Advancing apprenticeships

In my latest Sutton Trust post, I consider how to translate cross-party backing for apprenticeships into a serious offer for young people after the next election

This year’s party conferences were all about setting the scene for next May’s general election. But aside from the tax cuts, coalition in-fighting or forgotten deficits, there was a surprising degree of consensus on the importance of one issue that could be crucial to social mobility: apprenticeships.

Ed Miliband pledged that as many young people would start on good quality apprenticeships as go to university by 2025. The Prime Minister made the commitment to three million more apprenticeship starts in the next parliament.  Business Secretary Vince Cable promised to lift apprentice pay. This was an issue that was talked about at Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow.

Having placed apprenticeships as one of the ten core social mobility policies in our Mobility Manifesto, and, in partnership with Pearson, organised platforms to debate the issue at all three conferences, this was to be welcomed. Yet beneath the big numbers, the issue remains about what the pledges mean in practice.

For years, politicians have played a numbers game on apprenticeships. A good apprenticeship should offer a paid job (often at lower than average rates) with a strong combination of on-the-job and college-based training, preferably through day release, leading to a good qualification. They typically last two to three years.

But in the early years of the coalition the majority of new ‘apprenticeships’ were only at level 2 (GCSE standard) and many lasted a matter of months. Many of the new apprenticeships, especially those at higher levels, were also for older rather than younger people. These qualifications will often not have represented genuine training to enter employment, but certification of existing skills for those already working (essentially a rebranding of Labour’s Train to Gain offer).

That has started to change. No longer will shelf-stacking at Morrison’s be treated as being as much an apprenticeship as an elite course at British Aerospace or Rolls Royce. Apprenticeships cannot be a matter of months; they must last at least a year. The training element has been strengthened too.

But we are still a long way from where we need to be. The danger is that if politicians engage in a quick fix numbers game, quantity will once again trump quality. In that sense, a commitment to an extra 300,000 good quality apprenticeships each year at level 3 (A-level standard) or above in a decade’s time may be of more value than three million places over the next five years, if the vast majority are at level 2 and too few are for young people. The parties need to provide detail.

That’s why the analysis prepared by the Boston Consulting Group for the Sutton Trust last year, and the recommendations that emerged from our joint summit with Pearson in July are so important. They offer a route map of where we need to be if we are serious about making apprenticeships a world class brand rather than a catch-all title for courses at all levels.

Vince Cable told our fringe meeting in Glasgow that it was absolutely right to focus on advanced and higher apprenticeships for young people in any expansion. Matthew Hancock, the former skills secretary, told our July summit that he was expanding them significantly. Ed Miliband told the same summit that he wanted new technical degrees that would offer a more advanced apprenticeship route. He made the expansion of good quality apprenticeships – along the lines recommended in the Sutton Trust/BCG report – one of his six key policy commitments.

But it is going to be a real challenge moving from rhetoric to reality. For a start, a key part of the best systems would involve a fundamental change in the mindset of government and employers. We need to have progression within a three year apprenticeship, where level 3 or above is the goal, rather than getting young people to complete a separate level 2 apprenticeship before joining one that will lead to level three. That changes ambition, and recognises that different young people may need to start in a different place.

Then, we need a cultural change. To some extent, it is already happening. Middle class newspapers openly promote apprenticeships in a way that they previously reserved for higher education. Politicians see them as a vote-winner. But we still are some way from parents of all backgrounds treating a good apprenticeship as being as valid an option for advancement as many university courses. With fewer than one in five employers offering apprenticeships, we are also a long way from the German system where one in two does so.

And we need to look at incentives: enhanced destination data to encourage schools to promote apprenticeships and more financial support to increase employer engagement, backed by greater simplicity in the range of qualifications and the right intermediary bodies. We may not be able to replicate the German system, but we should try to emulate their ambition. There is now a degree of welcome political consensus that apprenticeships will play a big role in the options offered to young people after the next election. We need to translate that cross-party ambition into an apprenticeship system that matches the best in the world.

Autumn challenges for Clegg and Miliband

As he contemplates the next parliamentary year from the comfort of his Spanish holiday, the Deputy Prime Minister will have plenty of time to consider the perils of coalition. With a stand-off between Nick Clegg and David Cameron over constitutional reform, it is becoming increasingly clear how little the Liberal Democrats have gained from being in power with the Conservatives.

There are two reasons why this is so. First, Clegg failed to secure unconditional support for key policies from Cameron. He won a referendum on the alternative vote, but had no guarantees that his position would not be trashed by his coalition colleagues. Instead of just having a referendum, he should have made boundary changes conditional on AV being passed, and put both on the ballot. Now, rather belatedly, he has chosen to link the constituency carve-up to the failure to get Lords reform through. It looks petulant done this way, and does Clegg few favours in the eyes of voters.

But the second failing was not to insist that the Conservative Parliamentary Party be asked to endorse the coalition agreement in the same way that Clegg gained the support of his Liberal Democrat colleagues. This has allowed many Tories to take a pick-and-mix approach to its measures. This was, of course, as much Cameron's failure rather than Clegg's, but it was a weakness of the whole arrangement.

Of course, a bigger problem for Clegg is that on measures where his party gained seats, notably tuition fees, he has accepted a position the exact opposite to that which he argued for during the election. The concessions on repayment thresholds may make the loans more attractive to some, but have made the finances of higher education less sustainable. Clegg would have been better insisting on a lower cap on fees which might have appeared less daunting to potential students in the future.

Where the Lib Dems claim some credit for policies delivered - the pupil premium and a higher tax threshold - it can plausibly be argued that they are delivering policies that most Tories willingly embrace. The pupil premium also featured in the Conservative manifesto. But. so far, its failure to link with a national funding formula and to recalibrate the much higher premium inherited from Labour, means that it is often being used to mitigate cuts elsewhere in the budget rather than for proven measures that could tackle achievement and aspirations among target students.

If he is to regain some of the credibility he enjoyed before the last election, Clegg needs to be ready to revisit the coalition agreement in the autumn, and establish some key priorities for the second phase of the government, some of which should reflect the reality that George Osborne's economic policies are not working as intended. Top of the list should be a serious investment package in national infrastructure, one that starts to have a real impact on the economy, and a stimulus to service industries that pump money directly into the UK economy, perhaps through targeted VAT reductions for tourism-related industries or a strong incentive package to boost UK education. He should also try to put a halt in both cases to the Home Office's unstinting efforts to deter tourists and students from spending their money in Britain.

