Does Magpie Miliband think we're goldfish?

I watched Ed Miliband's speech yesterday and, to give him his due, it's one of the best speeches I'd heard him deliver. He was much more confident and positive than he has been in the past.

His delivery improved and some of his ideas sat quite comfortably with me - I certainly didn't sit through the speech feeling nauseous like I inevitably will when Cameron makes his speech next week.

How could you possibly argue against us all being one nation? Those words, of course, have  a particular resonance up here where we face a referendum which could split us in to two nations within the next 800 days or so. I'm not, by the way, impressed with Labour making out at their conference yesterday that they were the only ones who mattered in the fight against independence.

You don't have to dig very far, though, to see the flaws. There's not much in the way of concrete policy. It's a candy floss speech that nobody could really object to.There are a few specifics that I take issue with, though. Miliband has a nerve if he thinks that we have forgotten what the last Labour Government did.

He slammed the cutting of the top tax rate and had a good go at Nick Clegg for agreeing to it:

How many of his other Cabinet colleagues have cheques in the post from the millionaire’s tax cut? And how can he justify this unfairness in Britain 2012.

So what did Nick Clegg have to say about this very issue last week at our Conference:

At the last budget, we made two big announcements: that we were spending three thousand million pounds increasing the tax-free allowance, and just fifty million pounds reducing the top rate of tax while recouping five times that amount in additional taxes on the wealthiest. I insisted on the first. I conceded the second. But I stand by the package as a whole. Why? Because as liberals, we want to see the tax on work reduced, the tax on unearned wealth increased, and the system as a whole tilted in favour of those on low and middle incomes. The budget delivered all three.

But let me make one thing clear: Now that we have brought the top rate of tax down to 45p - a level, let's not forget, that is still higher than throughout Labour's 13 years in office - there can be no question of reducing it further in this Parliament. All future cuts in personal taxation must pass one clear test: do they help people on low and middle incomes get by and get on? It's as simple as that.

Who has been making the running on wealth taxes these last few weeks? Nick Clegg, not Ed Miliband.

Ed Miliband forgets that the Coalition put up Capital Gains Tax by 10% at the insistence of the Liberal Democrats. Under Labour, the wealthiest only paid 18%, a situation that brought about that example Nick used of a zillionaire banker paying a lower marginal rate of tax than his cleaner on the minimum wage. That's the sort of tax system the Government of which Ed Miliband was a member presided over.

And, ok, we had to agree to a drop in the 45p rate, but what we got back was more in taxation on the wealthy and more enforcement work on them. But look what we got for it - by next April, each low income house will have had their tax bill cut by £445 a year by the Liberal Democrats.

And look at what this means for someone on the minimum wage, who handed more than a grand to Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown every year when they were in power.

And the Liberal Democrats intend to take that down to zero in the next Parliament.It's good to see that Manchester residents and Labour Conference delegates are seeing this message on a poster van at the Labour Conference as Kat Dadswell tweeted earlier.

It's a far cry from the 10p tax debacle under Labour.

Now, let's look at what Ed said about the gap between rich and poor.

Those with the broadest shoulders will always bear the greatest burden. I would never cut taxes for millionaires and raise them on ordinary families. That is wrong, that is not being One Nation. And here is the other thing, I will never accept an economy where the gap between rich and poor just grows wider and wider. In One Nation, in my faith, inequality matters. It matters to our country.

If that broadest shoulders remark looks familiar, well, Nick Clegg says it all the time. In fact, almost a year ago, the Daily Fail reported on his plans for a "tax raid on the super rich."

The next situation actually made me burst out laughing.

We need a One Nation economy and the first big mission of the next Labour government is to sort out our banks. Sort them out once and for all. Not just to prevent another crisis but to do what hasn’t been done in decades. Necessary to enable us to pay our way in the world. We need banks that serve the country not a country that serves its banks.

Ok, these are the people who for 13 years pretty much let the banks do what they like. They knighted Fred Goodwin. It's this coalition, directed by Vince Cable, who will sort them out.

Mark Pack pointed out yesterday how Magpie Miliband claimed four new big ideas which are already being done by the Liberal Democrats in Government. They are: more house building, a business bank, more apprenticeships (up 60% since Labour's last year) and separating retail and investment banking.

It is just two and a half years since Labour were last in power. Ed Miliband think we will have forgotten how they crashed the economy, how they taxed the poorest more and the wealthy less than the Liberal Democrats have assured in the Coalition. We're elephants, Ed, not goldfish. We won't forget.

.

ComRes poll boost for Lib Dems - but the rest are as bad as each other

I'm certainly not going to get excited about a brief 3% increase in our poll rating, even if 15% is nearer where we have been in mid term even in opposition in previous parliaments. The ComRes poll in the Independent published today, though, doesn't make happy reading for either Conservative or Labour leaders.

Ok, so only 22% of people trust Cameron and Osborne on the economy, but they don't see Balls and Miliband as the answer to their prayers either, with only 2% more trusting the Labour team. If they can't get any traction from the luxury of opposition, they're not doing at all well. Maybe people remember only too well that they didn't fix the roof when the sun was shining and didn't save for a rainy day.

What can the Liberal Democrats extrapolate from this poll? Well, it was taken after five days of coverage in which we were talking about how we made the tax system fairer. So we need to talk more and more about that. Given by the reaction from Labour folk on my Facebook when I put up a picture showing how Liberal Democrats had cut taxes for people on the minimum wage, they know fine we're right.

The Government has also put up the Minimum Wage by 11p per hour as of yesterday - although there's further to go on that issue as I'm not impressed that the rates for young people have firstly not gone up and secondly are so much lower than for over 21s. The different rate for 18-21 year olds is particularly iniquitous. Why should these adults be paid less than other adults? However, the increase in the adult rate is good.

But, anyway, fairer tax is where it's at. Labour's record is pretty shambolic. The top rate of income tax was less than it is now for all but 36 days of the 13 years Labour were in office and we have increased the Capital Gains Tax on the wealthiest and are looking to tax wealth more. Danny Alexander has directed more resources into scrutinising the tax affairs of the richest so they pay the tax that they are due.

