Lib Dem recriminations continue over defeat in the AV referendum

By Jonathan Isaby
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The latest issue of Liberator, a journal written by, and aimed at, the Centre-Left wing of the Liberal Democrats (they generally despise the Orange Bookers), suggests that the recriminations are far from over inside sections of the party over the loss of the AV referendum last month.

An editorial in the magazine is especially scathing about the contributions of some of the party's most senior names to the Yes to AV campaign.

Opening by suggesting that "winning a referendum on electoral reform was always a tall order... once the Liberal Democrats – the main proponents of a ‘yes’ vote – lost their moral authority in the tuition fees debacle last autumn", it goes straight for their leader's jugular:

"The party had to campaign in effect leaderless, because Nick Clegg evoked such hostility among voters that he was judged a liability to the campaign... Clegg did make periodic interventions, presumably being unable to restrain himself, but each served to remind the public why they have lost trust in him."

It then goes on to attack other senior Lib Dems for "some startling tactical errors":

"Tim Farron, the titular head of the party’s ‘yes’ campaign, made a speech about Thatcherism having been “organised wickedness” and akin to “slavery”. In most circumstances, these remarks would be entirely unexceptionable. Here, they served to suggest that AV would prevent the election of a majority Tory government again, and so spurred Tories to go out and vote ‘no’."

"Then there was Chris Huhne’s carefully publicised outburst at a cabinet meeting, including the bizarre threat to take legal action against some Tory cabinet ministers over the admittedly vile content of ‘no’ campaign leaflets. This move would have been hard to sustain in court and merely gave the impression of politicians fighting like ferrets in a sack about something that left the public largely unmoved."

You "can't trust the Tories with the NHS" says Lib Dem MP

By Matthew Barrett
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Yesterday, Nick Clegg declared victory - he got the NHS reform bill concessions he pressed for. Whether he believed in the changes he got is another matter. Nick Clegg is very much an Orange Booker: the Lib Dems' Orange Book advocated public sector reform and privatisation. David Laws, Clegg's friend and close ally, authored the chapter on health, and wrote this for the Independent in 2004:

"Finally, we have advocated introducing more choice and diversity into the NHS, with new providers and greater choice. In an essay published yesterday (in The Orange Book; Reclaiming Liberalism), I have explored whether our policy could be developed further in the future to offer even greater choice and diversity."

Unlike the Orange Book tendency, Lib Dems of the leftish, SDP variety, were ideologically opposed to the NHS reforms from the start. Their celebratory remarks at the watering down of the bill are therefore more useful as an indicator of how the Lib Dem backbenches and grassroots will be feeling. Arch-left-winger Evan Harris told Adam Boulton on Sky News:

"What I'm interested in is to know whether tomorrow it's going to be clear that those have been broadly delivered and I think it will be and I think what we're seeing tomorrow is not so much the detailed reaction to Steve Field's report but the announcement of what the deal is between the parties and I think we've got everything we've asked for and have been pressing for and we did that publicly, you see, we're a democratic party." 

Andrew George, the MP for St Ives, an early supporter of changes to the Bill (despite not voting against it at Second Reading), said: 

"Of course we should pat ourselves on the back for having forced an unprecedented pause in a major piece of Government legislation. It is clear that, had the Conservatives outright power, they would be railroading this Bill through Parliament without hesitation."

He also launched a robust attack on the Conservatives:

"I'm afraid we can't trust the Tories with the NHS. They brazenly ignored the Coalition Agreement before the ink was even dry. Tory promises on the NHS should be issued with a 'health warning'" 

Who's top and bottom of the Yellow B**tards League table?

By Matthew Barrett and Tim Montgomerie 

On Wednesday, we reported that Tory MPs at the 1922 Committee wanted to "get those yellow b**tards", in reference to Liberal Democrats who were criticising Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms, having voted for it before.

In today's Mail on Sunday James Forsyth writes that 10 Downing Street is at the end of its tether in having to deal with the Liberal Democrats. They agree one thing one day and then revisit that agreement the next day. "It is like negotiating with an Italian," reports James, "You think everything has been agreed and shaken on, only for the other side to start demanding concessions before the deal goes ahead."