Meanwhile, Ed Miliband has benefited from the coalition's woes, but still lacks a strong enough policy on the economy and taxation. His challenge for the autumn is to put flesh on a policy that goes further than heckling 'I told you so' at the Chancellor. Ed Balls has argued for VAT cuts, but they need to be targeted on services and industries that are largely home-grown if they are to improve growth, not add to the trade deficit. Stella Creasy has rightly argued for a wholesale bottom up review of all public spending, with value for money at the heart of it. And the focus on any extra investment must be on infrastructure - both small-scale, such as restoring individual school capital budgets, and large-scale, including sorting out London's airports. Miliband has gained stature in the last year: this autumn is the time he needs to translate that into economic credibility.

Why is this man being allowed to preside over the wilful destruction of a major British export industry?

Imagine, if you will, a Government in the midst of a recession that chooses to insult investors who bring £8 billion a year into the UK economy. And it does so purely for reasons of ideology and prejudice, with little regard for the economic consequences. Such an approach would surely be the subject of widespread ridicule, and the minister responsible given the opportunity to spend a little more time with their constituents and their backbench colleagues.

That is precisely what is happening to our universities and colleges, as they strive to compete with Australia, Canada and the US for the brightest and best students in the world. This week, nearly 70 university chancellors have written to the David Cameron urging him to back UK universities in their efforts to recruit genuine international students. What other major export industry would have to go on bended knees to beg the PM's backing?

Yet the coalition's ill-considered immigration policy is turning students away. Already numbers from India have fallen, and other major countries are likely to turn elsewhere unless they see Britain welcoming international students rather than treating them like pariahs. Essentially the problem is this: the coalition is committed to reducing net migration at a time when the number of Britons migrating is falling. There are already strict controls on overseas workers, so the only way to achieve this is to cut student numbers.

Yet as the universities point out in their letter:

In an age of increasing global mobility, the number of individuals considering a university education abroad is growing rapidly. In this market for talent – and export income – the UK performs exceptionally well, with 9.9% of the total market share in 2009, and export earnings of £7.9 billion. International students also play an important role in towns and cities up and down the country, and contribute significantly to local economies. There is a clear opportunity to build on this success, with forecasts suggesting that export earnings from this activity could more than double by 2025.

Since the formation of the coalition, the Home Office has tried to cut immigration to the UK in several ways. It was perfectly reasonable to clamp down on 450 bogus colleges and prevent them from sponsoring students.The Border Agency claims that this has meant 11,000 fewer bogus students coming to the UK. At the same time, universities and colleges are licensed as Highly Trusted Sponsors to admit overseas students and must take responsibility that students will turn up to and attend courses, and that they are legitimate. Institutions that fail in this quickly lose their status, so they have a strong incentive to do so. It is not always easy, as the wholly inept Border Agency is often behind on the paperwork, but it makes some sense. 

What makes no sense is keeping students within the net migration figures: it is like capping manufacturing exports or saying we have enough tourists this year, thanks.

Moreover, the impression from outside is not that there is a sensible balance being struck between recruiting legitimate students and barring bogus ones. Rather it is that an increasingly zealous minister at the Home Office, Damian Green, the man most responsible for the chaos at the borders last month, seems hell bent on discouraging students from coming here in the first place. The Home Office has dusted down all its old wheezes and finally found a willing buyer in the once moderate and mild-mannered Kent MP. As a result, an £8 billion export industry is playing second fiddle to their fantasy targets. So much so that Green told a Policy Exchange event in February that

there is scope for further examination of whether and to what extent foreign student tuition fees boost the UK economy and, crucially, how UK residents ultimately benefit from that. 

Universities UK has argued that the total ‘export earnings’ of higher education, including tuition fees and spending by non-UK students, could grow from £7.9bn in 2009 to £16.9bn in 2025 with the right policy environment.Its research also highlighted the extent of growth in Indian postgraduates, as well as higher international student mobility from China, the Middle East and Nigeria. A recent IPPR report has calculated that current Government targets could see losses of up to £3bn a year from students: in truth it could be a lot higher if the Green message reaches those growing markets. Moreover, these students are not just an invisible export, as the IPPR adds

The difference in terms of the dynamic contribution to the economy over 20 years, in terms of losing so many young, highly qualified and motivated migrants is hard to calculate, but would likely be very large.

It is time for David Cameron to take a decisive stance on this issue, and to back British higher education. If he wants a simple solution, he could start by emulating the Australians - one of our big competitors for East Asian, Indian and Chinese students by treating students differently in the statistics. The IPPR explains:

Australia keeps a record of international students in its estimates of total net overseas migration (NOM), but these fall within the ‘temporary’ category (alongside business long-stay migrants, working holidaymakers and long-term visitors) and there are few formal caps on these numbers, although the government is able to exert some control through policy, such as by raising English language requirements.

Then he should borrow another idea from Tony Blair, and launch a major Downing Street campaign actively to promote UK higher education in overseas markets. The message should be that Britain welcomes international students - and he should show that his government means it.

Clegg should demand real investment for renewing those vows

With Francois Hollande elected in France and Labour's modest triumph in the council polls, it is hardly surprising that David Cameron and Nick Clegg feel the need to renew the vows they exchanged in the shotgun wedding of 2010. But whether they should stick to the letter of the pre-nup that they signed on that fateful day is another matter. The economy desperately needs investment, and the government badly needs a sense of purpose. There are few signs that either are planned. And that reflects a failure of imagination by Nick Clegg and his improbably sidekick Danny Alexander.

The Budget was not just a disaster for the Tories, countering George Osborne's smugness with its extraordinary collection of crowd-displeasers. It was also a failure for Nick Clegg, because he failed to persuade his coalition partners that cutting the 50p tax rate at a time when the country (and Europe) has entered into a populist anti-rich rage might not be the best idea, just at the moment.

But then despite the hype there is little sign that the Liberal Democrats have gained much beyond becoming a punching bag for liberal initiatives already favoured by Cameroon reforms, such as gay marriage or even Lords reform. The Lib Dems have failed utterly to promote the sort of infrastructural investment that might move the economy from Osborne's recession into lasting growth. School building has been slashed. House building is a combination of anti-Labour spin and coalition inaction. The high speed rail will take years to materialise and Heathrow is chaotic not just because of Teresa May's passport panic, but because there is nowhere for the planes to land half the time. High speed broadband seems a distant dream, especially with BT involved.

