The Times are reporting that

Tory MPs say Greek exit will force referendum

What gives this story a lot of credence is that Nadeem Zahawi, who is close (and loyal) to George Osborne, said on the record:

“If there is a requirement for a new treaty, which there must be, to deal in part with Greece’s exit, then it would trigger a referendum. We would have to make sure we would try and repatriate powers from the social chapter and bring those elements back to the British Parliament.”

Whilst another article in the Times says

Clegg: I won’t be part of EU veto government

Nick Clegg today issued a veiled threat to quit the government if David Cameron were to veto a future European Union (EU) treaty deemed necessary for the eurozone’s survival.

Tory MPs are predicting the Greek issue will come to a head shortly after June the 17th (the date of the Greek elections)

Perhaps it is time to revisit the year of the next election betting market, the only consideration being the Fixed Term Parliament Act of 2011.

Best Prices (via oddschecker)

2012 Ladbrokes 10/1

2013 William Hill 6/1

Welcome once again to PB’s overnight open thread in the relaxing atmosphere of the PB NightHawks cafe.

He took the opportunity to talk about the economic crisis engulfing Europe, making the point that Europe has to work together to sort it. There were no diplomatic niceties in his language as he criticised the failure to find a solution so far:

…our response to this brewing crisis has been woefully fragmented. We have failed on a number of fronts. We have tried to give Europe’s problems different labels, tried to keep them separate. But the world just doesn’t work that way. Management of financial risk, fiscal discipline, labour market reform; these are not just different chapters in an economics textbook. They are closely connected problems with consequences for us all. We have created different classes of country; strong and weak, spenders and savers, Eurozone and non-Eurozone. But these divisions are false. Europe’s economies cannot be prised apart and filed neatly in different boxes; they are too interdependent. And we the way we take decisions is undermining public confidence. Every few weeks European leaders sit down to yet another crisis summit, where another temporary solution is agreed. The tree is falling, and we are pruning one leaf at a time. It is piecemeal politics; endless tactics with no strategy.

He tackled the idea that if Greece were allowed to leave the Euro, the rest of us could just happily get on with our lives and pretend it was nothing to do with us:

And by the way, let me challenge the fashionable assumption being whispered behind cupped hands – that for some countries, leaving the Euro wouldn’t be that bad. That actually, a Greek exit now would be in everyone’s best interests. My own view is that that wildly underestimates the unpredictable, irrevocable damage that could be done to a monetary union when it is shown not to be permanent. No rational person interested in the wealth and wellbeing of Europe’s citizens could advocate taking such a risk: not with Greece’s future, or our own.

He outlined his four point plan to fix things – fiscal mechanisms such as Eurobonds, a responsive monetary policy, decent firewalls to provide a sustainable way of stabilising the banking system and creating the conditions for growth across the single market.

First, faced with different economies, which suffer shocks in different ways, Europe must either share common debt, or change the way money is transferred. You cannot have a monetary union in which one country saves, exports and invests and another spends, borrows and consumes without some mechanism to make it all add up. So we need new fiscal instruments in the Eurozone, through either Eurobonds or greater transfers between Eurozone members.

Second, the European Central Bank has to act as a real monetary backstop, a lender of last resort. This is critical. Fiscal action across the EU must be supported by responsive monetary policy – with central banks prepared to intervene aggressively to support demand.

Third, we must build a firewall big enough and strong enough to stop the flames from spreading. At the moment, countries are stuck in vicious, periodic uncertainty. Tottering banks are propped up by governments. Governments then take the hit from bond markets. Lenders then question whether governments can still shore up the banks. And so the pendulum swings back, only this time everyone’s costs have gone up and the taxpayer ends up deeper in the hole. We need to find a sustainable, realistic way of re-capitalising and stabilising banks.

Fourth, we need to get serious about structural reform. The creation of the single market – the largest borderless single market in the world – is an incredible achievement, one that still has the potential to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. But if that potential is to be realised, we must allow the single market to flourish. We must maintain a relentless focus on creating the right conditions for growth.

Given Nick Clegg’s experience working at the heart of Europe, in the office of the Trade Commissioner, leaders across the EU would do well to take his advice.

