James Forsyth

This conference season marks the half way point to the next election and we can see the political battle lines becoming clearer. The Tories, as their new poster campaign shows, intends to hammer Labour as the party that has learnt nothing from its mistakes. The argument of the coalition parties, which Nick Clegg previewed in Brighton, will be that the world has changed but Labour is stuck in the pre-crash era with its borrow and spend economics. Ed Miliband for his part wants to run as the man who is ‘on your side’. Today’s policy announcement taking aim at pension charges and the energy companies are designed to resonate with those voters who feel that the economy is not working for them.

Michael Gove is withdrawing his appeal against the Information Commissioner’s ruling that his private emails were searchable under the Freedom of Information Act, I understand. The Education Secretary has decided to do this because the Cabinet Office has concluded that anything that constitutes ‘information’ falls within the scope of the act which removes Gove’s ground for appeal. In other words, if two ministers, or a minister and a special adviser, email or text each other from their personal accounts or phones and that conversation involves any discussion of government business—however, fleeting or peripheral—then those texts are FOI able. I’m informed that new Cabinet Office guidance to this effect will be issued in the near future.

The spotlight is shifting from the Liberal Democrats to Labour ahead of the party’s conference. But I suspect that at least one theme from Brighton will be carried on to Manchester: what to do about the coming spending review. In The Spectator this week, Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman makes clear that she is adamantly opposed to Labour repeating Gordon Brown’s 1997 trick of promising to match, at least initially, Tory spending plans: ‘Our argument against the Tories is that the scale and pace of their deficit reduction is self-defeating and hurting the economy and therefore making less money available. So we have got a fundamental economic critique — we would not be signing up to doing the very thing we think is hurting the economy.

The only line of Nick Clegg’s speech that drew whoops from the hall was the announcement that Paddy Ashdown was returning to run the 2015 general election campaign. The enthusiasm was testament to the affection that the grassroots of the party still have for their former leader. The appointment tells us several intriguing things about the internal state of the Liberal Democrats. That Clegg felt the need to announce who was running the next election campaign at this conference, more than two years out from the date of the next general election, shows he’s keen to do everything he can to demonstrate that he is going to lead the party into that election.

Vince Cable’s speech yesterday setting out how he thinks there’ll be another hung parliament was a significant moment. It was clear last night, that it had placed in peoples’ minds the question of whether Cable was more likely to hold Lib Dem seats than Nick Clegg and whether he would be able to better exploit a second hung parliament. This has added to the importance of Nick Clegg’s speech tomorrow. I understand that on Wednesday Clegg will be forceful rather than apologetic, it will be a book end to his sorry over tuition fees. He intends to use it to set out where he is taking his party.

The Liberal Democrats are a party facing an identity crisis. During their many years in opposition, they had a slight all things to all men quality. But now they are in government, they are rapidly becoming defined in the public mind. How to respond to that is a question that they have been grappling with for the past two years. In a packed and over-heated fringe meeting last night, Nick Clegg’s former director of strategy Richard Reeves provided his answer—which is, although more starkly stated, the leadership’s. Reeves’ argument is that the party should become a Liberal party of the radical centre. In other words, he wants to take off the Social Democratic hand brake. Reeves makes this case with verve and one can see the political space he’s talking about.

There is something very Liberal Democrat about Nick Clegg’s Q&A session with party members at conference. There’s a distinct mix of familiarity, fondness—the loudest applause came for the announcement that today is Nick and Miriam’s 12th wedding anniversary and policy debate. In response to a questioner who claimed that Danny Alexander was more right wing than ‘Peter Osborne’, Clegg was keen to stress to members that the coalition’s fiscal plans were more flexible than they are given credit for.

One of the striking features of the opening rally at Liberal Democrat conference was how it was figures from the left of the party who attacked Labour most vigorously. Simon Hughes, the deputy leader, scolded those who think that governing with Labour would be easy; pointing out that the parties are at odds on nuclear power, Trident, civil liberties and a whole host of other issues. While the party’s president Tim Farron demanded that Labour apologise for the expensive failure of the NHS PFI projects, the Iraq war and a whole host of other issues. Nick Clegg himself was on fairly confident form. He began with a couple of gags about his unlikely chart success.

Nigel Farage’s very public willingness to explore a UKIP-Tory electoral pact in exchange for a pledge from David Cameron to hold a referendum on EU membership is, I suspect, designed to achieve two things. First, it is meant to flush out Cameron. If Cameron declines the offer, Farage will be able to claim that only UKIP are the only party to vote for if you want an In/Out choice on the UK’s EU membership. It’ll undercut the Tory offer of a renegotiation referendum. Second, by floating the offer he makes it more likely that individual Tory MPs and candidates might sign up to the offer themselves, pledging to back an In Out referendum in exchange for no UKIP challenge.

Going into the last election, many of Nick Clegg’s closest allies and, I suspect, the Lib Dem leader himself found the tuition fees pledge embarrassing. It was precisely the kind of opportunistic policy that they had tried to wean the party off. But when it came to the election and it was still, despite their best efforts, party policy they decided to run with it. As soon as the election results came in, it was clear that Clegg’s exploitation of the subject was going to cause him problems seeing as both Tories and Labour were committed to the Browne review which was almost certain to come out for higher fees.