We have seen that infrastructure can be delivered on budget and on time with the Olympic stadium. And I have no quibble with efforts to get better value for money than Labour in public building projects. But there is simply not enough action on providing the major infrastructural investment that could give the economy the kickstart it needs, boosting demand and jobs, and ensuring more people pay taxes rather than draw benefits. Rather than fighting plans for an extra £10bn cut in welfare budgets, Clegg should be seeking to cut the budget by getting people into real jobs. At present, all that's on offer is the dubious rebadging exercise known as the Youth Contract.

Within months, Europe including Germany will recognise - in part because of what's happening in France and Greece - that it needs a better balance between austerity and growth, and that investment projects are needed for the latter. The US under Barack Obama has recognised that, as has the IMF and OECD in its advice to member nations. This is not about cutting day-to-day spending, which will have to continue, though Osborne always underestimated its knock-on impact on private sector services, but about medium to long-term investments that will have a return.

So, rather than whining about Lords Reform, Clegg and his colleagues should force the investment issue with a real determination: new rail, schools, housing, airports. If he focused on that rather than the dubious achievements that he cites for his role in Government to date, the voters might even notice. By the same token, Labour should switch its arguments from the speed of the spending cuts to a ceaseless demand for more capital investment, with a strong critque of the government's enduring incompetence and inability to deliver. It too might find that a successful formula to consolidate and advance on Thursday's success.

Bad advice: how the jerry can salesman is crippling Cameron's Downing Street

George Osborne may be taking much of the blame for the crisis-a-day budget that has spawned anger from Greggs pasty counters to charity balls. But he shouldn't shoulder the blame all by himself. There is another figure who deserves to share the credit blame with the Chancellor: Francis Maude. When last we heard from the Cabinet Office Minister, he was advising us to stock up on petrol-soaked jerry cans in our garages, in an act designed to show just what he thought of all that silly 'elf and safety advice. Since his wisdom was not received in the spirit of helpfulness with which it surely was intended, the Horsham MP has disappeared.

Cameron will hardly have thanked Maude for his jerry can sales drive, as it added to the narrative of woes that also included his own misremembered pasty-eating escapades on Platform 3 at Leeds Station. But his ingratitude should be extended more widely when it comes to Maude. For he is responsible for most of the Government's woes. Oh, I know, Andrew Lansley must take the fair share of the blame for his crazed health reforms, but since he is so totally lacking in self-awareness, he can't really help it. And Osborne really should have foregone the White House in the week before the Budget, but he knew that his quadmate Danny Alexander was there to do the Budget read-through in his absence, so perhaps he can be forgiven too.

Yet, if Cameron had some politically astute, policy-focused special advisers in Downing Street, at least they could have confined the wayward health secretary to banning labels on fag packets and getting Coca Cola to feign an interest in making fat people thin instead of screwing up the NHS. Had he got somebody wise shadowing the Treasury they might have spotted the dangers of the granny tax, the pasty tax, the charity tax and all those other delights that keep on giving from Osborne's car crash of a budget.

But the reason that he relies instead on a policy unit dominated by civil servants with little political nous is Francis Maude. For it was his bright idea to mock Labour's lavish spending on, er, 84 special advisers across government that as Neil O.Brien of Policy Exchange so shrewdly noted in yesterday's FT cost less in a year than DWP pays in benefits to dead people every week.

People worry about the expense. But peak expenditure on special advisers under Labour was £5.6m a year – less than the government pays in benefits to dead people each week. Advisers enable ministers to grip their department and cut costs. Elsewhere, their numbers are much higher: Australia has twice as many, with only a quarter of the number of civil servants. Germany’s Angela Merkel has a whole chancellor’s department to enforce her will.

Maude decreed that the coalition - especially No 10 - would be purer than pure when it came to special advisers, obviously assuming that they were all straight out of The Thick of It rather than a vital lever of power. Funny enough, the civil service were generally happy enough to encourage him in his delusions. And the result is what it is: a dysfunctional government that is still making headlines with a cost-neutral budget and a government that lacks much sense of direction or purpose despite some progress in education and welfare.

Of course, wiser ministers have simply cocked a snook at the Jerry Can salesman by recruiting like-minded folk as policy advisers or in communications roles to top up their SpAd quota. But, really, why the pretence? It is as utterly silly an issue as the debate over party political funding. Politicians think the voters really care that much, when in fact it is the attempt to raise money from other than taxpayers that causes all the problems or the chaos that comes from not biting the bullet on special advisers that creates chaos.

Here is an issue where there needs to be some common purpose between the parties. Politics and good government need to be paid for. Let them stop treating voters like idiots, and tell it to them straight.

More state funding for political parties is the only answer

Suppergate may be providing further discomfort for the Tories after last week's budget ineptitude. And plenty of indignant outrage will flow from those not involved, not least at the ludicrous figure of Peter Cruddas and his attempt to sell the most expensive dinners around. Yet supporters of democratic politics can neither afford the either the comfort of righteous indignation nor the cheap laughs that the incident provokes. Once again we can see how important it is to grasp the nettle of state funding for political parties. For, the truth is that each time an incident such as this emerges it further dents party politics. And that is bad for democracy as a whole.

I have long argued that greater state funding for political parties is the only way forward, and these events strengthen my view. It is true that at least we now know how the parties are funded. All the parties have come unstuck as a result of their reliance on large donors. Of course, there's a good case for capping the amount parties can receive from a single donor - and doing so closer to £5000 than £50000; just as there's a case for capping constituency spending all year round. But this inevitably descends into party political knockabout: this time we may be enjoying Cameron's discomfort, but he is not the first party leader to face such controversy. Greater state funding must be the answer. The Labour government should have bitten the bullet on all this years ago; Nick Clegg should certainly insist that his coalition partners do so know.

And for the benefit of those who think the taxpayer shouldn't fund political parties, don't forget they already do, and on a much greater scale now than before 1997. In 2011/12, according to the House of Commons library the opposition parties received £6.5m in so-called 'Short money' with nearly £600k more for party work in the House of Lords. There are also policy development grants to help develop manifesto policies. Party funding is now worth more than three times as much per Commons seat as it was in 1997.

So, all the parties should call a truce on this issue. Labour should accept that the unions fund the party too much, and find a more direct link to individual union members. The Tories should axe big donations. And the taxpayer should pay a little more to protect something that people the world over risk their lives for - and bring an end to charades like we have seen played out this weekend once and for all.