* Caron Lindsay is Wednesday editor at Lib Dem Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings

Rebuking Adrian Beecroft for calling Vince a socialist, Oborne heaps praise on him:

I believe that any serious and objective consideration of Mr Cable’s record in office shows that he has been a formidable Cabinet minister, an important ally of enterprise, and, above all, one of the most loyal and supportive members of this Government.

And praises his record on employees’ rights:

Mr Cable is right and Mr Beecroft, along with his Conservative admirers, has taken a very dangerous wrong turning. The kind of untrammelled free market capitalism which Mr Beecroft is advocating is inhumane, unedifying and unBritish, and ultimately comes close to the false proposition that the Conservative Party should be the plaything of very rich men pursuing their financial interests at the expense of a disempowered workforce.

And shows how he brings business and jobs to Britain:

Mr Cable deserves the bulk of the praise for the recent small surge of inward investment into Britain, though characteristically he has not tried to grab all the credit.

Oborne then goes on to wax lyrical about Vince’s life experience:

It sounds paradoxical to say so, but Mr Cable is a new type of politician. He has knocked about the world, working as an adviser to the Kenyan government and chief economist of Shell. He has unusual personal accomplishment, as anyone who saw his remarkable appearance on Strictly Come Dancing will know. He is the author of the most gripping memoir by an active politician since that by David Blunkett. He has known personal tragedy through the slow death from cancer of his first wife, Olympia. He has rough edges and has enjoyed a genuine career outside Westminster. Alone among the Liberal Democrat members of the front bench, Mr Cable has managed to stay loyal to the Coalition without surrendering his identity.

Of course, I couldn’t agree with him for a whole article. That would be ridiculous. I’ll just point out that Oborne, in the last sentence of the paragraph above, seems to have forgotten the paper that he’s writing for ran a sting operation at the end of 2010 where Liberal Democrat ministers were recorded saying things you would very much expect Liberal Democrats to say. I wrote at the time that the whole episode had confirmed my faith in our MPs, even if I disagreed with some of the decisions they had made.

And, finally, the highest accolade:

 Mr Cable is now in that very interesting place: he is the moral centre of gravity for the Coalition and of British public life

He even throws in a bit of a comparison to Gladstone.

You can read the article in full here.

* Caron Lindsay is Wednesday editor at Lib Dem Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings

TOP MESSAGES FOR THE DAY

1.       The South West has provided the perfect start for the Torch
Relay. Hundreds of thousands of people have lined the streets to
welcome the flame, creating remarkable scenes and providing a great
advert for the region, the country and the Games.

2.       The Torch will briefly enter the West Midlands for the first
time today, before arriving in Wales on Friday. Both parts of the UK
are making a huge contribution to the Games, and will add their own
distinctive magic to the Torch Relay.

Pyongyang 2012…

I accept the cynical case that his release was convenient to the Scottish government in many ways: it prevented his “martyrdom” in a Scottish prison; it may have helped the lucrative business of trading with Libya; it was helpful to the SNP government’s wider aims to
remind everyone about ways in which Scottish and English law (and, by extension, Scotland and England) differ. But none of these influence my opinion that his release was justified on the stated grounds of compassion.

To justify this, I think we only need to ask one question: what would have been gained by keeping him in prison for the last three years? Among the purposes of prison are protecting the public from further crimes by the same criminal, rehabilitating the offender, deterring others from committing similar crimes, and retribution for the crimes already ommitted.  The first purpose had already been served. This terminally-ill man was clearly of no danger to the public in any country.  He was also clearly beyond any point of rehabilitation.  We can reasonably assume that the prospect of being released once terminally ill doesn’t much influence the decisions of those who seek to blow up airliners. And so we are left with retribution.

The desire for retribution is an understandable human response, but it seems to me to be to be an overwhelmingly negative one. Indeed, it’s one that all the major religions urge their followers to resist. Even if there were an equivalent punishment – in the sense of “an eye for an eye” – for the murder of 270 people, carrying it out wouldn’t bring them back to life, nor necessarily even give any meaningful comfort to their families.