So, who are the real troublemakers on the Liberal Democrat side of the Coalition? Here's a rough guide...

 

Vince Cable: Cable's time in office, as the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, has not been a happy one - for him or his Cabinet colleagues. He threatened to abstain on his own tuition fees policy, admitted he thought about resigning over his BSkyB gaffe, and also implied he might prefer life outside government. He called David Cameron's modest speech on immigration "very unwise" and, as Paul Goodman pointed out last week, business doesn't think much of him.  As Charles Moore pointed out last week in a devastating column the tuition fees policy has become a terrible dog's breakfast: students oppose the debt, the Treasury isn't going to save much money and universities won't get the scale of resources they need to deliver world class courses. Well done Vince.

Chris Huhne: After numerous instances of criticising Conservatives over the AV referendum, Huhne is certainly one of the Premier League's Big Four. He has threatened to sue his Coalition partners and likened the first Muslim member of Britain's Cabinet to Goebbels. His climate change plan, although diluted by the Chancellor, threatens to wreck Britain's economic recovery, as Nigel Lawson warned yesterday. If he survives his formidable intellectual skills will mean his environmental policies could become a massive political problem for Cameron but his immediate future rests in the hands of the Essex police.

Simon Hughes: Hughes, the deputy leader of the Lib Dems, frustrated the Coalition on tuition fees - by not committing to voting for, or against the policy, then criticising the plans, then abstaining on the vote, then agreeing to be a "social mobility tsar", and then criticising the policy some more. Outside of tuition fees, Hughes led rebellions against the rise in VAT and housing benefit cuts, and said Baroness Warsi was "inventing facts" during the AV referendum. Most recently, Hughes has opposed the NHS bill (that he voted for), and said it needed "fundamental" change for him to vote for it again.

Lord Oakeshott: He's not the highest profile Yellow B**tard but certainly, behind-the-scenes, one of the most dangerous. Personally close to Cable and tactically close to Huhne, Oakeshott attacked George Osborne as "incompetent" when he resigned as a Lib Dem Treasury spokesman earlier this year. "He hates Tories," said one ConHome source and is stirring up opposition in the upper house to the Coalition's NHS and police commissioner plans.

The remarkable solidarity of the Liberal Democrats

By Tim Montgomerie

I prepared the image on the right in anticipation of many defeated Liberal Democrat candidates attacking Nick Clegg for Thursday's terrible election results for the junior partners in the Coalition... but I had no real opportunity to deploy it.

It's true that a few unknown Lib Dem councillors have said some things against Clegg and these have been picked up by the BBC. The Mirror's Kevin Maguire also got excited on Twitter yesterday when a defeated Lib Dem candidate called for Clegg to go.

But the remarkable thing is how solidarity within the parliamentary Liberal Democrat party - and among the party's other bigwigs - has been holding up. The Independent on Sunday reports that Nick Clegg wasn't taking chances:

"As the full horror of the electoral wipeout emerged on Friday, Clegg hit the phones, contacting more than 50 party figures around the country, many of whom had lost their seats. The charm offensive – which some note has been too rare an occurrence since the coalition was formed – seemed to pay off. All but a handful of defeated councillors came out to defend both Clegg and the coalition."

None of this means that Clegg doesn't have enemies in the party. He does. But they are waiting until the second half of the parliament. The most likely scenario is continuing positioning by Cable, Farron and Huhne in anticipation of Clegg resigning in year three or four. No senior Tories expect Clegg to be Lib Dem leader at the next election. They expect him to step down in the later stages of the parliament so that the Lib Dems have at least a year to rescue themselves with a leader untainted by co-operation with the Conservatives and by the tuition fees u-turn. Clegg may nonetheless stay on as Deputy Prime Minister or, more likely, become an EU Commissioner when a vacancy arises, in 2014.

Ed Miliband, by the way, needs something a little more subtle than appealing for Lib Dem defections via the front page of The Observer. New Labour did these things behind-the-scenes and relationally when they successfully detached some Tory MPs from the parties of Major, Hague and Howard. He would be wise to do the same.

