As part of an ongoing attempt to put my online world into some sort of order I have today refreshed the website for my company, Grit & Oyster Limited.

This website hadn’t been properly updated for quite a while. So it needed to be changed to reflect the current status of the business, given a more attractive look, and to be brought into line with current internet standards.

I also wanted to move it to WordPress as its platform for content management. This was not only to reflect the fact that a large part of  the work I am doing at the moment is developing WordPress themes, but also to provide greater flexibility in publishing content and highlighting some of the projects I have been working on.

As a temporary measure I have used the same theme that I have used for update to my personal website I did a few weeks ago. This is a temporary measure as I intend to develop a specific theme for the company website when work on other projects allows me.

‘Blair writes of his earlier approach: “We were saying, forget about complex, institutional structural reforms; what counts is what works, and by that we meant outputs.

“This was fine as a piece of rhetoric; and positively beneficial as a piece of politics. Unfortunately, as I began to realise when experience started to shape our thinking, it was a bunkum as a piece of policy. The whole point is that structures beget standards. How service is configured affects outcomes.”‘

Well d’oh!

I’ve always argued that one of Blair’s great failures as a politician was his inability to understand how organisations and institutions worked. Partly I think this is due to his lack of interest in history and learning from history. Something that is unusual in a succesful politician. This lack of understanding hobbled his attempts at reform. It is a nice “I told you so” moment to see that he himself in part recognises this.

The first thing to note is that, in governing terms, a hundred days isn’t all that long. It certainly isn’t long enough to make anything but a sketchy and very preliminary judgement on the coalition’s success. This is important because in this situation rushing to judgement is the last thing we should do. I said back at the end of June when writing about Nick Clegg’s speech to the Liberal Democrat local government conference that “the next few months should be about holding our nerve” and nothing that has happened since has changed my mind on that. Instead I am beginning to suspect that the months may turn into years of nerve holding.

However, without rushing to judgement, I have reached some initial conclusions about how things are shaping up. It is clear that the leadership of both political parties, Lib Dem and Conservative, are committed to making the coalition work and to it lasting the full five years. Away from their leaderships there are many in both parties who are nervous and uncertain, and others who have doubts about the direction the coalition is going in. But none of this is strong enough or widespread enough to amount to a level of discontent that would threaten the existence of the coalition. The idea that this coalition couldn’t work and that it would inevitably and quickly fall apart is proving to be nonsense.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t think that the coalition will come under strain or that it lasting the full five years is guaranteed. It is possible that it could come of the rails. As I see it the biggest potential threat to the coalition would be if the referendum on AV is lost. But that aside, the chances of it lasting the full five years are very strong.

It is also clear that the new government is genuinely a coalition in the sense that it consists of two parties working together in partnership. Loose talk of the Liberal Democrats being poodles and meekly propping up a Tory government without anything to show for it is simply not born out by the facts. The coalition agreement itself clearly demonstrates that the Liberal Democrats are having an impact on the government’s agenda and we have seen examples of where this has continued in the weeks since the agreement was signed. How much influence the Lib Dems have and whether it is being used in the right directions is a separate debate, but anyone seeking to deny that that influence is there is simply being foolish.

I have also come to the conclusion that the coalition is not only working well enough to stay in existence but that it is also providing “good” government. By this I mean that many of bad practices of the New Labour years of “sofa government” have been banished. We are seeing proper cabinet government and a greater openness. The very fact that two parties have to discuss and have a say on major decisions is in itself leading to better decision making. I also detect that a greater and healthier role for parliament is beginning to emerge. It is early days and the picture is mixed. I am seeing infantile populism and rushed and ill thought out initiatives from some Tory ministers. But overall the trend seems to be positive. We will see if it continues.

So the coalition government is working, in some ways working well, and Liberal Democrats are influential within it. In the performance of Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister and the other Liberal Democrats who hold ministerial office I can see nothing to complain about. So, at the moment and aside from particular policy concerns, I am not losing any sleep over the Liberal Democrats role as part of the coalition. What is keeping me awake at night is the performance of the Liberal Democrats as a political party, but that is another argument for a separate article.

So I am content with the coalition so far. But that does not make me, yet, an enthusiastic and unconditional supporter. At this point I start to think about my list of specific policy concerns. There isn’t space here to go into each of them in detail but I will try to give a flavour of my thinking.

