The Clegg catastrophe

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The Guardian has just posted a long article under this title by Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt on its website.

Though the site no longer has that useful button that told you an article's publication history, I assume it will be in tomorrow's paper.

Here is a flavour of it:

Oakeshott regarded the forthcoming electoral drubbing as the last chance to remove Clegg, whom he had long seen as a political disaster for the party. “It felt like the scene in Far from the Madding Crowd when the sheep charge over the hill together,” Oakeshott recalled. “I thought ‘Oh my God, this is it’. In the face of all available evidence – in council elections, byelections and opinion polls – there was collective self-delusion, and the party was going to press ahead to disaster.”

And:

The party, desperate for votes, then fell into a trap set by the National Union of Students. In November 2009, the NUS persuaded 400 Liberal Democrat candidates, including Clegg, to sign a pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative. To make matters worse, Clegg agreed to be filmed doing so.

And:

Confident that his LBC training had made him an adept media performer, Clegg agreed to take part in two TV debates against Nigel Farage during the campaign. They were not generally perceived to be among Clegg’s most dazzling performances. Ed Davey, the Lib Dem energy and climate change secretary at the time of the debates, was unimpressed. “The disaster over the Farage debate was there was a Liberal Democrat leader who was representing the establishment,” he said.

I suppose we should be grateful that someone thinks our decline and fall worth documenting in such detail. Now for the fightback.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Knuckles Oakeshott blows himself up

Our latest week at Bonkers Hall ends with a bang.

Friday

A bright morning on my gunnery range, which occupies a remote corner of the Estate frequented only by sheep and ramblers. My companion is my old friend and fellow peer Matthew “Knuckles” Oakeshott, who rang earlier in the week asking for personal tuition in the deployment of the Bonkers Patent Exploding Focus (for use in marginal wards).

I give him my usual lecture: “The key thing after you have pulled out the pin is to get it through the letterbox, leg it down the garden path and dive behind the hedge before it goes off.” I then invite him to try it out for himself on a mock-up of a front door that I have had erected for just such occasions.

He pulls out the pin with gusto, but then spends an age fiddling with the letterbox, with the result that the Focus goes off while he is still holding it. Fortunately, he is unharmed (though rather black in the face).

“I am afraid, Knuckles, that This Sort of Thing may not be for you,” I tell him gently. “And I’d stay away from Ukip activists until I have had a good wash.”

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• On the roof of St Asquith's
• Introducing Freddie and Fiona
• No time to worry about Japanese food
• Nick Clegg and Vince Cable at the Bonkers' Arms
• Send for the Well-Behaved Orphans
• Steve Webb visits the Hall

Nick Clegg will be making a mistake if he appoints Danny Alexander as our economic spokesman for 2015

Andrew Grice makes a worrying claim in the Independent:

Nick Clegg is expected to appoint Danny Alexander rather than Vince Cable as the Liberal Democrats' main economic spokesman at next year's general election.

His evidence for this is that Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander have jointly written (or rather, I suspect, put their name to) an article for the Indy setting out the Lib Dems' stance on tax and spending in the 2015-20 parliament.

I do hope that Nick will not appoint Danny as our economic spokesman at the next election. I have not seen a single media or parliamentary performance from Danny that has involved him doing more than shuffle a limited number of prefabricated sentences. It is hard to imagine him doing well in the televised chancellors' debate, for instance.

By contrast, Vince (who performed so capably in that debate in 2010) has the respect of the public and has the priceless ability to take credit for the good things the government has done and give the impression that the bad things are nothing to do with us.

He is also able to command the House of Commons in a way that Danny can only dream of.

This decision would also display a distressing amount of strategic confusion among Team Clegg. We are told - though you would have to work hard to glean this from the Indy article or from Nick's speech on Monday - that the Liberal Democrats are going to fight the next election on a radically different economic from the one George Osborne will put forward.

So why choose the Lib Dem politician who is so closely linked to Osborne in the public mind to put it forward?

At the 2010 election we used to boast that the Lib Dem front bench had four considerable economists, which made a more powerful team than either of the other parties could boast.

