By Paul Goodman
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John Redwood writes on this site today to advocate a mandate referendum on the EU in this Parliament - a move that would require an Act to make it happen. John Baron continues to lead the campaign for a separate Act in this Parliament, which would write the In/Out referendum to which David Cameron is committed into legislation. I will write about the arguments for and against both ideas in due course, but will for today limit myself to the implications which they have for the maintenance of the Coalition.
It might be that the Commons would vote for one of the two measures, or even both, because enough Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs would support them: it is arguable that Ed Miliband would not oppose the Baron initiative, in particular. But let's presume that Nick Clegg lines up against both bills (a reasonable presumption). In such circumstances, could Cameron whip Conservative MPs to go into one lobby if Liberal Democrat MPs were going into the other?
The question of whether the Prime Minister supports Redwood's or Baron's proposal (or both) thus turns out also to be a question about the future of the Coalition. Readers must decide for themselves whether it could work effectively were the two Parliamentary parties directed into different lobbies by their respective whips - and whether the Coalition is worth preserving. It's worth noting that the Coalition Agreement doesn't insist that the two parties vote together in all circumstances - for example, over tax breaks for marriage - and that the Liberal Democrats helped to enshrine it when they failed to support Jeremy Hunt.
My own answer is that the Coalition is worth preserving, and that while EU referendum bills might not bring it down, they would certainly strain it severely. This raises a further question: if the Coalition is worth preserving, how long should it last for? Again, readers must give decide for themselves, but my answer is that since it will effectively be inoperable for its final six months - or as good as - Cameron could loosen the whipping arrangements during that period.
It would probably be too late for a mandate referendum by then (mind you, I suppose one could be held on general election day itself), though there would certainly be time to enshrine the In/Out referendum in law. I would certainly like to see a series of initiatives from the backbenches, which Tory Ministers would support from the dispatch box - and, more often than not, in the lobbies. In that last six months, backbenchers could propose a tougher immigration cap, a tighter benefits cap, a British Bill of Rights, English votes for English laws - and so on. The alternative for David Cameron, at that stage, will be Parliamentary paralysis.
By Paul Goodman
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LibDem bloggers Stephen Tall and Mark Pack, and Mike Smithson of Political Betting, raised some solid objections to the Coalition breaking up some six months before the 2015 general election - which I recommended on this site earlier this week. (Mike suggested that I should see "This House", the well-reviewed play about the Parliament of the mid-1970s - and a reminder of the terrible fate of governments without majorities. I replied that neither of us can expected to be around for the play about the hapless last six months of this Coalition - due, on the same timescale, in roughly 2053.) Let me deal with the two main points raised, before going on to make a new one.
By Paul Goodman
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David Cameron gave Conservative MPs "a very strong indication" at the recent Parliamentary Party meeting that he wants to introduce legislation before 2015 for his planned EU referendum after the next election. Or so the Spectator's Isabel Hardman reported recently. But the Prime Minister knows as well as anyone that Nick Clegg wouldn't support such a move: it would simply be vetoed. So what on earth was he doing playing up to his Euro-sceptic MPs? Was one of his weaknesses on display - namely, his tendency to duck short-term trouble, whatever the medium-term cost ? Or were the Spectator's sources mistaken? Did they mis-read or exaggerate?
Perhaps. That's been known to happen - and often, too. But I believe that Isabel knows what she's about, and that there's another explanation for Cameron's nods and hints. Both he and Nick Clegg - and most MPs in the parties they lead - want the Coalition to continue. They recognise that if they don't hang together they will hang separately, and that a snap election, forced amidst strife and chaos, would benefit neither of their parties. (Yes, yes: I appreciate that there's a Fixed Terms Parliament Act. But it might not be sufficient to prolong this Parliament until 2015, were the Coalition to break down.)
Continue reading "Cameron should end the Coalition in September 2014" »
By Peter Hoskin
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“Screw the Lib Dems, and just do it anyway.” Ever since the Coalition was formed, the Tory leadership has been advised to do just that – but now, in these post-Eastleigh days, the words are becoming louder and more insistent. In its leader column today, for instance, the Daily Mail concludes that the public wants:
“…coherent ideas which can be implemented immediately – regardless of the objections of Lib Dems who, if they pulled the plug on the Coalition, would face electoral annihilation.”
In some ways, this argument is understandable. It’s true that the Lib Dems block Tory policy ideas, and – what’s more frustrating – sometimes those policy ideas are good ones, too. It’s also true that the Lib Dems would face “electoral annihilation” should they terminate the Coalition. Last week’s by-election victory notwithstanding, they’re currently stuck at around 10 per cent in polls. That’s not a level of support that Nick Clegg and his MPs will be eager to test.