Chris Huhne accuses the Conservative Party of opposing "every change in our democracy"

Matthew Barrett

As the Telegraph's James Kirkup notes, Chris Huhne has been doing the media rounds again, with yet more anti-Conservative comments. Huhne said:

"By giving voters more power, by giving power to the people, it’s absolutely in the tradition of the way in which we have improved our system over time, giving votes to women, giving votes to every person. All of these changes were actually opposed by the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party has opposed every change in our democracy, including votes for women, including votes for all men. That’s always been the Conservative role."

Quite apart from centuries-old political stances being irrelevant to the current campaign - the Labour Party once stopped Emmeline Pankhurst from joining on the grounds of her gender, but I'm not aware of that governing the nature of their equalities policies since - Mr Huhne is being selective with his history. It was the Conservatives who extended the franchise to the working class (Reform Act 1867) and gave equal votes to women (Representation of the People Act 1928) - David Lloyd George's government in 1918 only gave votes to some women. This was another weekend of strongly anti-Conservative comments, as previously listed here.

Senior Lib Dems behaving badly

Matthew Barrett

Last week, I detailed Vince Cable's gaffes since the formation of the coalition. Since then, Lord Ashdown, Nick Clegg, Simon Hughes and Chris Huhne have made various attacks on coalition policy and members, so here is an updated list of the last fortnight, including remarks by Dr Cable:

• Hughes said "Baroness Warsi, who has been inventing facts"
• Clegg attacked the No campaign as the "death rattle of a right-wing elite, a right-wing clique"
• Vince Cable telling the BBC that the Lib Dems had "restrained" the Tories from making "offensive" policy decisions for Scotland
• Lord Ashdown writing in the Observer "These cynical smears and scaremongering show not only the bankruptcy of the no campaign's arguments but also how low is the level of its regard for the intelligence the public."
• "That's why I'm glad the Tories aren't in power by themselves at Westminster. We have stopped the Tories behaving like they did under Thatcher" - remarks dropped from a speech made by Dr Cable in Edinburgh
• Huhne accusing George Osborne and William Hague of "making claims which have no foundation in truth whatsoever."
• Nick Clegg making a speech saying "The no campaign ... have an interest in keeping things just the way they are. The old politics likes its nice little racket, its nice little earner. They don't want you to have any more say than is absolutely necessary to keep them nice and cosy in their safe seats. They want people locked out and politicians kept in. Well democracy is not theirs to control, it's yours."
• Dr Cable admitting he thought about leaving office over his BSkyB gaffe
• Chris Huhne (unsuccessfully) threatening legal action against Conservative politicians and refusing to rule out resigning
• “If I find myself outside the Government, I can assure you there are all kinds of things I can do with my life. I can have much fun going around the country speaking, writing books and probably doubling my income in the process" - Dr Cable implying he might prefer to be sacked from Cabinet rather than stay in it.
• Clegg saying the Prime Minister is on the side of "reactionary interests" - the BNP
• Lord Ashdown telling the Prime Minister to "disassociate himself from a deeply personalised campaign which, frankly, no British Prime ­Minister should ever be ­associated with"
• Dr Cable calling David Cameron's immigration speech "very unwise"
• Huhne saying "I’ve been involved in every single British election campaign since the early 1980s – and I can never remember a campaign which has stooped as low as the no campaign, in dredging up stuff which is downright lies."
• Dr Cable saying "It's time for the progressive majority in the country to rise above this narrow tribalism and support this reform because we need to make sure the progressive majority wins elections in this century and not the Conservatives as they did, by the back door, for two-thirds of the last century."
• Huhne accusing the Conservatives of condoning "gutter politics".