An alternative option is mercy, and in a case like this, where it simply involves allowing a terminally-ill man to die in his own country, it comes at no real cost to anyone. It shouldn’t be confused with forgiveness; he’s still a murderer and his conviction still stands. One definition of mercy is this: the exercise of self-control by people who possess power over others. That is the sort of thing that I think we should encourage, from our elected leaders as much as from anyone.  And that is why I believe that, even though he wasn’t as close to death as it seemed at the time, and despite the ugly spectacle of his welcome back to Libya, releasing al-Magrahi was the right thing to do.

* Malcolm Wood is a Liberal Democrat member in Edinburgh South East.

      I have met police officers to hear their worries about the Winsor proposals on police pay. Understandably some police officers are worried that their pay will be cut, owing to the new scales and the enlarged pension contributions.

      I took these matters up with Mr Winsor this week when he came to the Commons to hear MPs concerns and to listen to our representations on behalf of constituents. I put to him the worries about pay, and said that I did not think we wanted to cut police pay for officers doing important work fighting crime.

      He said that on his proposals most police officers would be better off. He explained that there would be extra payments for anti social hours, for front line duties and for special skills. When I asked why so many police officers did not seem to think this would be the case he said he had set out on line a calculator so they could check it out for themselves. He argued that his proposals had been misrepresented in the media.

      If any local police officer is worried about the pay  changes, they can log on to review.police.uk and will see on the front page a calculator facility to open which will enable to work out easily what the changes might mean for them. Mr Winsor says it will be reassuring to many. I am happy to take cases up again if officers find their calcultations do not come up with a fair and reasonable answer.

My colleagues on the Lib Dem Defra backbench Committee and I have been very clear that we oppose measures that would harm a protected bird of prey that’s only now recovering after decades of decline, and we’ve been making this case to Defra ministers. We believe the focus should be on tackling the problem identified by shooting estates only where it’s proven that buzzards are the cause, without resorting to capturing buzzards or destroying their nests. In those cases, we’re supportive of the non-lethal methods Defra has identified.

However, thousands of pheasants are killed by traffic every year and our view is that focussing only on the issue of buzzards eating young pheasants which, after all is nature taking its course, is far too narrow. If gamekeepers are suffering financially as pheasant poults are not making it into adulthood, we should take an holistic view of the problem rather than reacting on the basis of anecdotal evidence.

I know that many of you will feel that spending money on a buzzard management programme is not the best use of public money when many other conservation initiatives aren’t being taken forward, and I’d welcome your comments on this in the comments section.

Baroness Kate Parminter is Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Backbench Committee on Defra/Decc.

Following on from the previous thread, does recent polling make a Tory/UKIP more likely or less likely?

POPULUS

It found that only 21 per cent are “positive” about Britain’s membership of Europe, while 31 per cent say they are “negative” and think the country would be better off leaving.

However, 23 per cent who are negative about UK membership still think Britain would be worse off leaving the EU, while 25 per cent do not have a strong view either way.

This means the 44 per cent believing that Britain should stay in the EU outweigh the 31 per cent who want withdrawal — meaning that a referendum victory for an “out” campaign would be far from certain.

Furthermore, 54 per cent of voters said the current eurozone crisis “makes me less confident that the UK could or would prosper if it withdrew from the EU”.

COMRES

26% of Tory voters are “seriously considering” voting for the UK Independence Party.

If a referendum were held on Britain’s membership of the EU, I would vote for Britain to leave the EU

Agree 46%

Disagree 30%

Half (51%) of Conservative voters agree, compared with 42% of Labour voters and 39% of Lib Dem voters.

Compare the 54-34% split in recent British Election Study (disapprove-approve of EU membership).

Excluding don’t knows, this suggests a 61-39% vote to end Britain’s membership of the EU.

TSE

Note: Mike Smithson is on holiday until June 7th.

