Across the pond, the race to be the democratic nomination for President last night sparked into life. The candidates have previously shied away from direct confrontation with the front-runner, Hillary Clinton, but last night they piled on in spectacular fashion.

A particular point of contention was Clinton's support for 'Kyl-Lieberman', the Senate bill which, among other things, designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organisation. Clinton argued that the bill pushed for more aggressive diplomacy to counter Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Her opponents disagreed, and used it to turn the debate to Clinton's vote in support of the Iraq war.

John Edwards described it as "written literally by the neocons", and that if President Bush took the country to war "are we going to hear 'if only I knew then what I know now'" - a direct shot at the language Clinton uses on the stump when discussing her vote in favor of the war in Iraq.  Chris Dodd followed up, arguing that "What (Hillary) didn't learn back in '02, you should've learned by now".

Clinton's support for Kyl-Lieberman is proving politically problematic with the primary electorate. As a result, she dispatched potential vice-presidential nominee General Wesley Clark - the respected former Allied Commander of NATO, 2004 presidential candidate, and Clinton backer - to defend her vote on the influential blog DailyKos.  His reaction was mixed, reflecting the genuine difficulties of her position.

But, ultimately, the highlight of the debate? Watch Sen. Joe Biden slam Rudy Giuliani here.

Meanwhile, over here, Nick Clegg vows to defy ID card legislation should it be introduced.

Vince Cable, though new into his job, has hit the ground running in terms of attracting the headlines. 

By not attending a dinner held in honor of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia he has muscled his way into one of the major stories of the day ('A dubious ally who devalues our Government' The Independent). 

We at CentreForum are hoping that the Acting Leader of the Liberal Democrats will also be able to catapult our own story into the headlines tomorrow.  We are launching our latest book, 'Globalisation: a liberal response' to which Cable contributed and will help introduce.

The book includes chapters by James Cameron on environment, Philippe Sands on international law, Philippe Legrain on immigration and Anatol Lieven on security.

Tomorrow's event will also feature Sir Samuel Brittan who alongside Cable will debate liberal responses to a globalising world economy.

For more details go to the forthcoming events section of the CentreForum website.

Also in today's news:

'Yes is matters who leads the Lib Dems' Tim Hames - The Times

Huhne: I would scrap Trident (The Observer)

Lib Dems 'too inward looking' (Press Association)

Press Review:

BBC: Clegg joins Lib Dem leader race

Independent: Clegg: We must broaden our electoral appeal or face oblivion

Telegraph: Senior Lib Dems line up behind Clegg

Guardian: Boost for Clegg as potential rival stands aside

The press coverage of the Lib Dem leader's race today is fairly non-descript.

However, it is a blog entry from yesterday on the Times' website which is most interesting, providing an insight into Nick Clegg's thinking on the thorny issue of Europe. Clegg is clearly someone who could easily be branded by the Conservatives as overly European, and, to make the point, one rabid Tory MP failed to restrain himself yesterday in the New Statesman: 

In refreshing Tory tradition, there is always one MP who does not hold back: "Nick Clegg is a screaming Euro-fanatic man-child; he's half Dutch; he should be called Nick Clog."

This sort of attack is unlikely to be damaging to Clegg during the leadership race (and could help him) but it could prove a greater political worry should he win the leadership. Clegg has clearly been doing some of the thinking necessary to carve out a distinctive, pro-European, but not uncritical, position on Europe.

The Times

Huhne and Clegg to go for Lib Dem leadership

First Lib Dem candidate happy to be underdog

The Independent

Huhne: 'We must be radical but rational – you won't see me streaking down the street'

The Iraq effect is far from over in British politics

The Guardian

Paddy Ashdown: My vote is for Clegg

The Telegraph

Better Ming than some of the numpties

Chris Huhne denies plotting against Ming

Chris Huhne: From outsider to contender

With the leadership contest shaping up there has been much speculation over which direction the leader should take the party in. Several opinion pieces make some suggestions regarding both the requirements of the next leader and the party’s broader direction. Writing in The Guardian today Paddy Ashdown notes;http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2193510,00.html

“the party's next leader needs not only to be a skilful communicator who can make the Liberal message relevant to the modern age, but also to possess the intellect and the vision needed to develop and define that message.”