David Owen's warmth towards Ed Miliband is a fig leaf for Labour's lack of success in encouraging a senior Lib Dem defection

Tim Montgomerie

Interviewed by Jon Sopel for today's Politics Show the former Labour Foreign Secretary, and co-founder of the SDP, was very warm about Ed Miliband and the changes he is making to the Labour Party. He said that he was open to voting and possibly even joining Labour again. 'Even at the age of 72 you can flirt' was Sopel's conclusion.  Of the Labour leader David owen said:

"He knows that I’m going to look very hard at what he does with the Labour party. I think he's started extremely well. He's claimed back the ground of civil liberties which Tony Blair lost with the Labour Party and many good decisions... I think he made some very sensible shadow cabinet decisions and I think he has rooted the party by his choice of Shadow Chancellor - a trade unionist, a decent man.”

It was earlier this week that Rachel Sylvester commented upon (£) Ed Miliband's outreach to the founders of the SDP. At a time when Cameron and Clegg are constructing their big tent the Labour leader is clearly attempting to lead what he described yesterday as Britain's progressive majority. The fact that he is fishing in yesteryear's SDP pond does underline, however, Labour's lack of success at encouraging high profile defectors from the Liberal Democrats.

I am quite surprised we haven't seen a single Lib Dem MP defect to Labour or even stand as an independent (as a good number have done in local government). Lib Dems on the Left have actually been very critical of Labour's attemts at outreach. Gang of Four member Bill Rodgers has actually warned Labour of patronising behaviour towards the Lib Dems. Things might change, of course, but the solidarity within Lib Dem ranks must be of real comfort to Nick Clegg. If a Lib/Lab coalition emerges in Scotland after May's Holyrood election I suspect that will actually help party unity - reinforcing the Clegg claim that the Lib/Tory Coalition in Westminster is a purely business relationship, not a marriage.

Tim Farron tells Ed Miliband to renounce Bush and Murdoch before making any more outreach to Lib Dems

Tim Montgomerie

During the leadership race Ed Miliband wasn't nice about the Lib Dems but he avoided knocking them during his first speech as leader and has today made a direct overture to a party that, at the grassroots level, leans left:

"To those who are reluctant to abandon ship but are concerned about the direction of their party, I invite them to work with us on issues of common interest ... I have asked Liam Byrne to work with Richard Grayson [a former Lib Dem policy director] to draw up areas where our policy review can be informed by submissions and ideas of Liberal Democrats who want to contribute. To Liberal Democrats who fear their deal with the Tories is shifting the gravity of British politics to the right, I invite them to work with us against the direction in which this government is taking Britain."

Mr Miliband highlighted three areas of common interest: social mobility, the economy and "the way we do our politics".

Tim Farron, the leaft-leaning President of the Lib Dems (and my tip to be the party's next leader) rebuked the Labour leader in pretty strong terms*: 

"Labour have just spent 13 years sucking up to Rupert Murdoch and George Bush - why would any sane progressive even give them a second glance? As part of the coalition government, Liberal Democrats have started fixing Labour's economic mess, taking millions of people out of Income Tax and reforming British politics. Things Labour had 13 years to do but failed to deliver. The Liberal Democrats have also announced more cash for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, one of the biggest moves to improve social mobility in decades. Continuing that work is something far more attractive to Liberal Democrats than helping Ed Miliband's increasingly desperate attempts to work out what he actually stands for. However, if he is serious about co-operation then the first thing he should do is stop the Labour Party's attempts to block the referendum on electoral reform that he claims to support."

The FT Westminster blog has a report on other parts of Ed Miliband's press conference including this difficult-to-dispute observation:  the pro-AV campaign will lose if Nick Clegg is the figurehead.

* I'm grateful to Andrew Sparrow for the quotes.

Seven steps to a Liberal Democrat recovery...

Tim Montgomerie

The overnight polling made bleak reading for the Liberal Democrats but here is my list of the seven things that might, might, might get them back in business by the time of the next General Election...