Ministers have to be politicians too

Andrew Lansley remains the Health Secretary for now. But, as this blog has long pointed out, he was a disaster waiting to happen. Before the election, he said he wouldn't reform the NHS (apart from in some secret memo that he sent to himself). His initial health reforms were incoherent, and hampered by his daft insistence that he was scrapping Labour's hugely successful floor targets, even though he wasn't quite doing so. This sent a signal to the system that they could push more people onto longer waits. Which they did in too many cases. When he was forced into making a major U-turn on GP commissioning - effectively removing the compulsory element - he pretended he had made no concessions at all. Which was pretty stupid, at a time when his coalition partners were demanding concessions. So, now David Cameron is being forced to expend huge political capital keeping a hopeless minister who doesn't do politics.


But Lansley is not the only political accident waiting to happen. Iain Duncan Smith may be a more likeable character, but he shares some Lansley traits - a lack of political skill and an enormous self-belief - and his plans have disaster written all over them. The Duncan-Smith reforms make perfect sense, of course, and are right in principle. It is right to aim for a single simpler universal credit, and it is pretty indefensible to be arguing that a £26k benefits limit (net) is too low. It would have been better politics to recognise the need for some regional differentials at the outset: call it a London weighting, perhaps. But because Duncan-Smith isn't really much of a politician - his politics, like that of Lansley, is limited to a sneering pretence that nobody else has ever executed any reforms of any worth in this area, especially the last Labour government. And because the echo chamber that is the Tory press cheers him on, he is convinced he will succeed. However, the Treasury expects Duncan-Smith to fail. George Osborne apparently makes no secret of his disdain for a project that relies on one failsafe mechanism for success: Government computer procurement.

Lansley and Duncan-Smith both profess expertise in their fields. But they lack the skill to sell or see through their grand ideas. The last few years may have given politics a bad name, but politics is vital to the successful delivery of change. A good politician exaggerates the concessions he or she has made to win over critics; a bad one pretends he has made none. Health and welfare reform were two of the coalition's big ideas. It is a mark of Cameron's poor people judgement that be put the two ministers least likely to deliver them successfully in charge. The PM is said to have an aversion to reshuffles. And Tony Blair reshuffled too many people too often. But if he wants to salvage either of these key reforms, Cameron needs to overcome his aversion. And he needs to do so pretty quickly.

Cameron is right about coasting schools, but wrong that Labour 'hid' this data

Why does David Cameron ruin a perfectly good argument with some petty partisan point-scoring? Today's article by the PM in the Daily Telegraph argues that some schools in leafy suburbs and shires perform less well than they should do, and are a bit complacent about it. All of which is true. It is also the case that the coalition are publishing more data than before, but it is nonsense to suggest that this data was deliberately 'kept under wraps' by the Labour government.

In fact, Labour greatly increased the amount of data that was published about schools, including in the league tables. It introduced measures of school improvement, as well as raw data. It also made available plenty of information to the Fischer Family Trust and other organisations that provide most schools with targets - those that strive for the top quartile in FFT are the ones that are not failing their students. With freedom of information, there was plenty of other information available too.

But there is a balance to be struck here. There is a good reason to have some limit to the number of elements in the league tables if they are to be readily understood. People should be encouraged ro read them alongside Ofsted reports. Newspapers and other media rarely publish all the data as it is. The issue for Government is to decide where the focus should be if such publication is to drive improvement. Michael Gove has already accepted the measure introduced by Labour of five good GCSEs including English and Maths as desirable for at least half of students in all schools, and as a goal for 80% of all students. This was a new measure introduced by Labour in 2005 as a way of ensuring that all pupils were entered in the basics. Together with floor targets, it has driven substantial improvement, including in London.

Cameron is right that there may be a temptation to focus on D-C borderline students. But this is not a bad thing in itself: schools certainly should ensure that students heading for a D are helped to achieve a C, as this will be worth much more to them in later life, But, of course, they should equally ensure that B/A borderline students work for an A. Any good school will do this, in part because of the revolution in data and individual targeting introduced by Labour. And Ofsted should pick up on it if it isn't happening.

But there is a separate issue about the effect of some of the new measures being introduced by the Conservatives, and it is not obvious that they have got these right. The English Baccalaureate could have a beneficial impact if it sees more academically minded students taking a foreign language, and an earlier push by Labour has already seen a big uplift in triple science, which is continuing. But while students should learn history (my own degree subject) and geography, it is by no means obvious that they will be of greater benefit to every student than engineering, technology or computer science. The only difference is that the former appear in the new league table measure at the expense of the latter. League tables can create perverse incentives no matter the intentions.

Equally, it is important that the PM's drive doesn't prevent us from seeing the wood for the trees. There is a very good reason to focus on the five good GCSE measure for weaker schools, and it has been the backbone of many academy improvements and those in London. But introduce too many measures, without any sense of their respective importance, and it becomes a lot harder for parents to compare schools. This happened with Labour's Contextual Value Added measure that the coalition is replacing with a less complex measure of value added. So, it is good that the new league tables will show us how well schools are working for pupils at different attainment levels. But let's make sure that in the process we don't substitute a fog of statistics for true focus.

Fox fiasco, NHS bill chaos. Move Maude.

David Cameron's two big crises of the moment, the Liam Fox/Walter Mitty saga and the slow death of Andrew Lansley's pointless NHS legislation owe a lot to another member of his cabinet and a silly self-destructive piece of gesturist posturing. Francis Maude's obesessive opposition to political advisers in government has led Fox to use unorthodox methods to maintain the advice of his Alanticist soulmate Adam Werritty, while Lansley's ludicrous bill would never have seen the light of day had Cameron enjoyed half-decent political back-up in No 10 while it was being dreamt up.

I hold no brief for the increasingly bizarre Werritty or his politics, and some of the meetings that he set up would not have been appropriate for any political adviser. But a Secretary of State is entitled to have political advice that reflects his political position as a counterweight to the bureaucratic certainties that he will receive from his civil servants. The civil service is fine at offering what it sees as the tenable options on any issue, but it can benefit from radical challenge from political advisers as well as ministers. And the idea that ministers should not have sufficient political back-up to fulfil a democratic mandate is pretty undemocratic. I have no idea whether there is more to Werritty than a go-for for Fox: but if that is all that he is, he should have been able to work for Fox in an official capacity, albeit with fewer luxury hotel visits and first class flights. Had he done so, his role would have been properly defined.

