First published at the Labour Lords blog In the last two months, Peers have spent 25 hours debating House of Lords reform. Today they will spend two and half hours debating youth unemployment, and only one backbench Conservative is taking part. That doesn’t say much about the Government’s priorities, particularly in tackling what Nick [...]
From the BBC website: The HS2 rail scheme might not be ready before 2030 because of “dither and delay” by ministers, former Transport Secretary Lord Adonis has said. The Labour peer said he feared the legislation needed for the project may not be passed within this parliament. Phase one of the £33bn high-speed rail link, [...]
This is taken from my opening speech to the Progress annual conference on 12th May Approaching mid-term, a significant political shift is taking place in Labour’s direction. Partly this is mid-term coalition blues. But something more fundamental is happening. The Tories promised their economic plan would deliver growth and jobs. Two years on it [...]
From the Guardian This morning the committee of MPs and peers who have been studying the government’s draft bill for reform of the House of Lords publishes its report. After an unprecedented 30 meetings, hours of evidence-taking and comprehensive deliberation, the speculation and misrepresentation will be over. On some points of detail, the committee was [...]
For the New Statesman He knew he was right The striking thing about this defensive biography of Nick Clegg is how much of it is spent debating whether he is a Conservative. The author, a Liberal Democrat activist, likes his leader a great deal. “Idealism in politics is at stake through the person of Nick [...]
“Andrew Adonis has a unique record of combining radical ideas on public services with a very pragmatic focus on achieving results. Suzannah Brecknell meets the Institute for Government chief to discuss a year of the coalition… Andrew Adonis likes clarity. He speaks deliberately, ensuring his phrases are clear and well-constructed, as befits a former journalist [...]
For the New Statesman Democratic dilemmas Vernon Bogdanor questions Nick Clegg’s claim that the coalition’s constitutional reform programme will bring about “the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832″. His argument is that while the fact of the coalition’s existence marks a bold change in modern constitutional practice, the programme of political reform set out [...]
For the New Statesman A marriage of true minds David Laws has written a highly informative – as well as highly partisan – account of the days preceding and following the formation of the coalition government this May. The key question is why the Liberal Democrats went with the Conservatives rather than with Labour. To [...]
The Lib-Con pact is riven with deep ideological faultlines The coalition agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats is not so much a programme for government as a catalogue of concessions achieved by the smaller party at the expense of the larger one. Many of them spelt out in precise detail. We learn the [...]
Originally published in The Guardian Lib Dem brokers misled and tried to run a dutch auction. This Thatcherite-liberal love-in can’t last Unprincipled governments are inevitably unstable, unsuccessful and short-lived. This will doubtless be true of the Cameron-Clegg coalition, the most unprincipled governing combination in Britain since the Fox-North coalition of 1783, which united a similarly implausible duo [...]