If you agree with this approach, of cutting taxes for the poorest and raising them for the wealthiest to make the tax system fairer, please sign up here to the Fairer Tax campaign.

Nick Clegg talked about us getting out on the doorsteps to deliver 3 million leaflets on the Fairer Tax campaign by Christmas. This ComRes poll shows us that this would be a very good use of our time. Let's wear out some shoe leather. 

There's a surprise: reactionary, conservative parties scupper Lords Reform

Boy, was I annoyed with Nick Clegg yesterday. One thing about being on holiday in this country is that you can't escape news. Well, I could switch my phone off but it just doesn't work like that. So, I was not chuffed that he chose the first proper day of my holiday to announce the end of Lords reform. My half pint of pear cider in the Magners Pasture was rudely interrupted by details of his statement. At least there were two other Liberal Democrats we'd met by chance to discuss it with.

Clegg faced a really rotten situation. David Cameron couldn't persuade his coalition-hating right wing backbenchers to support the Lords reform that they'd all been elected on and had supported going in to the Coalition Agreement. What was he to do? In the event, he is the only leader to emerge from this with integrity and dignity.

There was no way that he could simply let it pass. His decisive action yesterday to scupper a pet project of the Conservatives, the boundary changes, is entirely appropriate. Cameron really wanted those boundary changes to happen, particularly as they would benefit the Conservatives disproportionately. Nick Clegg could not afford to just sit there and take a clear breach of the Coalition Agreement without any consequences. If they'd got away with it once, we'd have risked total impotence within the Coalition and that could not happen.

Now, I know I said the other day that I wasn't too happy with the idea of using the boundary review to punish the Tories. I do however, understand where Nick is coming from. We have to wrap this up and move on. While I think people would expect there to be consequences - you can't break an Agreement and expect to get away with  it scot free - they don't want to see protracted public argument that would destabilise the Government. One clear, rational statement, presented in reasonable terms, was the right thing to do.

There is one aspect, though, of voting down the Boundary Review which really annoys me. Nadine Dorries, whose seat would have disappeared if they'd gone ahead, now gets a massive reward for bad behaviour.

It seems very clear to me that neither Cameron nor Miliband had the slightest inclination to ensure Lords Reform, which they both apparently support, actually happened. Nick Clegg was willing to negotiate with them. He offered Cameron the option of changing the legislation to include a referendum before Lords elections took place, but the Prime Minister wasn't willing to let the people have their say. He asked Ed Miliband how many days of Parliamentary debate he wanted to see and Miliband wouldn't even give him the courtesy of a reply.

The reality of the situation was that Nick was faced with a weak Prime Minister who couldn't control his own backbenchers and an unprincipled leader of the Opposition who was not prepared to enter into genuine negotiations. Nick acted decisively, rationally and intelligently.

I'm glad that he had some choice words of criticism for the Conservatives in his statement:

My party has held to that contract even when it meant voting for things that we found difficult. 
The Liberal Democrats are proving ourselves to be a mature and competent party of Government...
And I am proud that we have met our obligations.

But the Conservative party is not honouring the commitment to Lords reform...
And, as a result, part of our contract has now been broken.

Clearly I cannot permit a situation where Conservative rebels can pick and choose the parts of the contract they like...
While Liberal Democrat MPs are bound to the entire agreement. 
Coalition works on mutual respect; it is a reciprocal arrangement, a two way street.  

I have told the Prime Minister that when Parliament votes on boundary changes for the 2015 election Liberal Democrats in Parliament will oppose them.
When part of a contract is broken, it is normal to amend that contract...
In order then to move on. 

Lords reform and boundaries are two, separate parliamentary bills…
But they are both part of a package of overall political reform.
Delivering one but not the other would create an imbalance – not just in the Coalition Agreement, but also in our political system. 
Lords reform leads to a smaller, more legitimate House of Lords.
Boundary changes lead to a smaller House of Commons, by cutting the number of MPs. 
If you cut the number of MPs without enhancing the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Lords...
All you have done is weaken parliament as a whole…
Strengthen the executive…
And its overmighty government that wins.    

The Conservatives already know we're no pushover - we've forced Osborne to raise benefits in line with inflation when he didn't want to, we've insisted on more action on the environment and renewable energy than the Tories feel comfortable with. They know that we're a force to be reckoned with within the Government. That message doesn't really get across as well as it could to the general public. The challenge for Nick and his team is to ensure that it does, while balancing that with the need for the Government to look professional and competent. I'm encouraged by the way they did that yesterday.

Labour put down amendment which would have given Tories tax cut for richest they wanted - and which Lib Dems stopped

I realise that Parliamentary shenanigans and point scoring isn't everybody's cup of tea, but it's worth pointing out that Labour today squandered a relatively good position going into the first PMQs of the new Parliamentary term. Ed Miliband had an open goal ahead of him given controversy over the pensioners' tax allowance,  "pasty tax" and charity tax relief yet he and his strategists still managed to misunderstand parliamentary procedure to a ludicrous extent. He's just lucky that more excitable members of the Tory benches didn't take their chance to have some fun. 

Miliband looked not to Labour big hitters of the past for inspiration, but to a tv political satire. He could have pulled words from Barbara Castle or Michael Foot or Tony Blair. Instead, he pulled them from foul mouthed spin doctor Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It, describing the Government's recent performance as an omnishambles. It's not been the best, for sure, but Labour have singularly failed to capitalise on the Coalition's woes.

Since the Budget, Labour have squealed long and loud about how wicked the Coalition is, particularly on cutting the 50p tax rate to 45p. They had the chance to vote against it in March, indeed Ed Balls promised they would, but, as Mark Pack's handy infographic shows, not one of them did. 

They had another go today, but they put in an amendment which, if it had passed, would have set the top rate of tax at 40p. This, bizarrely, would have been exactly what the Tories wanted all along, and which Liberal Democrat ministers stopped. In fact, Osborne only got to cut the rate to 45p because Liberal Democrats insisted  taxes were raised on the wealthy which would bring in 5 times the saving.

