Were the Lib Dems "useful idiots" in coalition?

Polly Toynbee seems to think so.

She wrote a piece yesterday using this exact phrase expressing her disgust with Nick Clegg and the legacy that she perceives he and his party have left behind following the coalition of 2010 - 2015. Some of her points are reasonable but amongst it all are many unfair claims and some of what she says is absolutely ridiculous.

I thought it was time for a good old fashioned fisking:

Can you forgive him? That depends on whether you think Nick Clegg venal or just a political idiot. Seeking power was no sin, as that’s the purpose of politics: he is to be judged by how he used it. In a rich crop of self-justifying politicians’ books this autumn, Clegg’s Politics: Between the Extremes is first to invite an assessment of how he did.

He might have been wiser to keep his head down and hope the country has a short memory. But that would be out of character, as his own account reminds us of one grave political misjudgment after another. Almost everything he colluded with in the Cameron government was an error, while almost all he achieved was piffling in comparison. His role now is as a warning beacon of what not to do in future coalitions.

It's not fair to say that almost everything Clegg did in government was an error although of course there were some big ones. But I would certainly agree with Polly that there is a lot that the Lib Dems did in government and the way they approached it that should be lessons for future putative junior coaltion partners. (For further reading on these lessons by the way I recommend this excellent piece by Former Lib Dem MP David Howarth).

How Icarus-like was his fall from the dizzy days of Cleggmania. Back in 2010 “I agree with Nick” was mirrored by opinion polling. For the record, this paper backed the Lib Dems in 2010, though its political columnists – myself included – wrote supporting Labour.

It took decades of local pavement-pounding for the Liberals to grow from a taxi-full of MPs into a 57-strong coach-load at Westminster. But after Clegg led them to a thrashing last year, they are now back in an eight-MP people carrier (with probably only four MPs after boundary changes) – and have few local councillors. They have deserved it.

Start back in that 2010 sunlit No 10 rose garden, with toe-curling smiles that look yet worse in retrospect. Clegg and his party had to make one big call: was the country indeed on the verge of Greek-style bankruptcy and in need of David Cameron and George Osborne’s emetic austerity medicine? They fell for the bait and called it wrong, as even the likes of Mervyn King, Bank of England governor at the time, now agree.

It's easy to forget now just how much turmoil the political and economic world was in in the immediate aftermath of the 2010 general election. The country hadn't had a peacetime coalition since before the Second World War and the financial crisis was still rumbling on. I agree with Polly that the Lib Dems were a bit too hasty to accept the need for the level of austerity that Osborne wanted but to pretend that this was somehow an easy and obvious call that they should have avoided is to play the game of hindsight. The press was going ballistic. The markets were all over the place. Had the politicians carried on much beyond the Tuesday with their coalition discussions God knows what would have happened.

Now I happen to think that this is ridiculous. There are countries all round the world that wait weeks or months for new governments to form and give their politicians plenty of time to thrash out the agreements needed to govern in coalition. But that is not what was happening here. Our body politic and the Fourth Estate are not used to this way of doing things. They expect the removal vans to be round the back of Downing Street the morning after an election result. The press were pushing very hard the narrative that Gordon Brown was "The Squatter in Downing Street" which was preposterous given that all he was doing was fulfilling his constitutional duty*. We needed a Prime Minister and a functioning government whilst the coalition talks were going on. But our press were unwilling to acknowledge that and hence there was massive pressure on the Lib Dems to cut a deal, any deal to get a "legitimate" government in place.

The Lib Dems swallowed the story that the country needed a boiling down of every function of the state to its bare bones. They were useful idiots for what was always an ideological project: Cameron and Osborne said within a short time that even once the deficit was down, there would be no restoring of cut-down public services.

I hear this "ideological" claim about the Tories and austerity all the time. I'll just say that up until the financial crisis of 2007 Cameron and Osborne were not contemplating anything like this. Their mantra was in fact "sharing the proceeds of growth". But of course by the time they came to power there was very little if any growth to share and the economy was in the toilet.

In accepting extreme cuts as an economic remedy, Clegg abandoned his party’s greatest thinker, Keynes, who would have gone for growth through government investment. But even if Clegg has been right on austerity, why did he let the axe fall on the most vulnerable? In policy after policy, the bottom half bore the brunt as VAT rose, while the top had an income tax cut and kept their many benefits: tax reliefs, and cuts to capital gains and corporation tax.

And here I would (at least partially) agree with Polly. The VAT rise, the cuts to capital gains and corporation tax as well as the reduction of the top rate of income tax from 50% to 45% in the pound were all largely regressive and unwelcome measures.

The rightwing thinktank, the TaxPayers’ Alliance, showed how Osborne raised the lifetime tax-take from the bottom 20%, while tax for the top 20% fell. Even Clegg’s flagship raising of the income tax threshold was soon revealed by the Resolution Foundation to direct most of its huge £10bn cost to the benefit of the upper half while low earners gained little.

I would quibble with this point though. I remember seeing these analyses at the time. What they did was highlight that the very poorest did not earn enough to benefit from the tax cut. But that ignores or at least misunderstands what the point of the raising of the threshold was meant to do. It was supposed to allow people who were previously earning not very much but still paying tax keep more of the money they had earned. Polly's is an argument for never raising the tax threshold at all as this will never benefit the very poorest, most of whom do not work. I'll leave it to the reader to decide if this would be fair.

Guardian readers need no reminding of the extreme severity of the benefit cuts – hitting children, mothers and people with disabilities hardest. Clegg had no need to fall in with the vindictive spirit of the bedroom tax, the sale of swaths more social housing, or the ever-tightening screw of work capability tests, as food banks opened everywhere. Labour supporters seeing the Lib Dems sitting on their hands and saying nothing may never forget. But then social justice was never the Lib Dems’ strong point: good on human rights and the environment, social equality is not in their DNA.

This is bullshit. I was a Lib Dem from 2008-2013. Many of my closest political friends are still in the party and I struggle to think of any of them who would wish for anything other than social equality and justice. In most cases they have spent decades fighting for just that. That their parliamentary representatives in government may have fallen short of this ideal is not a reason to besmirch the DNA of the entire party in this way.

In 2012 Andrew Lansley’s health and social care bill was stumbling in parliament, as it dawned on the Lords that this was a project to blow the NHS into fragments by setting up a market tendering every shard out to any bidder. “No top-down NHS reorganisation,” said the coalition agreement, and the Lib Dem grass roots rebelled. But they were soothed by Shirley Williams, and Clegg voted it through.

Why? Cameron was astonished not to lose the bill. So disastrously unworkable has it proved that it’s now being dismantled again, but deep, lasting damage was done to the NHS that Clegg could easily have stopped.

I keep hearing this. That the coalition "destroyed" the NHS. I have no idea what Polly and the people who say this are on about. I can still see my GP in exactly the same way as I could when Labour were in office for 13 years. I have also had cause to use hospitals numerous times in the last few years and again they are as accessible and free at the point of use as they always were. There is literally no difference at all in that respect. The changes were very complicated but essentially were attempting to allow the NHS to use facilities and services whether private or public where appropriate without dogma getting in the way. It is simply a small extension of what Labour had already done.

I think in fact what this episode tells us is that whatever the Tories do with the NHS when they're in office, however bland or minor it may be they will always, always be described as having "privatised" and "destroyed" it as well as trying to flog off its constituent parts to their mates. Especially by people like Polly Toynbee.

The charge list is long. The value of his pupil premium remains disputed, and he has suffered enough for his tuition fees debacle. He boasts of pushing through 5p plastic bag charges, but he should have stopped the banning of land-based wind turbines. He was treated as a minor irritant in the great Tory project – and that’s all he was.

In his book, Clegg observes Tory savagery on benefits and housing as if he were a non-participant; yet he had the power to stop or soften much of this. What makes him more of an idiot than a villain is his weak understanding of the power he had.

Take his failure to seize the one great prize his party sought for decades – proportional representation that would make such coalitions a fixture. His party would justify a pact with the devil to secure electoral reform. But out of sheer incompetence, Clegg blew that chance. He got his referendum, but only on AV: the weak “alternative vote” even his own side didn’t want. Fatally, he failed to force Cameron to pledge his party’s support. The same team of Tory liars who swung the Brexit vote ran the anti-AV campaign, preposterously claiming the tiny cost would deprive babies of NHS incubators and our boys in Afghanistan of kit. How Cameron’s crew laughed when Clegg lost.

