Tag Archives: coalition

Nick Clegg on being Nick Clegg in The House magazine

By Prateek Buch | Published 3rd February 2012 - 3:00 pm

Deputy Prime Minister gave a wide-ranging interview to The House magazine, in which he discusses how it’s right for the two coalition parties to differentiate themselves once a stable government was formed:

In the run-up to the general election, you may remember, the tabloids were screaming, saying that if there was a hung Parliament locusts would descend from the sky and the sun would be blotted out, you know… so we needed for those first few months to show the most important thing of all, which is this is a government that works, and actually works rather well.

Of course,

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Posted in News, Parliament | Also tagged lords reform, nick clegg | 1 Comment

Opinion: The Coalition are winning the economic argument

By David Thorpe | Published 20th January 2012 - 12:30 pm

It’s a dark winter night in Westminster but the building from which a group of men emerge is still wreathed in light. The men clamber into a sleek car, which streaks away through the emptying streets. Their journey is short in physical distance, but it’s long on significance for all of them. They are serious of face and purpose as the vehicle stops by one of the quieter spots on the riverbank.

The heaviest of the men is the first to get out, he flashes a look along the river bank, and seeing it deserted, nods quickly to his companions, all of whom …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged deficit reduction, ed balls, ed miliband, labour | 30 Comments

Opinion: LibDems should run a big-spending department

By Sam Cannicott | Published 9th January 2012 - 12:53 pm

Writing in The Times, Danny Finkelstein (here for subscribers) predicts that the Coalition Government will stick together in 2012 and that those who think there will be a general election this year are wrong.

I agree. The coalition will survive and there will not be a general election. But I hope that the coalition will look rather different. The Liberal Democrats need to be running a big spending department responsible for a key public service. A problem that the party faces is that it struggles to explain to non-politicos what the Liberal Democrats actually do. …

Posted in Op-eds | 7 Comments

Opinion: which twin is the Tory?

By Simon Titley | Published 23rd December 2011 - 9:00 am

Earlier this month, my home town of Lincoln hosted its annual Christmas market. Lincoln was the first city in the UK to host a German-style Christmas market. Since the first market in 1982, it has grown from just 11 stalls to more than 250. This year’s was the most successful yet, attracting a record 335,000 visitors to the city and contributing millions of pounds to the local economy.

The Christmas market is the most visible product of Lincoln’s twinning arrangement with the German wine-producing town of Neustadt an der Weinstrasse. Besides the market, the twin-town relationship has …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged europhobia, eurosceptic, liberator magazine, twin towns | 29 Comments

Opinion: The coalition will now change; the Lib Dems must ensure it does so for the better

By Nick Thornsby | Published 15th December 2011 - 1:26 pm

When, earlier this year, David Cameron sanctioned the Conservative-dominated No to AV campaign to attack his until then unfailingly loyal deputy, he precipitated the end of coalition phase one. It had not meant to happen so quickly, but the Liberal Democrat reaction – the strategy of differentiation – soon followed.

The prime minister’s actions in Europe last week are a similar turning point. By pandering to the extremes in his party – by acting as Tory leader rather than prime minister, as Paddy Ashdown put it – David Cameron has forced Nick Clegg to once again rethink the Liberal Democrat approach …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged david cameron, david laws, featured, paddy ashdown | 23 Comments

LDVideo: David Laws interviewed by Mark Littlewood

By Nick Thornsby | Published 1st December 2011 - 5:57 pm

Last week, the Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, Mark Littlewood, spent an hour talking to David Laws at the IEA’s Westminster headquarters. Before a packed room, Mark and David touched on a whole range of issues – taxation, Europe, the formation of the coalition, just exactly how liberal the Liberal Democrats are, and many more.

The hour-long exchange, which you can see below, is well worth a watch:

(Video also available on vimeo here.)

Posted in News, YouTube | Also tagged david laws, european union, institute of economic affairs, mark littlewood, tax | 2 Comments

LibLink: Chris Rennard – The Lib Dems’ three-pronged strategy for success

By Nick Thornsby | Published 28th October 2011 - 2:58 pm

In the House Magazine, Lord (Chris) Rennard – campaigns guru and former chief executive of the party – has set out the ‘three- pronged’ approach that he believes the Liberal Democrats should take over the coming years.

Here’s a sample:

The first of them follows on from Nick Clegg’s first-year priority, which was to show that the coalition government was stable and capable of taking tough decisions. So an early task for Nick Clegg was to show that ‘coalition works’. This test required huge self-discipline in agreeing a four-year Comprehensive Spending Review, and some compromises that were unpalatable to many Lib Dems.

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged chris rennard | 4 Comments

Opinion: Caroline Lucas is wrong

By Steve Bolter | Published 14th September 2011 - 3:43 pm

As a campaigner on environmental issues since the 1960s, I have admired the way Caroline Lucas has publicly championed green issues. However, while I am sad that the Lib Dems have not been able to implement all of their manifesto, I am even sadder that Caroline’s lust for power has overtaken her commitment to the environmental cause.