The biggest issue is, I suppose for everyone, the budget, deficit reduction and the economic situation. For me this is the area where holding your nerve becomes most important. While the debate around the “fairness” of George Osborne’s emergency budget has been pretty intense, and to my mind somewhat inconclusive, I am deliberately refusing to rush to judgement on the economic policies of the coalition.

I do have concerns. These are that the cuts are handled properly, made in the appropriate places and don’t do unnecessary damage to public services. That infrastructure investment, particularly green infrastructure investment, is maintained. I believe the danger of a “double dip” recession is real and that steps should be taken to avoid this. Finally, from the perspective of social justice, I want to be sure that the coalition’s economic policies are not only genuinely fair, but are seen to be fair. In particular, I don’t think the government has so far been tough enough on the banks.

However, and I may say more about this elsewhere, we are not yet at a stage where we can make a judgement about whether the new government is getting it right on the economy or not. There are many key decisions yet to come, so for the moment, I think it is wise to wait a while to see how things are worked through.

Outside of economic matters there is mixed picture. On foreign affairs I have seen nothing to object to. On the civil liberties agenda there has been much that is positive. I am not as worried about the moves made in education as some seem to be although I have some questions. I am more concerned about health, mostly because I question whether further big bang organisational reform is what is required at the moment. Something more organic would seem to be a better way to go. My two biggest concerns are firstly a fear that the political reform agenda will turn out to be too timid and secondly that an opportunity to pursue a really positive and radical reform agenda in local government is about to be missed.

To some the above may seem overly negative. Alternatively, I am sure others would describe me as an apologist for those who have “betrayed” the party and its voters. What I am trying to do, as a Liberal Democrat and supporter of the coalition, is to be open about my concerns and fears in the expectation that many of them will be answered, over time, in a positive way. In short, early days as it is, I believe the Liberal Democrats were right to enter the coalition and I was right to back that decision. What the coalition has to do now is deliver. So the argument is no longer whether the coalition in itself is right, it is now whether or not it can govern in the best interests of the country.

As a result, and so not to offend anyone I may have removed, I thought I would post the note I wrote about social networking for my personal website here:

A note about social networking

Managing your online life can become complicated, so I have developed my own particular way of dealing with social networking sites and services.

I am on Facebook but I use it in a very restricted way. I use it for close friends and social things. Friend requests from people I haven’t actually met are likely to be ignored!

If you are just interested in keeping track of what I am up to the best approach is to follow me on Twitter.

Professional contacts and former work colleagues should connect with me through LinkedIn.

You can also sign up to the RSS feed of my ‘Strange Thoughts‘ blog.

I admit that it doesn’t look very exciting, but I intend to add some photo galleries and there will be new content as we get closer to next year’s local elections. I also hope to get one or two more people involved in updating it so that it isn’t just reliant on me and we can get a bit more regularly changing content.

The website is based on WordPress and uses a special WordPress theme for Liberal Democrat websites that I have written. I will be blogging a bit more about that in the next few weeks.

The address is: www.lutonlibdems.org.uk

This was a project that for a long time had badly needed doing and I am pleased to have finally sorted it. It will need a few tweaks here and there but I am happy with the result.

The idea of the site is an attempt to bring all my online activities together in one place.

The place where I will continue to blog will be here at ‘Strange Thoughts’ but  I have a number of roles and responsibilities in my life and the people I meet will usually know me through one or other of them. If any of them were to Google me I wanted them to be able to find a place where they could quickly get a a rounded picture of who I am. I also wanted them to be able to easily access the other online places they might be looking for, whether it is this blog, Twitter, Luton Lib Dems, or my company website.

I hope the new design and content will achieve this. If you feel inclined, check it out and let me know what you think here.

Details on the BBC website; ‘Luton man who threw egg at Baroness Warsi jailed‘, & on the Guardian website; ‘Man gets six weeks in jail for throwing eggs at Tory peer Lady Warsi‘

Call me an old liberal softy if you like, but I do think jail time for throwing an egg at a politician is a bit harsh.

Politics is always about both head and heart. Political decisions are made either through a process of rational thought, or by the emotional reactions of the human beings involved, or more usually by a combination of the two.

The ‘head’ of the Liberal Democrats on display at the special conference had made its mind up in a pretty clear and determined manner. It was more or less agreed that the logic of the situation the party had found itself in after the election pointed to a fairly narrow range of options. The Party seemed to have decided that a rational analysis of the risks and benefits of different courses of action leads to a strong argument for participating in this coalition.