Had he secured PR, the political landscape would be changed for the better, beyond all recognition. The Tory party would have split between pro- and anti-EU wings. Labour would split between Corbynites and social democrats. Ukip and the Greens would have their fair share of seats.

Above all, citizens could vote for a party closest to their views. At a time of turmoil and alienation, it’s never been more urgent to restore a closer link between what people want and what they get in Westminster. I can never forgive Clegg for bungling that once-in-a-generation mission so badly.

This is the part of Toynbee's piece that I most profoundly disagree with.

I am not happy with the legacy that the Lib Dems left behind. Indeed I left the party part way through their time in office disillusioned with what had been achieved and more specifically the lack of a difference in their approach to politics (I highlighted Clegg's very disappointing approach to PMQs when he deputised as an example of this). I myself wrote a pretty scathing piece late last year about Nick Clegg and how he hasn't been held properly accountable for his failings in government.

But the idea that Clegg somehow bungled the chance for PR is to misread reality so badly that I wonder just how well Polly even understands the dynamics of politics in this country.

The Tories are opposed to any change at all to the electoral system for the Commons. That is almost all of them. Certainly almost all of them in parliament. I could write a very long piece on the reasons for this but it is a bald fact.

Furthermore the Tories are absolutely implacably opposed to any change to a proportional system for the Commons.

These two facts conspired to make it impossible to get a proportional system during the 2010 coalition agreement. It was difficult enough for Cameron to get them to agree to a referendum on a pretty minor change to the electoral system (AV) that wouldn't have been proportional. The idea that Cameron could ever, ever, ever have got his party to vote for a referendum on a proportional system for the Commons is laughable.

With AV, the Tories would have been looking at maybe losing 10 or 20 seats that they would ordinarily win in an election. With a properly proportional system they'd lose 100 or more seats that they consider "rightly" theirs. I of course utterly disagree with them about this but that is what they think. They would consider it electoral suicide. Even a referendum on such a system would have been (and would still be) way, way beyond the pale for them because of the risk they might lose it.

They just about accepted the AV referendum thinking that they'd have a pretty good chance of winning it as it's difficult for those opposing the status quo in referenda and AV is a system that nobody is particularly enthusiastic about. But a fully proportional system whose benefits would be much easier to coherently argue for in a referendum? Over their cold dead bodies.

I am 100% certain that had Cameron tried to force this through we would have seen one of two things. Most likely the coalition agreement would have failed. The Tories would have governed alone for a few months doing all the easy things. There would have been no austerity during this time and they would have spent it spreading poison about how the Lib Dems had eschewed their chance at governing because they "selfishly" wanted to change the electoral system "massively in their favour" and away from our "stable" system that had "served us well" for "hundreds of years". And then gone to the country again in the autumn of 2010 and got a majority.

The second possibility is what happened with Lords reform. Which is that the Tories might have said they would do it but in practise when it came to a vote in the Commons loads of backbench MPs would have voted against it. And Labour would almost certainly have found a pretext to oppose it too in order to dish the Lib Dems (in exactly the same way they did when they had the same chance with Lords reform) and hence the referendum would not have got through. And that would have caused the government to fall with the same outcome as the previous paragraph, "selfish Lib Dems" etc. etc. etc. followed by a Tory majority.

To suggest that Clegg somehow fumbled an historic opportunity on PR is so far from the truth and what was possible that it actually makes me angry. Angry that Polly Toynbee would write it and angry that so many people in my country seem to also believe it.

Clegg did lots of things wrong in government but messing up his One Big Chance for PR was not one of them. Such a change at that time was simply politically impossible.

History may remember him as no worse than clueless. But one tragedy is that the country needs a strong unequivocal pro-European party, as the Lib Dems once were. Clegg’s miscalculation of everything has left behind only a tiny rump with too little heft to influence the battle ahead.

I would certainly agree that Clegg's miscalculations have left the Lib Dems as a small rump but to characterise this as "everything" he did in government is manifestly unfair and does not give him credit for the things he did manage to achieve in his five years as Deputy Prime Minister of this country.

It's worth mentioning as well that throughout the piece Toynbee falls into the trap that many people seem to of overestimating the leverage that the Lib Dems had in office. They had 57 MPs so despite the fact that they had 23% of the vote vs the Tories 37% (i.e. roughly 4 voters for every 6 the Tories had) they only had 1 MP for every 6 the Tories had. That put them in a fairly weak position in terms of being across issues in the government and certainly in terms of parliamentary firepower. A junior partner with a seventh of the MPs of a government simply cannot dictate terms on every single policy as her piece suggests they should have done.

Had the Lib Dems pushed it too far, eventually the coalition would have broken down. I used to talk about this and used to predict that were that to happen, all those Labour supporters cheering for the end of the coalition would be very sorry when we saw a majority Tory government. I was derided for talking such "nonsense" but of course in 2015 when the parliament ran out that's exactly what we saw. It's now pretty obvious in hindsight that that would have been the result had the election been earlier.

So in actual fact the Lib Dems ameliorated the worst Tory excesses, did some good things and some not so good things (as every party in government does) and staved off majority Tory rule for five years. In a just world they'd be thanked for "taking one for the team" instead of being pilloried and castigated by left wing columnists who don't appear to understand how politics actually even works.


*Indeed the depth of the lie of this "squatter" narrative is exposed by the fact that Brown actually wanted to resign and was persuaded not to by Clegg who begged for more time. In the end Brown resigned before the coalition agreement had been finalised and hence Cameron went to see The Queen unsure if the deal would be formally reached and if instead he would have to lead a minority government. That's just how wrong the narrative is and yet it still persists. Even now people talk about how Brown "squatted" in Downing Street. We truly live in a post-truth world now.

The unaccountability of Nick Clegg

Something that has been bubbling under for a while with me is a niggling feeling that Nick Clegg hasn't really been held to account for the utter devastation that the Lib Dems suffered back in May. Sure he resigned and is now just a lowly backbench MP. And indeed he is now in the somewhat excruciating position of not being able to step down as any subsequent by-election under current circumstances would probably lose the Lib Dems another seat that they can ill afford to squander.

So perhaps that combination is enough. And yet I feel that somehow it is not.

I was a Lib Dem from 2008 to 2013 and I still very much consider myself a fellow traveller at least with the membership if not the leadership in the latter years of the coalition. I was excited by the vibrancy of the party in the run up to 2010 and after the coalition was formed I was genuinely optimistic about the possibility of real political reform and a strong liberal flavour to the government that would play out over the following 5 years.

Sadly it was not really to be. At least not in any meaningful and sustainable way. Despite the promises the only political reform we got were fixed term parliaments which were only really instituted to protect the Lib Dems from their larger coalition partner and they were set at 5 years rather than the more accountable and liberal 4 years that most campaigners for this change wanted to see. Apart from that, electoral reform at Westminster, Lords reform and other measures people like me wanted to see fell by the wayside.

In addition to that a number of measures that most liberals would never have wanted to see on the statute books were rammed through in the teeth of party opposition. Secret courts were a resignation issue for some, most notably Jo Shaw who made the best political speech I have ever seen in person from the podium at the 2013 Lib Dem conference. I nearly left myself at that point but stayed on in hope only to drift away disillusioned later that same year. There were other things as well, tuition fees, 45p tax rate etc. etc. etc. I don't need to go through the list. Most people reading this will know them all by rote.

But politics is tough and it certainly wouldn't be fair to blame Clegg for all of those, although he was complicit.

There are some things though for which the blame squarely falls on his shoulders. I'll highlight just three here although there are more.

Firstly the complete lack of any attempt to change the way PMQs was practised at all. Clegg stood in for Cameron at PMQs many, many times. And instead of using the opportunity to do it differently, perhaps taking a more emollient tone and not constantly bashing anyone who criticised the government he did the exact opposite. He used the bully pulpit to attack the opposition over and over again. In many respects he was worse than Cameron. It made him look like Just Another Tory. Indeed after he resigned as leader he cited "sitting next to the Prime Minister" at PMQs as one of his biggest mistakes because of the "optics". He is right about that but it is much much worse than he states because of the way he himself carried out the same duties.