Chris Huhne has fallen by the wayside, and David Laws has to an extent too. But if Nick thinks Vince Cable is too old, or he does not trust him or lacks the magnanimity to put the Oakeshott plotting behind him, then let him choose Steve Webb for this role.

My latest column for the Leicester Mercury: Clegg will stay but things must change

Partly written at Stokesay Castle, this opinion piece was due to be published in Wednesday's Leicester Mercury. I cannot find it online, so here is the whole thing.

Time for the Liberal Democrats to reconnect with their voters

Nick Clegg will stay as Liberal Democrat leader. The only credible alternative was a Vince Cable caretaker leadership, but the events of last week have made that unlikely. And even without them, I suspect the opportunity came a couple of years too late for him.

But that does not mean Nick Clegg can carry on as if nothing has happened. The Liberal Democrats' results in the local and European elections were deeply disappointing. We lost 11 of our 12 MEPs and nearly 300 local councillors.

And it is not just this year's results. The loss of councillors has been going on for years. There are councils we used to run, or have hopes of running, where there is no Liberal Democrat left.

What has caused this slump in the party's fortunes? The easy answer is that the Liberal Democrats have become part of the government and done it at a time of great economic difficulty. But there is more to it than that.

Ever since the Coalition was formed, Nick Clegg's advisers have told us we must move from being a party of protest to being a party of government. But that phrase is not so impressive if you look at it closely.

We are not in government because Nick Clegg is a better leader than Charles Kennedy or Paddy Ashdown. We are in government because Labour and the Conservatives finished in a near tie and we held the balance of power as a result.

And being a party of government has been interpreted as meaning that we have to give up on the people who have voted for us in the past.

We know what a traditional Liberal Democrat voter looks like: they care about the environment, they believe in public services and do not want society to become too unequal. What no one knows is what the new Lib Dem voter will look like.

Yes, we deserve credit for cutting taxes for the low paid and for providing sound government so the recovery can take place. But there is no sign that this will be enough to recruit millions of new voters.

Nick Clegg needs to change. After four years in power in an age of austerity we can't expect him to be popular, but we should expect some grudging respect. And I do not sense that from enough voters.

So let's hear Nick talk more about what the Lib Dems want to do in the future and less about what he has stopped the Tories doing.

And let's not be afraid to appeal to our traditional voters. We will not thrive without them.

David Howarth on the changes the Liberal Democrats must make

David Howarth, who was MP for Cambridge between 2005 and 2010 before giving up his parliamentary career to return to academia, is the party's most impressive intellectual. His introduction to Reinventing the State comes nearer than anything I have read to express a coherent Lib Dem philosophy.

You can find it on the Social Liberal Forum website under the title "What is Social Liberalism?" and it is well worth reading.

But what I want to blog about here is something David had written today on Liberal Democrat Voice: What does the evidence tell us about our strategy should be?

The evidence he refers to is the findings of the British Election Study, which was published on 7 May.

As David points out, Lib Dem strategy since we entered the Coalition has been centred on two hopes: that the economy would come right and that voters would give us the credit for this.

What do the findings of the study tell us about the likelihood of this strategy coming good? David writes:

The answers are very unhelpful for our current strategy. Optimistic voters think – by over 5 to 1 – that we are not responsible for the conditions that give rise to their optimism. In contrast, those same optimists think the Conservatives can claim credit for the coming economic improvement by a majority of 4 to 1. 

If one looks at crucial subgroups of voters, such as electors who voted Liberal Democrat in 2010 but have moved to Don’t Know (more than a fifth of our 2010 vote), the situation is nearly as bad: a 4 to 1 majority against giving us credit and a majority of 4 to 3 in favour of giving the Conservatives credit.

The problem here, as David points out, is that the argument that austerity has led to recovery is an inherently Conservative point of view so, not surprisingly, it is the Conservatives who get the credit for it.

David concludes: "As an electoral strategy this looks hopeless, even irrational."

Most of the debate following the Lib Dem debacle in the local and Euro elections has centred on the leadership.