Let me explain. The Finance Bill clauses put forward by the Government were as follows:

Clause 1 – Income tax
Charge for 2012-13 and rates for 2012-13 and subsequent tax years
(1) Income tax is charged for the tax year 2012-13, and for that tax year.
(a) the basic rate is 20%,
(b) the higher rate is 40%, and
(c) the additional rate is 50%.

 (2) For the tax year 2013-14.
(a) the basic rate is 20%,
(b) the higher rate is 40%, and
(c) the additional rate is 45%.

The Labour amendment was to delete 2(c) which, if passed, would have left us with no additional rate. What they should have done was to put in an amendment deleting Paragraph 2 in its entirely meaning the tax rates for 2013-14 would have had to be discussed at a later date.

The Government won the vote comfortably, by 67 votes, but what would have happened if a few of our more mercurial right wing Tory friends had decided to vote with Labour to abolish the 45p rate?  The Labour front bench would have been drowning in egg yolk.

That wasn't Labour's only mistake of the day. Their promised amendment on tax reliefs didn't even make it into the debate.

If they can't get the basic parliamentary procedure right in opposition, what chance have they in Government? They've been calling the Government incompetent, but this display hardly inspires confidence.

The Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Treasury Committee, Stephen Williams, had this to say about the day's events:

“It is worrying that the two Eds don’t understand the fundamental principles of our tax system, despite having worked in the Treasury for many years as Gordon Brown’s backroom boys. 

“It took them 13 years to introduce a 50p rate and then they only did so shortly before a general election. Now that the local elections are coming up, suddenly they care about it again and put down ill-thought through amendments that remove the top rate altogether.

 “Labour’s biggest tax change was to remove the 10p tax rate hitting people on low and middle incomes while Liberal Democrats are giving nearly 25m basic-rate tax payers an Income Tax cut and have lifted more than a million people out of paying Income Tax altogether. At the same time, we’re making the rich pay their fair share by cracking down on loopholes and excessive tax relief.

PMQs - Tragedy, Comedy and the Continuing Saga of the Family Bone

I'm not used to learning anything from the weekly pantomime that is Prime Minister's Questions. Sadly, though yesterday's session brought  me the news of the death of Marie Colvin, the veteran Sunday Times reporter whose often heartbreaking reports from war zones I've been reading most of my adult life. Both David Cameron and Ed Miliband paid tribute to her work, the latter calling her brave, tireless and an inspiration to women in her profession. More tragedy followed as Sajid Javid, the MP for Bromsgrove, asked the PM to join in with sympathy for those killed and injured in the bus crash involving children and staff from Alvechurch School.

It amazes me how seamlessly the Prime Minister, feeding off the querulous atmosphere in the Chamber, can go from talking about a very tragic situation to throwing verbal brickbats at the Opposition and in particular its leader.

Having said that, he seemed to go a bit easy on Ed Miliband yesterday. He didn't take the obvious temptation to throw in a quote from Alex Hilton's blistering criticism of the Labour leader with every answer, merely choosing to end their exchange with the stinging:

“You are not articulating a vision or a destination, you’re not clearly identifying a course and no-one’s following you…My problem is that you are not a leader.”

This was after one of Ed Miliband's better performances. He'd led on the NHS, castigating the PM's health summit for including few health workers and following up with increasingly specific questions on the commissioning of care, citing HIV services at Homerton Hospital as an example. This didn't suit Cameron's agenda, which was to talk about people who'd not published Risk Registers in the past. He had one A Burnham, Labour's health secretary in mind.

John Bercow intervened several times during their exchange. He implored MPs to strive to be "tranquil and statesmanlike." At noon on a Wednesday? A tad ambitious for them, so his later remarks seemed to be obsessed with pulling up MPs for not referring to each other in the third person. Which of these offends you more - hearing someone being addressed as "you" or seeing a bunch of mostly men behaving like a baying mob in the Mother of Parliaments?

However, there were moments of decorum, mostly provided by Liberal Democrats. Julian Huppert secured the PM's backing for the Times'  Cycle Safe campaign. Mike Crockart was not so lucky when he asked if the PM had been persuaded by his trip to Edinburgh last week that this was an ideal location for the Green Investment Bank.

Every time Conservative Peter Bone gets up to speak, he throws in some family anecdote. Usually he refers to something Mrs Bone has said to him, but today his young son took centre stage for apparently asking whether Nick Clegg was a goodie or a baddie. The House erupted in laughter as Cameron joked that there was only so much detail he can take about the Bone household. He didn't say Nick Clegg was a goodie, though. For that, Liberal Democrats can be grateful.

Why is Diane Abbott the top headline on BBC News?

I've been busy with blog posts, Alvin and the Chipmunks and children today, so the furore over Diane Abbott's tweet had kind of passed me by. I knew someone had said something but, frankly, I wasn't interested enough to look.

I can't avoid it now, though, being that it's the top headline on the BBC website. Heavens above, unemployment and poverty are increasing, the House of Lords is about to discuss a big cut in benefits to the sick, the global economy is on the brink of a very large precipice and so on  - and we're talking about an admittedly over generalised tweet from an MP.

Even having read it, I can't actually get that wound up by it. It's a bit crass on the surface, but I get where she was going with it. It's about how power elites use their power and is nothing to do with race, gender or anything else. I certainly don't think it's worth the mockrage it's attracting online.

I rarely disagree with Mark Thompson, but I think his demands for her to apologise or be sacked were unnecessary. I am appalled at the way Ed Miliband has simply demanded an apology without giving Diane a chance to explain what she meant - and I think she would have been able to give a credible explanation backed up by historical fact for what was going through her mind. We have to remember, though, that Miliband's reaction comes in a week where is authority as leader is being challenged so it's likely he felt he had to be seen to be "strong". Sometimes being strong involves backing the people on your own side. I'm not wildly impressed that, rather than giving her the space to explain herself, he sent Chuka Umunna to give her a public dressing down. Remember all the furore about Ken Clarke's comments on rape last year? I don't recall Theresa May being sent out to tell him off publicly. He dealt with it himself to the extent that I forgave him.

I'm not wildly chuffed with Nick Clegg for getting in on this act either. It was a waste of his time - but at least he was in the camp of getting her to explain her remarks.

