How many more anniversaries will there be?

Today is the first anniversary of David Cameron becoming Prime Minister and tomorrow is the first anniversary of the Coalition's formation - as I have said before, the first few hours of David Cameron's premiership were as the head of a minority Conservative government as the Liberal Democrats only approved going into the Coalition in the early hours of 12 May.

In any case, today is an important day but the question many political commentators are asking is how long can the Coalition continue?

The election results were bad for the Coalition for an unlikely reason. The Lib Dems did badly, losing MSPs, AMs, thousands of councillors and - of course - the AV referendum. Although this was bad, it was also expected. The real damage came from the Conservatives doing rather well - increasing their number of councillors and winning the AV referendum.

Ironically, it would have been better for the Coalition if both of the governing parties had done badly in the elections as now the Lib Dems feel singled out - acting as the political equivalent of a human shield for the government's unpopular austerity measures.

I think the Liberal Democrats will remain in the Coalition if only because they would be wiped out in the general election which would immediately follow the break-up of the Coalition.

Incidentally, today is the 199th anniversary of Spencer Perceval's assassination (Perceval is the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated). If the Coalition lasts to the 200th anniversary of Perceval's death, I can imagine laboured newspaper headlines linking Little P's sad end to the health of the Coalition.

"Never had it so good"

In 1957 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave a speech in Bedford in which he said "most of our people have never had it so good." At the time, the speech was said to be optimistic (if not arrogant), but in fact it was meant as a warning. Mr. Macmillan was trying to say that the recent years of prosperity wouldn't last forever.

Today Lord Young was forced to resign after saying "For the vast majority of people in the country today, they have never had it so good..."

He wasn't a member of the government (he was the PM's enterprise adviser), but it is still embarrassing for David Cameron.

It must be especially annoying for Lord Young as what he said was true. People who are in work and have a mortgage are doing quite well. As interest rates are so low, mortgage repayments are very small.

This group of people (which is sizeable) suddenly have more money at the end of month and can't be feeling too bad at the moment. However, they have job losses and public service cuts to come.

To me, Lord Young's ill-advised words seem like a Macmillan-style warning.

Buried

This afternoon Downing Street announced that Andrew Parsons (the PM's photographer) and Nicky Woodhouse (the PM's filmmaker) have been removed from the civil service. The two had been referred to as 'vanity staff' and the Prime Minister was widely criticised for paying them with public money.

The removal of Mr. Parsons and Ms Woodhouse from the civil service is an embarrassing u-turn for the Prime Minister, but oddly, the press haven't covered it much today - they seemed to have had another story to talk about.

The happy and historic news of a Royal wedding has also buried some sad news for the readers of political blogs. Tom Harris, the Labour MP for Glasgow South, has announced that he is to give up blogging as it was getting him "into too many squabbles". A lesson for us all!

And so it begins...

Boris Johnson and David Cameron went to Eton together, they both went to Oxford, were in the Bullingdon Club at the same time, and they were in Michael Howard's Shadow Cabinet together. However, you would be wrong to think that this makes them friends.

The rivalry between the two men has been much documented and at the same time remained in the shadows, never overtly coming out in public, there have just been suggestions of its existence here and there. This has made it one of the most tantalising political stories of the moment.

I predict that Boris Johnson's description of the government's housing policy as 'Kosovo-style social cleansing' is just the opening skirmishes in a much longer battle between the Mayor of London and the Prime Minister.
Some of this was inevitable, Boris Johnson will be fighting for re-election in less than 18 months, and he needs to separate himself from the government. Mr. Johnson knows people tend to vote against the party of government in mid-term, especially one which is rising taxes and cutting public services. As a result, the Prime Minister will probably tolerate these differences of opinion - for now.

In the meantime, I'm guessing the Mayor will enjoy snipping at his old schoolmate and it is probably are foreshadow of Conservative Party conflicts to come.

