Clegg looks across Mersey to a Promised Land

William Hesketh Lever, Lord Leverhulme, philanthropist, industrialist, Liberal. He set up Port Sunlight as a social experiment.

Yesterday in Port Sunlight they celebrated the birthday of Lord Leverhulme, the 20th century industrialist who tried to build a utopia on the banks of the Mersey.

His model village for workers producing Lux and Lifebuoy in the Sunlight soap factory was an early experiment in a new kind of social and political system.
This afternoon, on the other side of the river in the Liverpool Echo Arena, Nick Clegg will have to work hard to persuade sceptical Lib Dems that his political experiment in powersharing with the Tories has been a good idea.

His leader’s speech - the first of this conference season in a completely altered political landscape - is going to be a balance between pride and persuasion.

He will thank delegates for holding their nerve during the coalition talks, he will plead with his followers to keep the faith, and urge them to keep their eyes on the far horizon.

In other words, it will be the usual Moses and the Promised Land stuff that party leaders lean on when they know they are facing a long journey through an electoral desert.

Clegg sees the coalition deal as a long game and holds out the prospect of rewards for his party if they see through the cuts agenda, wipe out the deficit and take the British economy to the sunny uplands by 2015.

He will argue that the Lib Dems were right to go into power with the Tories as voters would not take them seriously if they had turned down the opportunity. There is, he will tell his party, no other direction to go in except to march with the Tories into this valley of unpopularity and through to the other side. In fact there are several forks in the road on this long march.

One of the big waypoints will come with the election of a new Labour leader in Manchester this Saturday. It will be the political fulcrum on which the conference season and the rest of the political year will swing on. Depending on who the Opposition leader is Lib Dems will be offered an alternative prospectus, perhaps even a tempting offer, to walk on the other side.

Next May will be the all-important referendum on AV voting, which is Nick Clegg's to lose given that many of his coalition allies and large elements of the Labour party will be campaigning against a yes vote. It will also be the beginning of a new financial year of stringency not seen before in peacetime Britain.

The cuts process may have picked off some stragglers by then but next year will mark the point of no return, when the Lib Dems know there can be no retreat, that their fate is bound to the Tories.

It will also be the first litmus test of coalition politics with the Scottish Lib Dems facing the voters in the Holyrood elections, just as the cuts start to bite. Some of the long marchers may be lost then too, although I suspect the Lib Dem MSPs are quite resilient.

So it will be next year, not after today's speech, or this week's conference that we’ll know if Clegg’s high risk experiment with his party is working.

William Hesketh Lever, Lord Leverhulme, a lifelong Liberal, might have been impressed with Clegg's the bold move. There may even be a lesson from across the Mersey.

After all, when Lever built Port Sunlight he merged with another company to form Unilever, the modern multinational that is still selling us soap today.

NIck Clegg underpants a big hit in Liverpool

The Lib Dems have started arriving in Liverpool for their first conference in government and security is far tighter than most delegates have been accustomed to in the past.

This poor chap I met on Crosby beach last night was stripped to his Nick Clegg underpants to get past the barriers as quickly as possible. (The armbands are because they're still learning to swim in government)

Kennedy scores against Treasury

In Liverpool for the opening of the Lib Dem conference. Nick Clegg is due to address a rally on AV reform in an hour or two. Among the invited guests will be Charles Kennedy, the former leader who earlier this week called on the coalition to put the brakes on spending cuts.


That's not likely with the war talk coming from fellow Highland MP and Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander in interviews today, and a pre-brief of his speech for Sunday.

At least Kennedy scored a result against the Treasury this afternoon in Inverness. In the Camanachd Cup Final it was Fort William (Charlie's home shinty team) 3 Kingussie (Danny's constituents) 2. Sin thu fhein a' Thearlaich.

Highland Lib Dems get their collars felt

Just in case Charles Kennedy thinks he's done enough to placate his constituents by murmuring discontent about the coalition cuts agenda the other day there's a cracking editorial in the West Highland Free Press to remind him how much more he must do to oppose the government.

Focusing on the plans to privatise the Royal Mail the Free Press rails that a private company "will be free to charge 20 or 30 pence for a letter delivered within Glasgow or London, two, three or four times that amount for delivery from Glasgow to Kyle of Lochalsh". In short it is " a disgraceful initiative" says the Free Press, which seems to be atoning for giving Kennedy such an easy ride at the general election.

In its leader page the paper points both barrels at all the Highland Lib Dems, claiming it can hear Gladstone birling in his grave as they auction their Liberalism on the alter of Tory cuts. Take it away, Rog..

"If you refute that principle in so basic an amenity as the mail, where do you stop? Or rather, where next do you start - by surcharging the west Highlands for health, for policing, for education?

Interestingly, this is purely a Liberal Democrat proposal. It is not, like so many others, a Tory policy with Danny the LibDem lapdog trotting along behind. It comes from the office of the Liberal Democrat MP for Twickenham, Mr Vince Cable.

Twickenham is unlikely to suffer from the abolition of the uniform postal charge. But no fewer than five of Mr Cable’s colleagues - nine per cent of his party’s parliamentary strength - represent the Scottish Highlands, which will be hurt more than anywhere else in Britain by Vince Cable’s big idea.

Vince Cable’s fellow LibDem MPs dominate the north and west. From Badenoch to Dunvegan Head in Skye, from the Mull of Kintyre to the northern tip of Unst in Shetland, with the single exception of the Western Isles we are represented at Westminster by Liberal Democrat MPs. They are all we have.

They now need to ask themselves some serious questions. They campaigned for election on a platform of protecting services in this region. They vigorously opposed privatisation of the Royal Mail, and even more furiously condemned the idea of variable charging.