Twitter's great - and a really good place to share ideas. I feel, used properly, that it can bring politicians closer to ordinary people. Used properly means a normal conversation flow and in any normal conversation flow sometimes things come out in not quite the way we meant them. We need to be a bit more tolerant when people make that sort of mistake. Come on, we all know Diane Abbott. She is no racist bigot. Can we not just remember our experience of her over 20 years or so and not get all hot and bothered about 140 or so characters tweeted in around 30 seconds?

I tend to agree with much of this post from Dorian Lynksey. Lots of food for thought in there - one example being this bit about Twitter:

I don’t want to get into the ridiculous mob mechanics of Twitter outrage, which can be as bad on the left (witness pandagate) as it is on the right, except to note that the “gotcha” strategy is a surefire way to ensure that no politician ever expresses themselves on social media except in the bloodlessly inoffensive style of Ed Milibot’s feed. It seems we desperately want politicians to drop the platitudes and speak openly, except when they do, in which case they need to apologise and resign.

There, that's my unscheduled mid afternoon rant over.

I've not got much love for Ed's Bargain Basement with the nasties in the dark corners #lab11

So, yesterday afternoon, Ed Miliband gave his first proper speech to the Labour Conference. The first, last year, was written hastily after his unexpected victory, but he's had a bit longer to think about this one. Why, then, was last year's better?

And all he could come up with was a so-called "new bargain". That seems to basically mean that those same large corporations and media organisations (Murdoch, anyone?) that Labour sucked up to for years are to re-designated evil and be made to stop ripping us off.  The former energy secretary mentioned energy companies and their rigged market. That same market he did nothing about in office. It takes some nerve to make a campaign issue out of your own failings, I'll give him that.

His speech was all over the place. He went rather clunkily from talking about the operation on his nose to praising Harriet Harman in a handful of words. The structure was all wrong - he'd start a paragraph as though he were addressing Conference but would switch back and forth between addressing Labour and the British people. It just didn't flow.

And somebody really does need to get Ed in a room and sort out his delivery. So many times, interludes for applause saw him make some really weird smirks. He tripped over words and he looked terrified up there.

I think the striking thing was that he was in front of a grey, lifeless backdrop which replaced the usual red, or purple as they adopted for a while. It reflected the lack of ideas and general vacuousness coming from Labour at the moment. I mean, this is their showcase, and so far the best they've come up with is a plan to reduce tuition fees which will make no difference to most people on ordinary incomes and a bizarre idea from the shadow Culture Secretary Ivan Lewis that could have led to the state regulation of journalists.

Now that Ed has the freedom to choose his Shadow Cabinet, we can but hope that Mr Lewis will be sent to the back benches. What gets me is that these speeches aren't delivered in isolation. Somebody will have had to have seen them in advance. If the draft set no alarm bells ringing, that shows that Labour's authoritarian streak runs deep. They just look stupid now, with Lewis having had to sheepishly almost immediately afterwards.

But back to Ed's speech, and thanks to the Torygraph for printing it in full. By far the nastiest bit was his assertion that:

Take social housing.

When we have a housing shortage, choices have to be made.

Do we treat the person who contributes to their community the same as the person who doesn’t?

My answer is no.

Our first duty should be to help the person who shows responsibility.

Should the answer not be to build more affordable housing?

You have to wonder what sort of character test people would have to pass in order to get a council house. Do we just let nice people have housing or do they have to do good works in their communities as well as being nice?

And what do you do to the family with one troubled child who's causing problems - make the entire family homeless? They have to live somewhere. How is this going to help anyone?

Hearing this sort of ill thought out populist bile coming from the mouth of a Labour leader still makes me feel sick. It's bad enough, but expected in a way, to hear it from a Tory. It's become a bit of a triumph of hope over experience to expect any better from Labour but somehow a corner of my heart still does.

So, if you are struggling with various problems in your life, addiction, illness, a child with behavioural issues, despite Florence and Machine's song playing in the background after the speech, you'll find that Ed and Labour don't have love for you.

Cameron should stop bashing Ed for standing against his brother

I am getting utterly fed up of tuning into PMQs and hearing David Cameron take Ed Miliband apart at the flimsiest of excuses for standing against his brother in the Labour leadership election.

Today, Ed had a go at William Hague, and Cameron retorted with a cheap gag about how Ed clearly liked knifing foreign secretaries - look what he'd done to the last one. Ed came back with a line about Cameron's fascination with his relatives, and he was sure he'd bring up something about his second cousin in Belgium next. I'm sure Tory Central Office is stalking this person as I write.

I have to say that was the high point for Ed at PMQs today - Cameron utterly wiped the floor with him as he complained about falling police numbers. Not the thing to do when your previous Home Secretary was on record as saying cuts would have to be made.

I am no Ed Miliband fan, believe me. I think he's a complete and utter hypocrite who's trying to rewrite history. However, I do think that he had every right to stand in the contest, and to win. Why should his older brother have any greater claim to the job?

Cameron's taunts make it sound that he believes your background should in some circumstances hold you back - exactly the opposite of what this Government is trying to do. I've had enough of this kind of nonsense and he should stop it.

Things I would rather do than accept Ed Miliband's invitation to join Labour

It's that time of the month again, when Ed Miliband issues yet another invitation for disaffected Liberal Democrats to join Labour. He claims that thousands of Liberal Democrats have joined Labour since the coalition was formed, without giving a shred of evidence to back that up. Even in Scotland our membership has risen by over 16% since the coalition was formed so we're in good shape as a party. Ed really is full of the old charm - insinuating that those of us who don't take him up on his offer are not "courageous". It's not persuasive by any stretch of the imagination.