Mr. Miliband's first PMQs

Some nerviness before your first Prime Minister's Questions as leader is understandable, and an uneasy performance from Ed Miliband would have been more than forgivable. However, Mr. Miliband seemed neither nervous nor uneasy at his first PMQs as Labour leader, in fact, his questions were measured and clever, his delivery was smooth and he actually had some genuinely funny jokes. David Cameron however seemed rather uncomfortable at times, and was often unable to give a clear response to questions from the Leader of the Opposition. Even the Father of the House, Conservative MP Sir Peter Tapsell, complimented Mr. Miliband on his performance.

Fortunately for the Prime Minister, and unluckily for Mr. Miliband, the media gave near blanket coverage to the extraordinary rescue of the 33 miners from the San José Mine in Chile. During the rescue, Mr. Cameron telephoned the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, to congratulate him. The Prime Minister really should have also thanked the President for rescuing the miners on the same day he was trounced at PMQs, thus pushing Mr. Miliband's success off tomorrow's front pages.

Ed Miliband always has next week's PMQs to get the media's attention, although I suspect victory will be a bit more difficult next time - Mr. Cameron will want to learn from today's defeat and make sure he is ready for his next meeting with Mr. Miliband.

Of course, the importance of PMQs for those outside the Westminster bubble is rather insignificant. When William Hague was Leader of the Opposition, he frequently defeated Prime Minister Tony Blair in debates across the despatch box, but he then lost the 2001 general election in a landslide. Mr. Hague once described PMQs as "exciting, fascinating, fun, an enormous challenge and, from my point of view, wholly unproductive in every sense."

One thing PMQs does do is give a sense of the personality of the party leaders. Today Mr. Miliband seemed calm, cool, clever and funny. The big test for a successful leader is whether they seem 'Prime Ministerial'. In my opinion, I don't think Mr. Miliband did that today, but this was mainly due to the fact that he wasn't the guy answering the questions.

Good or bad conference for the PM?

At the start if the conference season, I had thought that, in comparison to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative conference would seem rather dull. In fact, it was one of the strangest and most interesting conferences due to it being hijacked by the Chancellor's announcement that child benefit would be cut for families with high incomes (most of whom are Conservative voters). George Osborne apparently announced his plan without talking to the Cabinet, something for which Mr. Osborne used to criticise Gordon Brown.

Many Conservative delegates and MPs were greatly angered at the announcement but an opinion poll suggested that 83% of people support the cut. Although, as most commentators pointed out, about 83% of people aren't affected by the cut and it's easy to support someone else losing money.

David Cameron's speech on Wednesday was good, but not his best. There was a very sweet moment when the Prime Minister talked about Niamh Riley, a six-year-old girl from Salford who sent Mr. Cameron a £1 from the tooth fairy to help with the deficit. Mr. Cameron apparently returned the money with a thankful note advising Miss Riley to 'treat herself'.

To me, it seemed as if the bad headlines were affecting the PM (either that or his newborn had been keeping him up). George Osborne however was unaffected and unapologetic, he knows that there are worse cuts needed and that the government is going to become very unpopular in the next few months.

However, the next general election is a long way away, and the coalition hopes that by the time polling day comes, the economy will have been repaired and the government will get the credit. In the meantime, they will have to suffer through some very bad headlines and a few more hijacked conferences.

Fun at the conference!

Conference season is here again, and there's always something of interest at this point in the political calendar, though normally it's one of the party leaders in some form of difficulty. However this year is interesting for very different reasons.

Next week is the Liberal Democrat conference which in previous years has been described as narcolepsy inducing, but this time the keynote speakers will be members of the government. Nick Clegg will give his traditional leader's speech as Deputy Prime Minister and Conservative MPs will be welcomed! Who would have predicted that a year ago?

Then, on Saturday 25th, the Labour party will begin by finally announcing the result of their leadership election. This is probably the most important moment of this year's conference season. The next leader of the Labour party will have an enormous influence on British politics in the next few years. The really exciting thing is, no one knows who the next leader will be!!