Did head win out over heart?

Is it a clear case of the head being for and the heart being against? It certainly was for my friend Linda Jack one of the few speakers against the motion, who clearly stated that she was “voting with my heart”. But I think it was more complicated than that. While the head maybe clear the ‘heart’ of the Liberal Democrats was a lot more confused.
We feel very nervous. We know the risks are very high.

This pattern of a clear head and a troubled heart seemed to run through the speeches made in the vast aircraft hanger like hall.

The speeches

I did miss the standing ovation for Simon Hughes’ speech, which I have heard several people describe as his best speech for years, as I was having a cup of tea and a, very tasty, muffin at the time. But of the speeches and contributions I did hear this is my assessment;

Vince Cable gave the best speech I heard. I think he spoke for many, if not most, people in the party when he argued that although the risks were great for the party, for the benefit of our ideals and the country we had to take that risk.

Why should we participate in the coalition? “I want to confront the present reality and advance my hopes for this party and this country” he said.

The speech that moved me most was the one by Tom McNally. Others have noted Toms extraordinary journey from Labour Prime Ministerial advisor to Minister in a Lib Dem/Conservative coalition. But his speech showed how that journey wasn’t without passion and principle. His was one of the more effective lines of the day as in describing his responibility for the Human Rights Act he declared that he was now “Minister with responsibility for this Party’s soul.”

The best speaker in the two intervention slots was Alex Wilcock who managed to make several telling points in a short space of time.

The most politically effective speech I thought was from Lynne Featherstone MP. As the new Minister for Equalities she dealt well with issues of concern for the Party – “there will be no roll back on equalities on my watch” – and set out an agenda for her new role grounded in political reality – “We are here to help David Cameron’s frontbench deal with the head bangers on his back bench.” (I will say though that the speech would have been more politically effective if journalists and TV cameras had been allowed in to report on it.)

Time to get dirty

There were a number of speakers who made an argument that was essentially along the lines of it is time for the Liberal Democrats to grow up. This is a time for the party to get real, make the tough decisions, and become proper players in politics. Andrew Stunnell MP used the line that the Liberal Democrats are “not a hobby”. Similary Chris Davies MEP said “We are members of a political party, not a knitting circle”.

Evan Harris typically made the point by quoting Woody Allen – “Is sex dirty? Only if you’re doing it right!” Well, he argued, it’s the same with politics.

Evan’s speech saw one of the more poignant moments as the long applause the hall gave him demonstrated the respect the Party has for him and our distress at him narrowly losing his Oxford seat.

But it was Vince Cable who got it most right – “The biggest comfort zone is opposition”.

Shopping lists

While some did get rather excited at the sight of real live Liberal Democrat cabinet ministers, most understood the point that power and position is only important for the things it can achieve.

So there was much talk about the amount of Liberal Democrat policies in the coalition deal. But there were also those who had brought their shopping lists.

The amendments were all about things peole wanted from this deal; concerns over human rights and support for the HRA, social liberal concerns about social justice and the new governments approach to the poor, the ever present issue of tuition fees, the Digital Economy Act, and so on.

I did wonder what the two speakers from Wales thought they would achieve with what was essentially a whinge that there was not enough in the coalition deal for Wales. I do hope that now we are in government demands goodies for particular constituencies or areas doesn’t become a feature of Liberal Democrat conferences. Pork barrel politics is never very attractive.

Electoral reform

One of the themes I want to highlight from the day, mostly because i have some sympathy with it, was an underlying dissatisfaction with the deal over electoral reform.

The clearest advocate for this was former MP David Rendel, who was apparently the only member of the Party’s Federal Executive to vote against the coalition agreement. He was not a happy man. He said that the decisions of those crucial party meetings had “left me feeling very lonely”.

His concerns are real, I have some understanding of where he is coming from. He could be right that we will see five years of good government followed by five decades in the wilderness. I very much hope he is wrong.

But then that is very much the gamble we are taking. Will the things we achieve for the country be worth the potential political damage that could hit the party and can we turn delivery in government into renewed growth for the party.

But as Chris Huhne MP pointed out in his summation coalition government can work. With his tongue in his cheek he referred back to a previous coalition government, the 1940-45 coalition government under Churchill; “you know what I learnt about the Second World War? – we won!”

At the end of the debate the vote against the coalition agreement was barely into double figures.