Let me just emphasise to Ed, in case he hasn't quite got it, some of the things I would rather do than join Labour:

• spend a day looking after the snakes at Edinburgh Zoo (can't abide things that slither on the ground on their bellies);
• clean out the rabbit hutch in the middle of a hailstorm;
• take up speed skating (you know how phobic I am about snow and ice);
• snog George Osborne (you know how phobic I am about Tories);
• take a trip on the Pepsi Max Big One or any other Rollercoaster (not good with heights either);

I'm sure you get my drift by now. Ed, not even if the Labour Party was the last Party there at the end of the night, we'd both consumed more lager than was good for us, and we both had a paper bag on our heads, would I ever even consider joining your illiberal, authoritarian, union controlled organisation in which I as an ordinary member would have no influence over anything. And here's just a few of the reasons why, in no particular order:

• Iraq, illegal war, enough said;
• Implicating this country in complicity with torture;
• Making it more difficult for the poorest to afford housing with unfair changes to housing benefit;
• Letting down the poorest by increasing the gap between rich and poor;
• Failing to fix the roof when the sun was shining - meaning we all suffer as a result of their economic incompetence;
• Failing to regulate the banks, either before or after the crash;
• Wasting a fortune on illiberal ID cards;
• Failing to protect working families with low incomes;
• Their dissembling over the cuts in spending they would have made if they had won the election;
• The appalling mess they made of the Tax Credit system, and their treatment of thousands of poor families, forced to repay thousands they couldn't afford;
• Imposing control orders on people without telling them even what they were being accused of;
• Centralising public services to the detriment of people using them;
• Taking kids' DNA without parents' permission;
• Storing the DNA of innocent people;
• Running an inhumane and often brutal immigration system.

The thing is they haven't changed. Just last week, we had Labour MP Kerry McCarthy say she'd happily stand by and let every man in her constituency give a DNA sample in the hope of catching a murderer. This mob are quite happy to play fast and loose with the basic tenets of our justice system, such as being innocent until proven guilty. Many of them, including my own MP, oppose a voting system which would require MPs to work harder and to properly engage with their constituents.

There are actions taken by the Coalition Government that I don't and will never support, on housing benefit, DLA, for example, and some of the NHS reforms sound pretty scary, making me very glad indeed I live in Scotland, on the ridiculous immigration cap and many other things. However, no matter how upset I get, I'm sticking with the party where my heart lies. There's no way I could possibly join  the Labour party which views people as a collective, amorphous blob who'll take what they're given by a Government who knows best. 

Lady Mark and Andrew Reeves have already robustly and politely declined Mr Miliband's invitation and I join their chorus of refusal. 

What would the Telegraph have heard at Labour MPs' surgeries last year?

It amuses me to hear Ed Miliband being so dismissive about the nature of the coalition, saying it's a sham. I actually think that what we've heard over the past few days proves that it isn't. Liberal Democrat MPs and ministers are not making life easy for themselves, but they know that they can do more good in the Government than out of it, and that life would be much worse if they weren't there.

I got to thinking, though, what if the Telegraph (or some other paper) had decided to throw ethics to the wind this time last year, and gone around some Labour MPs' surgeries. I mean, we all know what a happy little band of campers they were, don't we? Imagine if they'd gone to Geoff Hoon's or Patricia Hewitt's surgeries and asked a few well worded questions about Gordon Brown? I mean, those two spent Christmas plotting about how to overthrow him and made spectacular arses of themselves (and, in Hoon's case, not for the last time this year) trying to pull off a coup in the first week of January.

Would James Purnell, or Alan Johnson or David Miliband all have praised their leader fulsomely, or damned him by their lack of enthusiasm?  I'm absolutely certain those amoral journalists would have found some interesting snippets to report.

Actually, I wonder what they're all saying about Ed Miliband now. I mean, Ed's team still seems in shock that he won and everyone else is being suspiciously silent. I am fairly certain that even now metaphorical daggers are being lined up right between his shoulder blades.

Like I said, just a thought.

This is why we elected Tim Farron as President!

Having met Tim Farron and worked on his presidential campaign team, when he sends out a press release, I actually hear it in his voice, talking just a tiny bit too fast, full of energy and passion for whatever the subject is.

We're in for a treat over these next two years. I sometimes worry that our press releases are too safe, too predictable, and dare I say it, too boring. No danger of that with Farron around. I am absolutely sure he's going to end up in trouble at some stage, but I'd rather have someone speak their mind than be bland.

Farron is the political equivalent of taking a big fat red chilli and sticking it in the frying pan, seeds and all. So while Simon Hughes has been gently cajoling disaffected supporters to stay with us despite Ed Miliband's attempt to cuddle up to them.  Tim's press release was entitled "Why would any sane progressive give Labour a second glance?"

“As part of the Coalition Government, Liberal Democrats have started fixing Labour’s economic mess, taking millions of people out of Income Tax and reforming British politics.  Things Labour had 13 years to do but failed to deliver.

“The Liberal Democrats have also announced more cash for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, one of the biggest moves to improve social mobility in decades.

“Continuing that work is something far more attractive to Liberal Democrats than helping Ed Miliband’s increasingly desperate attempts to work out what he actually stands for.

“However, if he is serious about co-operation then the first thing he should do is stop the Labour Party’s attempts to block the referendum on electoral reform that he claims to support.

That's the sort of punchy stuff we've been needing for the last six months, not the terrible e-mails from the Party that we've all come to dread.

Labour game playing threatens key Climate talks - could Caroline Lucas help?

While the atmosphere at Westminster heats up in advance of The Vote tomorrow night, our attention has been diverted from the fact that something else is warming up - the planet - and unless concerted, global action is taken soon, we are going to be at the mercy of some cataclysmic changes.

In order to try and avoid that, the latest UN Climate Change Conference is taking place in Cancun. At last, in Chris Huhne, the UK finally has an effective Environment Minister who knows what he's talking about and could play a major role in bringing people together. Or at least he could if he didn't have to fly home to vote tomorrow night.

It is convention that when a minister is away on Government business, that the opposition organises it so that one of its members don't vote. That's a reasonable arramgement which enables the Government to carry out its international obligations.

There aren't many more important international issues than climate change, and Chris Huhne already outlined his concerns that the momentum behind the :UN effort might fall away. From the BBC report above,

"What worries me is that there will be countries that say the game here, this particular forum, isn't worth a candle," he told BBC News.