After the Labour conference, it's the Conservatives' turn with David Cameron's first conference speech as Prime Minister.

Northern Ireland apology

It's said that all powerful nations have an original sin. With the UK, it's Ireland. The British have filled many dark pages in the history books with atrocities in Ireland, but in recent history the darkest day was 30 January 1972 (Bloody Sunday) when British paratroopers opened fire on a crowd of people in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

Commenting on the publication of the inquiry into Bloody Sunday, today David Cameron (who was five years old when the killing took place) apologies in the House of Commons for what happened on that day. The apology was honest and unreserved, even though it should have been said by a British Prime Minister 40 years ago. There is now a fragile peace in Northern Ireland and in laying out the unforgivable David Cameron may have opened to door to forgiveness.

Politeness in the Commons?

The House of Commons, known for its boisterousness, especially during Prime Minister's Questions, was strangely polite and quite today. The tragedy in Cumbria no doubt was partially responsible for this. In many ways it was similar to Gordon Brown's first PMQs which took place just days after attempted terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow.

When he first became Leader of the Conservative party, David Cameron said he wanted to put an end to 'Punch and Judy politics' which the Commons is known to produce. This was quickly forgotten, and as Leader of the Opposition Mr. Cameron continued the adversarial tradition of Commons' debating. Perhaps today's politeness on the part of the Prime Minister was an attempt to return to his original policy of orderly discourse.

One of the most striking (and distracting) things to notes was the Prime Minister's lack of the notes! Pervious PMs have had a massive folder permanently in front of them during PMQs, which contained the government's position on every issue which might be asked about. David Cameron however, for most of the time, didn't have one piece of paper to hand. I wonder how long this innovation will last.

Harriet Harman, acting Leader of the Labour party, performed well, although having been Leader of the House for the last three years, she is used to the atmosphere of the Commons. One thing missing was a third party. Before, the leader of the second largest opposition party (normally the Liberal Democrats) was allowed to ask the PM two question, but of course the Liberal Democrats are now part of the government and their leader sat silently next to the Prime Minister.

Talking of the Liberal Democrats, today the nominations for the Deputy Leadership closed. There will be two candidates for the job - Simon Hughes and Tim Farron – and the election will take place next Wednesday.

Some Labour MPs must look on with envy, their leadership election doesn't end for months. At the moment is looks like only three candidates - David Miliband, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls - will be able to get the support of 33 Labour MPs, which is required for them to be nominated. All three candidates are white Oxford educated men, and two of them share the same surname and parents. This is not the image of diversity for which some in the Labour party had been hoping. There is still a little time for other candidates to get nominated, the deadline is next Wednesday – the same day as the Liberal Democrats Deputy Leadership election and David Cameron's next PMQs.

The new Prime Minister's Questions

In ancient Rome, when a triumph general returned home after a great victory, he was paraded through the streets while being cheered by excited crowds. To make sure the adoration of the masses didn't go to his head, a slave would always be placed near the general and repeat the words "hominem the memento" (remember that you are just a man). Today, the UK has a similar procedure for keeping its political leaders grounded – Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs).

Members of the government were required to answers questions in Parliament long before the office of Prime Minister was invented. But Prime Ministers have only had to regularly answer questions in parliament since relatively recently, only the last 50 years in fact.

Tomorrow David Cameron will take part in PMQs for the first time as Prime Minister. Of course, he is used to the scenario having been Leader of the Opposition for five years, but he was the one asking the questions then, now he has to answer them.

During the election campaign, many Americans watching on the other side of the Atlantic were surprised to hear that the UK had never before had live TV debates. "But you have TV debates all the time" they said, "We've seen them on C-SPAN".

The Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (or C-SPAN for short) shows live coverage of Prime Minister's Questions in the US, where it gets very respectable ratings. Americans seem bemused as well as a little jealous of the fact that every week when Parliament is sitting, the British Prime Minister is summoned to the House of Commons where he or she must answer questions from ordinary MPs on any subject they like. There have even been calls for the US President to go to Congress and answer questions as a direct result of Americans seeing PMQs.

Strangely, the British public seem far less interested. The ratings for PMQs are very low, especially in comparison to the TV debates during the last election. The atmosphere of the House of Commons is inherently rowdy and the Prime Minister is free to answer the question however he or she sees fit, which normally means evading the question. The timing doesn't aid public interest either; Prime Minister's Questions starts at the strike of noon on Wednesdays and lasts thirty minutes, during which time most people are in work or having lunch or both.

Tomorrows PMQs might get slightly more interest as for one week only they'll take place at 3pm, at which point we'll see how good our new Prime Minister is at answering questions for a change. Historically, it takes some time for a new PM to get used to the ordeal of PMQs. Margaret Thatcher was famously very poor when she first became Prime Minister, but over her many years in power she grew to become the master of the Commons. Tony Blair's first years at the government dispatch box were difficult as he was against Leader of the Opposition, William Hague who had been a prominent member of the Oxford Union and was an expert debater. During his time, Gordon Brown made several notorious mistakes, such as accidently saying he had 'saved the world', and when asked about allegations he'd been bullying his staff, Mr. Brown just replied "any complaints are dealt with in the usual manner".

It should not be forgotten that PMQs is an incredibly stressful and difficult task for any Prime Minister. In the past some have excelled and some have faltered, tomorrow David Cameron will face acting Labour leader Harriet Harman, as well as all the other MPs, and we will find out if he is just a man.

Old ceremony for the new politics

The old ceremony, described in the previous post, took place today but was it the beginning of the new politics much talked about by David Cameron and Nick Clegg?

Conservative MP, Peter Lilley, opened the Queen's Speech debate by proposing to give thanks to Her Majesty for coming to Parliament. Traditionally the humble address, as it's called, is normally a witty speech and Mr. Lilley certainly told many jokes, but most of them were directed at the coalition.

The MP for Hitchin and Harpenden said he wondered whether he should now refer to Liberal Democrat MPs as "My Honourable Friends" (a form of address normally for when an MP is referring to members of his or her own party). Mr. Lilley suggested calling his new Liberal Democrat allies, "partners".

The jokes underlined an issue which might become very serious in the come months and years, which is, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats simply don't like each other. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister seem to genuinely get along, but the rest of their MPs are not so keen.

Maybe time in power will help the two parties to bond, but there will be much argument and debate in the short term. Today's Queen's Speech was a mixture of Conservative and Liberal Democrat bills and many members of one party might find it difficult to vote for the policies of the other.

Compromise and restraint will be needed in the times ahead. For Westminster, that really will be new politics.

Pomp on a budget

Tomorrow is the State Opening of the new Parliament. At 11am, the Queen will travel from Buckingham palace to the Houses of Parliament in an ornate horse drawn carriage, escorted by hundreds of soldiers on horseback and dressed in traditionally uniform. When she gets to Parliament, the Queen will enter the Robing Room where she'll put on the diamond encrusted Imperial State Crown. From there, the Queen will walk to the House of Lords where she'll sit on a golden thrown and say "My Lords and Members of the House of Commons, my Government's overriding priority is to… find ways of saving money" - or words to that effect.

To be fair to Her Majesty, the carriage, the crown, the thrown, et cetera are not her personal property (they belong to the state) and the words of the speech will have been written by David Cameron. But the Queen, along with almost every government department, will have to go through their budgets and find any possible saving to reduce expenditure. The Queen actually has a reputation for frugality with public money, so she shouldn't have a problem doing this. Departments of State in recent years however, have had a culture of extravagance which makes the Imperial State Crown look thrifty. This culture will now have to change.

