Putney Lib Dems: excellent raffle tickets, even better speech from Lord Newby

Last night I was over in Putney for the first annual Putney Liberal Democrats dinner, where amongst the other visitors were Bridget Fox, Shas Sheehan and Jonathan Fryer – who has written up Dick Newby’s excellent speech.

Rivalling the speech in excellence was the raffle tickets, which are of a decidedly superior cut in Putney. What most struck me about the speech was the way in which Labour’s tactics in the Lords has driven Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers closer together as they spend hours in each other’s company with shared distaste for Labour’s crude filibustering. A smarter opposition would have been seeking to drive apart, rather than together, the coalition partners. As a result, Labour’s tactics have become good news for the fate of Liberal Democrat policies in the coalition agreement which Conservative peers are not keen on. The more Labour unites the coalition, the more support Conservative peers will give to such policies.