"It will peter out, it won't vanish. People next year won't send a senior minister, they will send a junior minister, and then the year after they will send a senior civil servant. In a few years' time it will be the local ambassador, and it will wither on the vine.

"That's not what we want here. We want a sense that there is renewed momentum so people are coming back next year with a real sense they want to reach a deal."

Chris has been asked by the UN to sort out a compromise on the Kyoto Protocol. No pressure, then! Unfortunately, because Labour are playing silly games, it looks like he's going to have to leave this vital work to cast his vote in the debate. What a waste of a trip, and for no good reason. 


It's clear that this comes right from the top in the Labour Party. Ed Miliband's office is clearly exploiting the fact that the vote is likely to be tight and is flying in the face of organisations like Oxfam and Christian Aid who acknowledge the vital role this country represented by Chris has in brokering a deal on climate change.

Oppositions play games, we know that - but there are limits. Ed Miliband, the former climate change secretary whose achievements in that office seem to have passed me by, should no better than to jeopardise an intensive international effort.

He should think again - or, actually, there's another solution, put forward by A C McGregor on Twitter, quoted with permission.http://twitter.com/#!/A_C_McGregor

@ChrisHuhne needs an opposition MP to pair and let him stay at Cancun Summit... asked @CarolineLucas ?

Surely the Green MP would want to do her bit to enable Chris Huhne to stay at the Conference and continue his efforts to further the cause of global action to prevent climate change?

More on Labour's new generation - tokenism on equalities and Phil Woolas

You may remember that I was none too pleased about Yvette Cooper not getting the Shadow Chancellorship last week. Now my anger is increased tenfold when I discover that new leader for a new generation Ed Miliband considers the equalities portfolio so irrelevant that he just dumps it on the top girl in the Shadow Cabinet elections. It's appalling tokenism.

And words fail me about the return of Phil Woolas to the ministerial team at the Home Office. This is the guy who refused to let the Gurkhas live here and was famously shown up by Joanna Lumley following a Lib Dem led defeat in the Commons on the issue.

Ed Miliband says Labour made mistakes on civil liberties:

"As someone who is liberal on social issues and civil liberties, I accept that in government we were too draconian on aspects of our civil liberties,"

We'll leave aside the fact that he voted for many of them for the moment.

Phil Woolas in 2001 wanted to remove state benefits from those who refused to register to vote as this Independent leader article shows.  By their deeds shall you know them, and all that. Appointing Phil Woolas to any role that has an impact on civil liberties is a bit like appointing Harvey Hawley Crippen to be a relationship counsellor.

To show such faith in someone who is awaiting the outcome of an election trial, ironically due on 5th November, could be seen to be questionable.

Ed Miliband on This Morning

I haven't watched This Morning in ages, but I randomly switched it on a few minutes ago to see new Leader of the Opposition being interviewed by Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby. This is the politician's equivalent of a cuddle. It's not what you'd call a Paxmanesque grilling.

Even so, every time Phil did have a bit of a go at challenging him, Ed looked like he was like a rabbit caught in the headlights.  If he can't cope with a fairly relaxed affair like this, he's going to find Prime Minister's Questions next week a bit of an ordeal.

From this interview today, we discovered that:

Ed was against the Iraq war, but he didn't doubt the motives of those who decided to carry it out - well, actually, I do. What were they thinking? They seemed more interested in blindly following the ideological Bush strategy than actually working out what was in the interests of this country and its standing in the World.

Ed doesn't like cuts, but he really doesn't think strikes are a good idea. He's giving the impression now of not wanting to be associated with the unions, whose votes handed him victory. He seems to be letting the Daily Mail dictate what he thinks rather than just be himself. This is never a good idea and he doesn't seem comfortable with it.

He thinks Labour made some mistakes on the economy, but David Cameron's a pessimist and it isn't really that bad, honest.

There was a bit of a comedy moment, and I expect a researcher is getting their ear chewed out as I write, when Phil asked Ed if he was going to get married to Jane. He rightly commented that Justine might be a bit annoyed if he did. And the answer was the right one - he isn't going to get married just to satisfy the Daily Mail, but because he loves her.

I was annoyed when Holly Willoughby thought it was legitimate to ask him whether it might be difficult for the Queen and the Pope to trust him because he's said he's an atheist. Frankly, if they do, then it's their problem. Faith, or lack of it, is no barometer of trustworthiness.

So Ed has now completed this rite of passage for a political leader. Holly and Phil then went from interviewing him to Keith Lemon. Their jobs are certainly never dull and predictable.

Big Brother Miliband returns to back benches

So, David Miliband has taken the long walk from the limelight to the back benches apparently in the hope that his little brother Ed can be left to lead the Labour Party in peace (or into pieces).

I can see that he's already spent three years as the smoking gun in one cabinet, with the tiniest suggestion of rebellion leading to the entire political press pack camping on his doorstep. More of the same on that front, especially given the family angle, would be pretty agonising. We saw what happened when he snapped at Harriet Harman for clapping Ed yesterday. He knows every raised eye row or wry smile would have Nick Robinson in a tizz.

Good luck to him. David's retreat from frontline politics will take some of the heat but I suspect that every time Ed falters, or gets up the nose of one of Labour's factions, there will be speculation about his leadership and whether his big brother could take over if he were forced out.

I suspect David has back benched himself for the duration of this Parliament because any attempt to re-join would be seen as a challenge.

I wonder if things would be the same, and Ed would have quit the Shadow Cabinet, if David had won. I suspect not. He was only the front runner after the ballot closed and he wasn't that well known. I reckon he could have stayed in relative anonymity in David's Shadow Cabinet.

David is now going to spend time with his family, saying that these last few years have been tough for him & his sons. Of course if he'd won, it would have been just as tough for them. I really don't like it when politicians use their kids in that way.

David will now have time to reflect on his actions over the past few years. I suspect he will regret not challenging Gordon Brown, but I doubt he could have snatched victory in May as people were sick of Labour, whoever led them.

He did mention in his statement that he wants to develop the community action programme that had been a major part of his leadership campaign. I just hope he gets rid of the control freaky house party instruction manual.