Which brings me to Lansley's bill that is finally getting the scrutiny it deserves thanks to a re-energised David Owen and a canny offer from Andy Burnham, who has made a flying start back at Health by offering to back GP commissioning if the bill is dropped. As Camilla Cavendish points out in an excellent piece (£) in the Times this morning, the bill makes no difference to patients, it will be blamed for the next NHS crisis [which I believe will follow Lansley's equally ludicrous abandonment of targets] and it doesn't actually require primary legislation. Indeed it may even set back the private and voluntary provision already introduced as a result of Alan Milburn's reforms. But all of this was entirely predictable, and would have been seen by a half-competent, politically aware NHS adviser in No 10. Cameron lacked such a figure because the No 10 policy unit was virtually non-existent thanks to the strictures of Maude. Even today, it is filled with civil servants rather than politically astute figures, for the same reason.

Of course, Francis Maude thought he was being terribly clever when he announced a reduction in the number of Whitehall political advisers. And, funnily enough, the civil servants in the Cabinet Office cheered him on, as did the newspapers. It allowed a nice dig at Labour too. All of which would have been exchanged for a day's bad headlines had the coalition increased their number. Some ministers have created policy adviser posts for political appointees (who are subject to the strictures of civil servants on political activity) to get round the rules. But they shouldn't have to. The Prime Minister should have a strong cadre of able well-informed political advisers, and individual cabinet ministers should be able to assemble small teams of people they can trust politically to act in the interests of their democratic mandate.

So, if and when Liam Fox goes, and once Cameron finally gets rid of the disaster that is Andrew Lansley [and it gives me no pleasure to note that this blog told you so long before the election], he should also move Maude. And do a U-turn on political advice.

Cameron must do details

It is not easy being Prime Minister, having to keep on top of lots of pesky details across Whitehall. It can also be a major cause of inertia if you strike the wrong balance between strategy and substance: look at Gordon Brown's first year as PM as a lesson in how not to do it. But you can also go to the opposite extreme, and that has been the characteristic of David Cameron's first year in office. He paid little heed to the plans that his old boss Andrew Lansley was concocting at Health, even though they ran directly contrary to his promises to voters, and more importantly they had too many half-baked elements, such as compulsory commissioning for GPs and the effective scrapping of waiting time targets. He was far too busy to notice that Kenneth Clarke at Justice was turning the idea of the Tory party as the voice of law and order on its head, with promises to release rapists and paedophiles quickly so long as they fessed up. And his inattention has led to several other lesser difficulties too, from the scrapping of sports partnerships at the DFE to the sell off of forests at Defra. And two weeks running, this disinterest has tripped him up at Prime Minister's Questions, to the benefit of Ed Miliband.

To be fair to Cameron, a big reason why he missed a lot of this lay in his foolish acquiescence to the idea that the Blair government's biggest problem was a surfeit of special advisers, so he left his own policy unit in Downing Street woefully understaffed. That, at least, has been remedied and I suspect a count of SpAds and political policy appointments across Whitehall would rival anything from the previous decade. But there are also suggestions that the Prime Minister has the idea that he should float above the minutiae of Whitehall. And to an extent, he should. Tony Blair was very good at seeing the wood from the trees, and getting to the essence of a problem quickly. But that doesn't mean not being informed about potential pitfalls in his Government's policy: Blair used his PMQs preparation assiduously to update himself on such issues and spent plenty of time on detail when a policy was likely to be controversial.

There are signs that the some in Government are realising that details should be addressed before they create a crisis: the decision to widen the grounds for legal aid in future divorce cases to include emotional abuse (Clarke had originally intended to confine it to physical domestic violence) has avoided a certain defeat on the question in the House of Lords and an indefensible aspect of the proposals. Cameron has to show a similar attention to detail across all departments, using his policy unit as an early warning system. Otherwise, he will not just acquire a reputation for U-turns and indecisiveness, he could be seen as not on top of the job. And that's not something that people want in their prime ministers.

The morning after

Were it not for Scotland, Ed Miliband could claim to have had a good night. As it is, the extraordinary SNP surge will overshadow some genuinely impressive achievements: potentially gaining a majority in Cardiff (providing a lesson in the benefits of coalition for the larger party), routing the Lib Dems in cities like Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, Hull and Stoke, winning back Gravesham and good results in places like Telford and Luton. Yet Labour also lost ground in key seats like Gloucester and Dartford. Of course, results have still to come in many areas. But the fact that one cannot say it was an overwhelmingly good night for Labour is a measure of the uphill struggle that Miliband still faces.

For he is the leader of the party in the whole of Britain, not just England; and he can't accept credit for Cardiff without also accepting the embarrassment of Edinburgh. He needs now to work to ensure that there is a root and branch reorganisation of the Scottish Labour Party, with the persuasion of a heavy hitter to position him or herself to do an Alex Salmond on the whole Scottish Labour party. After all, Salmond had the confidence to stick his name on every Scottish ballot paper.

In England, this is a better result than it might seem, because Labour has once again become the largest party in votes cast. This is important with the Tory gerrymeander still set to be introduced despite the failure of AV. It is a mark of the ineffectiveness of Nick Clegg that he didn't insist that the two measures were dependent on each other, thus forcing Cameron and crew to restrain themselves over their No enthusiasm. The Liberal Democrats are facing potential revolts over key coalition policies which will strain the partnership, and should certainly scupper Andrew Lansley's barmy NHS plans (if not restoring those waiting time targets that had been a huge success for patients) and may force speedier Lords reform and turn the pupil premium in schools into a meaningful incentive to attract poorer students. And while the Tories will be pleased not to have seen their vote drop significantly, they may find that this is the last time they can feel so smug: as Lib Dem councillors disappear, voter anger will find a new home.

For Labour, it is vital that the party does more than sort out Scotland. The extra councillors should help consolidate the party organisation. But Miliband needs to show some policy mettle too, and not wait until his various reviews have pronounced. Voters don't know what he stands for, and he needs to pick some strong symbolic policies on which to take a stand: that might mean outpacing the Tories where their policies are potentially popular, like on academies and free schools, and providing radical alternatives where they are getting it wrong, including on crime and prisons. He should not let the Lib Dems take the initiative on constitutional reform, but he needs a clear and credible economic and social policy that appeals to working class and Middle England voters alike. Of course, he should not unveil all - or even most - of his policies now, but he does need to show where he stands. Otherwise it will be difficult to turn last night's genuine gains into an election winning strategy for 2015 - or before.

An updated version of this posting appears on the Public Finance blog.

