Nick Clegg's "free school meals for all" plan clashes with his own principles and policies

By Mark Wallace
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The Lib Dem conference was never just going to be about Vince moaning and a plastic bag tax. Sure enough, Nick Clegg's big announcement is free school meals for all school children aged between five and seven.

As Robert Halfon MP notes elsewhere on ConservativeHome this morning, the sensible part of Clegg's proposal (that which gives equality on school meals to poorer students at FE and Sixth Form Colleges) is actually nicked from the redoubtable MP for Harlow, which is further evidence of the need for Conservatives to take full credit for our ideas.

But leaving that aside, two problems strike me with Clegg's headline policy of free school meals for all - one of principle, and one of practice.

"Boot Vince out of the party - and the SDP lot" - that Lib Dem divide isn't going away

By Mark Wallace
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I wrote yesterday about the fundamental division within the Lib Dems between the Liberals and the SDP:

"Any political party is a coalition of sorts - we Conservatives certainly have plenty of tribes of our own, who disagree about plenty of issues. But Lib Demmery is a more divided creed than most.

Having been formed from a merger of two parties, it has never succeeded in bringing the left and centre any closer together. The rift extends to the social level as well as just the ideological - you don't see many deficit hawks hanging out over beers with the Keynesian wing of the party."

I didn't expect their conference in Glasgow to provide a more vivid demonstration of this than the economy debate, but an anonymous MP on the Liberal side of the divide has helpfully provided a confirmatory quote to The Sun's Tom Newton Dunn:

“We should boot out Vince Cable from the party. Him, and all the SDP lot. The merger hasn't worked."

Any party has its disagreements, but this of a different order - and it isn't going away.

Vince Cable, the Psammead Business Secretary

By Mark Wallace
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Readers may recognise the two faces above. One is an ancient, grumpy and rather self-centred creature which claims to know secrets unavailable to ordinary mortals. The other is the Psammead, from Edith Nesbit's Five Children and It.

The cantankerous Psammead promises its audience that their fantastical wishes can come true - and then brings them crashing down to earth within a few hours. His uneasy coalition with the five children who discover it living in a sand pit is an uneasy one - without him, they would never be able to go on their adventures, but in return they have to put up with his constant grumblingand the limits of his powers. 

I suspect you're starting to see that the resemblance with Vince extends beyond the eyebrows.

What can be learned from the new Labour, Lib Dem and Green peerages?

By Mark Wallace
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Earlier this afternoon I wrote about the 14 new Conservative Life Peers who have been appointed to the Lords. In the same announcement, 16 other Peers were created for the Labour Party, the Lib Dems and the Greens (the brief biographies are those from the Downing Street press release):

Green Party

• Jenny Jones AM – member of the London Assembly; former Chair of the Green Party of England and Wales and former Deputy Mayor of London

Labour Party

• Sir Charles Allen CBE - Non-Executive Director of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games; Chairman of Global Radio Group
• Sir William Haughey OBE - prominent Scottish businessman and CEO of City Refrigeration Holdings
• Alicia Kennedy - former Deputy General Secretary of the Labour Party
• Doreen Lawrence OBE - campaigner for justice, race equality and better policing
• Jonathan (Jon) Mendelsohn - business advisor and co-founder of LLM Communications

Liberal Democrat Party

• Catherine (Cathy) Mary Bakewell MBE - former leader of Somerset County Council
• Rosalind (Olly) Grender MBE - former Director of Communications for Shelter; former Director of Communications for the Liberal Democrats
• Christine Mary Humphreys - President of the Welsh Liberal Democrats; former Member of the National Assembly for Wales
• Zahida Manzoor CBE - former Legal Services Ombudsman; former Deputy Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality
• Brian Paddick - former Deputy Assistant Commissioner in the Metropolitan Police Service
• James Palumbo - co-founder and chairman of Ministry of Sound Group, the international music and entertainment business
• Jeremy Purvis - former Member of the Scottish Parliament for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale
• Alison Suttie - former Press Secretary to the President of the European Parliament; former Deputy Chief of Staff to Nick Clegg and Election Manager for the 2010 General Election
• Rumi Verjee CBE - entrepreneur and philanthropist
• Sir Ian Wrigglesworth - Liberal Democrat Treasurer; former MP for Teeside Thornaby and for Stockton South

There are a few conclusions that can be drawn from this list:

1) The Government still has one eye on the Coalition Agreement - but only to a degree. The elevation of Jenny Jones as the first Green Peer is a nod towards the Coalition's pledge to make the House of Lords more representative of the level of support for smaller parties. Evidently the Greens were felt to be an acceptable route to do so - it's notable that UKIP, who received many more votes than them, did not receive any new Lords or Ladies. 

2) The Lib Dems aren't that bothered about the Rennard affair. As Guido notes, Alison Suttie has been caught up in various allegations about how the Lib Dems handled the scandal - but it hasn't prevented her donning the ermine. Not a great sign that they're ever going to take the issue seriously.

3) Londoners will be spared yet another Brian Paddick candidacy for Mayor. Some have cruelly suggested that the only reason he agreed to stand for the second time was because he would get a peerage for his efforts. It must be slightly awkward that Jenny Jones, who will arrive in the Lords at the same time, beat him into a poor 4th place in 2012.

4) Labour will always say one thing and do another. Reportedly, Labour have attacked today's announcement for "increasing the cost of politics". Will their new Peers therefore refuse to take their seats? Somehow, I doubt it...

5) People forget scandals if you wait long enough. Labour Peer Jon Mendelsohn is most recently recognisable from his work trying to nip the the David Abrahams Labour donor scandal in the bud - but he also hit the headlines early in the Blair years, as a character in the Lobbygate scandal. Time, it seems, heals all wounds.