 

As Paddy points outs, being a savvy communicator is a component of being a  leader, particularly in the age of 24/7 rolling news. However by itself, this is insufficient. An effective steward of the Liberal Democrats must produce a coherent narrative in which to frame specific policies.

This narrative must present a  “story” or theme which typifies the essence of policy proposals and is remembered by voters long after the minutiae of the policy is forgotten. The process of constructing this narrative must be both introvert in deciding what the ideological identity of the party will be and extrovert in projecting this identity to the wider electorate.

Adrian Hamilton writing in the Independent today offers a flavour of what the Liberal Democrat narrative should  include;http://http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/adrian_hamilton/article3070532.ece

 “We don't need to follow Iraq with an equally blind entanglement in Afghanistan. There is an alternative to a policy of escalating confrontation with Iran. There is no requirement to isolate and demonise Hamas, or Hizbollah. We don't need to follow a contortionist, cowardly approach to Europe nor a vague, ill-defined policy towards the reformation of international institutions from the UN to Nato, the World Bank and the IMF”.

An additional issue, not mentioned by any of the above articles is the story of the profound inequalities of opportunity in Britain.  A golden thread of social justice underpinning Liberal Democrat policy would not only provide a clear definition for the party, it would also present a message which resonates with large sections of the electorate.  

Wow... quite a lot to go at today...

The Times

Leader - Situation Vacant

Alice Miles - Sir Menzines Campbell wasn't too old.  He was too old-fashioned

Friends and confidants told Campbell to go

The old friends who turned on their leader

Peter Riddell - Roll up for most frustrating job in politics

Whodunnit? It was the socks-obsessed press

Rivalry of former allies began at the Commons

The Telegraph

Two outsiders may run for Lib Dem leader

Dignified Ming's most undignified exit

Ming hoping for a job offer from Brown

The Independent

Leader - A new leader must create space for the third party

Mark Oaten - Ming went because we didn't know what to do next

Challenge for Ming's successor is to find distinctive policies

Campbell hints that Huhne's supporters plotted against him

The Guardian

Michael White - Personality may trump policy this time

Simon Jenkins - The exit poll: why Ming failed the Big Brother test

Speculation and media's age fixation drove leader to quit

Ebbing support forced Ming out

Simoh Hoggart - Ming socks it to 'em

Jonathan Freedland - Now the Lib Dems must decide what they want to be when they grow up

Spot the difference

A farewell to Elspeth Campbell

The Financial Times

Campbell accuses the media and colleagues

The Daily Mail

You’re playing a dangerous game, Sir Ming warns LibDem plotters

Chris Huhne launches his campaign to become Lib Dem leader

PETER OBORNE - Ming will survive but don't be so sure about his party

QUENTIN LETTS - Assassinated in Westminster but where's the body?

GEOFFREY LEVY - The leader who was 10 years too late

Who's odds on to take over?

BBC News

Huhne set to launch Lib Dem bid

Comeback Kid... Could ex-Lib Dem leader Kennedy get his old job back?

Who's who: The contenders

In quotes: Political reaction

Ashdown backs Menzies' decision

Could Sir Menzies succeed Martin as Commons Speaker?

Unsurprisingly, the news of Ming Campbell's departure has been met with a huge splash of media coverage.

Perhaps more surprisingly is the amount of agreement that the different commentators and leader writers manage to muster:

The frontpages and sketches talk about the rather bizarre announcement (see Simon Hoggart in The Guardian and Andrew Gimson in The Telegraph).