Changing the NHS changes

Readers of this blog will not be surprised that David Cameron and Nick Clegg are being forced into full-scale rescue mode for Andrew Lansley's health 'reforms' this week. The attempt to force GPs to become NHS managers was always bonkers, however good the more entrepreneurial GPs may be at managing local healthcare budgets. While Cameron clearly should have known this, he was clearly adversely affected by Francis Maude's decision to deny him a reasonable level of politically-savvy advice within No. 10. The removal of the quasi-accountable role of the Primary Care Trust clearly ran directly counter to Liberal Democrat policy (even if the latter sought to bring local authorities into the picture). It was also inevitable that their initial attempt to create a market based on price rather than quality would have to be reversed, given all the Cameron guff about the 'NHS safe with us' before the election. And the removal of waiting time targets (despite 'guarantees' in the NHS constitution) was always going to affect patients adversely - and it has started to do so.

So, the conjoined coalition twins have a chance to reverse Lansley's mess before the legislation is torn apart in the Lords. But they should not pretend that all they are doing is minor tinkering if they are making the more significant changes that are required. If they really want to win back public support, they need first to apologise for the changes, which were a clear breach not just of the coalition agreement but also of the solemn promises (there were a lot of those, weren't there?) made by Cameron and Clegg before the election. They then need to spell out what they will do and what they will not do, as a result of their U-turn. That should mean at the very least voluntary participation in the fundholding scheme, a residual role either for PCTs or local authorities and competition based firmly on quality. They need also to be rather more honest about the extent of improvement since 2000 - which is pretty obvious to anyone who has experienced the system before and after - as well as the extent to which it still needs to improve. And finally, they need to restore the maximum waiting times until such time as they genuinely are no longer needed, with any Tory who says that they 'distort clinical priorities' being forced to wait on a trolley in A&E on a Saturday night without being seen for a minimum of 10 hours. Only then will they start to convince the public. Anything less is (not very good) spin.

Educating the health secretary

While the battle to protect Libyans from Gaddafi continues, domestic news - bar, perhaps, this week's Budget - is unlikely to get much of a look in. But the weekend saw two further dents in the credibility of Andrew Lansley's grand plans for the NHS. First, the Observer revealed that recent polling showed record levels of satisfaction with the health service, after the reforms and investment of Labour. This information had been suppressed by the Government, which talks a lot about publishing facts but tends only to do so when the facts suit their case. In this case, Lansley apparently preferred 2006 data to more recent figures. The figures bore out the findings of earlier concerns about the government deliberately ignoring an improving trend in health outcomes. Both are shamefully promoted by Lansley. But we need to know the baseline, and trend, so we can judge his changes in the same light.

The second dent came in an article by the independent-minded GP and Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, in the Sunday Telegraph. She is particularly concerned about the impact that stripping out Primary Care Trusts and handing £80 billion of public money to GPs will have on the NHS. There should be as much concern about the premature removal of floor standards over waiting times, which are likely as budget cuts bite to lead to longer waits for treatment and a return to the trolley patients of the late 90s. As I have argued before, the issue is not whether reform is needed or even whether GPs can be entrusted with primary care budgets, but the utterly mad way in which these reforms are being introduced. There is no evidence they will work: it is all based on a hunch, which might be OK with a £5 bet at Cheltenham but not with an £80bn wager on the NHS. There is no distinction made between enthusiastic GP fundholders and unwilling conscripts. There is no proper transition with targets and primary care trusts. The whole thing has failure written all over it in large letters, and it is astonishing that neither David Cameron nor Nick Clegg can see it.

The absence of any proper No 10 policy scrutiny is evident in the way these changes are being introduced. And if the new policy wonks drafted in to the PM's Policy Unit have any sense they will immediately propose several changes to the Lansley lunacy. If they want a better model of reform, they could ask Michael Gove at education who has adopted this approach with academies and free schools. First, make fundholding a gradual process available to those who want it and have the skills to deliver it. Second, retain PCTs as a smaller but important strategic oversight until there is universal fundholding. Third, keep some floor standards - maximum waiting times for treatment and A&E - and use them as part of the accountability package. Fourth, be absolutely clear that competition will be on quality with fixed prices for treatment. That is the model that Gove has adopted in education - pace but choice on academies and free schools, residual local authorities, GCSE and Key Stage 2 floor targets and fixed per student funding (still linked to area) with adjustments for poverty and special needs (albeit with spending cuts). Lansley could do worse than learn from his education colleague. The rest of us could do a lot better if he did.

Time for a few more U-turns

I'm afraid I hadn't got around to stirring myself into a righteous rage about the management of the forests before David Cameron ruthlessly hung the hapless Caroline Spelman out to dry over the ill-communicated and poorly considered proposals. He badly needs to get a grip from No 10. But I am sure that its impact would have been far less damaging than two other government plans that remain a core part of the coalition project: forcing GPs to take over most of the NHS budget and the scrapping of the EMA. Both require swift retreats or they will lead to future problems when it is too late.

As I have said here before, there is nothing wrong with GP fundholding, where GPs actually want to hold the funds and where certain services that they will have no interest in commissioning are provided elsewhere. There is a lot wrong with simply handing over £80 billion of our money to consortia on the hunch that it might be a bit less bureaucratic or a bit more efficient. After all, the King's Fund has shown decisively that the Government's rationale for change is wholly bogus. Some GPs may have a natural aptitude for strategic decision-making. But just as some are lousy at diagnosing diseases, some will be hopeless budget-holders, at least when it comes to dealing with such large sums. This policy has disaster written all over it. Like the forest sell-off, it has no real support except from a few keen fundholders (and if they are keen, let them do it). In his heart, the PM must know this. Since he's in u-turn mode, here's what he should do. First, slow the reform timetable and the abolition of primary care trusts to allow reluctant fundholders to join as volunteers rather than conscripts, as with academies. Second, make the policy permissive, so that those with good business plans get the right to commission and those without must go back to the drawing board. Third, introduce a quality threshold alongside price into the value-for-money criteria, so that the policy doesn't end up replacing good provision with weaker but cheaper alternatives. Oh, and give Andrew Lansley another job where he can be less destructive.

On EMAs, it is a little different. This is a policy driven not by ideology but by funding. Ironically, the determination to pretend that school budgets were not being cut to fund the pupil premium led to the destruction of a proven, targeted measure to encourage ambition and achievement for poorer pupils to fund an untried, untargeted pot of money that will merely be used to plug funding gaps in schools that receive it. Michael Gove told school leaders six months ago that he wanted to persuade the Treasury that EMAs should stay. He clearly didn't succeed. But now that we are seeing the combined impact of government policies on young people, he needs to try again. Not least because without it, in the absence of compulsion when the participation age is raised, there will be nothing to persuade poorer young people who should do so to stay in further education when that is a better long-term option than a badly paid job with statutory part-time training tacked on. I know poorly paid young people lack the voting power of weekend forest-goers, but if the government cares about social mobility, it will make important changes.