I am not Nick Clegg's greatest fan, but the only conceivable alternative to his leading us at the next general election was a Vince Cable caretaker leadership.

Today's events have made that much less likely, so it the strategy that must change. And David Howarth says the British Election Study has some important lessons for us:

What are the views, for example, of voters who have a high propensity to vote for us but who are not voting for us now? By more than 2 to 1 they favour redistribution of income, by 3 to 1 they are for greater environmental protection and by 8 to 1 they oppose further privatisation of public services.

In short, potential Lib Dem voters believe in the policies the party has traditionally stood for. Over to you, Nick.

Inquiry into briefings against Vince Cable by Nick Clegg's office

On Liberal Democrat Voice Caron Lindsay points us to an article in this morning's Observer:

Nick Clegg has launched an inquiry into claims that aides have been involved in a "dirty tricks" campaign against his leadership rival Vince Cable. 

The Liberal Democrat leader is investigating an allegation that members of the media have been briefed with erroneous information damaging Cable's position in the party. 

The move followed an angry complaint from an MP during a meeting of the parliamentary party at last week's Lib Dem conference in Glasgow. The dispute centres on an economic debate held during an away day for Lib Dem MPs last month. 

A number of reports, including one by the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson, alleged that Cable lost heavily when he proposed at the event that the government should borrow more, at current very low interest rates, to fund more capital spending. One source, reportedly close to Clegg, told the Sun: "The good doctor has been well and truly put back in his box."

I blogged about this "back in his box" comment at the time. What I heard in return amounted to "Well, Matthew Oakeshott started it", which was not particularly encouraging.

Still, I am not sure an inquiry is needed. Can't Nick just tell his people to stop doing it?

There are two other problems with communications from Nick Clegg's office. The Observer quotes one unnamed Lib Dem MP as describing Nick's aides as "the Stasi".

I would not go that far, but the tone of "people close to the Liberal Democrat leader" quoted in the press is often unfortunate. They tend to come over as a little too pleased with themselves, dismissive of the wider party and out of touch with the concerns of those struggling to make it through the economic downturn.

As this is the sort of view those who do not like Nick Clegg tend to take of him, it is precisely the wrong tone for his spokespeople to adopt.

The other problem is identified by Caron:

Our senior sources need to spend their time making sure that we respond quickly enough to major stories like the Go home poster vans or David Miranda’s detention. Two days in each case to get a Liberal Democrat approach out there was about 47 hours too long. That phrase “on message, in volume, over time” applies to them too. 

You aren’t doing anything to create a stronger economy in a fairer society enabling everyone to get on in life while you’re giving a completely inaccurate account of a meeting to a journalist.

I'll never be as on message as her, but Caron is right to identify a problem in basic competence about the leader's press operation.

I suggest Nick tells his people that they are not Damian McBridge and are not in The West Wing but are there to do what is in many ways a mundane job. And if he has to bring people people in from outside his circle to achieve competence, that will be no bad thing.

Matthew Oakeshott is right to criticise the government's Help to Buy scheme

I have always struggled to see the point of the government's 'Help to Buy' scheme. Yes, young people face a huge problem in affording their first home now, but the answer to that is allow prices to fall. Putting more money into the housing market will ultimately force prices up and make matters worse.

So I was pleased to see Matthew Oakeshott making just this point in the Independent today:

Help to Buy could soon become “Help to Boom and Bust”.

Indeed he extends it by questioning the wisdom of years of near-zero interest rates:

UK house prices remain way above their long-term ratio to average earnings, which are flat as a pancake. But artificially low mortgage interest rates are ticking time bombs under house price affordability and will give millions of home buyers serious grief when the Bank of England phases out quantitative easing, as it eventually must.

Note that the person pursuing these harmful interventions is the free-marketeer George Osborne and the person rightly calling for the market to be allowed to operate is the social democrat Lord Oakeshott.

Whatever happened to the Coalition's commitment to localism?

More and more, the Coalition agreement reads like the blueprint for the government Britain needed but did not get.