There is lots of praise for Ming in the leaders.  Not just for his qualities, but for knowing when to go.  The general impression is that the Lib Dems will do well from it. The Telegraph is typical in saying:

"It is inconceivable that the new leader will prove as easy a target [for the Conservatives] in this respect as Sir Menzies." ('Sir Menzies' exit  is good news for politics')

See also the leader in The Guardian ('A sad but necessary departure') The Mail ('Too decent (and dull) for modern politics') and even the Sun:

"After soaring into a commanding lead by mopping up Sir Ming’s deserters, he now risks losing them to a rejuvenated Lib-Dem Party. Once again, the next election is wide open." ('Young guns')

It must be said, though that such a view is not totally unanimous.  The Independent warned of dark days ahead, describing yesterday as an:

"inescapably... bleak day for the Liberal Democrats, which threw a harsh spotlight on the plight of the third party." ('Cold winds are swirling around the third party')

Some people also express an initial view on the likely candidates.  Those that do are of a pretty similar mindset:

"Nick Clegg is so plainly the superior contender for the post that, if he does not win, the party will have opted for collective suicide after committing two murders. "

says Tim Hames in The Times ('Lib Dem assassins don't have a clue').

The Times' leader column is of a similar view:

"If the mediocre Mr Huhne is anointed, his party is doomed to insignificance, while the clearly more capable Mr Clegg seems to understand that a combination of market economics and social conscience will have popular appeal." ('After the Ming')

In a similar vein is Daniel Hannan - though he is not the kind of endorsement Clegg will necessarily welcome.

Huhne's camp makes what will be an unwelcome appearance in many of the analysis columns fingered as are for destabilising Ming.  According to Greg Hurst:

Allies of Mr Huhne were being accused last night of a brutal briefing campaign to destabilise Sir Menzies and hasten a leadership contest before Mr Clegg’s stature and support base within the party grew. ('Rapid exit of conference hero who defied his critics but not the polls')

This story is repeated by Michael White in The Guardian ('Miserable end to an honorable career as Lib Dem leader falls in the final lap')

But although this can't have been the start that Huhne has had, as the FT points out, his campaign has crucial experience from the previous campaign ('Succession fight between Hughes and Clegg')

I suspect this blog will be rather busy in the coming weeks.

After Charles Kennedy resigned at the beginning of 2006, CentreForum published a briefing note entitled 'The battle for liberalism: ten key questions for the next Lib Dem leader'

As the Liberal Democrats head into a new leadership election, many people will be pondering a similar set of questions. 

What are the new questions that the party now faces? And which of the old questions still need to be addressed?

The reaction to the Government's Set piece announcements is still astonishing a week on.

At the beginning of the new week, it seems churlish to look back at the previous one, but we can indulge as it was such a significant story.

Most notable was Polly Toynbee's reaction on Friday in The Guardian ('This was the week that Labour's leaders left social democracy for dead'). The bitterness is palpable:

The comprehensive spending review every three years is mightily important. There is no company, arts organisation, charity or function of the state that does not hang upon its judgment. It was even delayed several months to get it right... Then at the last moment in a few days of hysteria, it all seemed to be done on the back of a matchbox.

Her column stands in stark contrast to the expectations she and others had of Brown - after waiting so long to get rid of Blair:

This was more than a horrible humiliation for the prime minister. This was the week that social democracy ebbed away in England.

Peter Preston picked up on this theme on Sunday in The Observer. ('The columns start to sway')

There he highlighted the feeling from the columnists in general that things weren't as they should be:

...the past few days have had an impact inside the media village that won't disappear in another febrile week. Those on the left who looked to Brown are looking away. Those on the right who acknowledged his superior intellect are checking their notes again.

The honeymoon is over.

Ming Campbell's leadership of the Lib Dems has come under attack over the last three days in the newspapers.

Both The Independent ('Delayed election revives criticism of Lib Dem leader') and The Telegraph ('Sir Ming warned as Lib Dems seek poll boost') have used rather selective quotes from Lib Dem blogs to suggest that Ming is under coming under great pressure.