I asked Clegg about this very subject when I interviewed him in September 2012 and he claimed that he would have liked to change PMQs but when he had made slight attempts to move in this direction he had been branded as "ineffective and weak" and hence he had had no choice but to stick to the bearpit style. But this just simply is not good enough. What was the point of having a Lib Dem Deputy PM taking PMQs if when he deputised for the PM he made no difference to how it was practised and more importantly gave no inkling of how a liberal PM could do it? He had a responsibility to show how liberals in general and Lib Dems in particular were not happy with the current system and would change things. On this particular point he completely and totally failed.

Secondly cleaving far too closely to the Conservatives in the early years of the coalition. The "Rose Garden" press conference was clearly a misstep but it was indicative of a wider problem about how the party presented themselves. On the media and in parliament they went on and on and on about how there was a strong Lib Dem flavour to the government. They pounced on research that suggested 75% of their manifesto had ended up in government trumpeting this from the highest rooftops. But all this just made the Lib Dems look like they were crypto-Tories; when the cuts started kicking in, the tuition fees were raised, the NHS reforms were announced and all the other policies that were anathema to 2/3rds of the voters who backed Clegg in 2010 they "owned" the entire lot. There was no serious attempt to distance the party from these policies in government from the top level. Indeed Clegg seemed to revel in what he was doing, at one point light heartedly quoting Blair saying "It's worse than you think, I actually believe in the policies.". By the time the "differentiation" strategy kicked in in the last year or so of the parliament it was far, far too late.

The final one I want to focus on is how totally misguided Clegg's long term political strategy was. He seemed totally convinced that there were a huge swathe of liberal leaning voters out there who had previously gone for the Tories but now the Lib Dems had demonstrated they could do government they would come flocking to the yellow banner. And that these voters would replace all the lefties who had previously backed the party. Time and again at conference we members were all assured that the leadership knew exactly what it was doing and it would all come good. After the wipeouts in local elections and in 2014 losing all but one MEP (a devastating result for "The Party of Europe) the members were urged to keep the faith.

It was all wishful thinking. In May this year the electorate delivered their verdict. The Lib Dems lost 83% of their seats. They are now down to 8 MPs. There are some projections (that I take seriously) that suggest that in 2020 after the boundary changes they could be down to 4 MPs. They are a shadow of their former selves and are likely to be a political irrelevance for a generation or more.

I'm not saying there were any easy answers after the 2010 general election. There weren't. As I have argued many many times Clegg took the only option for stable government for 5 years and his party have paid in my view a disproportionate price for effectively putting the country before party.

But Clegg and his aides were complicit in a large number of tactical and strategic mistakes that made the ultimate result 5 years later even worse than it needed to be. They didn't listen to the many many voices from both inside and outside the party urging them to change tack. Clegg refused to stand down in June 2014 after the Euro elections when it was obvious to almost all political observers that he was a busted electoral flush.

I have no specific recipe for what sort of "punishment" Clegg should now undergo. Indeed it is unrealistic and probably even churlish to think there is one. But the party, its current and future leaderships and its members should think very carefully before pursuing the line that Clegg was very brave to do what he did and that the party in any way owes him a debt of gratitude. They should also all do their best to try and make sure he does not ultimately become a well respected and loved grandee of the party (like say Paddy Ashdown) who is listened to and has great influence in the future direction of the party.

He made some major errors that have cost both the party and ultimately the country in terms of much reduced liberal influence in parliament for many years to come.

At the very least he should be held accountable for that.

Which of these is more likely to be true?

1) Nick Clegg is totally spineless

2) Politics is inherently very difficult. Those in leadership positions often have to balance many competing interests both within and without their party and at the same time attempt to try and ensure they can maximise their vote in upcoming elections within the constraints they are faced with at any one time.

Discuss.

Death of 75 cuts for Clegg?

I am starting to see reports (e.g. here) that small numbers of Lib Dem local parties have held meetings to decide whether to vote to trigger a leadership election for the party. There have only been 4 so far and only 2 of them have voted to trigger the contest. It will take 75 local parties to vote for a contest before it happens.

I also understand that at least a couple of dozen other local Lib Dem parties have arranged such meetings and will hold them in the near future.

One of the problems is that many local parties are playing their cards close to their chest and the information is only leaking out in dribs and drabs.

At first when I heard parties were organising I thought it unlikely the 75 threshold would be reached and that Clegg is probably safe. However that ignores two factors. Firstly, momentum. If we start to reach say 10 or 15 parties voting for a contest and this becomes widely known this could start to feed upon itself. Local parties who hadn't got round to organising a meeting, perhaps because they thought it wouldn't make any difference might just do so. The media may help feed this too. If they start to see a real chance that significant numbers of parties could vote to effectively oust Clegg they are likely to cover the story in more detail and this could cause a feedback loop as described above spurring the undecided or reluctant to action.

The second point is that 75 parties may not be needed. If the momentum is clearly in that direction and it is becoming clear that lots of local parties are voting for a contest we could see a "men in grey suits" moment for Clegg from his senior colleagues who don't want to see the party further damaged by a "death of 75 cuts".

We have seen how ruthless the Lib Dems can be about their leaders once the writing is on the wall. Just ask Charles Kennedy or Ming Campbell whether they have any doubts about their colleague's ability to wield knives...

Could Clegg really be this Machiavellian?

Bear with me here.

The Lib Dems are in trouble. Real trouble.

If the proportion of people who vote for the party in next year's general election is in the low teens as is looking likely they could lose dozens of seats. They could even be back to the days of the parliamentary party "fitting in the back of a taxi".

But one thing that could ameliorate this is if in many of the seats that the yellows are defending where their challengers are the Tories, the blues do not do as well as the polls are predicting. And one way that this could happen is if there is a big UKIP surge around the time of the 2015 general election thus splitting the vote on the right and saving many Lib Dem seats in the process.

Of course most commentators think that the current UKIP polling numbers will fall back to more "normal" levels, say 5% or so and the dent to the Tories will be minimal.

But what if someone helped the UKIP leader Nigel Farage to raise his profile around a year before that general election? What if the profile raising was done in the forum of two debates between him and another politician, a member of the government which effectively elevated him to the status of a senior cabinet minister? What if Mr Farage was then widely seen to have won these debates, thus demonstrating that his views are very popular, far more so than the 10% - 15% that the polls would have us usually think?

In fact what if the fallout from such debates made it pretty much impossible for the UKIP leader to be excluded from the pre-election debates in 2015?

This could then of course lead to a big bounce for UKIP just around the time they need it to do maximum damage to the Tories and inadvertently help the Lib Dems.

Clegg couldn't possibly be so scheming. Could he?

The universality question

The announcement at Lib Dem conference that all infants in state primary schools will get free school meals is an interesting one.

Firstly the party leadership clearly thinks it will be popular and they are probably right. Secondly it's a distinctive policy that the party can point to to say "this would not have happened without us". It's almost certainly impossible to measure the benefits of such a policy in cost terms mainly because the benefits will likely be in ways that cannot be measured very easily or quickly such as improved concentration and long term health outcomes. That in itself feels rather liberal and open minded.

You knew it was coming though.

But.

The problem is that this policy is universal. All infants at public schools will get free meals. That includes children of multi-millionaires. It includes Frank Lampard's 5 year old daughter as Nick Ferrari pointed out to Nick Clegg on LBC this morning.

Now I think a good case can be made for a policy like this being qualitatively different from some other benefits that are applied universally. The fact it is children receiving it, who are generally too young to make informed decisions about what they eat is a big one. Also the fact that children eat together and the cultural separation that the current system of some children having free meals and others whose parents pay for them imposes at an age when difference is often pounced upon in peer groups is a very important factor.

But the Lib Dems need to be very careful. Because this level of nuance was sometimes lacking in some of the previous discussions about e.g. pensioner benefits. Those who argue for maintaining other universal benefits that the Lib Dems are seeking to abolish have just been handed a powerful argument that could if not handled correctly make the yellows look hypocritical.

All Lib Dems put up to talk about this need to be hyper-aware of this potential problem and be ready to deploy quick and convincing arguments why this case is different.

Cameron's loss is parliament's gain

To listen to much of the coverage of politics in the UK these days you would often think that the opinion of only three people really matters. David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg.

So much of the debate is conducted around what these three men think and want that the commentariat are largely at a loss to know what to do when suddenly the true nature of our democratic system asserts itself as happened on Thursday with the Commons voting to decline military support for an attack on Syria.