For a couple of years Guido used to report his financial market trading in a box in the blog’s right hand column. It was popular with a few readers, nowadays Guido trades occasionally and just tweets about it. Readers still ask how the market trading is going, the above chart shows how it has been going this year so far, each data point is a closed trade. For the first couple of months Guido was long and wrong on gold, which hurts when you are over-leveraged. Since March Guido has been trying to sell a break in the Euro, as the chart shows it wasn’t really going anywhere until a couple of weeks ago when it dipped below 1.30 to the US dollar before hitting new lows for the year yesterday. Making back all losses for the year and some…

The CityAm Active Trader conference saw 650 traders gathered in the City. Guido spoke to them about the pros and cons of trading on the back of your political analysis. If you are interested in that kind of thing (and why the tooth fairy made 7 year-old Miss Fawkes cry) the speaking notes are here. Just don’t tell Mrs Fawkes…

Paradox 1: When asked, most people in this country say the current system of British politics needs to change. Yet the public consistently votes for small-c conservative parties and causes.

Paradox 2: As both a liberal and a democrat, I want a more participative democracy. Yet I’m sceptical referendums are the best way to achieve this.

A brief history of referendums in this country

Let’s take a look at our three most recent experiences in this country of referendums:

• Just three weeks ago, 11 cities in England voted on whether or not they want to their local authorities to be run by an elected mayor. Of these, 10 voted to maintain the status quo, with Doncaster voting to retain its decade-old mayoral system, and Bristol the one outlier which voted for change.
• In the referendum on the alternative vote in May 2011, there was a decisive rejection of changing from first-past-the-post, with just 10 UK areas out of 440 voting in favour of AV.
• Two months prior to that, in March 2011, Wales voted to extend the law-making powers of its national assembly — a vote for change, true, but one that simply extended existing Welsh assembly powers and was supported by all four established parties in Wales.

We can go back further in time.. The first ever UK plebiscite was the 1973 Northern Ireland sovereignty referendum — which overwhelmingly re-affirmed the population’s wish to remain part of the union. Then two years later, in 1975, Harold Wilson asked the British people if they wanted to remain within the Common Market — again the status quo prevailed.

Six of the next seven referendums held in the UK focused on devolution:

The other referendum, the all-Ireland vote on the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, resulted in an overwhelming endorsement of that stage of the peace process, having been backed by all Northern Ireland’s parties other than Ian Paisley’s DUP.

Between 2001 and 2012, there have been 47 referendums held by local authorities on whether to introduce elected mayors to run the council — of these, 33 have resulted in no change.

My two conclusions from all this

That’s my brief run through the full list of our UK experiences of referendums, from which I draw two conclusions:

1. A good rule-of-thumb is that the public will vote for the status quo when asked in a referendum. Put simply, voters tend to dislike change (no matter what they may tell pollsters when asked an abstract question). It’s a variation, I suspect, on the ‘loss aversion’ explanation of human behaviour: people prefer to avoid losses than to make gains;
2. The exceptions to this rule-of-thumb being when the change proposed in a referendum is backed by a coalition of most/all the major parties.

And that leads me to the following tentative views on the two contentious issues currently the subject of debate on whether we should hold referendums to settle them… First, an in/out referendum on British membership of the European Union would almost certainly result in the ‘in’ side winning. And, secondly, on House of Lords reform those opposed to reform (ie, in support of the status quo) would most likely win.

A Lord reform referendum proposal

There are, therefore, two options open to Nick Clegg to square the circle of accepting a referendum on Lords reform and maximising his chances of winning the reform argument.

The first is to hold a referendum in which he — together with David Cameron and Ed Miliband — would lead the campaign for a democratically-accountable chamber: an enthusiastic alliance of the three main parties might persuade a majority of the public.

An alternative to that is to promise a referendum to be held after the Lords-replacement second chamber has been in operation for (say) five years, at which point the public would be asked if they want to stick with it, a ‘future-proof’ lock to offer the public the chance to revert to political patronage if they find democracy unappealing.

In some ways, this latter suggestion is a cynical one: I’m deliberately putting forward the option I think would be most likely to result in my preferred option, a reformed second chamber, winning. But, then, that’s also what those who favour the status quo are doing. The difference with my proposal — of a post-reform referendum — is that the public would be able to base their vote on real-life experience of both systems.

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.

Those who know me will not be surprised that I was running late so things were already underway when I arrive. Those people will be further un-surprised that I hadn’t registered in advance either, confident that people would be willing to take my money on the day!

