Archive for nick clegg

The fallout from Chris Huhne’s resignation

I’ve been busy with the media yesterday and today giving my take on Chris Huhne’s resignation, so here are the two main highlights if you missed them: The Lib Dem Voice survey results I mention are covered in the piece Which four Liberal Democrat ministers have most improved their standings in 2011? and for more [...]

Nick Clegg: what his speech web page could have looked like

26 January 2012 ,
Earlier today in amongst positive comments about the communications handling of Nick Clegg’s speech, I also made some criticisms of the digital side. It’s only fair to ask, “OK, but what would you have done?” so here is the web page I would have put together: Nick Clegg: More money back in your pocket I’ve [...]
Nick Clegg Resolution Foundation speech word cloud

Nick Clegg’s speech in a word cloud

26 January 2012 ,
And finally, to round off a trio of posts about Nick Clegg’s speech today to the Resolution Foundation, here is his speech as a word cloud: UPDATE: Here’s my one-pager summary of the substance of Nick Clegg’s Resolution Foundation speech, in handy sharing-friendly format.
Nick Clegg with parents and children 2010. Photo courtesy of Alex Folkes / Lib Dems. Some rights reserved

Nick Clegg turns media weakness into media strength

Ask a Liberal Democrat what they think about the British media and chances are you will hear a complaint about how media habits developed during years of a two-party political system that generated one-party governments die hard. That makes today’s speech by Nick Clegg on tax policy a smart move, turning those habits from a [...]

Nick Clegg returns to income tax

Later this morning, Nick Clegg will be giving a speech to the Resolution Foundation in which, after recent talk about wealth taxes, he is returning to the topic of income tax cuts. More specifically, speeding up the progress towards a basic income tax allowance of £10,000 whilst keeping the 50p rate. This is of course closely [...]

Promising signs ahead of next Queen’s Speech

24 January 2012 , ,
There wouldn’t normally appear to be much of a connection between private universities and House of Lords reform, but it is there in the process details of today’s news about the government dropping its plans for a bill to allow the creation of new private universities from the forthcoming Queen’s Speech. It makes for good [...]
Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister

And lo, Nick Clegg talks about fairness in a time of austerity

22 January 2012 ,
In my earlier post about Nick Clegg’s interview on the Andrew Marr show I speculated: I suspect Nick Clegg went into the interview wanting to talk in some detail about his vision of fairness in a time of economic austerity as each time he half got going on such a topic it sounded like there [...]

Andrew Marr bids for record-breaking number of different topics in one interview

22 January 2012 , , , ,
I wonder if somewhere deep in the BBC there is a target for how many different topics must be asked about in political interviews each month and someone woke up this morning to realise that January’s quota is about to be missed. Or perhaps there was a typo in Andrew Marr’s contract and his BBC [...]

Wanted: a new form of capitalism

17 January 2012 ,
Look through the grand sweep of history and times of severe economic turmoil have often been accompanied by times of ideological ferment. That ferment has often thrown up the extreme and the nasty – think fascism or Communist dictatorship – which makes the absence of an equivalent post-financial crash ferment not wholly a bad thing. [...]
Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister

VIDEO: Nick Clegg calls for “John Lewis economy”

16 January 2012 ,
(For more on the story see the BBC report Nick Clegg plans more employee ownership.)