And yet I don’t agree that the Tory leadership should just steamroller over the Lib Dems. There are two particular reasons.
By Paul Goodman
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In my sole venture into school drama, I played Arthur, "a very junior Home Official official", in Tom Stoppard's New Found Land. I might otherwise have been cast as an Parliamentarian in the two-part play between which it is sandwiched, his Dirty Linen: indeed, the play boasts no fewer than seven male MPs. I was perhaps ineligible to play the part of the eighth, Mrs Ebury - and also to star as the central figure in the play, Maddie, the Secretary to a Select Committee, who first appears on stage wearing "a low cut, sleeveless blouse, buttoned insecurely down the front; a wrap-around skirt, quite short; underneath, suspenders, not tights, and a waist-slip which is also pretty, silk and lace, with a slit...the knickers ought to be remembered for their colour - perhaps white silk with red lace trimmings."
The plot turns around the dalliance of Miss GoToBed - to use Maddie's surname - with all eight MPs (yes, including Mrs Ebury). So what would happen in a Dirty Linen for our times? Maddie would surely refuse to yield to the MPs' advances, find her way to Kathy Newman of Channel 4 News, and tell her tale as part of an investigative special. My point is not that the 1970s were better or worse than today (Dirty Linen was first performed in 1976) than that attitudes towards Parliament and sex have changed almost out of recognition - the second, arguably, even more than the first. And the places in which changes to those attitudes are most pervasive are institutions or businesses which have at least one thing in common with Parliament: size.
By Harry Phibbs
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This morning there is still an official Lib Dem denial that Nick Clegg was aware of the allegations concering Lord Rennard's sexual harassment of female party activists. However, reading the abundance of revelations in this morning's papers about the scandal the denial stretches credibility to breaking point.
There is a long saga of hypocrisy on the Left when it comes to women's rights. There was Jean-Paul Sartre's treatment of Simone de Beauvoir. There was the way American feminists on the Left excused Bill Clinton's behaviour. The scandals involving fringe left-wing parties in our country such as the Socialist Workers Party and the Workers Revolutionary Party are well documented.
However, there is a broader hypocrisy which all politicians need to address.
In The Spectator (£) this week Ross Clark reflects on how politicians fail to follow the rules they impose on business. David Cameron "lectured a business audience in India" on the need to have 50% of company directors as women while "just four of Cameron’s 22-strong Cabinet are women" while "as for the educational background of Cabinet ministers, God help any university which showed such a bias towards public school types."
Continue reading "Party leaders fail to follow the equality rules they impose on others" »
By Paul Goodman
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As soon as Nick Clegg announced last summer, in the wake of the collapse of Lords reform, that the Liberal Democrats would about-turn on the boundary review, I wrote that his prospects of winning a majority in 2015 were vanishing, that he would now hope to re-form the Coalition after the next election, and that his leadership was now at risk. Nothing since has happened to make me change my mind - if anything, events have made a challenge more likely. Risk is not certainty, and my best guess is that there is only a 25% per cent chance of a leadership ballot after the local elections, but is is impossible to make an accurate assessment.
The Adam Afriyie story identified only one of a number of plots that are swirling round Westminster. It is a mistake to believe that what is needed to trigger a ballot is the click of computer mouse in some Portcullis House office, ordering 46 MP suicide bombers to go over the top, and send in letters demanding a ballot to Graham Brady. If events take on a momentum of their own, and enough of the Judean People's Fronts and People's Fronts of Judea on the Tory backbenches are galvanised into life, Brady will suddenly emerge to declare a contest. It is worth considering the news this morning in the light of that possibility.
By Paul Goodman
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CHRIS HUHNE, WITH PARTNER CARINA TRIMINGHAM, ARRIVING AT COURT, © i-Images
Chris Huhne has just pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice. No doubt we will find out in due course why he has done so now, having originally pleaded not guilty to the charge.
Three brief points:
More later.
By Harry Phibbs
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With the exception of Andrew Neil and also Justin Webb the Lib Dems have been given an easy ride in their opposition to an in/out referendum on the European Union. They have escaped awkward questioning on this incredible shift in their policy.
At the last General Election the Lib Dem candidates stood on a manifesto with the following commitment:
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 fundamental change in the relationship between the UK and the EU.
We believe that it is in Britain’s long-term interest to be part of the euro. But Britain should only join when the economic conditions are right, and in the present economic situation, they are not. Britain should join the euro only if that decision were supported by the people of Britain in a referendum.
Continue reading "Lib Dems have no credibility in opposing an in/out EU referendum" »
By Peter Hoskin
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If they tuned in, what might the Tory leadership have learnt from the first of Nick Clegg’s weekly appearances on LBC radio? Not much that they wouldn’t have known already. Some of the stand-out points included: