The Christmas break has been punctuated by a couple of big stories. At the end of last year we had the Telegraph’s sting of a number of Lib Dem MPs, including Vince Cable. We also saw a big political battle over the hike in VAT to 20% on 1 January.
Other stories have rumbled on over the holidays, with Conservative MPs increasingly uneasy with their leader’s approach to the Lib Dems and the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election. Angus Reid conducted an interesting poll showing that the Coalition would struggle if if fought as one in 2015 because Lib Dem voters would desert it. Ed Miliband has changed up his press team and looks to be making more of an impact, although there is a long way for him to go.
The NotW hacking scandal came back again to ruin Andy Coulson’s New Year, and the Coalition has got itself in a bit of a mess trying to decide what to do with Control Orders. Half of Westminster decamped this week to Oldham for the by-election, which is expected to return the Labour candidate, Debbie Abrahams, and David Chaytor became the first MP to be sentenced for his expenses claims. He was given 18 months in prison.
YouGov Polling 06-01-11:
Conservative 39%
Labour 43%
Lib Dem 7%
Government Approval: -20%
The Telegraph's sting this week has upset Vince Cable. Speaking to his favourite local paper, the Richmond and Twickenham Times, Cable claimed that the sting had caused 'great damage' to the relationship between MPs and constituents.
This response is really pathetic. First, he's trying to deflect attention away from what he has said and onto the means which the journalists used to obtain it. Secondly, there will be no damage to the relationship between MPs and their constituents. To realise this you only have to look at what has been published: it's all headline stuff about national politics. The Telegraph went looking for concrete evidence that senior Lib Dem MPs were proclaiming their loyalty in public and were then openly critical behind closed doors. They found it, not because they were duplicitous, but because some Lib Dems ARE saying one thing in public and another in private.
The only 'great damage' done is to an MP's ability to fob off constituents by saying that really he opposes everything nasty that his Government has done but that he had to do it or he'd get sacked.
And really there is very little in these tapes that should surprise anyone.
Jeremy Browne called the Conservative's EU allies 'quite nutty' and 'an embarrassment'. Well, they sort of are aren't they? Cameron's decision to ditch the mainstream right-of-centre EU block in favour of the smaller ECR group, which includes some pretty controversial individuals, has surely been one of the strangest decisions he's made as Tory leader. It's hardly surprising that the Lib Dem's leading foreign policy man should be critical.
He also said that the Lib Dems were a softening influence on the Tories' Europe policy, and that the EU was relieved that they were tempering the anti-EU side of the Conservatives. Again, this is hardly news. It's very obvious to anyone who looks at the UK's foreign policy for more than five seconds. The same applies to the comments he made which claimed that the Tories' immigration policy was driven by 'uncharitable' instincts. This is pretty much what the Lib Dems and Labour said about the Tories before the election.
Paul Burstow saying that he didn't want voters to start trusting David Cameron, and that Cameron hasn't suddenly become a 'cuddly Liberal'.
David Heath claiming that George Osborne 'gets up your nose' and that he didn't understand what it was like to be poor. (I'd never heard this argument before.)
Vince Cable bragging that he thought he was important enough to bring down the coalition with his 'nuclear option' of resigning.
Michael Moore saying that he didn't like the plans to scrap Child Benefits to some families and that he doesn't like Liam Fox.
Norman Baker saying that there were some Tories he liked and some he didn't, the former including Ken Clarke and the latter category including George Osborne.
Ed Davey claiming that changes to Housing Benefit could be problematic.
Steve Webb stating that the Lib Dems needed to assert their identity more within the coalition. (Shocking.)
and Andrew Sturnell claiming that he didn't know if Cameron was 'sincere', and saying he was a 'very skilled' political operator.
The only seriously interesting revelation was of just how idiotic Cable could be. Not just in his naive claim that he could bring down the Government but also by saying that he was trying to 'wage war' against Murdoch, and that in doing so he might actually seek to bring his office into disrepute by not being objective. Now it's pretty common for left-wingers to dislike Murdoch, but to risk your professional career in order to prevent a takeover takes things to another level.
As a final point, it was very revealing to see the Telegraph shamefully fail to report Cable's comments about Murdoch. The Telegraph stands to gain from any curbs on Murdoch's empire and so didn't report what Cable said. Instead, some brave journalist leaked it to Robert Peston at the BBC and it was left to that organisation - one which, like the Telegraph, competes against Murdoch - to tell the truth. The BBC is to be highly commended for its reporting and the Telegraph should be ashamed.
Apparently, Vince Cable's car crash of a ministerial career is one of the Telegraph's top three 'celebrity news' stories today.
The paper left the sage of Twickenham out of its front-page politics section and gave him a berth in its celebrity news section instead - which apparently covers everything 'from the Hollywood homes of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton to the chic nightclubs visited by Kate Middleton and Prince William and the holiday beaches favoured by the Beckhams and the Sarkozys.'
I'm not sure that people take Vince Cable seriously. His forthcoming performance on Strictly Come Dancing - the subject of this 'celebrity' article - is coming at a pretty bad time. He could really do with keeping his head down for a while after making a total idiot of himself earlier in the week. It's sort of all his own fault though really, so I've got little sympathy.
What I will say is that while it was a controversial move to keep Cable in the Government and not to have forced him to resign - as Cameron and Clegg would have done to almost anyone else - keeping him inside the tent does mean that he can't start stirring the pot on the backbenches. And that has to be better for the long-term health of the coalition.
Anyway, it's sad about Ryan and Scarlett, isn't it guys?
What is Ed Miliband doing? His performance on Wednesday was awful. I know people sometimes have bad days, but frankly he'd lost the argument before he even set foot in the chamber.
Here's a quick and by no means comprehensive list of the things I would have considered talking about at PMQs:
The ill-advised comments of Howard Flight, which had made the Tories seem out of touch and callous. The continuing concerns about the way the NHS is being restructured. The Lib Dems were/are in disarray over whether to vote for, against or abstain over tuition fees - even Vince Cable, who is in charge of the bill, hadn't then decided what too do. There had been more protests over the fee increases. Wikileaks had just released documents suggesting the Governor of the Bank of England thought Cameron and Osborne weren't up to the job. The plan for elected Police Commissioners looks to undermine the impartiality of the police force.
So what does he ask about? The OBR report. Which said that growth this year will be better than expected and that 160,000 fewer jobs than expected will be lost through public sector cuts.
So he got torn to shreds. He questions had no direction. He didn't build momentum. Cameron couldn't believe his luck, it's hard to see how Ed Miliband could have made it any easier for him. And to top it all, he used a tired line about Thatcher which Cameron had obviously anticipated and deployed the headline-grabbing retort: 'I'd rather be a child of Thatcher than a son of Brown!'
Two comments have caused much consternation this weekend. The first was from Enterprise Tsar Lord Young on Thursday evening, and led to his resignation on Friday afternoon. The second was from Vince Cable on Sunday morning. Both showed a combination of political naivety and wilful provocation.
It has been pointed out by many (see here and here for starters) that Lord Young's comments that people have 'never had it so good' during this 'so-called recession' contained an element of truth. Low interest rates are good news if you've got a mortgage and still have your job. But that doesn't mean he was right to say it.
Lord Young was probably fed up with generalised comments about the recession and how it was affecting people. So he sought to tell it as he saw it. But in doing so he made a sweeping, generalised comment of his own which undermined the government's narrative that its deficit reduction plan - and the job losses that will accompany it - is the only responsible way to deal with the effects of the recession. They also play in to people's ill-founded yet genuine concerns that the Tory party is the party of the rich, and that it doesn't care - or won't even notice - if they suffer. Any comment that undermines the government, however economically accurate it may be, is a foolish comment to make. It is right that he has resigned.
Vince Cable has also made comments that are totally accurate and completely foolish. Speaking to the BBC's Politics Show, he said that, on tuition fees, the Lib Dems 'didn't break a promise. We made a commitment in our manifesto, we didn't win the election. We then entered into a coalition agreement, and it's the coalition agreement that's binding upon us and which I'm trying to honour.' Spot on; but what on earth is he thinking?
The Lib Dems need the debate about tuition fees to go away. As quickly as possible. It is turning voters against them. So why would one of the most senior Lib Dems come out and deliberately provoke their (very noisy) opponents on this issue? Last week the CCHQ building was trashed by part of a 50,000 strong demonstration against this legislation. All he's done is start another round of media interest in the subject. NUS President Aaron Porter is back on the airwaves, calling the comments 'insulting'. Cable gains nothing from this. Neither does his party - in fact it just highlights the same 'broken promises' that Clegg talked about (see below) before the election. Sometimes, even if you know you're right about something, you should just bite your tongue and shut up about it.
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