One thing which won't change is the ceremony of the State Opening. Before giving her speech, the Queen will send Black Rod (her representative in Parliament) down to the House of Commons to ask the MPs to come and listen to her speech. Black Rod will then walk to the Commons, but before he reaches the door to the chamber, the MPs will slam it in his face and he'll have to knock three times (using his black rod) to gain entry.

The tradition now looks slightly comic, but it has a very serious history. On 4 January 1642, King Charles I attempted to enter the chamber of the House of Commons in order to arrest five of its members. The MPs were so angered by this that they slammed the door of the chamber in the faces of the King's soldiers. The troops were only able to open the door by ramming it (three times). When King Charles finally entered the chamber he found the five members he'd come to arrest were not there, and when the King asked Speaker William Lenthall where the men were, Mr. Speaker refused to tell him, saying "I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me" (in those days, that was considered to be a major snub). This was the last time a monarch entered the chamber of the House of Commons, and King Charles ended up being tried and executed by Parliament.

The ceremonial slamming of the door is supposed to represent the separation of Parliament and monarchy, but in modern times it has come to represent Parliament's independence from the often domineering government, more than the now powerless monarchy.

Tomorrow the MPs will be slightly more polite than they were in 1642. Once Black Rod is let into the chamber, he will say the words "Mr. Speaker, the Queen commands this honourable House to attend Her Majesty immediately in the House of Peers." At which point Dennis Skinner (the MP for Bolsover and a notable republican) will shout an insult at Black Rod, before all the MPs, led by the Speaker, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, walk to the House of Lords where they'll listen to the Queen read the speech, which details the legislative programme in the new session of Parliament. For the last few hundred years, the speech has actually been written by the Prime Minister of the day.

Queen Elizabeth is quite use to this ceremony as she has been doing it since she came to the thrown in 1952 and has only missed it twice (when she was pregnant). Although this is the first speech to be written by her newest Prime Minister and it is also the first time in her reign the Queen has read the legislative programme of a coalition government - there hasn't been one since her father was on the thrown.

This year's speech will detail some of the spending cuts to public services in an attempt to lower the UK's massive budget deficit. For a time the coalition will be able to blame the last government for the painful times ahead in public services, but David Cameron must know that this tick won't last very long.

The Queen my read out the speech, but it's the man who wrote it that will get the blame for what it says. Perhaps, when Black Rod knocks on the door tomorrow, David Cameron might be tempted to tell him to go away.

The power of 1922

It's often said that, due to the UK's wonderfully bizarre unwritten constitution, it's a lot easier to remove a Conservative Prime Minister from power than it is to remove a Labour Prime Minister. There are mechanisms for removing a Labour PM, but they're convoluted and, more than that, Labour MPs tend to be unwilling to use such mechanisms. This is not true of Conservative MPs who have a belligerent tendency, not to mention the fact that they can remove their leader with a very straightforward mechanism which rests in the infamous 1922 Committee.

The committee was actually formed in 1923 but was named after the year in which its founders were elected. However, when Conservatives hear '1922', they don't think of the general election which took place in that year, they think of something far more dramatic.

On Thursday 19 October 1922 Conservative MPs gathered at the Carlton Club in London to discuss the coalition government which consisted of Conservatives and Liberals. Does this sound familiar? The difference between that coalition government and the current one is the Prime Minister in the 1922 coalition was a Liberal (David Lloyd George), despite the fact that the Conservatives were the largest party in the Commons.

Austen Chamberlain, the leader of the Conservative party and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lloyd George, strongly supported the continuation of the coalition as did most of the leadership of the party. But many of the ordinary Conservatives MPs did not like linking themselves to an unpopular Liberal Prime Minister. So on that day in October 1922, there was a vote of the members present at the Carlton Club, effectively on whether to remain in the coalition or not. The party leadership lost the vote, 187 to 87, and as a result Chamberlain resigned as leader, the coalition collapsed, an election was called and the Conservatives won a majority in the Commons. Ever since, '1922' has been shorthand for the devastating power of ordinary MPs when they become sufficiently disgruntled.