Take the introduction to the section on communities and local government:

The Government believes that it is time for a fundamental shift of power from Westminster to people. We will promote decentralisation and democratic engagement, and we will end the era of top-down government by giving new powers to local councils, communities, neighbourhoods and individuals.

What we have seen instead is Eric Pickles threatening to strip local councils of their planning powers and hand them to a centralised planning inspectorate.

And we have seen deep cuts in local government funding while many central government budgets are protected.

As Matthew Oakeshott says behind The Times paywall today:

Ring-fenced spending will be half the total in 2015-16. It's nonsense: no self-respecting finance director would run a business with half its overheads untouchable; no Chancellor should either.

The reason for this ring-fencing of central government budgets is the weakness of politicians and political system. To get elected David Cameron had to promise he would not spend less than Labour in many areas: in the hope of getting elected next time Labour is now promising it will not spend more.

One answer would be for local councils to raise more of their own revenue, but there is currently no prospect of any government tackling that question.

So local government continues to suffer and there is money for vanity projects like HS2 while local bus services are cut.

Observer: Nick Clegg refuses to back Jeremy Hunt

Last night I wrote a post saying that the Liberal Democrats should vote with Labour if there is a Commons division on the conduct of Jeremy Hunt.

An article in tomorrow's Observer suggests that this may happen.

Toby Helm and Daniel Boffey write:

Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, has refused to give unequivocal backing to Jeremy Hunt over his handling of the BSkyB takeover controversy as senior Liberal Democrats broke ranks to demand a new investigation into whether the culture secretary has broken the ministerial code. ...

Labour will call a Commons vote on whether Hunt should be investigated, claiming he misled parliament about his role in News Corp's bid for BSkyB and failed to keep his adviser Adam Smith, who quit over his contacts with Murdoch executives, under control. 

A Lib Dem spokesman refused to say whether Clegg would order his MPs to back Cameron. "No decision has been taken," he said.

They go on to name three Liberal Democrat parliamentarians who have publicly criticised Hunt: Adrian Sanders, Lorely Burt and Matthew Oakeshott.

Lord Bonkers vs Lord Oakeshott on winter fuel payments

Lord Bonkers writes exclusively for Liberal England:

I fear our own Lord Oakeshott has made something of a fool of himself on the Daily Mail's electric website. 

He is quoted there as saying: 

'Would I be right in guessing that you, at the age of 61, are like me one of the 500,000 top rate taxpayers who benefit from this farcical tax-free bung,' he asked Lord Freud at question time.

"'Why can't winter fuel payments at least be taxed like the old age pension. That would raise £220 million a year to help people in real need in our country?'

And: 

Lord Oakeshott added: 'It is farcical to be spraying out winter fuel payment cheques all around the Mediterranean. 

"'The toast as they sip their sangrias in the sun at the Malaga golf club must be David Cameron and George Osborne.' 

This is clearly nonsense and I hope we shall hear no more of it from Lord Oakeshott - or any other Liberal Democrat.

Bonkers

Hotel Splendide, Antibes

Six of the Best 136

Birkdale Focus reveals that the young Matthew Oakeshott received the approval of Jo Grimond for his research into worker co-operatives - and hopes that the mature version will lead a revival of interest in the idea among Liberal Democrats.

What did Peter Mandelson think of Ed Miliband's victory in the Labour leadership election? LabourList will tell you: "It was a photo finish [and] I felt terrible for David. I felt even more worried for the party."

Peter Black AM keeps us up to date with Larry's progress at 10 Downing Street: "Cats do like to present their latest kill to their human hosts as presents. Do not be surprised at reports of dismembered rats being left in the Prime Minister's study or under the Cabinet Table."

Secularism is vital to building a stable world, argues Edmund Standing at Harry's Place.

The newly published complete works of Gerrard Winstanley, leader of the 17th century Diggers, is reviewed by Ariel Hessayon on Reviews in History: "At last Winstanley, the ‘foremost radical of the English Revolution’, who stands shoulder to shoulder with John Donne, Francis Bacon, John Milton, Andrew Marvell and John Bunyan as one of the ‘finest writers’ of a ‘glorious age of English non-fictional prose’ ... has an indispensable scholarly edition of his writings befitting both his undoubted literary talents and profound insights."