While the Green Party has played an important role in helping inform the public, it has only a very small proportion of councillors and just one UK MP. The Liberal Democrats, with their far greater number of councillors, their participation in the Coalition …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged caroline lucas, green party | 23 Comments

Opinion: What the US debt ceiling crisis can teach Britain on coalition and compromise

By Greg Judge | Published 4th August 2011 - 1:51 pm

The crisis in the US Congress has finally come to an end and President Obama was able to raise the country’s debt ceiling without invoking the 14th Amendment. It has been a weekend of worry and apprehension as to how far extremist factions such as the Republican Tea Party were willing to go and whether they were prepared to bring the country to the lowly depths of economic default.

Neither major party had seemed prepared to give up what means most to them; the preservation of continued support for Medicare and Social Security (Democrats) or the need for heavy fiscal cuts …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged barack obama, US debt ceiling | 14 Comments

Chris White writes: Is it possible to change Coalition policy?

By Chris White | Published 22nd July 2011 - 2:53 pm

Is it possible to change Coalition policy? Council leaders certainly hope so if the letter to today’s Times is to be believed. Over a hundred have supported – and no doubt many more councillors, deputies, backbenchers and the like might have done so had there been more time to hone the message and gather support.

The issue should be core to the localist agenda – although we need to be rather clearer about what we really want.

Not so long ago the police were governed (at least in non-operational terms) by the police committees of county councils. There was not much …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged elected police commissioners, english party, policing | 2 Comments

How coalition government means better government

By Mark Pack | Published 24th June 2011 - 1:53 pm

Last night I headed over to Enfield to hear Nick Harvey talked to a packed restaurant of Liberal Democrats about his experiences of a minister. It was an impressive turnout from one of our smaller local parties in London and an impressive speech from Nick, who cut his political teeth in the borough.

One part was about how coalition government made for better government. Nick Harvey gave the example of how troops were deployed to Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

As a defence minister learning about one of the most important issues facing him and colleagues, he had wanted to get his head …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged enfield liberal democrats, nick harvey | 12 Comments

Nick Clegg’s speech on NHS reforms: “We’ve listened, we’ve learned”

By Helen Duffett | Published 14th June 2011 - 12:15 pm

Nick Clegg has given a speech today at a joint press conference with David Cameron and Andrew Lansley, on NHS reform and the results of the listening exercise.

This comes on the morning that a Telegraph leader declared:

The Lib Dem conference changed everything. Grass roots activists made it clear to Nick Clegg that they would not accept the wider involvement of the private sector championed by Mr Lansley or what they considered to be his undue emphasis on competition. Ever since, the reforms have been in trouble and the three-month “pause” ordered by Mr Cameron sealed their fate. The NHS

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Posted in News, Speeches | Also tagged nhs commissioning board, nhs future forum, nhs reform, nick clegg | 5 Comments

The Independent View: Coalition Works! The inside story from the Constitution Unit

By Robert Hazell | Published 5th June 2011 - 12:39 pm

The coalition is working well, but the Lib Dems could do better, is the overall message from the Constitution Unit’s first report on how the coalition works in Whitehall and Westminster. We are conducting a 12 month study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, with a research team of five, including two former senior civil servants, and one senior broadcaster. David Cameron and Nick Clegg have authorised access to all the key figures in Whitehall, and so far we have interviewed 90 ministers, special advisers, officials, parliamentarians, and external interest groups.

Everyone we interviewed in Whitehall says …

Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged cowley street, cranborne money, danny alexander, david cameron, nick clegg, oliver letwin, short money, special advisers | 7 Comments

The Cameron-Clegg Government: or the perils of publishing a book early in the Parliament

By Mark Pack | Published 30th May 2011 - 3:54 pm

Simon Lee and Matt Beech’s new book The Cameron-Clegg Government: Coalition Politics in an Age of Austerity has, at first glance, a lot going for it. A line-up of significant academic names, a well-known and reputable publisher (Palgrave Macmillan) a subject matter that is rarely out of the news and (unlike for books about the 2010 general election) a field relatively clear of rival publications.

A second glance suggests one of its problems: although nominally about both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, there are five contributors who are listed as having published books purely about the Conservative Party but …

Posted in Books | Also tagged emma sanderson-nash, matt beech, simon lee | 2 Comments

John Pugh writes: is an apology in order?

By John Pugh MP | Published 16th May 2011 - 2:29 pm

There was little real choice about choosing to enter the coalition. There was little real choice about addressing the nation’s colossal budget. There was no way to avoid risking unpopularity.

As the Liberal Democrat councillors took the bullet for the coalition on local election day and Conservatives emerged relatively unscathed, it must be asked whether the extent of our defeats was avoidable. To put it another way could we have played the coalition game better – both in terms of presentation and in terms of policy?

The answer is unequivocally yes and for that reason MPs owe an apology to …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged higher education, tuition fees, universities | 60 Comments

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