So the prism that this story has been filtered through has been a "defeat" for Cameron. Or a "victory" for Miliband (even though his position shifted several times in the run-up to the vote). Or in some cases also a "defeat" for Clegg who is pretty much in the same position as Cameron albeit less exposed.

This sort of reporting though seems to follow the unwritten rule that we live in some sort of presidential system whereby a usually all-powerful man (Cameron) has somehow been inexplicably thwarted. That is not the system we live in. We live in a parliamentary democracy. 650 constituencies return members to this parliament and they vote on our behalf on issues. If a majority of them are in favour of an action or change, it happens. If they're not, it doesn't. There's nothing strange or ahistorical in that sense about Thursday's vote. There simply were not enough MPs willing to vote for military action. Or more accurately the principle of military action (the actual vote on action would have come later and now almost certainly won't).

After some soul searching I personally found myself by Thursday reluctantly in favour of military action. But it was a finely balanced thing and I completely understand others, including a majority of parliamentarians coming to a different conclusion.

There is no doubt that the Prime Minister lost the vote on Thursday. He wanted support for a plan to intervene and now that is not going to happen. But we are in a hung parliament with a fragile economy and many other problems. It is hardly surprising that on a vote to start launching missiles at a rogue regime within a highly unstable region our representatives in Westminster decided no. If they were unpersuaded then so be it.

My initial reaction on Thursday was to think that Cameron was severely damaged by this episode but I have since checked myself. I was reacting like a typical Westminster Bubble-ite filtering everything through a presidential "politics of personality" filter. There is no reason why the PM cannot emerge from this episode with his head held high. He tried to garner support for action that even the most gung-ho would surely concede the consequences of which are highly unpredictable and lost by only a couple of handfuls of votes. Parliament were accurately reflecting the will of the country if polling is to be believed. So Cameron now goes back to Obama and says he cannot follow through with what he would like to do due to his hands being tied. Obama of all people knows what this feels like having had many bruising battles with politicians in his own political system with its separation of powers and staggered electoral timetables. If anything I expect the President has much sympathy with his UK colleague and respects the position he is in.

If anything Cameron might actually end up in a stronger position than he would have done. If the military action that the US and France are still very likely to pursue goes badly now he will not be politically damaged by the fallout from it. But if it goes well he can rightly point out that he was in favour of it. It's sort of a win-win for him.

And all this talk of his "loss of Prime Ministerial authority" is rather overblown. What is the point of having a parliament at all if the Prime Minister of the day can simply push his or her will through it? What we have seen is parliament doing its job.

We should not complain about that but rejoice that the system is working correctly.

The Tories are the authors of the childcare bill downfall

Cast your mind back to last year when the Lords Reform bill was working its way through parliament.

Like many Lib Dems I was delighted that finally, after so many years we were going to get a largely elected upper chamber. Then the murmurings started. Tory backbenchers were going to kill the bill and they did indeed eventually vote against it in sufficient numbers to prevent it from being implemented. The consequence of this is that we still have a bizarre and anachronistic unelected upper chamber with no prospect of change any time soon.

The primary defence of the Tories who voted against the bill was that all that was in the coalition agreement on this subject were plans to "bring forward proposals" and they had honoured that. In their view they were never duty bound to support them.

I always thought that was terribly disingenuous. As John Rentoul pointed out at the time, what would be the point of proposing to bring forward proposals if they were then just going to be put in the bin?

Fast forward to today when Nick Clegg has killed Liz Truss's childcare proposals. His defence of this move is that the agreement was only to "consult" on these changes, not to implement them. Sound familiar?

I'm not saying this is a great situation for the government to be in but you have to ask yourself which of the parties was the first to breach good faith in this way?

The real lessons from the 2010 coalition negotiations

I've just finished reading Andrew Adonis’s 5 Days in May: The Coalition and Beyond and it has given me food for thought both about how the 2010 coalition negotiations proceeded and what lessons we might learn for any potential future coalition discussions.

Having already read David Laws’s 22 Days in May and Rob Wilson’s 5 Days to Power and having watched various radio and TV programmes about the 2010 negotiations, I already had a reasonable idea about how they went. But it was interesting to get a Labour perspective on the talks.

The fairly settled view from Lib Dems is that Labour were unprepared for discussions and some members of their negotiating team and parliamentary party seemed to be mentally ready for opposition, rather than seriously trying to make the necessary compromises to stay in power.

One figure, however, in all the accounts that I have seen, heard and read, who clearly did want to try and make the negotiations work was Gordon Brown. There is no doubt in my mind that he really did want to see a Lab-Lib coalition. Unfortunately, because he had not properly prepared the ground for any such discussions, having been so used both as Chancellor and PM to working majorities, he was destined to fail. The passion with which Brown tried to make the discussions with the Lib Dems work comes across in Adonis’s book as almost tragic, but given how much we already know about what a tribalist was, he cuts a contradictory figure, desperately trying to convince Nick Clegg of how a radical Labour-Lib Dem coalition could deliver.

A telling vignette from 5 Days in May is how Peter Mandelson, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls all discussed with Adonis how they had never come across Andrew Stunell before and did not know who he was. He had been Lib Dem MP for Hazel Grove since 1997 and a frontbench spokesperson for almost all of that time. This demonstrates a shocking level of engagement by Labour with the party that they were supposedly attempting, in good faith, to form a government with.

An important theme from the Adonis book is that of how the question of 'the numbers' seemed to be eminently solvable in the view of Brown and some other senior Labour people. Despite the fact that Labour only had 258 seats and the Lib Dems 57 (so a total of 315 vs the Tories' 306, with a majority requiring 326) Brown was convinced that most of the minor parties would fall into line. I’m not sure if I would describe this as wishful thinking or self-delusion but the idea that a 'rainbow coalition' or even a minority coalition that took the votes of the SNP, Plaid Cymru, Caroline Lucas, the SDLP and the DUP all pretty much for granted would have been plain sailing, and was somehow an obvious and equal choice to the stability of a solid working majority with the Conservatives, is optimistic in the extreme.

It also suggested to me a level of arrogance, perhaps fostered by 13 years in government, within senior Labour ranks that the minor parties would come to heel. The Lib Dems were doing the responsible thing in not assuming that all these smaller parties would stay in line and instead considering that any deal with Labour would be on the basis of a minority government which would have been very difficult to control. This was not least because a number of Labour MPs spent the five days of the coalition negotiations making it clear that there were things they would not agree to or vote for. So far from Brown being sure of being able to deliver his 258 MPs, it was far more likely that the total would regularly fall short of that depending on which issue the vote was on.

A good example of this is how during the first formal discussion with the Labour team, Adonis highlighted how Labour was open to a proportional representation option being on the AV ballot paper. But I know from my own personal discussions at the time that Labour MP Tom Harris would never have voted for a bill that included a PR option in the referendum. He told me categorically. It was also clear to me that he was not alone in this respect and there were a number of Labour MPs who would also have defied party whips to defeat this. Labour was negotiating on something it would never have been able to deliver on.

So what lessons can we draw from the various accounts of the 2010 coalition negotiations? I would say the most important thing is preparation. Both the Lib Dems and the Conservatives wargamed a number of scenarios before the 2010 election. They approached coalition negotiations professionally and with the clear purpose of forming a stable government that could last for a whole parliament. Contrast this with Labour, which didn't even start seriously planning for coalition until after the result was announced. And it made a big difference. The Lib Dems did not take Labour as seriously as the Conservatives as potential partners, not for ideological reasons (as Adonis seems convinced of), but primarily because the reds had not done the basic groundwork. So the key lesson from 2010 for Labour is to be open to the possibility that there will be a hung parliament in 2015, long before it actually happens, and to plan, war-game and prepare in advance for this outcome. Even just making sure the basics, such as having enough backchannel communication between key players. Happily, there are signs that Ed Miliband gets this now and is preparing the ground for just such an eventuality.

Another important factor is to be realistic about what can be achieved. Brown's offer of PR on the AV referendum ballot simply could not have been delivered by him in the circumstances he found himself in. Indeed the numbers made any alliance at all very tricky. If the maths makes things difficult, parties should be open about this. That is the only way that good faith can be maintained.

The final lesson to draw for now is more related to how the current coalition has played out. The Lib Dems have been reasonably disciplined in keeping their troops in line and ensuring that most items from the coalition agreement have gone through, even when, as in the case of tuition fees, they have gone directly against what the party wanted. Whatever you may think of the individual policies, this has been done in the name of coalition cohesion. By contrast, the Conservative backbenches have been much more restive and have forced defeats on measures such as Lords reform in defiance of their party leadership.

