Change that works for you?

The Lib Dems began 2011 with a dreadful poll. Just one poll admittedly, but it was the worst poll rating for the party since it was formed. Just 8% in a YouGov tracker poll for 2011. Another snapshot poll put them at 11%.

Whichever way you look at it, the Lib Dems are facing probably their most testing year since they were formed in 1988. They campaigned in the 2010 General Election with the slogan "Change that Works for You". Well, the country certainly got change. 2010 brought about the most dramatic change in British politics since the Second World War. A full coalition government; not the half-way house of the Lib-Lab pact in the 1970s.

Doing things radically differently in politics opens politicians open to huge political risk. That risk is harder to manage if the risk has, essentially, never been tried before. Britain's unfair electoral system delivers governments that make the public unused to parties working in partnership together. And with that lack of understanding comes the risk that the junior partner is seen as an annex to a larger party, irrelevant in its own status and purpose.

I don't think it is overdramatic to say that in 2011, the Liberal Democrats face a battle for survival. It is one they may well emerge from successfully, but the battle is there nonetheless. Nick Clegg took a gamble - and it's not yet clear whether the "Change that Works for You" that Nick Clegg has delivered for his own party will indeed be a change that works for the Lib Dems. Has he delivered his party into a fatal bear hug from David Cameron, in which the Conservatives can simply swallow up the Liberal Democrats? Would it matter if Cameron does swallow up the Lib Dems - can the Conservative Party safeguard the values that the Liberal Democrats have fought for since their formation in 1988 and in their various iterations before that? I believe it does matter that the Lib Dems survive.

I am in favour of the Lib Dems being serious partners in full coalition government. Nick Clegg promised on his first day as leader that he would be driven by a desire for "ambition and change". He has delivered both of those. Under his leadership, the party has grown in ambition and seriousness. The 2010 manifesto - notwithstanding a foolish promise on tuition fees - was the party's most credible manifesto promoted by a credible leader (gone were the wooly press conferences of the Charles Kennedy era when he struggled through a hangover to explain a local income tax).

Joining the coalition government was a necessary step in proving the value of three party politics in Britain. But the trouble with it is that three party politics does not exist yet. Britain still has a voting system that delivers two strong parties and leaves the smaller parties with a share of Westminster seats that barely does justice to their national support (how is it right that a party with 25% of the vote receives less than 10% of the seats in Parliament?). Clegg has gambled that he can create three party politics and win the voting reforms needed to make the Lib Dems more relevant and more powerful in the long term, by adopting a strategy which risks making the Lib Dems more irrelevant in the short term.

There are ways in which the risk can be managed. Supporting tuition fees was the right thing to do; it was wrong to have courted the student vote so transparently when it appears Lib Dem Ministers were always more open-minded than they suggested on the campaign trail. But they can't afford many more compromises - the decision on control orders, for example, needs to decide against them as a result of Lib Dem influence. It is, alongside tuition fees, one of the totemic Lib Dem policies that they need to be seen to deliver on in government. Otherwise, Lib Dem Ministers really are just window-dressing. Nick Clegg cannot afford another defeat on a core Lib Dem policy. Noone will vote for more pluralist voting systems if the coalition governments they produce are seen to be indistinguishable from a government where one party was in power.

But Clegg should also be given credit for what the Lib Dems have achieved, and tell that story more effectively. Many parts of the Lib Dem manifesto got into the Coalition Agreement and are now being implemented. But who knows how much of it? 65% of it is, and that should be part of the core narrative of the Lib Dems in government - otherwise they will keep being bashed for the compromises they will inevitably have to make rather than taking credit for steering the Tories in a more liberal direction in many cases.

In short, 2011 needs to be the year that the Lib Dems make this change work for them. Bold in standing up for core Lib Dem beliefs. Bold in telling a proud story of Lib Dems delivering and influencing change as a credible part of government.

