It’s no secret that things haven’t been great for the trade union movement in recent years, but sometimes it’s easy to forget quite how bad things are until you realise that so many apparently intelligent people in public life don’t even have the faintest idea of what they are or how they function. This was [...]
This might sound a bit strange, but I’m prepared to bet that Jeremy Hunt really wishes Vince Cable had kept his mouth shut when he met those undercover Telegraph reporters. It’s because of that little indiscretion, of course, that Hunt has the responsibility for deciding whether Murdoch can acquire a controlling stake in BSkyB, and [...]
The Liberal Democrats are set to merge with the Conservatives before the next general election. A lasting alliance between the two coalition partners has been the topic of some speculation since the Oldham by-election campaign kicked off and polls indicated the Lib Dems could barely hold onto second prize in a beauty contest with Jabba [...]
For all the Government’s many faults, one thing a lot of us could comfort ourselves with as the Coalition really got going was that at least they’d be better than Labour had been on civil liberties. They might be dead set on hacking chunks out of the State safety net for the poorest and most [...]
There have been growing mutterings recently about the prospect of the Coalition becoming an outright merger between the Tories and Lib Dems sometime between now and the next general election. I don’t know how likely it is – the prospect of strong resistance from rightwing Tories who take the same view as Fraser Nelson in [...]
If you watch senior Lib Dems being interviewed about the education reforms – and in particular about the now-notorious pledge pretty much all of them made to vote against tuition fee increases – there’s a particularly irritating rebuttal which they all keep coming out with: basically, they’re suggesting that people attacking them for their hypocrisy [...]
Early this morning 80 students from Cambridge University shut down the administrative heart of the elite University. Julian Huppert, Lib Dem MP for Cambridge, has responded: “But I cannot condone any action by students which results in them taking over property or breaking the law. I would appeal to these students to leave the university [...]
Last night Nick Clegg gave the annual Hugo Young lecture at the Guardian offices, and in doing so set out his vision of a just society. In his speech – a version of which was published on Comment is Free – he sought to present the Liberal Democrats as the “new progressives”, in contrast to [...]
No one expected Nick Clegg to bring his long (but apparently flimsily) held desire to abolish tuition fees into the coalition agreement. Even before the election, he had already distanced himself from the policy. “I want to get rid of the tuition fees system too – it’s just a question of when,” Clegg told me [...]
Vince Cable yesterday reiterated the government’s message that the deficit can only be reduced by drastic cuts in spending – except when it comes to big shiny exciting stuff that makes other stuff go boom. ‘It’s just like I said in June’ the Business Secretary explained. ‘We’ve moved on from the era of subsidies, and [...]
