James Forsyth

Today’s peerage list contains more interesting names than usual. Jullian Fellowes — Downton Abbey, Gosford Park, Snobs — is the one who will get the most attention. It is a sign of how confident David Cameron is feeling that he has risked the reopening of the whole class question. But perhaps, the most intriguing Tory appointment is Patience Wheatcroft. One imagines that she wouldn’t have taken the role unless it was a way to allow her to serve on the political front line. Howard Flight’s appointment to the Lords rights a wrong: his sacking as a candidate before the 2005 election was as unfair as it was hasty.

Today’s press will not have made happy reading for Ed Miliband and his supporters. Alan Johnson’s comments to The Times about the need to change the way Labour elects its leader has revived the debate about the legitimacy of Ed Miliband’s victory. Meanwhile in the New Statesman there’s a piece setting out the internal tensions within the party. Intriguingly, Lisa Tremble, who was David Miliband’s press chief during his leadership campaign, has put what could be considered a rather provocative quote on the record. She tells the magazine, ‘David’s rediscovered his excitement in politics…He’s looking forward to the new challenges. He’s not going anywhere.

Today is a very good day to bury bad news. Prince William and Kate Midddleton’s engagement is going to dominate the news and the front pages for at least the next 24 hours. Almost any other story can be slipped out unnoticed in the current circumstances. So it was a convenient time for Downing Street to announce that the photographer and the videographer would be moved off the public payroll and back onto the Tory one. This means that their work will not be able to appear on any government websites. Downing Street’s correction is welcome. But in reality, the damage has already been done by this story. It will be like the car following the bike, a story constantly advanced by those sceptical of the PM.

Tim Farron is a name to remember. Farron has just been elected Lib Dem president and is widely regarded as the brightest hope of the party’s left. Farron is a political natural. He won his seat from a Tory in 2005 and from endless campaigning has turned into as near as you get to a Lib Dem safe seat. At Lib Dem party conference, Farron was a late replacement for Charles Kennedy at the pro-AV rally and delivered the best speech of the night.  At the annual conference Glee Club, a bizarre sing-song that is a throwback to the days when there were very few Liberal MPs, Farron rapped. It could have been a moment of excoriating embarrassment and would have been with nearly any other politician, but he managed to pull it off.

Over at the FT's Westminster blog, Alex Barker asks why it is that David Cameron's expensive personal pledge on pensioner benefits has survived the spending review while Nick Clegg's personal pledge to scrap tuition fees, which would have cost roughly the same amount, has been spectacularly ditched. As Alex argues, one reason is that Clegg himself was not particularly attached to his pledge on fees. Indeed, he had tried to change the policy several times in opposition. The other is that George Osborne, who is the Tories' chief election strategist as well as the Chancellor, is determined to protect the Cameron brand.

One consequence of coalition and the student fees row is, as Nick Clegg said this morning, that the Lib Dems will be more careful about what they sign up to at the next election. This will create political space for a party that is prepared to advocate populist but unrealistic policies such as abolishing tuition fees. I strongly suspect that Labour will choose not to occupy this space, appearing credible will still be the most important thing to them. So, this raises the question of who will try and move into this slot? UKIP aren't ideologically suited to it, although Farage is a canny enough operator that little can be ruled out. But I suspect that it will be the Greens who take over this and other issues that the Lib Dems used to champion.

The violence at today’s student protest is, politically, a boon to the coalition. The story now is not the Lib Dems breaking their word but the storming of Millbank. The violence will also have cost the no-fees cause much public sympathy, we don’t like attempts at aggressive direct action in this country. There are questions that need to be answered after today, why were the cops so unprepared for the protest turning violent? I crossed through the protest at lunchtime and then it was quite clear that there was potential for trouble. I’m also bemused as to why it is taking so long to put a stop to the violence and deal with those involved. Given the political environment, this might well not be the last protest to turn nasty.