The various processes that the Lib Dems had (and have) in place to facilitate buy-in from the parliamentary and wider membership were seen by both Labour and Conservatives in 2010 as somewhat eccentric. Indeed, one of the reasons Brown found it so hard to get hold of Clegg on several occasions during the five days is because the Lib Dem leader was in one meeting or another keeping colleagues closely informed of what was happening and consulting them. But it is hard to argue that the legitimacy those processes conferred on the coalition from a Lib Dem perspective is anything other than a very good thing. I was one of the party members who voted in the special conference convened towards the end of May 2010 and it certainly gave me a feeling of ownership which has been sorely tested over the last three years. It is not a panacea and we enter a grey area when measures that were never in the coalition agreement are legislated on, sometimes to the chagrin of myself and my fellow party members. But a complete lack of any such process within the Conservative Party has led to a widespread feeling amongs its members, both in parliament and more widely, of a lack of legitimacy in the current coalition.

There was no modern precedent on which the parties could draw three years ago and they were, to an extent, flying blind. But in 2015, should such discussions become necessary, that will not be the case. All parties should learn the lessons from those five heady days in May 2010.


This piece was first published online in The New Statesman.


We discussed the Adonis book and the lessons for future negotiations on this week's House of Comments Podcast which guest starred Hopi Sen.

Clegg's Faulty Secret Courts Logic

I sat in the wrong place in the hall on Saturday for Nick Clegg's Q&A. I was about 2/3rds of the way back and despite thrusting my hand up every time he went back to the audience I didn't get picked for a question. Indeed he only really seemed to pick from about the first 6 rows which was all I think he could see.

But if he had have picked me I was going to highlight a particular bit of faulty logic in one of his comments about secret courts. In fact that's being generous. Sophistry would be a better word.

He claimed that there had been no point in Lib Dem MPs voting against Secret Courts as it still would have passed. According to Nick there was simply not a majority in the House of Commons to defeat the legislation. I'll put aside the fact that some commentators actually believe there could have been a majority against Secret Courts if the parliamentary Lib Dems with their liberal credentials had given a clear lead in opposing them.

Notwithstanding that Clegg's argument is ridiculous. If Charles Kennedy and the then Lib Dem leadership had followed that line of thinking in 2003 they would have voted for the invasion of Iraq. After all, there was not a majority in the House to defeat that either so they might as well have done according to the Deputy Prime Minister.

The fact that this argument seemed to form the backbone of his Secret Courts response demonstrates to me just how poor the thinking on this bill has been from our leadership.

Is Clegg's problem that he is too honest?

We see it time and time again with Nick Clegg.

He is asked whether he slept with "no more than 30 women" and agrees with the statement (that could mean anything from 1 to 30) and is pilloried for not being serious about politics. He just answered the question!

He apologises for a mistake in pledging before the election to prevent tuition fees going up which in retrospect was an impossible thing to make happen given how many other MPs were elected on a platform where they made no such pledge. He is vilified across the political spectrum and in the media for being weak, inconsistent and duplicitous. He is simply being as honest as he can be.

There have been various other occasions like this and we saw two more examples yesterday:

Firstly Nick Ferrari on LBC grilled him on whether he is likely to send his children to private schools. Clegg answered candidly explaining that he hasn't decided yet, that he hopes to be able to send them to a state school if they can find a suitable one and that his wife will be heavily involved in the decision. Cue derision from the left about how he is adding to his woes by answering this question in this way (he should simply use his kids as political pawns as far as I can tell is the argument) and from other quarters about how he is "hiding behind his wife". Never mind the fact that his position is the same as pretty much any father living in London with a household income in his bracket.

Secondly in an interview for House magazine he questioned the government's approach to capital spending in its early months and conceded that they could have approached things differently. Cue an avalanche of criticism from the media and Labour. He is merely stating the bleeding obvious. Things have not worked out brilliantly in this area. I would far rather have a politician in office admit where they think there have been problems. It gives me confidence they are likely to change tack in response to events rather than blindly ploughing on.

What all these incidents demonstrate is that the constant cry we hear for politicians to "tell the truth" and "give it to us straight" that you hear from media pundits and members of public on phone in shows aren't really true. Clegg is one of the most honest politicians in front line politics today. And yet his very candour is so often used against him.

The only conclusion I can draw is that what we really want is to be lied to.

Volatile drug use stats

Needless to say I am delighted with Nick Clegg's clear and politically brave comments on drugs policy reported widely today.

But I just wanted to focus on one small aspect of the coverage and discussion today. David Cameron, Theresa May and others who have spoken out against any change in current policy have repeatedly pointed out that there is no need for a review because drug use is falling. That may well be true but drug use statistics have a habit of bouncing around all over the place not really correlated with any legal or other factors. If anything it's cultural trends that drive these figures.

So my point is, what happens when the "drug use is falling so there is no need for a review" excuse stops being true? I am almost certain that at some point in the near future, drug use figures will tick up again.

When that happens, how will those politicians who have used the falling rates as a reason not to have a review react? Because the logical conclusion drawn from their own words now is that when the rates rise there will be a reason for a review.

They have hitched themselves to a notoriously unreliable hostage to fortune.

It's time for Nick Clegg to make the liberal case on drugs policy

The Mail on Sunday yesterday reported that the Home Affairs Select Committee report into drugs policy, reporting this morning is going to recommend that the option of legalisation should be seriously considered and a Royal Commission should be set up to report on the issue prior to the 2015 general election.

As readers of this blog will know I am a long standing supporter of liberalisation of our drug laws. So this report is a breath of fresh air as far as I am concerned. A sensible pragmatic look at the problems with current policy and an attempt to suggest steps that could help.

Right on cue, the government has already given its initial response and completely unsurprisingly they are making it clear they do not intend to do what the report suggests, before it has even been published. A government spokesperson said:

"Drugs are illegal because they are harmful - they destroy lives and blight communities. Our current laws draw on the best available evidence and as such we have no intention of downgrading or declassifying cannabis. A Royal Commission on drugs is simply not necessary. Our cross-government approach is working."

This is the same line that is trotted out by current ministers every time anybody: former ministers, senior business leaders, scientific advisers etc. try to advance this debate beyond the heavily constricted terms imposed by the government of the day. No matter what evidence is put in front of them they respond instantly to shut down further discussion.

However, this time we know that there is someone very senior in government who does not agree with this knee-jerk dismissal response. It is the second most senior minister of them all, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. We know this because back in September I interviewed him and one of the questions I asked him was on drugs policy. You can read the full interview here but the salient part of it is below:

"...there are an increasing number of bodies who are revisiting this debate in the round. So for instance the Home Affairs Select Committee has been looking at this now for a long time and I think is due to report in December. I will be reading that very, very closely indeed. If a cross-party select committee revisits some of these issues and urges us to open them up as a government, I think the onus is on us, not them to explain why we shouldn’t. Because every time people look at this issue on a cross-party basis in a considered fashion, it seems to me over several years now including in the committee that David Cameron once sat, actually the advice is for radical action towards a more evidence based approach. I will look out for what the HASC has with quite an open mind."

The onus is now on Nick Clegg to make the case for a liberal approach to drugs policy. It was clear from the interview that he is very open to discussion about alternative approaches. This report now gives him the political space to do this. It's not a loony fringe view from some political outsiders but a clear call for a sensible approach from a committee consisting of MPs from all parties who have taken the time to look at the evidence and speak to a broad cross-section of witnesses on this subject.

Mr Clegg also told me that he hadn't discussed this particular issue with the Prime Minister. I very much hope that will change today and he will make clear that the HASC report has the full backing of him and his party.


This piece has been cross-posted today on Liberal Democrat Voice.

Interview with Nick Clegg - Part Two

My prize for winning Lib Dem Blog of the Year on Saturday was a 25 minute interview with Lib Dem party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. I posted the first part yesterday where we discussed the coalition's legacy, pension funding for mortgages and a particular hobby-horse of mine, drugs policy. Here is the second and final part of the interview including a discussion on how his speech last year that stated "Birth should never be destiny" can be reconciled with his support for an hereditary monarchy, the three things he likes about Ed Miliband and whether anything can be done to improve PMQs. My questions are in bold. The rest are Nick's words:


Slightly changing tack now. In Spring 2011 in a speech about social mobility you used the phrase “Birth should never be destiny” which I completely agree with. But how can you reconcile this with your support for an hereditary monarchy?

