chance to see which side of the party is winning the debate internally. Normally, the Left dominates the grassroots - which is why the party leadership always makes a bigger deal of criticising the Tories than it does although last year the economic liberals in the party tried to assert itself a little more. This year, the motions that members are debating do suggest that the Left is still coming out tops.
From our UK edition
Though they didn't call them 'red lines', the Liberal Democrats did spend yesterday making clear the things they won't accept if they have to work with the Tories in another coalition after the 2015 general election. Today's Financial Times sets out a line that the party is apparently happy to cross: the EU referendum that the Tories have promised as their own 'red line'. Listening to Nick Clegg huff and puff his way through the Today programme, you'd have been forgiven for thinking he was a bit annoyed that he was being asked once again about his party's own position on a referendum: inconveniently, it was suggested that this wasn't really enough.
From our UK edition
The Lib Dems leadership might have hoped that it had moved on from tuition fees. But tonight’s League of Young Voters fringe was dominated by the topic. Lynne Featherstone, a Lib Dem Minister, says that she would like to shoot the Lib Dem negotiating team for not making the issue a red line in the coalition negotiations. Quite what her Lib Dem ministerial colleagues who were on that team—Danny Alexander and David Laws—will make of that remains to be seen. Tim Farron, the party president, was more judicious in his language. But he did say that the negotiating team should have realised that the electorate’s sense of what the party’s red lines should have been, should have been taken into account more.
From our UK edition
Danny Alexander clearly wanted to come across as casual and jovial for his speech to the Lib Dem conference. He wasn't wearing a tie. His top button wasn't done up. Neither were his cuffs because the Chief Secretary to the Treasury had, after years of politicians using it as a figure of speech, rolled up his sleeves. This sort of sartorial shift normally gets written up as a politician 'on manoeuvres', and Alexander did seem keen to appear a little different, a little more human, this time round. He even told the audience at one point that he was saying something 'with all my heart'. He had, though, scripted part of his speech for rather a different audience. 'The last time I addressed a crowd this large,' he said, looking out rather hopefully over a half empty auditorium.
From our UK edition
The Lib Dems are in an amusingly sweary mood this weekend at their conference, with Danny Alexander telling the Sun on Sunday that he's p****d off with the Tories for stealing his tax policy, and Lord Ashdown talking about shits and bastards last night. Vince Cable today promised 'more colourful language' about his coalition partners in the speech that he will give later in the conference. Perhaps Nick Clegg is planning to develop his 'No, no, no' speech from last year to tell delegates about all the times he's had to tell the Tories to eff off in the past four years, though he seems oddly delicate about return fire, with an official complaint about a Home Office source calling the Deputy Prime Minister a 'wanker'.
From our UK edition
The Lib Dem message in Glasgow this week in simple, you can’t trust either Labour or the Tories to run the country on their own. On Marr this morning, Nick Clegg said that the country was being offered a ‘dismal choice’ between ‘sticking your head in the sand’ with Labour or ‘beating up on the poor’ with the Tories. Clegg was determined to get his anti-Tory lines out there. He accused George Osborne of a plan to ‘savage unprotected public services’ and again and again attacked the Tories for being ‘economically extreme’ and supposedly wanting to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.
From our UK edition
Lib Dem conference rallies are always a little like spending Christmas with a family you don't know: quite baffling but rather endearing. There's the uncle who tells the same jokes every year (Paddy Ashdown, telling the conference that he'd been asked in the street by a 'little man' whether he 'used to be Paddy Ashdown' - mercifully the members found it hilarious, again), some confusing singing (an award-winning a cappella group who kept the delegates giggling by singing 'stuck in the middle'), a bit of sweariness (Ashdown, again, claiming the Libs were 'too nice' and didn't have any 'proper shits') and things that just don't make sense unless you're part of that family (a Lib Dem activist on stage telling the audience that she was 'starstruck to go campaigning with Baroness Ludford').