There is a famous quote about how the role of Vice President of the USA is “not worth a pitcher of warm piss”. How much then is the Deputy Leadership of the Liberal Democrats worth? Especially as it comes without a role in government.

There has been some exaggerated talk about the importance of this role. Not least from the two candidates themselves. The demands that the holder of the post should be elected by an all member ballot being especially silly.

Let us be clear – Nick Clegg is Leader of the Liberal Democrats and leader of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party. This role is to be deputy leader of the parliamentary party only. This is a Westminster role and has it’s significance in a Westminster context.

There are other Liberal Democrat leaders across the country. In Europe, Scotland, Wales and local government who have the authority to lead in their particular sphere of influence. In the Party as a whole any Deputy Leader would be out ranked by the Party President.

If the eventual winner tonight seeks to turn this role into something it is not I warn them that they will come a cropper. They should steer well clear of any pretensions they may have to be “the leader outside the government”. That is not say that the role won’t be significant, and more so than in the past.

The parliamentary party has a lot of work to do to adapt the way it works to the new context of coalition government and find ways to retain an independent voice. As has the Party as a whole. The role of Deputy Leader will be important in this. There is a need for a conduit between the backbenches and the frontbenches, between the party in government and the party in the country, and between Liberal Democrats in government and the voters.

So it should not be an organisational role. Establishing and running a team of backbench spokespeople is a bad, and potentially dangerous, idea. Instead it should focus on communication. If the winner tonight concentrates on that they have the potential to be an important and influential actor on a very big stage.

So who should it be?

In Tim Farron and Simon Hughes we have two highly impressive and charismatic politicians. I like and admire both of them and in truth would be content with either of them. But if I had a choice I would vote for Farron.

I am and always have been a big Simon Hughes fan but so often that admiration has been tinged with apprehension and disappointment. I would have the same feelings for him in this role. He is also in this contest the predictable establishment choice. In a funny way he is the “safe bet”. Yet the last thing we should be doing now is playing it safe.

There is also, this being a communications role, the need to catch the mood of the country and set the right tone. One of the problems with the coalition government that is already obvious is that it feels too southern and priveleged. It would be very helpful if parts of the Liberal Democrats could differentiate themselves from that. While Simon Hughes has always been a powerful defender of the poor and disadvantaged, my reckoning is that the comprehensive school lad from Cumbria would be better able to make that contrast. Farron is also funnier. So on that basis my vote would be for him.

Paul Walter has pulled together the list of the new target seats for the Liberal Democrats ranked by the percentage point difference between the party’s percentage of the vote, and that of the winner.

http://liberalburblings.co.uk/2010/05/the-new-liberal-democrats-target-seat-list/

According to this list the constituencies in Bedfordshire come in the following order:

Luton South is 56

Bedford is 135

Bedfordshire Mid 300

Bedfordshire South West 435

Bedfordshire North East 463

Luton North 512

“Striking differences can be seen in the same towns, between incumbents and non-incumbents. For example, in Milton Keynes North, where the incumbent was a Conservative, the swing to the Tories was 9.2%; in Milton Keynes South, where the incumbent was Labour, the swing was 6.2%. In Swindon North, where a new Labour candidate stood, the swing was 10%. In Swindon South, where the MP ran again, the swing was 5.5%. Most notably of all, perhaps, in Luton South, the swing to the Conservatives was 4.6%, while Luton North, where the sitting MP had distinguished himself during the expenses scandal, showed a rare swing to Labour of 0.5%.”

While the reported homophobia is of course appalling, and it is good to see another example of new media being used as a weapon to fight bigotry, my main reaction to this story was to start reminiscing about my time working for the Commission for Social Care Inspection in 2008.

The Commission had its headquarters just round the corner from the Greencoat Boy so the pub became a regular after work haunt for a time. As it is for hundreds of office workers who work in that corner of Westminster. I always thought it was a funny sort of pub. It was obviously reliant on that office trade and had no real particular qualities of its own. I remember the service was often slow.

After a while we gave up on the Greencoat Boy and relocated to another regular venue. If you are in that part of London and fancy a drink can I recommend The Speaker. A friendly pub, with a good atmosphere, and proper beer.

• ‘New squeaky clean Labour MP did margaret moran’s dirty work‘

I am not sure there is really that much in this story, but then the news that Moran sought to gain maximum poltical advantage out of her use of the Comminications Allowance is not news to me. It will interesting to watch what Shuker does with this money.