The session was already underway so I quietly slipped in through the door and sat at the back.

That’s right – at an openly advertised meeting, where Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was speaking, I just walked in off the street.

No pre-registration.

No ID check.

Not even a check on whether I was a party member.

And no check as to what I was carrying in the rucksack on my back, which includes my laptop, charger, external hard drive etc so is hardly empty.

So just what is it that made the Yorkshire and Humber region so much less of a security risk than Brighton or Birmingham?

Is Nick so incredibly popular in Yorkshire that there is no risk? It isn’t. No really. We’ve had letters.

Of course there was some security. There were 6-8 clearly visible people, presumably from Special Branch or somesuch organisation, keeping an eye on events. These are not, I suspect, the sort of people you want to mess with.  As a slightly unexpected latecomer they were probably keeping a pretty close eye on me throughout!

But surely the same arguments about Federal Conference would apply just as much to a regional conference?

There would have been a risk to the staff working in the venue and for the party. There would also be the financial risk to the regional party had they gone against the recommendation of the police etc.

Clearly the risk was considered negligible. In fact the risk was so negligible that the security officers tasked with protecting Nick weren’t even operating a cursory door check that people were party members and conference attendees. As I was sat by the door he even passed within about 10 feet of me on his way out!

If the party can hold a conference, operating a minimal level of security, quite safely and with the apparent approval of the police and security in Skipton in November 2011, why does it need such an incredibly higher level of security for a conference in Brighton in September 2012?

Maybe the FCC, FFAC and FE can explain.

Painful watching for team Hunt this morning as News Corp lobbyist Fred Michel took a battering from Mr Jay QC at the Leveson Inquiry. He’s coughed that the impression he was given was that Adam Smith was talking on behalf of Hunt and thus feedback was given to News Corp from the Secretary of State, via Hunt’s SpAd’s personal email address.

He also confirmed he was in text contact with Hunt – painful extracts were read out in court and the whole batch are due to be published today. It seems former Hunt SpAd Adam Smith will try to paint Michel as a fantasist, but the paper trail is not looking good…

UPDATE:

Michel to Hunt: "You were great at commons today". Hunt reply: "Merci, large drink tonight" #Leveson—
ian katz (@iankatz1000) May 24, 2012

UPDATE: The texts are here.

As well as actions as a party though, there are very many individuals who are both concerned about, and working with and for, asylum seekers in their locality.  This ranges from signing petitions to being part of committees and action groups, and supporting individuals in many ways.

We are proposing to form a group of such supporters, “Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary”,  to co-ordinate our work, share ideas and experiences, be a point of reference for our decision makers, and work to formulate new policy.

If you are interested, then please contact one of us as follows :

Suzanne Fletcher.  , 01642 786456

Janet King.

Philip Latham.

* Suzanne Fletcher was a councillor for nearly 30 years. Now retired, she is active as a campaigner in the community both as a Lib Dem and with local organisations. She also does voluntary work with an advice agency.

This one has been doing the rounds this morning… 

UPDATE: Sun sources say it was a wedding present rather than egotistically commissioned.

UPDATE: Sky are reporting that Trimingham has to pay a quarter of a million in costs within fourteen days. Ouch…

Can you guess who it is?

(Answer after the jump.)

Jo Grimond, during his time as party leader.

The show was called The Shadow of Ignorance and aired in April 1960. The Catholic Herald was not impressed: “Venereal disease is the result of promiscuity, and since the programme was dealing with human beings. not animals, the moral issue should have been discussed, but never was … In duty bound I sat the programme out, and when it ended opened the windows wide.”

* Mark Pack is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and writes a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.

To recap, Andrew Marr was talking about the authority and credibility of the political blogosphere. Top left on page 83 if you don’t want to read the whole thing.

“You look around and a lot of the most influential highly respected political commentators aren’t newspaper journalists, actually, they are bloggers. I’m thinking of people like Tim Montgomery on Conservativehome or Mr Pack on the Liberal website.”

Well, actually, Mr Marr, it’s Dr Pack, but we’ll let that one pass seeing as you were so nice.

It got me wondering what our Mark has said about Andrew Marr over the years. There are a couple of wee gems.

