There has been pressure applied on Nick Clegg to step down as leader of the party following the dismal display in the locals, which was followed by the even worse one in the EP elections. I’ve already written about why I think Nick’s still the man for the job and nothing has changed my mind over the […]
A plea to my fellow Lib Dems: If Clegg steps down, what happens next?
Yesterday’s EP election results were gutting. In fact, I haven’t felt that badly about an election result since 2010, when in the face of poll results telling us we were going to get a hundred-plus seats and “Cleggmania”, we ended up losing five. Even with all of the disappointing democratic results that have followed, including […]
Today’s election results will tell us nothing about 2015
Because I spend a lot of my time convincing people that voting is worthwhile, I should begin by stating why I think voting today is important. Although people tend to treat it as an insignificant, the European Parliament has a lot more power than people tend to consider. Also, while it’s done under the worst […]
A word to Nigel Farage: Libertarianism and Nationalism are mutually exclusive and here’s why
I’m no libertarian. I believe fundamentally in the freedom of the individual, but I do not think the state need always be the bad guy in this equation. For instance, I quite like having an NHS. Furthermore, I feel that having a health service makes me more, not less free as an individual. The fact […]
What would a UKIP of the left actually look like?
Owen Jones, left wing agitator extraordinaire, wrote an article in the Indy a year and a half ago asking why there was no left wing equivalent of UKIP. He didn’t put it in the following words, but I will: why, in the face of the splintering of the party political system, combined with Ed Miliband’s […]
How bad will the 2015 general election be for the Lib Dems?
Within a great deal of the Westminster bubble, the demise of the Liberal Democrats post-2015 is taken as a given. A Labour peer once told me, very matter-of-factly, that Nick Clegg was certain to lose his seat. When I told her that given there has never been a constituency poll that has ever revealed this […]
PMQS Review – May 14th, 2014
Verdict: Cameron wins, by a country mile Review: I really can’t believe that Miliband just asked six questions about the AstraZeneca takeover. I’m stunned. He wanted to avoid the economy – fair enough given the double whammy of the announcement from the OECD about above trend growth and unemployment figures falling, plus the fact that […]
David Cameron Will Probably Need the Lib Dems Again
There’s a new item in the Guardian today about David Cameron calling for an end to coalition in-fighting. There has been a lot of chin wagging about a difference in approach to Free Schools policy and the Prime Minister has finally stepped in. Some in the Tory ranks will say this is unneeded; if the […]
The Tories and Immigration
Over the weekend, both Cameron and Boris said some things in the media around immigration. Cameron sounded like he was trying to talk to two different audiences at once. That’s because he was. He said that Britain should not put up barriers to EU migrants coming here to work, that freedom of movement was important. […]
Labour’s latest misguided attempt to woo disaffected Lib Dems: the Clegg PPB
So most of you will have seen the Labour Party’s party political broadcast last night. If you haven’t, here it is. If you don’t want to waste four minutes of your life, I’ll summarise it for you: it’s four minutes of Clegg bashing with a scintilla of ineffectual painting-the-Tories-as-moronic-toffs crap. Last night, as I watched […]