I just don’t believe for a minute that if you were to man the barricades and effect a revolution to turn the United Kingdom from a monarchy into a republic, suddenly the problems of poor housing, poor infant health, poor pre-school support, poor education for poor children in primary schools would suddenly be solved. I think it’s the wrong answer to a much more profound social problem which is bound up with our education system, housing and patterns of work. I just happen to think that the monarchy provides a sense of identity and clearly brings a great sense of sort of value and pride to the country. I think it unites people, and we want to unite people rather than divide them. I don’t think the monarchy in and of itself is why we have these huge social and economic forces and factors that prejudice the lives of children who are born into poor backgrounds.

I think what is be slightly different which may be what you’re after is: “Does it foster a culture of diffidence and hierarchy?”. I personally think Britain is not a particularly diffident or hierarchical society, I mean people just don’t take authority no questions asked any more.

I was going to phrase it slightly differently than diffidence. I was going to ask isn’t it true that because our head of state is there by virtue of birth rather than merit that it undermines the case at a fundamental level within our society for meritocracy which is something that as liberals we should be striving more for?

I’m going to give you an answer which is really based on real world pragmatism rather than theory. I’m sure you could write a sort of theoretical case for all sorts of radical reforms within our society and heaven knows I’ve tried to get rid of some of the obvious bastions of privilege and patronage in the House of Lords which was difficult. In fact it proved to be impossible because of the vested interests in the establishment parties…

…and I am aware that there is a big majority in the country currently in favour of the monarchy so I realise that this is a rather academic discussion.

Yes, and I personally, not least now that I actually have more contact with members of the Royal family have actually become a stronger supporter of the monarchy than I even was before.

So were you already a strong supporter of the monarchy?

Well, if you ask me “What are the things that would make society more liberal?” “What are the things that will ensure that a bright but poor child is not condemned by the circumstances of their birth?” I just wouldn’t put fiddling around with the monarchy anywhere on my shopping list of things to do. I’d put education, I’d put taxation, I’d put housing, health, jobs…

…I understand the point you’re making but don’t you think like for example in the US where any child could potentially become the President and the Head of State that that says something fundamental about that society and how it operates?

Well let’s first crack our immediate problem which is that children at the moment irrespective of their circumstances of birth don’t think that they could become Prime Minister! Or even leader of the Liberal Democrats. I think the displace the failings of the political class or decant them into an argument about the monarchy is slightly letting the politicians off the hook. We have a political class, people like me, dare I say it people like you: Blokes In Suits…

…I don’t normally wear a suit. I wore it especially for you Nick!

Well I’m flattered Mark! But a political class who are not representative of modern diverse Britain. That is a much more urgent problem we should be addressing it seems to me than reopening a debate that the British people don’t want us to reopen and that I genuinely don’t think has the direct effect on lack of meritocracy that you feel. I hear what you say but I don’t share that view.

OK. So my last two questions. They are both related. Politics is a rough old game and there is often bad blood between politicians and leaders of different parties. So to combat that can you list three things that you like about Ed Miliband?

He’s approachable, he’s interested in policy…

…and is he willing to engage in sensible debate because you don’t always get that from for example PMQs?

But PMQs is not a debate, it’s a shouting match!

He’s got a perfectly good sense of humour. He’s a civilised human being. I’ve talked to him on several occasions and I have found him easy to talk to.

He’s wrong though! But that’s a different matter.

Linked to this do you think that PMQs and politics in general might benefit from a change in approach? A friend of mine recently suggested that you could still have PMQs but once a week the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition sit in a room with a moderator and for half an hour or three quarters of an hour just debate policy. Without all the baying and the jeering and the “playing for your team”. Do you think politics might benefit from something like that?

Look, I’ve been through this myself. The problem that we have at the moment is that if you act in a thoughtful, considered, emollient, human manner in the bear-pit of politics whether that’s on the floor of the House of Commons or some moderated discussion what I’ve discovered is that people immediately brand that as weak and ineffective.

I mean I saw it myself in the first few months of this government. When I did Deputy PMQs or stood in for PMQs I tried a kind of… I mean sometimes I didn’t, sometimes I’d lose it and shout at the Labour benches but you know if I was to sort of engage then it would be written up the following day as “Oh, he’s weak, he’s rubbish” all the rest of it. If I got up and just yelled at the other side, said a few jokes, made them look ridiculous and beat them round the head and neck it would be “Oh, a good strong improved performance”. I’m afraid that there’s this remorseless logic at the moment for the way in the which politics is communicated, interpreted and mediated by the press which just constantly ramps up the antagonism. It doesn’t mean that politicians can’t speak to each other but I wouldn’t hold your breath that there’s a new public forum. Much that I would like the idea that politicians could have a sort of fireside chat. At the moment, funnily enough particularly at the moment I think there is a rather shrill, almost semi-hysterical tone which is entering into the coverage of politics in part of our press. I think it’s partly because the press themselves are quite anxious about how they are going to hold onto their own readers so they are becoming ever more hyperbolic in order to try and hold onto people.

Thank you very much Nick!

Thank you!

Interview with Nick Clegg - Part One

My prize for winning Lib Dem Blog of the Year on Saturday was a 25 minute interview with Lib Dem party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. Here is the first part of the interview where we discussed the coalition's legacy, pension funding for mortgages and a particular hobby-horse of mine, drugs policy. My questions are in bold. The rest are Nick's words:


Thank you for agreeing to see me Nick

Not at all!

If we could start with a question kind of about the future but a little bit about the past too. With Lords reform now dead, what will be the coalition’s historic legacy do you think?

Oh I think the coalition’s historic legacy will be, firstly being a coalition! For those of us like you and I who are interested in politics being done differently and moving our sclerotic political culture forward, don’t forget that showing people multi-party politics works and that you don’t always just have to have either the blue team or the red team in charge is arguably more important than any one piece of legislation in terms of advancing the kind of politics that we believe in. Plural, evidence based, reasonable, where people set aside their differences in the national interest. I think that is massive and I don’t think that can be exaggerated. I think sometimes as Liberal Democrats we need to remind ourselves that however much people might be irritated by the antics of the Tory right and however much we might want to govern on our own actually proving that coalition works remains a massive strategic priority. And you know there are other things we are doing to change politics. The Fixed Term Parliament Bill which I think sometimes people assume that that’s just a small little ball; it’s not, it’s quite a big thing. We’ve been campaigning on that for generations and that actually changes politics quite significantly. I do think as a legacy we will have proved that politics can be done differently. That’s the first thing.

The second big thing is that we will be the government that has had to cope with the fallout of the biggest economic crisis this country has arguably faced for decades. I don’t think it is possible to exaggerate quite how serious this implosion was in the heart of our economy back in 2008. It’s not any old recession, I mean that was a complete breakdown, a sort of seizure in the heart, in the kind of transmission mechanism of our country, our capitalist system.

Vince Cable has described it as being like a heart attack.

Yes, it is very similar. The banking system is like a heart. It pumps money round the system. It’s like a heart pumping blood around a body and it had stopped. I sometimes think that people who say “Wellll, you should do this plan or that plan”…

The idea that you can recover from a heart attack of that severity with one policy or one wave of the magic wand. I think history will judge us very kindly in that if we hadn’t stepped up to the plate to provide a government that could pull us back from the precipice, which is where we were teetering back in 2010. If we can show by 2015, not that we’ve sorted everything out but that we have basically pointed the economy… by the way not simply putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, but actually rewiring the economy on a different basis, I think we will have done a great thing because we will have not only fixed the problem but we will have learnt the lessons from the past. By the way this agenda includes really, really building on green growth and not having this ludicrous stand-off between people who say you have to have growth and those who say you have to go green as if the two things are separate. They’re not. They go hand in hand.

And the third big thing for me is to make sure we don’t only repair the economy but that we also at the same time seek to unblock society to make it fairer in the very specific sense of giving people the opportunity to get ahead, live out their dreams and fulfil their talents. A liberal view of life is not one which wants to flatten and homogenise people but which wants to release potential in each and every individual. That’s why I place such emphasis on tax reforms so that people on low pay can keep more money. On our early years reforms so that two and three and four year olds get more support than they have ever done before. On the pupil premium, on making sure that we cherish vocational education just as much as university education. These are things which you would struggle to put some of it on a leaflet by 2015 but is what I think liberalism is all about. We live in a highly segregated society where privilege communicates itself across generations and where disadvantage does as well. Much more than in other liberally democratic developed nations.