A reality check - most LibDem members prefer a post-2015 coalition with Labour to one with the Conservatives

By Paul Goodman
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The Independent's Andrew Grice today fleshes out the claim I put earlier this week of David Cameron preferring a second Coalition with the Liberal Democrats to forming a Conservative Government after 2015.  Grice agrees that the Prime Minister woud prefer the comfortable Commons majority of over 50 which a coalition might give him to the narrow one which he could win alone - leaving him exposed to the 20-or-sp hard core of his Tory MP critics.

However, it's worth remembering that the Liberal Democrat may not be up for coalition with Conservatives for a second time.  Steve Richards claimed in the Independent that they won't, on the same day as my Daily Telegraph article.  Drawing especially on the left-leaning Liberal Democrat peers in the Lords, he argued that Nick Clegg's party won't want to become semi-permanently entangled with the Tories - and suggested that a second coalition wouldn't pass the Liberal Democrat triple lock procedure.

Clegg should be more annoyed than Osborne about Vince's Spending Review games

By Mark Wallace
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Most of the focus on the Spending Review has been on the practicalities, rather than on the element of showmanship involved.

It's obviously important to establish properly agreed spending plans for each department through the Coalition's full term in office. But there's also a hefty political element on the Chancellor's part - as can be seen by the chaos it has thrown the two Eds into, unable to decide whether they'll spend and borrow less, spend and borrow more or insist that both are possible.

That political motivation is also true of some of the Cabinet. It is telling that Vince Cable was the last one to agree a deal with the Treasury, and the very public manner in which he did it. James Forsyth of the Spectator was not alone in being briefed that the talks would last late into the night on Tuesday (though in practice they ended late yesterday).

We’d better watch out: Labour and the Lib Dems are discovering more areas of political overlap

By Peter Hoskin
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Here at ConHome, we’ve tended to mention the areas of political overlap between Labour and the Lib Dems. Indeed, Paul Goodman highlighted two such areas – pensioner benefits and the mansion tax – only last week.

But there are now so many examples, with new ones by the day, that a brief list in in order. Here goes:

The truth about Nick Clegg's manifesto referendum pledge - and how he is breaking it

By Mark Wallace
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 The Lib Dems have been twisting and turning over the last few days to get out of supporting an EU referendum.

Their most awkward moment came as their leader stood in for the Prime Minister at PMQs. Veteran eurosceptic Edward Leigh brandished a Lib Dem leaflet from 2008, asking whether the person claiming to be Nick Clegg who promised "a real referendum on Europe" was "an imposter or a hypocrite"? 

At the time, this was a pledge Clegg felt strongly about - going to the point of trooping his MPs out of the Commons when the Speaker rejected an amendment proposing an EU referendum.

Obviously his position has changed, and he now seems dedicated to stopping the people getting a say.

The Deputy PM's standard get-out nowadays is to point to his party's 2010 manifesto (with no justification for the change in policy since then). It said:

"The European Union has evolved significantly since the last public vote on membership over thirty years ago. Liberal Democrats therefore remain committed to an in/out referendum the next time a British government signs up for a fundamental change in the relationship between the UK and the EU."

Lord Adonis surfs the latest wave of LibLabLove

By Peter Hoskin
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For any Kremlinologists among us, Lord Adonis’s new book and his interview with today’s Guardian are sure to be fruitful reads. Not only are they about the Kremlinology of days past: about how the absence of any relationship between Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown helped scupper a LibLab Coalition after the last election. But they are also about the Kremlinology of days to come: about how a LibLab Coalition might be born in 2015.

Among Lord Adonis’s main points is that Labour should, as the Guardian interview puts it, “prepare for coalition, even when [they] are fighting all out for a majority”. He reckons that the mistakes of the last election ought to be corrected, such that Ed Miliband reaches out to the Lib Dems now and dangles the possibility of major Cabinet positions in front of their rapacious eyes.

Clegg again paints the Conservatives as extreme. When is Cameron going to kick back?

By Tim Montgomerie
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Nick Clegg's speech to the Liberal Democrats' Spring Conference is well worth a read. It's well constructed and it has a clear, simple message at its heart. In the Deputy PM's words (my emphasis):

"You can’t trust Labour to build a strong economy. You can’t trust the Tories to build a fair society. Only the Liberal Democrats can deliver a stronger economy and a fairer society, enabling everyone to get on in life. Get used to those words, Conference. Get used to saying them. That’s the message I need you to deliver across the country. I need you to explain it to people each and every day, from now, for the next two years and beyond."

There we have it. The central pitch of the Liberal Democrats may not be particularly new but its simplicity is its strength. The Lib Dems will present themselves as the party that will moderate Labour or the Tories. Team Clegg will argue that it will pull a minority Labour government towards fiscal responsibility and a minority Conservative government towards social responsibility. We need to think carefully how we counter that.

Yesterday, Lord Ashcroft's marginal seats polling suggested the Tories could win 17 seats from the Lib Dems. How can we maximise the likelihood of that gain? Part of the answer to that question might be to paint the Lib Dems as a party thart doesn't moderate politics but pulls politics away from the wishes of the public. The Lib Dems are, after all, more libertarian on immigration than 70% of the public - more enthusiastic about European integration than Labour - more pro-costly-renewables than Al Gore - and as soft on crime as The Guardian. We have to be careful, however, not to obsess about those topics. We mustn't just assert our differences with the Lib Dems. We must also assert common ground on issues like low taxes for the low-paid and investment in the NHS.