Here's what Gove should do. First, all students who received an EMA in Year 12 should get one for Year 13 or the college equivalent. Scrapping an EMA mid-course is unforgivable: have university students been asked to pay a higher fee mid course? This will also avert another court defeat if a legal challenge takes place. Second, savings are needed, so the EMA should in future be made available to all students entitled to free school meals while at school whose family income remains low. This would encourage students to claim FSM at school, helping schools in areas where there is a stigma about FSM to claim the pupil premium. But it would still save money by confining eligibility to the poorest students. Third, the EMA's requirements for study and attendance should be strengthened, with rewards for those gaining good qualifications. Fourth, there should be a differential transport element depending on where students go to college or school. Such a scheme could be introduced at lower cost than the existing EMA but it would make a direct link with the pupil premium and bridge the gap between school and university, where poorer students receive significant support.

A wise education secretary would make the change before a beefed up Number 10 policy and strategy function works out what a disaster EMA abolition will prove to be - and before he loses another court case.

How to make Big Society more than just BS

David Cameron is having another relaunch of his Big Society today. Always a bad sign in government, this one is boosted by his slightly implausible declaration that this half-formed policy is his great mission in life. Desperation suggests itself, not least as the policy has suffered its share of knocks in recent weeks.

The thinking behind the Big Society is perfectly reasonable. At least it would be if it didn't rely on stale caricatures of Labour's approach. When I worked with David Blunkett, he regularly spoke of citizenship and volunteering, which translated into curriculum changes and the promotion of programmes like Millennium Volunteers (since renamed) which is not much different from Cameron's citizens' service. Blunkett also belonged to a Labour tradition that owed much to the pre-war mutualism of the co-operative and trade union movements, which promoted credit unions and penny libraries in Victorian England. Tony Blair regularly promoted 'Big Society' themes such as mutualism in the delivery of public services through trust schools, for example. Gordon Brown was obsessive about encouraging volunteering.

Their enthusiasm produced valuable measures, but no-one would pretend they amounted to a great breakthrough. And there is even less reason to believe that Cameron will be any more successful however much he puts the policy up in lights.

For a start, there is already a certain amount of 'Big Society' activity going on - Cameron highlighted Balsall Heath in his Observer article yesterday, just as Blunkett did a decade ago - but its existence is not proof that it can rapidly be extended, especially if it is simply seen as a substitute for local authority cuts that ministers crassly pretend either are not happening or are nothing to do with them. As Will Straw points out in a great piece on Left Foot Forward today, citing comparisons between poor US states and Sweden, cutting public spending actually tends to reduce volunteering. Changing the culture requires more than words.

Then there is the lack of enthusiasm not just about those who are not already volunteers, or among those who volunteer, as I do as a school and college governor, to become more actively engaged. This is not just because they don't understand what the Big Society is all about, though they don't, but because their lives are filled with work and family commitments. Most people don't want to run their local school or park unless they think the system is failing them. And most people are happy with their local services. One survey today suggests a similar lack of enthusiasm among the coalition's MPs.

And there is also the matter of education. A cultural change will require a shift in what young people learn. Citizenship is patchy in schools, but instead of being revitalised it could be axed in Michael Gove's curriculum review. The International Baccaureate requires a degree of volunteering from young people, but Gove's English Bac gives credit for nothing beyond the narrowly academic. If the Big Society is to resonate, it must start with young people, many of whom already raise money for charity and would happily volunteer in their communities with the right encouragement. There needs to be space for them to try establishing social enterprises in schools and the translation of citizenship on the curriculum into citizens' service for all. Doing so could develop valuable personal skills that would stand them in good stead at work or in university.

But there is little such understanding in Cameron's 'here today, gone tomorrow' speech. Commercial loans for social enterprises will hardly encourage a flurry of activity, and seem yet another example of how the banks have hoodwinked the coalition. Of course, the civil service will rebrand lots of initiatives as Big Society to please their masters, just as they did with theThird Way when it was the phrase of the moment, and as they have rebranded plenty of fairly ordinary school proposals as 'Free Schools' to beef up the numbers in the DFE. But if Cameron genuinely wants to realise what he says is his great mission, he needs to start with young people, be honest about the cuts, recognise the true potential of mutual and social enterprises, and find ways to support those who give of their time as volunteers. Unless he does so, the Big Society really will be so much BS.

This post also appears at Public Finance.

Cameron's NHS roulette

David Cameron deserved every moment of his rough ride on the NHS this morning. For he simply lied to the electorate about his plans before the last election. No ifs, no buts. He lied and Andrew Lansley lied. They said that they would not engage in any 'top-down reorganisations' of the system. And that is precisely what they are doing.

It would be one thing if Cameron were simply extending choice by engaging more private providers, which is one more sensible part of the Lansley agenda. It might be OK if they were allowing more GPs to band together to establish fundholding co-operatives to complement commissioning by primary care trusts. That isn't what they are doing. They are forcing GPs to run the £80 billion NHS budget, whether they want it or not. That is more than a brave experiment. It is a reckless gamble with the whole health service.

I support free schools and allowing schools to become academies. I support more private choice within the NHS. But I think this experiment is profoundly mistaken because it is being imposed. It is not evolutionary, it is destructive. And it comes at the same time that the coalition are tearing up the biggest success story of recent years - greatly reduced waiting times - which could see the return of the trolleys and excessive waits. I spent some time in hospital before Christmas and saw the benefits of those changes compared with my last visit ten years before.

It is one thing to press ahead with radical reform where there are clear benefits from doing so, or there are strong structural reasons for doing so. Continuing - and accelerating - the direction of travel of Labour's reforms (as Michael Gove has done to an extent in education) would have made sense. Throwing everything up in the air and seeing where it all lands is madness. It undoes ten years of solid improvement for no obvious gain. Not only will Cameron and the coalition come to regret this. So will the rest of us.

This post also appears at Public Finance. It has been highlighted at the Guardian and Stumbling and Mumbling.