A free vote on fees is the only way forward

I don't usually blog on the same topic so regularly. But the tuition fees "dilemma" for the Liberal Democrats is becoming a touchstone issue for the coalition and its junior partner. It is a key test of whether power sharing is workable, an argument crucial to winning next May's referendum on a fairer voting system. Yet today, there is still uncertainty over how Lib Dem Ministers and backbench Lib Dem MPs will vote on tuition fees - in short whether Government Ministers will back Government policy. Shouldn't be up for debate, should it?

I've uncovered a bit more of what the Secretary of State responsible for Universities, Vince Cable actually said yesterday - and it's pretty shocking. Asked how he would vote, Cable said:

"If we all abstain, then that is the position I am happy to go along with... there is an option that we all abstain together and we are considering that. My own personal instincts, partly because I am the Secretary of State responsible for universities and partly because I think the policy is right are very much to vote for it. But we have got to vote as a group, collectively, and we are discussing how we do that".

Not good enough. This is not the kind of grown up, decisive leadership you would expect of a Government Minister in charge of delivering a key policy reform. If you adopt something as policy, you believe in it. If you believe in it, you argue passionately to persuade those who do not and to bring them on board. Every day that passes with senior Lib Dems hedging their bets, the more it sounds as if Lib Dems have reluctantly gone along with a policy they do not really support. You only need to look at Gordon Brown's premiership to see how damaging it is to dither whilst you wait to see which way the political wind is blowing.

Thankfully, some Lib Dems are talking sense. Lord Willis, former Higher Education spokesperson for the party, today said this on the Today programme:

"The reality is that either we bite the bullet and believe that the proposals are the ones to take us forward in terms of higher education or we don't. They do take us forward and it's time the Liberal Democrats now simply got on board and said, 'Well, let us back them; let us sell them'".

This is absolutely right. But a decision needs to be made fast. Looking at the detail of the Coalition Agreement, abstention does not seem to be an option. It says that Lib Dems can abstain "if the response of the Government to Lord Browne’s report is one that Liberal Democrats cannot accept". But the response to the Government is one that Liberal Democrat Ministers have accepted, so they cannot exercise any right to abstain.

It's a moment for decisive leadership. Lib Dem Ministers need to say they wholeheartedly endorse the proposals and will vote in favour. They then need to say that they will offer a free vote, as some sources are suggesting, for Lib Dem backbench MPs. And then strongly sell the policy to get as many to vote for it as possible. There is no point whipping the party into a ridiculous position that then requires an act of political contortionism to maintain, as Nick Clegg did on the Lib Dem position on the EU constitution referendum.

Mass abstention will be seen as a cowardly derelection of duty by the already disenfranchised students and by the wider public who expect Lib Dems to be constructive partners in coalition government. The only way forward is for a free vote on fees - and for Lib Dem MPs to at least vote boldly as decision-makers. For or against. I believe they should vote for the fees package. But they should at least make a decision - sitting on the fence is not an option.

Don't sit on your hands

In my last blog, I argued that both the Lib Dems and the Tories needed to make a stronger pitch to the public to explain why coalition government is a different kind of government. To explain why difficult situations arise such as the decision the Lib Dems will soon face over whether to vote or abstain in the tuition fees debate.

The Coalition Agreement gives Lib Dems wriggle room. It allowed the Lib Dems to abstain from the vote in the event that was necessary. Today, Nick Clegg and Vince Cable have refused to say whether they will vote for a policy of the Government for which they bear direct responsibility as Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State responsible for Universities.

To abstain would be a outright lunacy. It beggars belief that the key Ministers responsible are even considering it. It may be in the letter of the Coalition Agreement that Clegg and Cable signed up for in May this year. But it is nowhere near the spirit of what they signed up for. They signed up to become responsible, decision-making partners in government. Not part-timers, reserving the right to sit on their hands when the difficult decisions came along.

This is a difficult decision. Tremendously so. But it is also a moment when the Lib Dems need to be bold and implement the strategy I suggested they should adopt of vociferously explaining why coalition government means the junior partner cannot always implement its own policies; explaining why compromises need to be made; explaining why Labour should be ashamed of its hollow criticisms when it let down students time and again when they were a majority government wielding enormous freedom and power.