Chameleon at Redemption Blues pays tribute to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - "one of the icons of childhood Saturday evenings" - and reflects on her relations with make authority figures in general.

Six of the Best 129

Caron's Musings offers some calm reflection upon the enforced resignation of Matthew Oakeshott... and finds she is "probably even more livid than I was last night".

Characteristically, David Boyle gets to the heart of the matter on The Real Blog: "The real problem is this. It isn’t that banks are somehow unwilling to lend money to small businesses; it is that they are no longer set up to do so. They have no local managers empowered to take decisions. They have risk software that rules out most deals. They have such onerous conditions and charges that many SMEs shun them altogether."

The other big debate of the day has been the letter, published in The Times, from 17 Lib Dem council leaders and many other councillors saying that the government is cutting spending too fast. Gareth Epps explains why he would have signed it too.

Max Atkinson suggests that Oxford and Cambridge should weight their admissions procedures in favour of pupils from the state sector.

Chelsea fans are aware that it is many years since a player has gone from their youth team to a regular first-team place. TheChels.net looks at the prospects for the club's latest young hope, Josh McEachran.

Jones the Builder considers the architecture of the city where I work: "Leicester's heyday was the 1870s to the 1930s and this is very evident from the extraordinary flowering of the architecture of these years. With the outstanding exception of Stirling's Engineering Building at the University - one of the most thrilling structures in Britain - the architecture of post war Leicester has been a disappointment."

Matthew Oakeshott is right, Nick Clegg is wrong

Matthew Oakeshott has stood down this evening as a Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman in the House of Lords. This follows his robust comments on George Osborne's deal on lending and bonuses with the banks.

The Daily Mail quotes Matthew as saying:

'If this is robust action on bank bonuses, my name's Bob Diamond and I'm going to claim my £9 million bonus next week."

And:

"I think what the country will be asking, and Liberal Democrats will be asking is 'will Bob Diamond get a bonus of £9m next week, yes or no, is it acceptable for Government, yes or no?' and particularly, on these state banks we bailed out."

And:

"You keep fighting. Coalition is new, we've done the best we can to get the best deal we can. I don't think it's a good deal."

The BBC report says that Matthew left "by mutual consent", but it is hard to see why he would have gone voluntarily. The timing of this decision (6.45 p.m. this evening) gives rise to suspicion that it was designed, at least in part, to save Danny Alexander embarrassment when he appeared on Channel 4 News.

That report also quotes a party spokesman as saying:

Both Lord Oakeshott and the party leadership agreed he could not speak for the party when he did not support the party's policy.

But that is nonsense. How can the finer details of a deal thrashed out between a Conservative chancellor and the banks be Liberal Democrat policy?

I accept the case for collective responsibility, but Matthew Oakeshott is not a minister. Indeed, one of the weaknesses of the coalition agreement was that the Liberal Democrats were given so few front-bench positions in the upper house.

And what Matthew said is simply true. The country and Liberal Democrats will be asking why the head of a bank that had to be bailed out by the taxpayer is receiving a £9m bonus.

I am dismayed at the lack of political judgement here. Liberal Democrat members, by endorsing and then continuing to live with the coalition deal, have shown Nick Clegg great loyalty. We must be allowed to let off steam sometimes and to have figures like Matthew Oakeshott who are licensed to do it for us. (Another worrying factor here is that Matthew is widely seen as being Vince Cable's representative on Earth.)

And does Nick really think that the Liberal Democrats' core vote at the next election will be people who think we should not be too hard on the bankers?

Matthew Oakeshott wins Quote of the Day

The Observer has a story today saying that Henry Angest, one of the Conservatives' biggest financial backers is:

a publicity-shy Swiss-born banker who funds a network of obscure eurosceptic groups, including one run by the leader of the UK Independence Party.

Commenting on this, and winning our award, Lord Oakeshott says:

"David Cameron must stop taking donations in dark glasses."

No wonder Lord Bonkers calls him "Knuckles" Oakeshott.