Blog articles tagged with Nick Clegg

Lords reform: three tests for three party leaders

by Mark Pack / 02 Jun 2011 14:09

The fate of the current 789 members of the House of Lords may depend on the future course of the Government’s proposals for Lords reform, but so too may the fate of the three main party leaders.

For each of them Lords reform offers both an opportunity and a threat. For David Cameron the opportunity is to push on with his mission to change the Conservative Party, modernising it in a continuing

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Make Lords fight for the vote

by Shane Greer / 01 Jun 2011 16:35

The draft House of Lords reform bill would have it that elected individuals elected to the Lords would only be eligible to serve a single 15 year term. There’s word for that: idiocy.

If we’re going to have an elected second chamber, and frankly that is all but an inevitability in the long term, then why on earth create a term of office that fails to respond adequately to shifts in public mood?

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Slight hints of a Lib Dem recovery

by Caroline Crampton / 01 Jun 2011 12:06

The headline from the ComRes/Independent poll that came out last night was that Labour has lost its lead over the Tories for the first time since October 2010 – they are now level on 37 points.

Good result for the Tories, especially just after a round of local elections were just a few months ago they were bracing themselves for a thrashing. Support for Labour didn’t fall to produce this result. It was

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Coalition-friendly Conservatives like Clarke must hold strong

by Charlotte Henry / 19 May 2011 15:00

I want to start by saying I am a big Ken Clarke fan. Frequently calm, sensible and liberal, I was really pleased by his appointment as Justice Secretary, and his performance in the first year of the coalition government. He led a move away from Michael Howard’s outdated and ineffective ‘prison works’ mantra, and had started to bring humanity to the justice system

On Wednesday Clarke obviously got himself into a bit

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Can Tim Farron ride to his party's rescue?

by Laurence Durnan / 19 May 2011 12:22

If you feel sorry for Nick Clegg, spare a thought for his poor rivals. With personal poll ratings plumbing uncharted depths for a Liberal Democrat leader, one might assume ambitious Padawans would emerge, glistening with promise, into the political limelight. Not so much.

Widely tipped as a future leader of his party, David Laws looked to be the surprise star of the coalition before he was forced to resign after just 17

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Clegg set up to fail on House of Lords reform

by Caroline Crampton / 17 May 2011 11:53

Lords reform stumped New Labour in 1997 when they had a whopping majority. With that kind of incident in the recent past, you’d think Nick Clegg would know he was about to start fighting a battle that he’d already lost.

It has been suggested that this is Clegg’s consolation prize for his failure in the AV referendum. If that’s the case, it’s not much of a prize. All the signs suggest that he’s

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A week of parliamentary nonsense

by Martin Shapland / 13 May 2011 10:09

Is it just me, or have we had a strange week?

The referendum and local elections has tipped politics upside down and no-one’s quite found their feet just yet.

David Willetts is still standing on his head after suffering a frontal lobotomy on one of his two brains. The Tory university minister decided to follow up fantastic results on 5 May by floating the idea that rich people could buy their

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'England does not love coalitions'

by Samantha Tomaszczyk / 12 May 2011 14:52

One year on, and the Blitzkreig is over. Nick Boles MP, Institute for Government (IfG) fellow, argues if the coalition did nothing more than achieve the passage of legislation currently moving through parliament, it would have a very fair claim to being one of the most radical governments of the post-war period.

For this reason Boles and fellow panellist Jim Wallace ‘agree with Nick’ - the two parties have demonstrated coalitions can work.

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The end of Laws

by Shane Greer / 12 May 2011 13:12

The Tories love David Laws. In fact, you’ll find many a Conservative Party member who rates him more highly than many on the Conservative front bench. Nevertheless, I predict some silent delight in the blue corner at the news that Laws is to be suspended over his expenses claims.

Although Laws is a capable minister in Tory eyes, he remains at the end of the day a Lib Dem; a strong one. To

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Nick Clegg: from great reformer to Whitehall suit

by Chris McCarthy / 12 May 2011 11:58

After promises of the “biggest shake up of our democracy since 1832” took an early blow at last week’s AV referendum, Nick Clegg gave evidence this morning to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee on government plans for what was next on the reform agenda.

The embattled deputy prime minister was resolute in his attitude that last week’s result “does not diminish the need for reform.” Some mechanism for recall, the need

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The Lords reform games begin

by Harry Cole / 12 May 2011 08:51

There was something that struck me as rather odd about Nick Clegg yesterday. No, it wasn’t the fact that his yellow tie matched the yellow background at his “I promise I’m not a Tory” speech at the National Liberal Club, though that was hilarious. No, it was the fact that he turned a blind eye while Liberal Democrat peers rebelled and abstained in the crucial vote against the coalition on elected police chiefs in

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