May 2010

The Queen's speech yesterday announced a Decentralisation and Localism Bill which I pounced on with interest.

The coalition deal had indeed proposed giving powers back to local government, redressing the remorseless whittling away at local powers under Labour.

But the detail will be what matters. I have a particular interest in this because I am a member of a working group that has been developing the Liberal Democrat policy on localism. When we started we had no idea that we would be in goverment by the time we finished.

So, what happens now? We will be finishing the policy report, which I helped tp draft, very soon and then presenting it to Party Conference in September. It will be a significant test of the flexibility of the coalition - will the policy agreed by Conference then be absorbed into legislation? If so, what other hurdles will it have to jump over?

This is a new process for all of us, not least for the Tories who are not accustomed to having policy decided by members.

I've just updated Edward Davey's website with his views on the coalition.

It has been, not surprisingly, rather difficult to get hold of him in the last couple of weeks. Although he was not a member of the negotiating team, he is a member of the Liberal Democrats Federal Executive Committee, so had to attend all their meetings, late into the night, as well as the ones with the MPs.

He did make very quick contact with local members immediately after the election, in order to get our views on what the Liberal Democrat leadership should be doing next. (I'm not sure that there was this level of consultation down through the other parties.)

Then at the end of last week he called a meeting of all the party members in the constituency to talk about the outcome and tell us about his new job in the Government. He has been appointed as Minister for Employment Relations, Consumer and Postal Affairs in the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, led by the legendary Vince Cable . In fact, it is the only Government Department that has two Liberal Democrat Ministers.

I know that Ed is delighted with the appointment because it takes him back to the issues that brought him in to politics in the first place.

As for me, I still don't really believe that we have a Liberal Democrat MP who is also a Minister. It is going to take some getting used to!

I can't make it to the special Lib Dem conference in Birmingham today because we have a family event, but I'm following it with interest. I have already expressed my support for the amendment from some members of the party which states:

"Conference calls for Liberal Democrats to work constructively in government to ensure that the
net income and wealth inequality gap is reduced significantly over the course of this parliament."

I place myself firmly within the Social Liberal wing of the party, and this amendment is designed to support Nick Clegg in any further negotiations, not to undermine them.

Whatever the outcome today - and I'm sure that the conference will overwhelmingly endorse the coalition deal - one thing is sure: the Labour and Conservative press alike will announce that the party is split. They simply don't understand that The Liberal Democrats is a federal organisation run by its members, not by the Leader, and that we discuss all our policy in public, unlike the other two main parties. Healthy and robust debate is the hallmark of our form of internal party democracy.

A coalition with Conservatives was the only feasible outcome from the election. The arithmetic with Labour did not add up, and in any case, several prominent Labour MPs stated their opposition to a deal with us. Liberal Democrats would not have been thanked by the nation for propping up demoralised and defeated party.

You might expect me to be more sympathetic to Labour than the Tories, and in principle that is the case. But New Labour has not, in my view, been acting as a progressive party for some years - just think of the many erosions of civil liberties, such as ID cards, detention and the RIP Act, let alone the war in Iraq. And the gap between rich and poor is no better than it was 13 years ago.

Now I would never describe the Conservatives as progressive either, but I have been astonished by the concessions that they have offered us. What we have now is definitely not a Conservative government but a Liberal Democrat/Conservative government, which is a rather different animal. It will hopefully neutralise the hard right of the Conservative party, while bringing back into prominence moderate voices such as Ken Clarke. On our side, I was delighted to see Steve Webb hailing from the left of our party - as Minister for Pensions.

And a coalition is not a merger - each party maintains its integrity and independence, and can fight for their own policies in by-elections. Instead a coalition is a pragmatic and mature solution to an unprecedented situation.

As a footnote - I haven't been blogging during this last week, so I haven't yet mentioned that our own Edward Davey is now Junior Minister, working with Vince Cable in Business. I'm delighted for him and for the party, as this is where he started and where he has most expertise.

UPDATE

The Conference overwhelmingly approved the coalition motion, and the amendment I referred to, together with eight others, were all accepted by the movers of the motion.

They are gradually divesting me of all my power! On Monday I have to hand in my Council ID card and car park pass.

My Council email address will be pulled very soon, so please don't use it. You can contact me here, or simply email me on mary at maryreid.org.uk.

I was really sorry that Susan Kramer was beaten by Zac Goldsmith's millions in Richmond Park last night. Enough said.

But, of course, I am delighted that Edward Davey got back in with only a small dent to his majority. At the count last night I learned that Helen Whately's objective was to halve his majority of nearly 9000, but in the end it only dropped by just over 1400. She was a strong candidate - better than any the Conservatives have put up for many, many years - but Edward has done the work and it is obvious on the doorstep that he is highly respected across the constituency.

I got home at 5.30am this morning after a 24 hour election stint. The counting process was very long because all the voting papers in all the ballot boxes for the local and Parliamentary elections first had to be bundled, and the totals checked against the polling officers' records. Inevitably some ballots were placed in the wrong box, which was why they had to check all of them before starting the proper count.

The local elections ballots will be counted this afternoon from 2.30pm. From what I spotted last night it looks as though there will close contests in several wards, so the count could go on for some time. You should be able to follow the results live as they are announced on the Council's website.

Back to the Westminster results. I'm pleased to hear that Sarah Teather has gained Brent Central. This a new constituency and she was up against a minister, Dawn Butler, so it was expected to be a tough fight. In the end Sarah won with a notional 11% swing.

One that I was very sad to lose was Julia Goldsworthy in Cambourne and Redruth who lost by 66 votes. I've known Julia since she was a researcher for Matthew Taylor. She is a very bright, sparky woman who was developing well as the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Local Government. I've been working with her recently on the party's localism policy.

Lynne Featherstone is another MP that I have worked with and she pleasingly increased her majority in Hornsey and Wood Green.