The new Conservative MPs who entered Parliament in the 1922 election formed a committee of backbench MPs – the 1922 Committee – which continues to this day and is far more powerful than equivalent groups in any other mainstream party. For example, an immediate vote of confidence in the leader of the Conservative party can be called if just 15% of MPs write to the 22's chairman asking for one, and Conservatives are not timid about using this power either. It was most recently used less than seven years ago to forcibly remove Iain Duncan Smith from the leadership.

Perhaps this is why yesterday David Cameron changed the rules of membership of the 1922 Committee. Previously, only Conservative MPs who were not part of the government were allowed to be members of the 22. At the Prime Minister's request, this rule has been changed and now all Conservative MPs are allowed to join. This is significant as members of the government are far less likely to vote against their Prime Minister in any vote of confidence. The 22 has other powers, such as overseeing elections within the Conservative party, including the selection of Conservative chairpersons of Parliamentary committees, which can now be influenced by the government.

Interestingly, the vote to change the rules wasn't that close - 168 supported the change, 118 were opposed. Of course, when you consider the fact that there are 147 new Conservative MPs, it is not too surprising as they wouldn't want to upset the leader who has just brought them into Parliament, but many of the older Conservative MPs were very angry at this change.

David Cameron should perhaps be careful; even after these changes, the 1922 Committee is still extremely powerful and past experience shows Conservatives are not coy about using their power.

Freedom vs. Safety

The above photograph, which appeared on the front page of today's Times newspaper, was taken yesterday by Jeff Moore when David Cameron was walking from 10 Downing Street to the Houses of Parliament, seemingly unnoticed by the people walking around him. To be fair to the Westminster crowds, you wouldn't expect to see the Prime Minister walking alone down a busy street.

It's hard to imagine the President of the United States being allowed to do something like that, America's 'right to bear arms' makes life a bit more dangerous for public figures in the US, which leads to the US Secret Service being very strict with any overly adventurous commanders-in-chief. This wasn't always the case, President Harry S. Truman used to walk unaccompanied from Blair House, up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House every morning when the presidential mansion was being renovated.

Of course, four US Presidents have been assassinated, there have also been many more assassination attempts, and most of that was before the threat of Islamic terror was realised. It is something of an irony that the self proclaimed 'leader of the free world' cannot freely walk down the street unaccompanied by at least a dozen well armed Secret Service agents.

In democratic societies, political leaders have always had difficulties balancing keeping safe and remaining free, and I'm not just talking about the personal safety of the politicians. Yesterday, Abid Naseer won his appeal against deportation to Pakistan. Naseer is suspected by the Security Service to be an al-Qaeda operative, but crucially he has never been found guilty in a court of law. As a result, Home Secretary Theresa May is believed to have issued Naseer with a control order which would significantly restrict his rights. With a control order, Naseer would lose his right to use a mobile phone and the internet, he'd be tagged, his movements would be closely monitored and he wouldn't be able to go any great distance from his home without first checking with the police. Of course, if he wanted, he could go back to his home country of Pakistan, where he'd probably be tortured for being linked to al-Qaeda.

Harry S. Truman's direct predecessor as President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his 1941 State of the Union address, listed freedom from fear as a right as fundamental as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The question is, in modern times, is it possible to free people of their fear of extremism without making them fearful of the state.

One of the main tests for any government, and especially a coalition, is how it can keep the people free and at the same time fulfil the first duty of every government – to keep the people safe. In opposition, both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives condemned the Labour government and its policies that seemed to undermine civil liberties, like detention without charge and ID cards.

Now they are the ones in government, faced with ensuring national security, it will be interesting to see if the coalition still believes loss of civil liberties is not a price worth paying for defending the realm.