Chris Bryant's immigration speech isn't just a car crash, it's a full on, bollard-smashing rampage

By Mark Wallace
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During the 2010 General Election campaign, a Labour photo opp with Gordon Brown was interrupted by a car colliding with a bus stop. At that point, I thought it was as bad as things could get - how could any metaphorical car crash by a politician possibly outdo the real thing?

Chris Bryant is evidently more imaginative, and has today embarked on a one man mission to prove me wrong. Belted into the driver's seat of a rhetorical red mini metro, he careered through the political media, ploughing into bollards, oncoming traffic, tourists and both mounted cavalrymen outside Horseguards.

Just to ensure the job was done properly, he brought his political road-trip to a halt by effecting a head-on collision with an Alan Partridge-style joke about how easy it is to mistakenly think obese women are pregnant. The metaphorical car is definitely a write-off.

Backlash for Nick Clegg over immigration speech

By Harry Phibbs
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I sometimes feel that Conservative Party members don't take their role sufficiently seriously in terms of contributing to policy. However, the excruciating self importance of Lib Dem policy group members is hardly something one would wish to emulate.

Over at Lib Dem Voice a group of them are grumbling, having been provoked by Nick Clegg's recent speech on immigration. They seem to think that decisions on governing the country should wait upon the Deputy Prime Minister obtaining due authority from the gaggle of bearded sandal wearers at his Party's annual seaside gathering.

The group complains:

As members of the body setting up a review of Liberal Democrat policy on immigration and identity under Andrew Stunell MP, or members of the review itself, we feel the need to put a few facts in the public domain following Nick Clegg’s speech on Friday.

It would have been helpful had we been made aware of the contents in advance. It would have been very helpful if members of the Policy Working Group had been sent an embargoed copy of the speech the night before.

This is not just procedural fuss pottery. They are also objecting to the substance of what Mr Clegg was saying. In his speech Mr Clegg said he wanted to ditch the Lib Dem policy of giving an amnesty to illegal immigrants.

Lib Dem conference rolling blog - highlights of the party's anti-Tory positioning

Wednesday, 12.30pm:

It’s the final day of the Liberal Democrat conference, and so the final day of our intermittent live blog totting up all the anti-Tory positioning going on. And, in terms of rhetoric, it’s probably the quietest day so far: the overriding theme of Nick Clegg’s forthcoming speech is that the Lib Dems are now a “party of government”, and so his colleagues are on best behaviour this morning. Even Simon Hughes has been talking about the need for a decade of austerity.

But that isn’t to say that, in terms of substance, the Liberal Democrats have refrained from causing trouble for the Tories. In fact, they have passed two particular conference motions dismissing government plans. The first came last night, when they voted against the Justice and Security Bill, and particularly its proposals around “secret justice” courts. The second was this morning, with a resounding vote against Eric Pickles’ proposal to relax the planning laws around house extensions (the prospect of which Harry wrote about here). The Lib Dem councillor Chris White took the opportunity to swipe at Mr Pickles, as the BBC reports:

“Councillor Chris White, from St Albans, has delivered a stinging rebuke to Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, the minister responsible for the reforms. Mr Pickles harbours a ‘shoot-from-the-hip, issue-a-press-release-for-the-Sunday-papers attitude’, Mr White says. 'It is time to say enough is enough, let's try to get it right.'"

None of this is necessarily fatal to the government’s plans —people about the Lib Dem leadership are talking about these votes being advisory, rather than binding — but, at the very least, they increase the headwinds that Mr Clegg, and the Coalition, are operating against.

Labour's NEC election results: Red Ken, Karl Marx, and the "extreme left"

By Matthew Barrett
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The results of the recent elections to Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC), the Party's governing body, were announced yesterday. While the results cannot reasonably be said to represent a "lurch to the left", since five out of six of the NEC members were simply re-elected, and the sixth, a Blairite, replaced another Blairite, it's still worth considering the very left-wing ideals and activities of the members of the NEC.

The most popular candidate, with 31,682 votes, was Ken Livingstone. There's been enough written about Livingstone over the years for me not to have to revisit much of it here, but suffice to say his council tax rises, flirtations with dictatorships like Cuba and Venezuela, and mismanagement of City Hall mean he is unlikely to be the one to tell Ed Miliband to take a sensible policy option. 

The second most popular candidate was Ann Black, a trade union member since 1979, with policies to match the era. She is sceptical about Trident, and has a list of unaffordable, unrealistic, and out of touch policies:

"Personally I support properly-funded public services, comprehensive education, better employment rights, freedom from discrimination, joined-up transport, environmental sustainability, respect for local government, pensions and other benefits linked to earnings, and a positive role in Europe."

Black also recently wrote:

"We must tackle the tabloids on welfare, crime and immigration: people who want to be really nasty to scroungers, yobs and foreigners will vote Tory anyway, so we might as well take the moral high ground and give ourselves something worth fighting for."

Grant Shapps helps to highlight Labour's "cover-up" on immigration

By Joseph Willits 
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According to reports this morning, more evidence is emerging over a Labour cover up on immigration.  Both the Daily Mail and the Daily Express refer to £165,000 of taxpayer-funded documents prepared by the Department for Communities and Local Government which were never published by the previous government.

The documents contain new revelations about migrants from Bulgaria and Romania, as well as some more general statistics on immigration. Some of the previously unknown findings are as follows:

• 25 % of those arriving from Bulgaria and Romania had low education levels.
• Many immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania had four or more children.
• Three in every 100 migrants from Bulgaria and Romania had five children or more.
• The likelihood of claiming unemployment benefits was higher amongst Bulgarians and Romanians than other immigrants.
• Unemployment generally worse in the immigrant population as a whole.
• The immigrant community is less likely to take part in forms of civic participation.
• A population increase of 4 million from 2008 - 2018.
• A third of people in London were born outside of the U.K.
• By 2004-2007, net immigration was at 178,300.