So those are really the three things: changing politics for the good, fixing the economy but rewiring it for good and creating a really rich sense of fairness about how society works.

Just picking up that final point in the context of the announcement about the potential partial funding of mortgages from people’s parent’s and grandparent’s pensions which you made yesterday. Some people have been talking about it and I was just asked to discuss it on the radio. The question I’ve been asked and I am wondering myself is, isn’t this only going to help rich families basically? How is this progressive and how is it going to help poorer people?

Firstly you’re quite right that it doesn’t help everybody. It only helps those people who have got assets in pension pots which they can mobilise as a lump sum to offer as a guarantee to mortgage lenders so that your child or grandchild can take out a deposit. So it’s unashamedly for people with that asset. People who have got a £40,000 pension pot but have got very little disposable income, they don’t feel very rich. They may have very little in their current account and by no stretch of the imagination could they be called rich, yet they are people if you like in the middle or even low-to-middle income bracket who just so happen to have this pension pot which they wish to mobilise for the benefit of their children. So it’s not for everybody, you’re quite right. It is for people who have got a particular asset in the form of a pension pot. So it that sense it’s not for everybody. But it helps a set of people. The rough calculations from Steve Webb are that it could be made available to around 250,000 people in this country. Clearly not all of them will do it, but even if a small proportion do that’s still helping thousands and thousands of youngsters and helping them get a home that they otherwise wouldn’t get. It’s not a catch-all solution.

So you see it as part of a basket of measures to help?

Of course.

I know there are lots of other things being done as well but particularly when it comes to helping people get a house, or get a residence (it doesn’t always have to be a house). I used to rent for many years actually and one time I just had to get out of my house within two months because the landlord decided he wanted to let it to his son. I had no real security of tenure beyond a couple of months, I had to go. It was very frustrating and I just wonder what measures you think would be appropriate to help in that area.

I think what we need, above all frankly is more homes. More affordable homes, more social homes and more private homes for rent. There are a lot of people in the lower income bracket, not the lowest who rely increasingly on private rented accommodation and that’s why, much though all the press coverage of the announcements I and the Prime Minister made recently about the housing package were all about the temporary removal of the restrictions on extending your conservatory. Actually by far the biggest thing, something that’s never happened before which is that we broke the taboo in the treasury that says “Oooh, you can’t use the government’s balance sheet to offer as a sort of insurance policy” we offered £10 billion worth of guarantees to the registered social landlords and the house-builders who build housing for private rent. And they are telling us that this is going to be a massive shot in the arm for the provision of housing that you say people rely upon. Particularly those people who can’t get onto the property ladder as owners outright, or are often in transition in their professional or family life.

I wanted to ask you about perhaps a slightly controversial issue, drugs policy. Barack Obama recently said that drugs policy “is a legitimate topic for debate”. I think sometimes in the US it’s closed down as an issue but he’s clearly receptive to it. David Cameron himself called for a debate on legalisation of drugs 10 years ago when he was part of a select committee and signed up to the report that said that. There are also serious moves taking place in Latin America along these lines, I’m sure you’re aware of them. The world is moving on so is it possible that the coalition could do something on this issue? Could perhaps make some changes in a direction that would help reduce harms caused by drugs?

Firstly, I’m at the Liberal Democrat end of this debate in that I start from an assumption that the so-called War on Drugs is a spectacular failure and that we’ve got to be driven by evidence, not prejudice nor dogma…

Do you think that this government is receptive to that though?

Well I was going to come to that. I actually think that if you look at what we’re doing as a government in the drugs strategy, published in the first few months of the government’s life… Would it be the drugs strategy that a Liberal Democrat would write? Probably not but there is a lot in there, particularly on remedial support for people who have long term drug addictions which is very, very promising indeed. If you listen to the stuff that Ken Clarke was promoting as Justice Secretary and even Chris Grayling with his reputation for a being a “hard man of the right” actually I think there is now a cross-party consensus that we cannot simply carry on warehousing people in our prisons who have very serious mental health or drug conditions and not deal with those conditions themselves. So I think that’s a change. However, do I think there might be a case to look at this again? Well of course you’ve got to look at this, over and over again. We don’t have the answer to something which is a scourge in society.

But even measures like for example changing the categorisation of cannabis which was moved from B to C and then back to B. Cannabis is widely perceived as being a lot less harmful than something like alcohol.

Mmm.

The fact that this government, and not just this government, every government for many decades seems to largely ignore the evidence on this issue. Do you think there is any possibility of the government moving in a more progressive direction on something like cannabis? Just to put it into context as well there was a recent study that demonstrated fairly unequivocally that children under the age of 18 can seriously damage the development of their brains. But after the age of 18, there isn’t really that risk there. I’m not saying there is not risk with cannabis after 18 but that particular one is not there. So I thought it might be more appropriate to legalise cannabis but make it so that children cannot get hold of it in the same way as currently with alcohol, rigorously enforce that and therefore send a message that is evidence based regarding that particular drug. The drugs laws at the moment are not taken very seriously by some, perhaps because they’re not based very much in evidence, you know “All drugs are as bad as each other”. People know that is not true.

Basically I agree with your assumption that politicians should, in as much as it is possible for politicians to do this, refrain from seeking to make unilateral decisions, which of course need to be informed by what the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs say, and what the police say and others. That’s certainly a principle that, I’m not going to pretend is always met in practise but is certainly one that I am personally very committed to.

The second thing I would say is that you are quite right, there are an increasing number of bodies who are revisiting this debate in the round. So for instance the Home Affairs Select Committee has been looking at this now for a long time and I think is due to report in December. I will be reading that very, very closely indeed. If a cross-party select committee revisits some of these issues and urges us to open them up as a government, I think the onus is on us, not them to explain why we shouldn’t. Because every time people look at this issue on a cross-party basis in a considered fashion, it seems to me over several years now including in the committee that David Cameron once sat, actually the advice is for radical action towards a more evidence based approach. I will look out for what the HASC has with quite an open mind.

You may not be able to answer this question because I am sure you can’t read David Cameron’s mind but do you think that he would be receptive to such a debate? He certainly seemed to be 10 years ago and I wonder what’s changed.

I’ve no idea. I haven’t talked to him about it. I strongly suspect the Conservative Party as it has been for a long time is quite divided on this issue. You do have a liberal wing in the Conservative Party that is actually quite thoughtful and liberal and not hidebound by prejudice or fear of the Daily Mail headlines which is prepared to be free-thinking about this, driven by the evidence. Then you have another wing of the Conservative Party which you know, just wants to grab the headlines and appear tough even if it doesn’t actually help youngsters who are addicted and it doesn’t actually help reduce crime. Like so many things in the Conservative Party, there is this constant battle for its soul. We are lucky enough that we operate in the Liberal Democrats on this issue from a pretty calm, considered, reasonable and evidence based approach.


Tomorrow I will post the remainder of my interview with Nick including a discussion on how his speech last year that stated "Birth should never be destiny" can be reconciled with his support for an hereditary Monarchy, the three things he likes about Ed Miliband and whether anything can be done to improve Prime Minister's Questions!


You can now read the second part of the interview here.

A rather enterprising way to raise money for the Lib Dems

Will the public ever accept coalitions?

Over the last couple of years I have had a few comments from my non-political friends (yes I have some!) along the lines of the Lib Dems cannot be trusted. When people who are usually not really that into politics say things like that it makes my ears prick up because it demonstrates that something about the subject has "cut through". Unfortunately in this case it is something pretty negative about the party of which I am a member.

It should probably not be surprising that that message has resounded in this way, after all much of the media and the entirety of the Labour Party (and mischievous elements of the Tory Party) have been saying as much ever since the Lib Dems entered government. And of course there is a kernel of truth in it. The party said one thing before the general election and then in a number of key areas did something different after the election.

But the third party was never going to be able to do anything except that if they were to go into government. They were never going to get a majority and therefore they were always going to have to compromise in all sorts of areas.