David's decision, of course, highlights the fairly massive divisions in the Labour Party and emphasises how hard a job Ed will have to keep everybody in the same library, let alone the same page.

His time as leader is not going to be easy. No wonder he looked so miserable when he won.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Ed Miliband, mea culpa and the sheep's clothing

Today in Manchester a fresh faced shiny new leader pulled on sheep's clothing, some of the items stolen from the genuine leader of Britan's liberals, round the wolf that is the body of the Labour Party.

To be fair, that speech was well written, and well delivered - and it was a pretty good shot at what Ed Miliband needed to do in it - to dissociate his Labour Party from the divided, authoritarian, at times downright wicked rabble which had been noisily disintegrating in Government these past few years.

What may be a really good thing was his own personal commitment to the Alternative Vote. If he were to lead the Labour Party to vote for the referendum and campaign for AV, we could well be on our way to a fairer voting system. However all he said was that he personally would vote yes. I suspect he knows he doesn't have the authority to insist that Labour campaigns for it because the awkward squad start sniping.

He also stated his commitment to an elected Lords. I had to stifle a laugh when he said:

Yes, we need to finally elect the House of Lords after talking about it for a hundred years.

Labour had 13 years to do so in Government, and now it's left to the Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg (for the Tories would never have done it on their own) to implement this vital change. That boat has sailed for the new generation Labour Party.

In many ways, it sounded less like a leader's speech today and more like he was reading out his own charge sheet, a list of the things New Labour had got so terribly wrong, everything from Iraq, to civil liberties (these things listened to in stony faced silence by those members of Labour's cabinet who had brought them about). It had the air of a guilty plea in the hope that he'd get a shorter sentence. The very idea that he thinks that one speech, a few days at one Conference, could wash away the mess of the last 13 years shows Ed really doesn't get it.

But he only apologised for the attempt at 90 days, not for the month detention without charge we have now.

He mentioned his parents' flights from the Nazis and move to this country - but didn't apologise for the appalling way Labour treated asylum seekers. And I'm concerned that he's going to continue narrow anti-narrative on immigration.

He basically tried to position himself as the new Nick Clegg. He even pinched one of Nick's best lines, almost exactly with his example of the disparity in wages between a banker and care worker:

What does it say about the values of our society, what have we become, that a banker can earn in a day what the care worker earns in a year?

If that sounds familiar, it's not a million miles away from this, is it?

"And that's why I don't apologise for proposing that the banker from the City of London pay the same rate of tax on his capital gains as his cleaner does on her wages.

The thing is, the original Nick Clegg is still very much alive and well and enacting Liberal Democrat policies in Government. Miliband's Labour Party will always be playing catch up on that front.

There was actually very little in the speech that I disagree with. If you read the words, it all sounds very grown up and consensual. I mean, who on earth could find fault with this?

Here is our generation's paradox: the biggest ever consumers of goods and services, but a generation that yearns for the things that business cannot provide.

Strong families.

Time with your children.

Green spaces.

Community life

Love and compassion.

Words have to be placed in context, though. David Cameron tried to park his tanks on our lawn and it didn't work then. I think once we get to the substance, and once the novelty of a new leader wears off on a Labour Party that's to a certain extent been let off the leash after 13 years, life may not be quite so motherhood and apple pie.

Ed Miliband knew as well that he had to try to put some distance between himself and the unions, given that it was they who had delivered him his victory. Talking about strikes, he said:

We need to win the public to our cause and what we must avoid at all costs is alienating them and adding to the book of historic union failures.

That is why I have no truck, and you should have no truck, with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes.

The public won't support them. I won't support them. And you shouldn't support them either.

That's Bob Crow told, then.

The tight margin of his victory victory means that Ed Miliband will, like Gordon Brown before him, have to suffer the slings and arrows of outraged blairites. Changing the soul of the Labour Party is a fair old challenge for Mr Miliband, though, and isn't going to happen overnight, if at all. You have to remember that most of the members of the Labour Party voted for the status quo with a few frills, and so did the MPs.

As far as the Liberal Democrats are concerned, it's vital that we  get our distinctive message across. It's deeds, not words, that matter and in coalition we are the ones enacting liberating reforms and working for fairness, doing exactly what we said we'd do. 

Ed Miliband's challenge as Labour Leader

We all thought we knew, as the Labour leadership candidates walked into the hall today. Ed looked utterly miserable, David was smiling. It seemed like an open and shut case. Despite all the rumours to the contrary, David had beaten his younger brother.  Now the whole nation knows not to play Poker with those brothers for in fact it was Ed who prevailed.

Ed looked like a man who hadn't quite thought carefully enough about what he should wish for in case he got it. He's a bright man. He knew that he didn't have the backing of the majority of his MPs, or MEPs, or members and that it was the votes of the unions, on the last round, which had delivered victory at the last gasp. For every stage of the count, David led. He was 1.6% ahead before the elimination of Ed Balls, and 1.3% behind once his votes had been redistribute with the unions by far giving him the sliver of his margin of victory.

It is a very weird way of doing things. When the Liberal Democrats choose a leader, we just send a ballot paper to every member and whoever gets over 50% under an alternative vote system wins. I know that my vote as an activist is worth exactly the same as a senior MP's. We don't send extra papers out to members of other organisations who might share some of our values.

Labour's convoluted system leaves its new leader open to accusations that he is compromised, the choice of unions rather than the party's members or elected representatives. The unions will no doubt use that to try to force the new leader's hand. Ed would be wise to remember that the Labour Party and the unions did not save one single job in the 80s - and in fact often made things a lot worse. If Labour starts re-treading these footsteps, they face long term electoral oblivion.

While Ed deserves congratulations on a well fought campaign, I do have some sympathy with his brother David. I don't agree with his politics and I don't agree with the things he did as foreign secretary to perpetuate the complicity in torture by a UK Government, but his head must be mince tonight. He's thrown his heart and soul into his campaign. He's been working on it for five months (and probably before) and was expected to win. But Labour has decided in recent days that it wants to go back to the 80s rather than New Labour with the election of Ed and the selection of Ken Livingstone as London mayoral candidate.