Lib Dem bloggers have railed against the highly pejorative use of their good offices.  But clearly all is not well in the world of the Lib Dems.  An IPSOS MORI poll in today's Sun puts the Lib Dems on 11% (-5) with all that support seemingly switching to the Tories who are on 41% (+7). ('Cam gives Gord a poll battering')

Ming Campbell took over the leadership of the Liberal Democrats at a difficult time. Charles Kennedy's drawn out and ugly resignation left the party feeling bruised and vulnerable.

Ming's appeal was to give the party a period of calm and a 'safe pair of hands.' He would give other potential contenders for the leadership time to prove themselves in bigger roles. This has been working well.

But Gordon Brown's election bungle has now changed the political landscape. 

The Lib Dems won't be facing the voters for another 18 months.  

The rules of the game have now changed and Ming Campbell needs to find and articulate a new vision of where and why he wants to lead the Lib Dems.

Ignore the Punch and Judy show of Westminster politics; ignore fusty economic stories about sub-prime mortgages; ignore stories about far away shores.

The real news of the day is that CentreForum was awarded the 'runner up' slot in yesterday's Think Tank of the Year awards.

The award, organised by Prospect magazine, comes after we've only had one full year in operation (according to Prospect's criteria). We were competing against the likes of IPPR with their 72 staff and £4million annual expenditure. (It was IPPR who won the main award).

Yes, its self-indulgent to have a blog posting purely about us, but we're pretty pleased with ourselves and at least its pretty short!

Normal news service will be resumed tomorrow.

The commentariat are agreed: Alastair Darling has done a 'smash and grab' raid on David Cameron's policies to win back the affection of middle England.

Virtually all the papers write the same thing and make their own judgements.  Some think it shrewd, some think it dangerous, but are they all wrong?

When you consider the big changes - it is the Lib Dem policy package, not Conservative which the Chancellor has most closely followed.

• Ending taper relief on Capital Gains: Lib Dem policy
  
• Taxing flights not passengers: Lib Dem policy
• Raising Inheritance Tax thresholds to £600: Closer to the Lib Dem policy (based on a threshold of £500k) than the Conservative proposal (based on a threshold of £1million.)
• Non Doms: Government now consulting on Lib Dem suggestions such as limiting the time period allowed for Non Doms.
  

A triumph therefore for the Lib Dem policy process - but no coverage (with the exception of a small piece on the BBC ('Darling 'using Lib Dem air tax'' who are legally obliged to cover all parties)

The Lib Dems do best when they get coverage.  With the party at the lowest ebb in the polls for a long time, it is worrying that such a policy triumph has managed to go completely ignored in the papers.

Also in the news

On the same subject, but with a different take, is Will Hutton in The Guardian ('Spend it like Gordon').  He argues that both Labour and Tories are pitching for right-wing tax plans with left wing spending commitments.

"Apparently, both main parties are united in a consensus that if they are to champion the aspirations of the British, they must cut taxes on the wealthy while maintaining a social-democratic approach to spending. This corresponds to no coherent political philosophy of either left or right. In this respect, Cameron and Osborne have no more fixed ideological compass than Brown and Darling do.

"The odds are that Labour’s (poll) advantage will be restored shortly. But that advantage will be maintained only if the Prime Minister and Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, neutralise the inheritance tax question."

So says Tim Hames in today's Times ('It's time for the last rights over inheritance tax').

It's difficult to disagree with him.

George Osbourne's pledge has certainly captured the voters' imagination far more than it should. As Hames goes on to points out, the impact of the policy would have been felt by very few people:

But Peter Preston in The Guardian agrees in (the slightly mis-titled) 'Care in the afterlife'

It seems then that the inheritance tax debate has now opened. The treasury's reaction to it will perhaps be the most lasting outcome of this conference season's political shenanigans.

CentreForum recently sought advice from a respected political commentator about when to launch our next publication.

"I'd be very interested in it," he said "but I will only be writing about election speculation until Tuesday."

It is therefore no surprise that this blog, which is meant to highlight the interesting policy debates of the day, has struggled to find policy coverage in the broadsheets over the last couple of weeks.

Today is no exception. Poll speculation continues take up all the column inches. Ironically, the most insightful analysis doesn't come from the newspapers at all, but the politicalbetting.com blog which has been given extra detail of the published polls. Normally limited to one posting a day, Mike Smithson has posted 10 entries in the last two days.

The most readable piece today is Mark Lawson's slightly cynical look at Brown and Cameron ('The next PM will be the one who can best fake sincerity').

However, if you really look hard, there is an interesting policy piece today. It comes in the guise of The Times' coverage of an Office for National Statistics report on the family. ('A longer life and in better health - marriage really is good for you')

Sceptics will find as many holes as they want.  For example, the revelation that widowed men suffer some of the worst health might just be that they tend to be older. But, the ONS are generally quite good at not claiming what they can't back up with the data.

What is clear is that, as the Conservatives push The Family up the political agenda, liberals need to be clear where they stand on family policy.  That position needs to be based on evidence such as that in the full ONS report - Focus on families.

The conference season is over so we await the results of the opinion polls.

The Today Programme's 'doomsday clock' on the date of the General election stands at 5 minutes to midnight.

Blogger Guido Fawkes has a (limited) summary of what the pundits are saying in his 'Election fever' posting.

The much quoted John Curtice appears in The Independent, in addition to the doomsday clock ('Brown needs not just a victory but a Tory rout').  There he maps out the clearest vision of the electoral arithmetic that Brown needs to juggle.  The article should be required reading for anyone thinking of putting money on any particular date.

The general impression is that that now might not be the best time for Gordon to go to the country after all.  However, with expectations running so high now he'd look weak and damaged unless he calls it.

Taxing the rich and bringing back the poll tax may initially appear anathema to modern conservatism- yet combine these ideas into a policy and that it is exactly what Mr Osborne has done. As Gabriel Rozenberg writes in the Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2570516.ece

The Conservatives’ plan for taxing UK residents who are non-domiciled for tax amounts is an odd straitjacket. On the one hand, those “non-doms” who are not especially rich can opt into the British tax system and avoid the levy entirely. At the other end of the scale, the Roman Abramoviches and Lakshmi Mittals will barely notice a £25,000 charge.

Yet between these two extremes sit a range of foreign workers lumbered with a pseudo regressive  poll tax. Whilst they may find themselves giving less to the state as they become wealthier, the converse is also true. If they suffer a drop in income the state will extract a larger portion of their wealth. That said “non doms” do not play well on the public sympathies, the nurse’s position in the public hearts looks unperturbed by the moderately wealthy “non dom.”

As Rozenberg asserts there are attractions to Osborne’s proposals:

There is no doubt that the non-dom regime is ripe for overhaul, and this proposed levy will have the advantage of being easy to collect.

However the “non dom” regime may not be the most stable foundation for a centre piece of fiscal policy. The source of this instability is the fact that no one seems to know exactly how many “non doms” there are and how they will respond to the Conservatives’ measures. Even if the Conservatives’ count of “non doms” is correct a further problem may lie  ahead. Contrary to popular opinion the toys of the “non doms” often do not contain a football team or even a yacht. The reality is they will notice a £25,000 charge and may choose to avoid it. The consequences of this scenario to the Conservatives’ tax proposals could hardly be more dangerous. As Rozenberg asserts, the one certainty of politics is that of unintended consequences. For the shadow chancellor this could mean;

if you set out to tax foreign residents to pay for first-time buyers, you are likely to end up with fewer foreign residents and a lot more first-time buyers.

