Uk politics

In the autumn Nick Clegg annoyed some in the Labour party by telling his conference that 'Labour would wreck the recovery' and that 'the Conservatives would give us the wrong kind of recovery'. Some senior figures such as Lord Adonis said it suggested Clegg was predisposed to partnership with the Tories as wrecking is so much worse than a tendency to veer off in the wrong direction. But in his New Year message Clegg turns on all the parties, warning voters that a vote for anyone other than the Liberal Democrats in the European elections would wreck the recovery too. He says: 'In May you are going to choose who represents you in the European Union. Two of the parties on offer could help lead Britain out of Europe, the surest way to throw our recovery away.

For the Conservative party, 2013 has been the year of Lynton Crosby. Just over a year ago, the Wizard of Oz was appointed David Cameron’s chief election strategist. Now he’s full-time. His brief is to make sure the Tories in government have a clear message – something that eluded them in the 2010 campaign. And to see that the message is articulated in deeds, not words. In April, the Prime Minister described his own strategy by using a quote from the late Keith Joseph: ‘the right thing to do is to address the things people care about; to fix yourself firmly in what Keith Joseph called the “common ground” of politics’. As opposed to the middle ground of Westminster. Here’s the six top incursions into this middle ground. 1.

The Sun on Sunday's story this morning that senior Tories have opened talks with Boris Johnson about a campaigning role for the Mayor follows some advice offered by James Forsyth in the pages of this magazine back in May. In his politics column, James argued that Boris needed a role in the 2015 campaign to reach voters who might otherwise be turned off by the Tories: 'Persuading the public that Labour can’t be trusted with office again is necessary but not sufficient. To achieve victory, the Tories must connect with the electorate in a way that they are currently not. That means Cameron finding a role for Boris; he’d be well suited to being the chief Cameron surrogate. 'Those around Cameron fret about whether Boris can be trusted or not.

It turns out that Alex Salmond needn't worry too much about the re-emergence of that pesky row about advice on an independent Scotland's membership of the European Union. He's got arguments that are far more powerful than all that to convince Scots of the value of independence. In the latest issue of Idea, a magazine produced by the Evangelical Alliance, two Christian MSPs set out their arguments in favour of and against independence. Both accept that there isn't one Christian position on the subject, but the SNP MSP for Glasgow Shettleston John Mason does suggest that the Bible might have some wisdom on the matter - and it's from as far back as the book of Genesis. He writes: 'But does the Bible have nothing to say on all this?

While Anna Soubry's short joke about Nigel Farage on Marr has been causing the biggest row, it was actually Vince Cable's interview earlier in the programme that was clearly intended to annoy. The Business Secretary has been quite quiet of late, particularly after a rather humiliating conference season. But today he went much, much further than his boss Nick Clegg in differentiating the Lib Dems from the Tories. While he repeatedly referred to his leader's work in blocking the 75,000 proposed by Theresa May in a leaked Home Office document, Cable repeated his fears about the Help to Buy scheme and, significantly, warned that cuts to public services were endangering 'the social fabric'.

Fair's fair. Ed Miliband might be a fish-faced ninny but that doesn't let David Cameron off the hook. And not just because he's trailing a fish-faced ninny in the polls. No, the Prime Minister can be a terrible poltroon himself. Witness his witless suggestion today that the United Kingdom might veto future EU enlargement unless something is done to  thwart "vast migrations" of people. It is a silly thing to say for a number of reasons and the first of those is that Cameron is in no position to make any such suggestion. He cannot bind future British governments and since there is no immediate prospect of any country being accepted into the EU club it's not likely to be a decision he will ever have to make anyway.

David Cameron received a rapturous banging of desks at the final meeting of the year for the 1922 Committee this evening. My sources have given me a run-down of what was said. Backbenchers were, I hear, very cheered by some of his words, particularly on his 2015 strategy. The Prime Minister told his MPs that the important thing to avoid is fighting Labour on their own territory. That means resisting being dragged into ding-dongs about payday loans and other pet issues that Labour likes to raise (the problem with this is that it creates a vacuum for Labour to invent its own description of what the nasty Tories think when the reality is different, but at least this is a plan rather than a lack of awareness of the issues).