We know that Danny Alexander of Inverness and Alistair Carmichael of Orkney and Shetland have sold their souls for position. We do not know if much goes on in the heads of John Thurso of Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross or Alan Reid of Argyll and Bute.

But like much of the rest of the country, we are waiting anxiously for Charles Kennedy of Ross, Skye and Lochaber to stop bleating, climb down from his elaborately contructed fence and oppose government measures which he knows to be both unnecessary and uniquely damaging to his constituents.

Are you - Kennedy, Alexander, Carmichael, Thurso and Reid - going to sit tight in the name of some unholy union with the Tories, while the people you represent are singled out for surcharging simply because of where we live? Gladstone will be turning in his grave."

Hands off 'wur Airfix aircraft carriers

Well, Ian Davidson MP did ask for two aircraft carriers, "and none of your foreign rubbish", for his birthday last week at Prime Minister's Question Time. It now looks as if his wish, or at least half of it, has been fulfilled by Shadow Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy.

The campaigning pair were on College green earlier today with the Airfix solution to the Defence Spending Review which threatens the £5bn carrier contract.

The issue was raised at PMQs again this week, by new MP Tom Greatrex, who asked for a meeting on concerns that the carriers contract will be cut or axed all together.

Cameron batted that one to the MoD - "a snub" shouted Labour - and Michael Moore, the Lib Dem Scottish Secretary, went and spoke to Defence Secretary Liam Fox (another Scot) about the defence industry.

There's going to be a lot of dancing around these carriers over the next few weeks until the Defence Review is published.

The carriers are something of a cause celebre for Davidson. When the Herald's Mike Settle, sketched last week that the Glasgow MP must go to sleep in his aircraft carrier pyjamas, reading aircraft carrier weekly, he couldn't have imagined how close to he was to the truth. Someone only went out and bought the MP carrier patterned pjs - or so he claims anyway.

Personally I'd need the proof. I think we have to see a picture of Davidson doing a jig in his carrier bedwear when he finally saves the two carriers for the Clyde.

UPDATE: Davidson does have two aircraft carriers. The other model is kept in his constituency office because, as he said today, after Pearl Harbour no two aircraft carriers should be moored in one port ever again. Still no news on the pyjamas though.

It has to be Dave, say pollsters and bookies

The bookies William Hill say 80% of bets since the weekend have gone on Ed Miliband which has helped shorted the odds on him becoming Labour leader to 7/4.

It's an old tactic, to put a big wodge of money on your candidate to change the odds as the race comes to an end. If you win, you win big, and if you lose, well, the tears get lost in the rain.

Behind the hype David Miliband is still 2/5 on to win the race and the former Foreign Secretary is the Labour voters’ choice to become the next leader of the Labour Party, according to a ComRes survey for the Independent.

He is more than twice as popular than his nearest rival, his younger brother Ed, when voters are asked to name their preferred candidate; who would make the best leader of the opposition; the best prime minister and have the best chance of leading Labour back to power.

The poll, conducted amongst more than 1,500 people who have voted Labour at least once since 1992, found that David Miliband was also the most likely of the five Labour leadership candidates to win over wavering voters and people who backed Labour in 2005 but switched to the Liberal Democrats or Conservative Party this year.

The poll evidence was a strong counter to claims by Ed Miliband’s team that they “felt” the election moving their man’s way as the race entered the final stage. There was no sign of that apart from reports that some Labour MPs had shifted their vote to Ed without telling Dave, and without telling us either.

True or not the cold stats from Comres show David Miliband is the preferred choice of 26 per cent of Labour voters, compared to 11 per cent for his brother; 8 per cent for Diane Abbott; 7 per cent for Ed Balls and 5 per cent for Andy Burnham. Some 44 per cent replied “don’t know.”

The former Foreign Secretary enjoyed a bigger lead when people were asked who would make the most effective leader of the opposition. Thirty per cent said David Miliband; 12 per cent Ed Miliband; 7 per cent Ed Balls; 5 per cent Diane Abbott and 4 per cent Andy Burnham.

According to ComRes, David Miliband is by far the most popular candidate among people who voted Labour this year.

He is the preferred choice of 31 per cent of them, while 12 per cent opt for his brother; 8 per cent for Abbott and Ed Balls and 5 per cent Andy Burnham. Significantly, 40 per cent of people who voted Labour this year believe David Miliband is most likely to get Labour elected to Government, well ahead of his brother on 11 per cent.

The result of the vote will be announced on Saturday 25th September at the beginning of the Labour conference in Manchester.

ComRes interviewed 1,569 Labour voters online between September 3-10, 2010. Respondents were UK adults who have voted for the Labour Party at least once at a general election in the last 20 years.

Leadership latest - Tories back Ed the Younger

Almost everyone's mind is made up on the Labour leadership but when the five candidates appeared at the TUC last night for another hustings it was standing room only.'Elf and Safety monitors blocked your correspondent from attending.

More interesting than what any of the famous five had to say is what Tory high command is praying for a week Saturday. Philip Stephens, writing in the FT, offers an insight into Conservative thinking.

He writes: "Ed, the younger Miliband, who could yet win as everybody's second choice, has offered mostly mush – policies and promises calculated to make the party feel good about itself and about his candidacy. Few of the voters who deserted Labour at the election will be persuaded by a declaration that he was against the Iraq war ...

"By choosing David Miliband, Labour would be saying it wanted to win back England's aspirant classes – that it was still serious about power. But the party's heart could yet rule its head. Mr Clegg – and Mr Cameron – are cheering on the younger of the two brothers."

As Dennis Skinner said, it's David the Tories fear.