Kids are lonely and unhappy, fat and bullied. Half don’t eat breakfast, a third of under-16s regularly drink, nearly four in ten 15-year-olds have had sex. About 4,000 or 8,500 children (depending on which spokesman you were listening to) were admitted to hospital with alcohol-related illness, some 630,000 prescriptions for antidepressants are handed out to children annually and 11.2 per cent of girls self-harm. http://http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/alice_miles/article2577790.ece

The Conservatives' less than sanguine view of childhood! Even David the optimist Cameron would be hard pressed to see much positive amongst this salvo of failings. The Conservative solution to this crisis of childhood-more outside play. As Alice Miles in The Times puts it The Conservatives’ childhood agenda has shrunk from revolution to roundabouts. Well almost, there is another Conservative response, which is to reward couples with children with extra tax credits. As Alice Miles argues Cameron’s conservatives have marshalled this proposal towards a caricatured problem of the government’s policy. As with most caricatures the version is less than entirely accurate.

It is not the case that couples who stay together are penalised and paid less in working tax credits than lone parents, an error parroted by people who are too well paid to know. Both families get the same. The Tories have been using a grossly misleading comparison, first cited by the Labour MP Frank Field, to back up their case. Mr Field has said that a single mother working 16 hours a week, after tax credits, gains a total income of £487 a week, but a two-parent family earning the minimum wage has to work 116 hours to gain the same income.

Unsurprisingly the Conservative’s inaccurate diagnosis of the policy has blunted the effectiveness of their remedy.

The only problem addressed by Mr Cameron’s policy is this: if you are a couple with children living together, but you lie about the fact, then you are up to £1,700 a year better off from the working tax credit, as one of you can claim a lone parent top-up. This encourages people to lie about their living arrangements when they claim the tax credit. So Mr Cameron wants to offer the extra £1,700 to couples with children who admit to living together. That’s it. At most it will stop some low-earning couples who live together but lie about it from lying about it in future.

See? It doesn’t make any sense as a “boost for marriage”. You don’t have to get married to be eligible. And if you are already married, well, you don’t need the encouragement then, do you? You’re just being given an extra £30 a week. Nice, but why? If you want to raise children out of poverty, as the Tories claim, then putting extra money into working tax credit for couples is about a third as effective as putting it into more child tax credit for all children, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

So why when there are more effective policy tools have the conservatives stuck to the guns-in a word symbolism. As Miles recognises the policy signifies that Tories believe in two-parent families. In short it might not be the most efficacious policy, but it does chime with the Tory faithful.

The sketch writers love it when a political party feels really brave and decides to head for Blackpool.  Today its Matthew Engel's turn to rubbish the ailing resort ('Star turns fail to dispel general air of tat and decline').  There will no doubt be others in the week ahead.

However, If you read the Telegraph today things are going gloriously.

The leader column is full of positive statements - "There is ammunition a-plenty to campaign with here, whenever the election is called" it says.  "[David Cameron] is emerging as a strong leader under pressure." Followed up by the understatement of the year - "The prospect of an early election is clearly concentrating Tory minds wonderfully." ('A welcome flash of fire from the Conservatives')

However, for those less convinced that Cameron is on his way to Downing Street,  Tim Hames seems to be more on the money.  He writes today

"it is not as bad as it looks for the Tories. It is substantially worse." ('The road to Blackpool, via Punxsutawney')

Hames' diagnosis is convincing and worth reading in detail.

Time will tell whether it is he, or The Telegraph give a more accurate picture of Tory fortunes in the weeks ahead.

However, the most intriguing piece of the day is the John Bercow in The Independent ('A retreat to old comfort zones would spell failure').  In it he sets out his vision of what the Tories need to do over the next week .  He urges Cameron to go further and faster. 

Specifically, he says he is looking for Cameron to :

• reject tax cuts;
• continue to reject Grammar schools
• reject id cards
• invest in rehabilitation, rather than longer sentences for prisoners and (amazingly)
• raise the minimum wage.

This is quite a tall order - especially when he adds near the end "At our best, Conservatives are internationalists".

In today's big tent politics it would not be surprising if Bercow's piece was actually a prelude to the much vaunted Bercow defection. 

Brown's ideal start to his first General Election as PM is surely another Tory defector joining his ranks.