In January this year, when Marr interviewed Nick Clegg, Mark commented that he must have been bidding for the highest number of topics in one interview.

Marr’s comments yesterday were a big change from Autumn 2010 when he described bloggers as “inadequate, male, pimpled and single.” Mark reminded him at the time that most bloggers are in fact female.  Now that Marr’s admiring the genre, he might want to diversify his reading list. There are plenty good ones to choose from here.

It appears to me that seeing as Mark has been cited as one of the most respected political commentators in the country, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for him to head along to Leveson himself, especially as he has his own, liberal, perspective on how the media should be reformed post Leveson.

In the meantime, it will be chocolate milk shakes all round at LDV Towers today.

* Caron Lindsay is Wednesday editor at Lib Dem Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings

James Forsyth's Spectator interview with Nigel Farage, which Tim Montgomerie wrote about on this site yesterday, is a sign of how far the UKIP leader has come - and how seriously Fleet Street now takes both him and it.

• The party is sometimes nudging the Liberal Democrats into fourth place in the polls.

• It won 13% of the vote in this month's local elections, in not especially favourable electoral territory.

• Its vote share at general elections has risen from about 100,000 in 1997 to roughly a million two years ago.

• And it has of course polled in the mid-teens during the last two sets of Euro-elections.

I agree with Tim that Mr Farage's suggestion of Conservative/UKIP candidates at the next election is a tease - or, perhaps, a clever piece of psych-ops designed to divide and confuse Tory activists, and set them chattering.

The UKIP leader is suggesting that local Tory Associations detach themselves from their party nationally and give a different party a big say locally in candidate choice.  He knows well that this will only happen very rarely, if at all.

But having asked around and spoken to senior UKIP sources, I think that his real game is a variation on this theme.  Let's examine how UKIP could make a major strategic breakthrough in British politics, given that -

• First-past-the-post doesn't exactly help smaller parties, such as UKIP.

• The party has no winning record in by-elections and to date has been not much kop at them (though it did come second in Barnsley).

• Success in Euro-elections hasn't been followed by success at general elections - and there's no reason why this should change in 2014, even if the party comes top of the poll.

I think the answer lies in the gathering prospect of an In/Out referendum - which the Labour Party is toying with and the People's Pledge is enthusiastically campaigning for.  Such a referendum would deliver what Mr Farage was feinting at in his offer of joint candidates.

Namely, a Conservative split: in such a referendum, a big proportion of the party would vote No while the leadership (it must be assumed) would vote yes.  A recent ComRes poll found that 51% of Tory supporters would vote to leave.  My guess is that activists' views are similar.

The only referendum on Europe that has taken place in Britain had vast medium-term political consequences.  The divisions in Labour which it exposed took radical form in scarcely more than five years - when part of Labour's pro-EU wing broke away to form the SDP.

Mr Farage surely envisages a similar process in the event of an In-Out referendum, whereby the centre-right of the Conservative Party and UKIP are eventually welded together to form a new right-wing force.  A scenario by which an In-Out poll could be delivered is as follows:

• UKIP continues to try to build up its credentials as "the Tory party you used to vote for".  Note the stress Mr Farage placed in his Spectator interview on issues other than an EU referendum - such as grammar schools and wind turbines.

• The party gets a bigger vote share in next year's local elections than this year's.  Remember, they will be county council polls held in blue rural heartland seats.  Mr Farage will thus target disaffected Conservative voters.  My guess is he will aim for around 20%.

• This paves the way for UKIP to top the polls in the Euro-elections, increasing the pressure on David Cameron for an In-Out poll and encouraging Labour to come out for one to split the Tories - as the possibility of UKIP hitting above 5% in the general election looms.

There's a great deal more to be written about this - why Mr Cameron could come out for a renegotiation referendum; why a new right-wing party would be very short on appeal to "the centre"; why it's mistaken to build an electoral strategy solely on combating UKIP, and so on.

However, my theme for the day is trying to set out what UKIP's strategy must surely be.  It's not a bad one at all for that party.  Mr Farage has been around for a long time, is hardened by a hundred battles (external and internal), and will work to see it through.