1. Staying the course. As Lord Ashcroft's polling confirmed, the idea that a vote for the Lib Dems is a wasted vote is a leading reason why floating voters hesitate to support them. If Clegg & Co stick at government they'll prove themselves to be a grown up party. They will also show that hung parliaments don't necessarily mean instability for the country. Even in the worst of economic times. This is a big long-term dividend for Britain's third party. Plus, bringing the government down in the middle of the current economic circumstances might not be forgiven by voters.
2. Levelling with their supporters. Chris Huhne did it, today, on BBC1's Politics Show. He warned of "a period of immense unpopularity”. The Lib Dem leadership needs to look like it knows what's coming and prepare party members for the worst. Medicine is always more palatable if you think the doctor knows what he's doing. [David Cameron needs to do the same for Tory supporters btw because unpopularity awaits Conservatives, too].
3. Delivering growth. As Sir John Major said this morning, the Lib Dems and the Tories will get some credit for clearing up Labour's mess if, by the run up to the 2015 election, growth has returned. The Coalition's great advantage is that the economic cycle looks likely to be in sync with the political cycle. It is also why George Osborne is so important to the success of this government. His first Budget took the tough decisions on cuts, his second budget should take the tough decisions on growth.
4. Winning more concessions from Cameron. The most interesting table in Lord Ashcroft's polling was this one. Voters don't think the Lib Dems have made a positive difference in any policy area. As ConHome's stock-take shows, this is simply not true but Cameron, in my Law of the Coalition, will present more high profile gifts to Clegg to try and address this problem. My biggest fear is that, as growth returns, all proceeds will be used to boost spending on Lib Dem state projects rather than introduce economy-boosting tax relief. It's one of the reasons why I argue that the Mainstream Right needs to organise.
5. Seize every opportunity to govern with Labour in Scotland, Wales and in local government. Although the Lib Dems will do badly in next May's elections they could form a governing coalition with Scottish Labour. This will send a message to their left-leaning base that they are not biased to the Conservatives but, in the words of Simon Hughes, are, at Westminster, in a "loveless marriage".
6. Nick Clegg to resign as Lib Dem leader sometime in 2014. My hunch is that the "Liar Clegg" thing is now stuck in the public imagination. He'll be a huge handicap for his party if he is the leader at the next election but he should stay until 2014 (partly because he can hope things will change) but also because, to change leader now, would mean his successor will get the blame for the many difficult decisions to come. A gracious resignation speech as party leader, twelve or so months before the next election, will revive his own reputation somewhat (resignation speeches always do) but allow his party to choose a leader who isn't connected in the public mind with broken promises and a close relationship with the Conservatives. He could stay as Deputy PM until polling day, again allowing his successor some distance from the government. Five years as Deputy PM is a pretty fine thing for the CV.
7. Choose Tim Farron as the next Lib Dem leader. The Lib Dems need someone in the next election debates who is likeable, seen to be open to working with Labour, free of close connection with this government and who voted against tuition fees. Tim Farron, the telegenic new party president, seems the best-placed candidate to me.

'We've stopped Trident' brags Liberal Democrat President in email to party supporters

By Tim Montgomerie

It was in August that it became obvious that Ming Campbell was determined to stop Trident. See my blog from 1st August. Today Ming and his party succeeded and at least two Tory MPs expressed their disappointment in the Commons. David Cameron has, of course, said that Trident is only being delayed but the government has communicated hesitancy.

Ros Scott, the Liberal Democrats' President, has emailed all her party members claiming a "significant victory" for her party. This is the full text of her email:

"Dear member,

The Liberal Democrats have long argued that Trident is an out of date, unnecessary and hugely expensive weapons system that the UK has no need of in modern times. In this period of fiscal constraint it is also a luxury we can ill afford. Nick Clegg was right to argue powerfully against Trident renewal during the Leader's Debates. Our party was right to stand in contrast to both the Conservatives and Labour on this issue.

Today, within the Strategic Defence Review, the Coalition Government announced that there will be no final decision on the like-for-like replacement of Trident during this parliament. So Trident will not be renewed this parliament - not on a Liberal Democrat watch. Let us be clear, this is a significant victory for Liberal Democrat campaigners, and a fantastic example of what our Ministers can and do achieve in government.

But the Coalition Government is not just saying no to replacing Trident this parliament. It is going further. It is also taking important steps towards the goal of multilateral nuclear disarmament. The announcement today sees a 25% cut in warheads.

Today is yet another day that we can all feel hugely proud to be a party of government, delivering key Liberal Democrat priorities.

Best wishes,

Ros Scott
Party President"