On Friday Vince Cable is due to give a set piece speech. Given that a week is a long time in politics the speech could, presumably, go through several revisions between now and then. But that hasn’t stopped people speculating, and unnamed individuals briefing, that Uncle Vince is going […]
Yesterday’s Independent newspaper appropriated this title for its unprecedented editorial backing something that is clearly impossible. The Independent abandoned its traditional, and commendable, stance of remaining independent. It threw its support behind a second Conservative-Lib Dem coalition. The editorial added the caveat that it would like a second […]
[This post is the original version of a text that first appeared in issue 370 of Liberator magazine (February 2015), under the title “Sustained by useful idiots”] As we approach the last few weeks of this Parliament it is almost inevitable that our thoughts turn to evaluating the […]
Last week researchers associated with the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics published a substantial suite of papers reviewing the Coalition government’s policies across a broad range of social policy areas. They summarize the key strands of policy and try to provide an […]
Nick Clegg has a rather extraordinary post at the Telegraph today. The second half of the post is pretty standard: the Libdems are less spendthrift than Labour and less ideologically anti-state than the Conservatives. Split the difference and aim for the sensible centre. But in order to grab […]
… and I’m not sure the messaging quite hits the spot. Today’s Telegraph contains a piece entitled Vote Libdem for another Coalition, Nick Clegg says. On closer inspection it turns out that the article is based on the advanced briefing. But, nonetheless, the statements attributed to Clegg in […]
You have to admire Andrew George. Or at least I do. Commentators are busying themselves accusing the Liberal Democrats of inconstancy or hypocrisy in supporting his Private Members’ Bill to reform the Bedroom Tax. But we should remember that George has ploughed a rather lonely furrow in consistent […]
To the politically obsessed this might seem like an odd question. Of course political parties matter. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who take a more jaundiced view of politics: they’d argue that “they’re all as bad as each other” and it doesn’t matter who […]
Today, as might have been anticipated, Andrew Rawnsley took as his subject the apparent thawing of relations between Labour and the Lib Dems. The opinion polls suggest that an outright Labour majority in 2015 is by no means assured. So it makes sense […]
The formation of a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats was probably the only viable outcome of the General Election in May 2010. A coalition between two unnatural bedfellows in the public interest looked like the only plausible way forward. Coalition was always going to be […]
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