I worry that unenlightened Conservatives will use this result as justification for opposition to the Alternative Vote. That would be wrong. It's the fact that Labour gives the unions so much say in choosing its leader that's the problem, not the AV system.

However I had a look at the figures for Labour constituency party's votes and it may be that Ed is more representative of members in Scotland than he is in England. He was well ahead, or equal in very many CLPs north of the border.

The fact that the result was so close lends itself to years of factionalising and infighting in the Labour Party, the type of which we have seen for as long as I've been alive. If they couldn't keep a lid on internal tensions in Government, their chances in opposition aren't great.

On the plus side, Labour now has a leader who is in favour of both the alternative vote system and equal marriage. These can only be good things.

As an aside, Mark Pack has written about an aspect of this afternoon's BBC coverage that I also found intensely annoying - the interruption of the results with a voiceover from Nick Robinson talking through utter nonsense about what was happening. It's forgivable that Nick Robinson got his prediction wrong in such a tight race, but inexcusable that the facts were not allowed to speak for themselves.

I guess I understand a bit of Ed's misery today. I was once on opposing sides in an internal election with one of my best friends. I hoped my candidate would prevail, but my friend was a much better campaigner than I. The mixed emotions I felt as it became clear that my guy had won were very uncomfortable for me. If I had my time again, I'd still have gone for my guy because he's good, but as the results were announced, I looked over at my friend and saw how completely gutted he was. That was one of the worst moments of my life. Not just my political life, my actual life. To this day we are still friends, and there are no hard feelings over that between us. In fact, he trusted me to run a highly successful campaign for him some months later. It was a political campaign but when you're close to someone, you know your actions, even if they're legitimate, have an effect and you can't just walk away from that. In that respect,the winning milibrother was always bound to have the political equivalent of survivor guilt.

For Ed, that'll sort itself out in time,but the spectre of the unions coming to collect their debt remains, as do the tensions within the Party. No-one's resolved them in my lifetime, so he has his work cut out for him. He also has to decide whether he's going to continue the Labour Party's policy of "just say no" to everything or whether he's going to forge some sort of constructive opposition and engage in meaningful debate. He's damned by the electorate one way and his union paymasters the other.  I wonder if he'll come to regret his wish to be Labour leader.

Labour Leadership - who would you vote for?

Well, of course I don't have a vote, but if I did it would be emphatically cast for Diane Abbott. Not because I agree with everything she says. Far from it. But because she has earned my respect over many years for not conforming in a party that demands conformity and sheep like behaviour when in vicinity of voting lobbies.

Let's look at what she had to say on the issue of 42 days' detention - a speech that tugs at the heart strings of any Liberal Democrat, a speech so good that Liberty put it on their website.

This stuff is, well, wow!

I am a Londoner and I heard the last major IRA bomb, at Canary Wharf, from my kitchen in east London. Like thousands of Londoners, I waited for the early-morning call that assured me that friends and family on their way to work and school had not been caught up in those bombings. I will not take lectures from ministers about not taking terrorism seriously.

I do not believe, as ministers continue to insist, that there is some trade-off between our liberties and the safety of the realm. What makes us free is what makes us safe, and what makes us safe is what will make us free.

and then this:

I came into politics because of my concern about the relationship of the state to communities that are marginalised and suspected. It is easy to stand up for the civil liberties of our friends or of people in our trade union, but it is not easy to stand up for the civil liberties of people who are unpopular, suspected and look suspicious—people the tabloids print a horror story about every day.

However, it is a test of parliament that we are willing to stand up for the civil liberties of the marginalised, the suspect and the unpopular.

I came into politics about those issues, and I believe that if there is any content at all in ministers' constant speeches about community cohesion we must offer every part of our community not just the appearance but the reality of justice and equality before the law.

Seriously, read the whole thing.

And on top of all that, she even voted against the Digital Economy Act.
. She is good and if she won, she'd have some serious tanks to park on our lawn.

The chivalrous rush of rival candidates to get Diane Abbott on to the ballot would never have happened if any, of them thought she could win. And to be honest, from their point of view it's such tokenism that it's actually worse than our presenting our members with a choice of 2 middle class white males.

She's the only candidate, though, who represents a break with the past and who wasn't a part of the Government which has wreaked such havoc in the last 13 years. She's the only candidate who actually voted against the Iraq war. While the others have been swift to distance themselves from the worst of new Labour's excesses, and some have even sought out new depths to stoop to, Diane is the only one who can say on most of the issues that "it wisnae me".

There's a bit of me who wants to see her win, partly to puncture the smugness of the others, and partly because you'd hope that it would lead to a more mature politics, where genuine debate and discussion was the norm rather than the exception.

Among the rest we have Ed Balls, who Cameron completely skewered today, calling him the Alf Garnett of British politics. I mean, it's got to be bad if that comes from a Tory. David Miliband - the man who chickened out of challenging Brown in Summer 2008 and from then on had journalists camping on his doorstep every time there was a hint of rebellion in the air. He bottled it just like Brown did when it came down to it. I also just don't warm to him at all. His brother Ed - what's that all about - seems to be the more genuine and sympathetic a personality of the two brothers but tell me, what exactly did he achieve at Energy and Climate Change? As for Andy Burnham, well, ditto? If those four were a meal, they'd be polenta added with a side order of cous cous without any flavouring and no side salad.

I'm really disappointed that two people from the previous Cabinet have not bothered to enter the contest - Harriet Harman and Alan Johnson. I always used to look forward to PMQs when it was Harman, Hague and The Almighty Vince, it was always much more intelligent and lighter, I think. As for Johnson, well, Brown did well to put him in the graveyeard job of Home Secretary, but he could have injected some much needed personality and humour into the contest.

There's a long way to go, but I have yet to see anything that sounds like an original idea from any of the candidates. This is a party that thinks it can put its feet up for five years and point, laugh and be as destructive as possible. They think bucketloads of bile will win them the next election. We'll see, though, whether they can bring themselves back from the party that trashed the place and left everyone else to mop up the mess. How do they make themselves credible again?

It's a long time until the ballots are counted on 25th September. Let's see whether the campaign inspires or drags on. I'm not holding my breath.