“Most citizen journalism strikes me as nothing to do with journalism at all. A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting. They are very angry people. … Most of the blogging is too angry and too abusive. It is vituperative. Terrible things are said on line because they are anonymous. People say things on line that they wouldn’t dream of saying in person.”

And here’s Andrew Marr speaking to the Leveson Inquiry yesterday:

“You look around and a lot of the most influential highly respected political commentators aren’t newspaper journalists, actually, they are bloggers. I’m thinking of people like Tim Montgomerie on Conservativehome or Mr Pack on the Liberal website.”

Kudos to my co-editor, Mark, on his mention in Leveson’s dispatches.

And kudos, too, to Andrew Marr on this change of heart. As I’ve pointed out before, it was not highly respected political bloggers who chose to recycle unsourced rumours about the mental health of Gordon Brown live on air during a televised interview — it was Andrew Marr.

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.

Well, nearly.

Tim Montgomerie with AFC Bluebirds Captain, Hudson Roe

ConHome is delighted to be the new multi-pound sponsors of AFC Bluebirds - a five-a-side football team of Tory parliamentary researchers. In my dreams I see this as a first step towards becoming a sponsor of Man Utd and having a very nice box at Old Trafford.

Meanwhile good luck to the Bluebirds...

“I think the PM is just human and Ed Balls is a pretty irritating person”

          The latest wet drought has highlighted the imperfections of our water industry, with its heavy regulations and government protected regional near monopolies. It takes some kind of genius to be short of water in an island famed for its heavy rainfall in many parts.  It shows a lack of self awareness to be enforcing drought orders in the middle of one of the wettest springs on record.

            I have long put the case for water competition. Why can’t we have a choice of water provider? Why do we have plenty of bread, but run out of water? Isn’t the main difference that competing farms grow the grain and competing bakeries bake the bread, whilst regional monopolies decide rationing is easier than supplying enough to meet demand for water?

              The good news is the Coalition government has decided to introduce competition for all water supply to business. It is keen to allow water companies to buy and sell water across water company boundaries.

              At present little of this happens. Under the complex regulatory system in place companies feel they are better rewarded for putting in new water gathering capacity of their own, than buying water from another part of the country where it is more plentiful and cheaper. They can offset the capital expense against the profits under the formula used for price calculations.

                  The government might also considering a Green Deal type scheme for water customers to invest in water gathering and supply facilities at their own home so they could supply some or all of their own water for grey water purposes. Customers taking such an option would be lent the money to put in the equipment, and be put onto water meters for their company supply which would cut their bills considerably as they used their own water for gardens, car washing and other  low grade water activities. They would repay the loan for the water equipment over time, probably  with their bills and loan repayments  being lower  than the old bills with full supply from the water company.

In the Spectator today, Nigel Farage raises the possibility of joint Conservative/UKIP candidates at the next election.

He says

“What I do know is there are Conservative associations up and down the country who think this could be a way forward.

“All I would say to you is that in terms of co-operation or deals or anything in the future, firstly it’s some way off. But secondly, I can see that there are associations thinking along these lines. If they approach us, would I entertain and contemplate such ideas? Of course I would.”

Farage also makes clear his contempt and scorn for David Cameron.

“He’s a committed warmist and he wants to build wind turbines all over Britain. He’s so committed to the EU that he doesn’t want to have a referendum in case we give the wrong answer and he sees no difficulties at all with mass immigration – it’s cheaper chauffeurs and gardeners and nannies. He completely has turned his back on the concept of grammar schools to give people from poorer backgrounds the opportunity to get on.”

If you’re a Tory MP, in a marginal seat, or an association/candidate in a target seat that Tories need to win to achieve a majority, then Farage’s potential offer seems very attractive, especially with UKIP polling at nearly 10% and outpolling the the Lib Dems in some instances. 

But how will David Cameron and the rest of the leadership act, if MPs, candidates and associations start approaching UKIP?

The other variable in this is, if Labour promise in their manifesto an in/out referendum, as 81 Conservative MPs recently rebelled on the issue. 

The issue of Europe could yet cause as much problems for David Cameron as it did to the Premierships of Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

TSE

Note: Mike Smithson is on holiday until June 7th.