That the Lib Dems have "broken their promises" and "Clegg cannot be trusted" has become as much of the background mood music of the body politic of this country as "Blair lied about Iraq" or "Thatcher did not care much about society" were during their respective eras. As much as I might want to bang on on here about how the party had to compromise, I might as well be micturating into a tornado.

But this fact really does raise a much wider issue. Will the public ever accept coalitions? Because it is far from clear that what they are annoyed about is that Clegg et al made "the wrong compromises". It actually seems like the fact that any compromises were made at all is what has damaged the party (and that would likely have been true no matter what the compromises and who the political partner was). This would apply to any parties forming a coalition in the future.

Perhaps we have just had single party government in this country for so long that, despite the talk before the election about the public wanting politicians to "get along" the truth is that they are so used to one entire programme being enacted that when the electoral arithmetic requires parties to work together the damage caused, especially to the junior partner is just simply too great.

I wish I was wrong about this but I fear I am right. Maybe the last two years shows that the UK is simply not interested in parties compromising? And if the polls are correct we might well end up with at least another decade of single party government again after 2015.

I suspect the electorate might prefer to be back on the surer ground such a government would afford.

How the Lib Dem response to the doctrine of "Collective Responsibility" is screwing us

Compare and contrast:

“Of course, there is no reliance on our support for a Coalition Agreement commitment for progress on unrelated or other significant parallel constitutional formations. I have said that. There is no link; of course, there is no link.”

...and:

"Lords reform and boundaries are two, separate parliamentary bills but they are both part of a package of overall political reform. Delivering one but not the other would create an imbalance – not just in the Coalition Agreement, but also in our political system.
Lords reform leads to a smaller, more legitimate House of Lords. Boundary changes lead to a smaller House of Commons, by cutting the number of MPs. If you cut the number of MPs without enhancing the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Lords all you have done is weaken parliament as a whole, strengthen the executive and its overmighty government that wins."

Both of these statements were made by Nick Clegg in the last few months. The first one was at a Select Committee hearing in April where he also specifically said the words "There is no formal link" between Lords reform and the boundary changes.

I highlight this, not to embarrass the leader of my party (there will be plenty of others in Labour and the Conservatives queueing up to do that) but to highlight how our approach to collective responsibility within the government is now screwing us over.

i have been arguing for a long time that in public our ministers should have been making it clear that there are things we are doing that we would not do were we governing alone. I think the electorate are mature enough to accept this. But instead our approach seems to be to essentially "own" the entire government programme and to argue in favour of every element of it. This then leads to a situation with for example the boundary changes where Clegg can be painted as "having been for it, before he was against it" which is very damaging in politics.

If the approach had been to consistently explain that we were supporting the boundary changes as part of an overall package of constitutional change and all of it needed to go through (which is a perfectly reasonable position) it wouldn't seem like we were going back on anything now.

To be fair to Clegg there are examples including in the evidence to that committee where he did try to make this link but there are too many other examples where he has said things like "There is no link". The position has been too muddled.

This is not the only area where this has happened. For example Clegg has been quoted in the past as saying that Andrew Lansley is the "right man for the job" of Health Secretary. That's strange because before the election surely he though Norman Lamb was the right man, otherwise why was he Lib Dem spokesperson for health? I wonder why he felt the need to say this? He could have worded it along the lines of Lansley getting on with the job he was appointed by the PM to do or similar without endorsing him above all other possible ministers.

In the inevitable post-mortems that will come whenever this coalition finally ends I hope that our approach to collective responsibility comes under a sharp spotlight and we learn some important lessons. We are a separate party with a distinct identity. We need to find a way to make this clear, even when we are sharing power with another party.

Does the Lords reform debacle make a coupon election more likely?

My first thought was "highly unlikely" but the more I am mulling it over the more I am wondering if the inevitable dynamics that will result from the latest coalition debacle could move things in that direction.

The first thing to note is that without the boundary changes Labour are now overwhelmingly favourite to win the next election outright, probably with a big majority. I know 3 years is a long time in politics but the idea that the Conservatives (and Lib Dems) are going to recover in a major way from their current lows with the economy in such a mess and austerity on the menu for several more years to come is somewhat fanciful.

The second point is that if Labour win in a big way in 2015 then the other two major parties can likely kiss goodbye to any chance of office for another political generation. We saw after 1997 how much the large majority cushioned Labour against future election losses. It could be 2030 before the Blues or Yellows are seriously contending for power again.

But of course it's a massive leap to go from that fairly sober reflection of reality to implementing a deal whereby the Conservatives and Lib Dems allow the coalition partner a free run at certain seats. It's all going to boil down to the following issues:

1) How much do Cameron and Clegg want to retain power? If they are serious about keeping their hands on the reins after 2015 they are going to have to very seriously think outside the box.
2) Even if they wanted to, how well could they control their respective parties in the country to adhere to any deal? There is significant and growing animosity amongst the grassroots of the coalition partners and the idea that PPCs in potentially winnable seats may have to stand aside "for the greater good" is likely to be very hard to swallow.
3) How would such a deal be treated by the electorate? I can certainly imagine Labour making all sorts of hay with the idea that the coalition was trying to stitch up the election.
4) What would the long term calculations be? For the Tories there may be less downside. They would get the chance to retain power rather than face a potential decade or more in the wilderness. But history suggests that for the Lib Dems were they to go along with a plan like this they could be subsumed by the larger political partner. And even before that it could easily cause a split with "Independent Liberal Democrats" leaving the party to fight on their own terms.

On balance I still think this probably won't happen but you never know. I've observed throughout my politically aware life that politicians will do almost anything to hold onto power. John Major clung on until the bitter end in 1997 and even announced a 6 week proroguement of parliament in order to just eke out another couple of weeks. Gordon Brown endured indignity after indignity to stay in a job that it would seem he didn't even really enjoy and even tried himself to form a coalition with a party whom he despised (and whose name he consistently got wrong!).

I do not underestimate the allure of power. Especially for those who already have their hands on the tiller.

The Lib Dems may need to leave the government to stop the boundary changes

Now it is clear that Cameron is not going to be able to get enough of his backbenchers to support Lords reform there is lots of talk about how the quid pro quo for this will be the Lib Dems blocking the boundary changes. There is also talk about how the precise wording of the coalition agreement does not commit the Lib Dems to vote for the changes.

Even though it is dressed up in the language of principle, the argument essentially goes "You didn't deliver the change we wanted so we won't deliver the change you want.".

In some ways this is fair enough. The manner in which some Conservative MPs have parsed the coalition agreement to find a Clintonesque way of wriggling out of the spirit of the commitment to Lords reform has been low politicking at its worst. As a supporter of Lords reform (albeit one who could see a good argument for voluntarily delaying change ourselves) I would find some satisfaction in seeing the boundary changes voted down.

There is a problem with this idea though. Cameron really did try to get Lords reform through. He imposed a 3 line whip on his party to vote for the bill and the timetable. It failed because too many of his non-payroll MPs were prepared to vote against it (which is why the timetable motion was withdrawn as it was clear the government would lose).

If Clegg was to impose a 3 line whip on the vote for the boundary changes then straight away the Lib Dem payroll vote of 22 would have to support the changes (or resign from the government). I also suspect a number of backbench Lib Dems would either abstain or vote with the government. Some would doubtless rebel but it would not be enough to stop the changes*.

So the only way the Lib Dems could be sure of defeating the boundary changes would be to actually ensure all of their MPs voted against them. And I cannot see a realistic way that this could happen without triggering a chain of events that would lead to the end of the coalition.

It comes down to a matter of mathematics. The Conservative backbenchers can block legislation even if the government votes for it. The Lib Dems cannot do this. They don't have enough MPs.

I know that Cameron is determined to get this change through. Clegg cannot block it without making his entire party vote against it. We will soon reach the first (and probably last) impasse of the coalition sooner than most people thought.


*I am aware that a number of backbench Conservative MPs also do not want these changes to go through. It is possible for a scenario to play out where Clegg whips the Lib Dem payroll vote to vote for the changes but with a nod and a wink licenses his backbenchers to vote against leaving only a few Tory rebels required to torpedo the changes. The big problem with this though is not just that it would be blatantly obvious what had happened (which it would) but that I suspect Cameron has already war gamed this scenario. Now that the Lords reforms are dead, he has a big patronage carrot to offer any wavering MPs from his side. For this reason, I would suggest such a gambit on Clegg's part would fail. And I think he knows it.