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Bored of the usual weighty Party Conference speech analysis? Check out instead what the Twitterati thought of Clegg’s speech. The speech in 10 tweets @BBCLouise Nick Clegg admits "it's not easy" being in Government #ldconf @andrewpolitics Nick clegg: "I won’t rest, we won’t rest, until we’ve won every single one of those seats back lost in May" #ldconf @doktorb #ldconf Clegg "Labour ...
Next month Fishburn Hedges will be holding at event on What’s next…for the Coalition: the new politics under pressure with twelve months having passed since Cameron and Clegg first came together in the Rose Garden at No.10 and with the prospects for the Coalition looking radically different than they did a year ago. Against this backdrop, last week the Institute for Government hosted a semin...
This week sees the Health and Social Care Bill come to the end of its Committee session in the House of Commons, where MPs have debated and discussed its merits in detail. While this part of the parliamentary procedure is supposed to be an opportunity for making changes, alterations and amendments to a Bill, the reality is that in this particular case the Health Bill has so far emerged relatively ...
Ever since Harold Wilson gave the Beatles MBEs and the heady days of the Blair Government and its celebrity filled receptions at No.10 (remember Oasis?), politicians have looked to the outside world to boost their credentials. In recent years this has manifested itself in a growing number of business people being appointed to advise the Government or Prime Minister of the day, the results of w...
With much of the Conservative Party Conference fringe focused on either what the Big Society means or the impact of the proposed cuts, I decided yesterday to seek out something a little different - new MP Nick Boles talking about his idea for an electoral pact between the Tories and the Lib Dems at the next election. Nick argues that the Coalition should last longer than its current five years f...
The Coalition’s commitment to greater transparency started positively enough with a flurry of public consultation appeals appearing on nearly every government website, such as the Treasury's 'Spending Challenge'. Yet attempts to "crowd-source" policy are being seriously questioned. Ministers have already been accused of rejecting every idea put forward on the Coalitions' new programme. The gove...
With Parliament heading into recess, last night saw the turn of the political pundits to share their views on the Coalition. At a packed seminar at the Institute for Government, Danny Finkelstein, Olly Grender and Will Straw waxed and waned about the Government’s first few months in office and its prospects for the years ahead. Enjoying a glass of wine in the audience, I listened with interest ...