Time for a rethink on school sports

At the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust conference in Birmingham this week, the strongest applause from the audience during the speeches of schools minister Nick Gibb and shadow education secretary Andy Burnham came when mention was made of the coalition's bizarre decision to axe the school sports partnerships that have revitalised PE and competitive sports in schools. Needless to say, the 2000 heads and school leaders were not applauding the rather thin defence being offered for the decision, nor did they buy the shameless spin that has accompanied the axe,

Today's Observer reports that ministers are frantically seeking a way out of the problem, which has already wrongfooted David Cameron at PMQs and threatens to undermine any hopes of a serious Olympics legacy among young people. Heads and pupils already threaten a national campaign that will embarrass even the most thick-skinned coalition MP. The fact that the SSPs have doubled participation in competitive team games and increased PE participation fourfold is dismissed by Cameron with statistics that no Labour spindoctor would have dared to disseminate. To imagine that a scheme that increases participation in inter-school competitions from 1 in 10 to 1 in 5 is a failure because 80% of young people are not so involved is both logically ludicrous and downright disingenuous. The clue is in the word 'competitive'.

But when the lead sports writer in the Sunday Times is as scathing as David Walsh is today (£), even Cameron's spin doctors must know the game is up. The coalition's ideological opposition to any ringfenced funding has come seriously unstuck. Now they just have to admit that there are occasions when such ringfenced funding is needed and desirable. Given that the funds are supposedly simply going to be added to the Dedicated Schools Grant, there should be nothing but a little loss of pride involved in re-ringfencing them: it should not trouble the Treasury one iota. The question is whether ministers are prepared to recognise that they have made a mistake, and effect the necessary rethink.

People want minimum standards not just meaningless milestones

I'm not sure what planet the PM was one when he described the series of business plans published today on the Cabinet Office website as 'revolutionary'. They are anything but. Since 'targets' are a forbidden word in the coalition lexicon, we are treated to a series of 'milestones'. For the most part these appear to be events and announcements that ensure that the government introduces its policies, but very little to hold them to account on results. Of course, Labour had too many targets, but those that set minimum standards on waiting lists and exam results were very successful. Instead of such standards we now have 'people power'. We are now responsible for ensuring that our local A&E sees us within four hours or waiting times are kept short. If they aren't, it is apparently no longer the fault of ministers, however much they cut budgets or impose untried restructuring of GP services.

But that isn't the whole story. Andrew Lansley may have abandoned minimum standards in the NHS despite his relatively protected budget. But Michael Gove has not done so in education: he told local authority officers last week that he would shortly be announcing minimum GCSE standards.

It can’t be acceptable to have so many schools in which two-thirds of children fail to secure five good GCSEs. Minimum standards at GCSE have risen in recent years, in line with the increased aspirations of parents and communities. Those school leaders and local authorities who have driven the fastest improvements deserve special credit. But given the quickening pace of school improvement across the globe, I believe it’s now essential that we demonstrate that we are stepping up our reform programme. I will therefore be finalising details of new floor standards shortly, for inclusion in my forthcoming Schools White Paper. These will apply from January 2011, when we have the verified and final summer 2010 examination data.

These are likely to extend Labour's highly successful floor targets which have made schools with fewer than 30% of pupils achieving five good GCSEs including English and Maths a rarity (half of schools were in that category before 1997). At the same time, Gove is sharpening accountability in primary schools. But there seems to be little such understanding in other coalition departments. Today's rather pathetic business plans are remarkable similar to those we were expected to produce regularly in the early years of Labour government, and some look like they were written by the same civil servants, with the same managerial gobbledygook but with rather less on which to hold ministers to account. What David Cameron and Nick Clegg must recognise is that inputs without outcomes are pretty pointless.

And if they don't know it, the voters will explain it to them rather more cogently than today's business plans - in good time for the next election.

Coalition catastrophe

David Cameron has proved his political ineptitude by allowing David Laws to be thrown to the wolves. Laws was a key figure in his government, yet Cameron refused to back him and allowed the media to pick him off. Cameron enjoyed a potential position of strength in these early days of his new government, yet he squandered it by refusing to support one of his most important ministers. God knows what Nick Clegg thinks he was doing allowing this to happen. By allowing a spurious and intrusive Telegraph story to destroy the career of such an able politician, Cameron has given the green light to the media to pick off his ministers as they see fit. In doing so, he has declared his own insubstantial weakness. Today is a sorry day for politics. And Cameron (with Clegg in a minor supporting role) must accept responsibility.

The Lib Dems are the big losers in the coalition

I wish the new Government well. There are some good policies in the Coalition agreement, some on political reform like PR for the Lords - though not the absurd 55% requirement in a vote of confidence - and on education (if Michael Gove uses the right levers). But one thing is clear: despite all the rantings and ravings of the Tory right, it is the Liberal Democrats that have been the clear losers. Cameron has played a blinder by convincing the world and the Lib Dems that he has had to make huge sacrifices to win this agreement.

First, the Lib Dems' power is limited. Nick Clegg as Deputy PM has settled for a desk in the Cabinet Office, but no real job. David Laws has a poisoned chalice implementing the cuts as chief secretary. Vince Cable has been sidelined on banking reform in the business department without the influence of Lord Mandelson. Danny Alexander has Scotland, a non-department. Only Chris Huhne has some influence at energy, but on nuclear power is stymied by his own party's opposition. The Lib Dem junior ministers are unlikely to have much of a role to play in each department, though they may prevent the wilder excesses of right-wing Tory ministers. Bizarrely, the Lib Dems accepted all this in preference to insisting on even one major office of state or spending department like education or health.

Second, on policy, as John Rentoul has pointed out, Clegg has been royally outmanoeuvred by Cameron. The pupil premium was Tory policy anyway: Michael Gove will be pleased to have some money for it. The £10,000 tax threshold will mean a middle class tax cut paid for by public sector savings, not a more progressive tax system (though economically a better approach, this is hardly what the Lib Dems wanted). The fixed term parliament suits Cameron as it ties in the Lib Dems. On the abstention votes on tuition fees, marriage tax or nuclear power, the Tories will win anyway with a 307-286 majority. And whether or not an AV referendum succeeds, the Tories will still be able to push through their gerrymander of English constituencies to make more of them Conservative. Cameron will be delighted to neutralise his right-wing, ditch crazy policies like the inheritance tax cut and avoid a distracting row in Europe.

Third, in return for the happy couple pix and a host of ministerial cars, they have destroyed their credibility with many of their own voters, particularly in areas like the South West where they were seen as a repository for anti-Tory votes and in Northern cities where their council base had already started to crumble. Many Lib Dem members are already joining Labour.

None of this is to suggest that the Lib Dems weren't right to enter a coalition deal. Indeed, they deserve some praise for being prepared to sacrifice their party for the sake of stable government. But anyone who thinks that they are the winners from the whole deal has been spending far too much time watching 24 hour news and reading the papers.

This post has been picked up by Iain Dale.