Piotr Brzezinski: Make no mistake, Plan B has arrived

Piotr Brzezinski is a JD / MBA student at Yale University and the former Head of Digital Government at Policy Exchange

Only a few weeks after Nick Clegg’s ‘No Plan B’ conference speech, it has become abundantly clear that there is, in fact, a Plan B. Without wavering from its commitment to deficit reduction, the government has recalibrated across the board; witness Plan B:

1. No new tax cuts: The longstanding assumption has been that the government, having cut spending in its early years, would cut taxes before the next election. George Osborne’s pre-conference interview, however, emphatically ruled out any such pre-election tax cuts.
2. Credit easing: Details remain to be revealed, but the premise of credit easing is clear: the government will enable loans to the private sector and retain assets as collateral so that, by feat of accounting magic, increasing lending now doesn’t add to the state deficit.
3. More QE from the Bank: Just after the conference ended, the Bank of England announced another round of quantitative easing to goose demand and protect banks.
4. Go-slow green regulation: As others have noted, the Chancellor’s speech also marked a clear change of emphasis on environmental regulation—no longer does the government seem to promise ‘green at any cost’ policy.
5. More aggressive deregulation: Lord Young has returned to reinvigorate a deregulation drive that—planning and localism reforms aside—risked stalling; plans to limit industrial tribunals are hopefully a sign of things to come.

Piotr Brzezinski: Concessions for Clegg won’t save the Lib Dems

Piotr Brzezinski is a former McKinsey consultant and Conservative Party policy unit analyst

Dear, oh dear. Last night was not kind to the Liberal Democrats, and it looks like the AV referendum will deliver a resounding defeat as well. No amount of spinning or "stabbed in the back" myth-making will ease the pain snatching defeat from the jaws of victory - going from a 30 point Yes campaign lead to a projected double-digit defeat will be a bitter pill to swallow.

Surveying the wreckage, the Lib Dems will no doubt go through a bout of introspection, back-biting and pointless leadership speculation. But no amount of policy give-aways from the Conservatives can address their fundamental problem: the Lib Dems haven’t set out a clear, distinct worldview or ideology.

Both the Labour and the Conservative parties, at their core, can answer Lenin’s ‘kto, kogo’ question – roughly translated, "who is screwing whom?"  When it comes to a zero-sum policy, a clash of interests, both parties can ask themselves "whom does this help; whom does it hurt?" and identify the side that they represent.

Of course, we don’t live in a binary world but such quasi-Marxist clashes of interest still matter. David Cameron’s One Nation approach has muddied the waters a bit - to the resentment of many grassroots activists - but ultimately the Conservative Party has a sense of self and whom it represents.