Uk politics

The Liberal Democrats have spent the past few months building up to yesterday's announcement that they would trash the boundary reforms following the failure of the House of Lords Reform Bill. As so much of the arguments this morning focus on whether the party is justified in voting down the changes to constituencies, I've taken a trip down memory lane to review the key statements from both parties from before the 2010 general election right up to this morning's Today programme interview with Jeremy Browne. Coffee Housers can judge for themselves whether or not Lords and boundaries are linked. The Liberal Democrat manifesto: Change politics and abolish safe seats by introducing a fair, more proportional voting system for MPs.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Nick Clegg’s decision not to support the 2015 boundary changes as a ‘penalty’  for Lords reform not happening is that Downing Street is insisting on pushing on with the matter. I’m told that Number 10 will ‘do everything we can to persuade everyone we can to vote for them.’ When I put it to this senior Cameroon that this was futile given that with Lib Dem ministers and MPs voting against, there was no chance of getting it through the Commons, the source said ‘is it feasible [to get the boundary changes through], yes'. There are two possibilities here. One is that Cameron is pursuing a Micawber strategy, hoping that something will turn up which will allow him to get these changes through.

If yesterday was the peak of enthusiasm for Boris Johnson's hopes for the Tory leadership (Guido noted that every broadsheet commentator discussed the Mayor of London in their Saturday columns), then today is very much the morning after. The first sobering voice came from William Hague as he popped up on Sky News to warn Boris against a leadership putsch. 'Boris is doing a great job as Mayor of London and people love him the more they see him, and that's great… but I think it is true to say - and certainly it is true for me - that I hope and believe that we are not looking for a long time for any new leader of the Conservative Party.

In recent weeks, Downing Street has been repeatedly told by Tory MPs that if proposals for an elected element in the House of Lords were brought back to the Commons, the next rebellion would be even bigger than the 91 who voted against second reading. Downing Street, as the Telegraph reported this morning, has now accepted that Lords reform will have to be dropped and there is talk of a formal announcement to this effect as early as Monday. But, intriguingly, I understand that David Cameron does not intend to abandon efforts to get the boundary reforms through. This, as Isabel noted this morning, has the potential to cause a massive coalition row.