Abstaining will gain nothing. It will make the party and its MPs look ridiculous. It will not for one moment appease students protesting loudly against this Government policy. And it will achieve nothing: it will not stop the policy, it will not make Lib Dems look student friendly. And it will not be the first time that abstention will be a tempting option when Lib Dem manifesto commitments are not adopted - what next for control orders, for example? The Lib Dems cannot pick and choose which Government policies to support. And if the Lib Dems cannot, then their Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State responsible for the policy certainly cannot either.

It's also crucial to the referendum on the Alternative Vote system due next summer. The living example of coalition government presented to the electorate in May must be one where it can be demonstrated that coalition government works. That it is not a messy substitute for majority government, where coalition partners pick and choose, abstain here and absolve all responsibility there. That will not persuade the public that the coalition governments which a fairer voting system may deliver will in turn deliver stable, united government.

Far better to go for it. Vote strongly for. Explain why it's the right decision. Gain some conviction as a party that is a full-time partner in Government. A party that has moved on from being a party of protest on the sidelines.

Now they are six: tell us what coalition really means

The Coalition Government is six months old. And this week has perhaps been the toughest week of the coalition so far for the Liberal Democrats.

Nick Clegg’s stand-in act at Prime Minister’s Questions coincided horribly with a student protest against tuition fees that turned ugly and violent outside the Tories’ London HQ. Clegg was forced into a squirming justification of ditching a cast-iron pledge to do away with tuition fees in favour of a policy that will see the overall cap on tuition fees rise from £6,000 to £9,000. And for him and each of his MPs that signed a pledge not to increase tuition fees during the election campaign, it’s all feeling decidedly awkward.

For 70 years a party of opposition, less generously – a party of protest, it must come as an almighty shock to be at the receiving end of such vociferous protest. And all the harder for it to be from part of your core vote. For election after election, the Lib Dems have courted the student vote. Electoral success for them has been all about incremental progress, of wooing specific types of voter – students, building the South West strongholds of Somerset and Cornwall, those opposed to Iraq and the liberal public sector.

Wednesday’s attack on Tory HQ may have grabbed the headlines, but the anger of most of the 50,000 strong student demonstration was directed at the Lib Dems. You gave an empty promise, and you let us down.

The Lib Dem’s tuition fees pledge was not wise. It was a hangover from a party still wired up for protest politics, chirping from the safety of third party opposition, and not one of a party expecting to be in government. The Tories and Labour made no commitments whatsoever on tuition fees – both pledging to wait for the Browne Review and then decide. The Lib Dems went for it, pledging to phase out tuition fees altogether in 6 years. Bold, myopic, stupid? Probably a bit of all three, but then many a party has foolishly stuck to a policy that its core vote is rather keen on.

But the 2010 election was not any election for the Lib Dems. There was a strong chance of a hung parliament – this blog was predicting that outcome as far back as March, well before the manifestoes were published. The Lib Dem manifesto should have been checked and checked again for future U-turn clangers. In fairness to Clegg, he did try and water down the commitment to abolishing tuition fees at his party conference in 2009. Clegg is not the first Lib Dem leader to feel shackled by the socks and sandles brigade, but he is perhaps the leader who feels it most acutely.

So much for the tactics, what of the policy? I have always happened to believe that tuition fees are right. I do not subscribe to the view that university should be free for all. Our universities are horrendously underfunded. University lecturers are disgracefully underpaid. And our universities are struggling to compete internationally – there are only five British universities in the world’s top 50 universities – which they must do to retain British innovation in research and developing our brightest talent for the future. How tuition fees are levied then becomes the question – and the compromise that has arisen out of the Browne Review is as good an answer as I’ve seen.

Much has been made of the progressive nature of the proposals. It has allowed Clegg to say he has retained his progressive ambition on fees, an unconvincing act of considerable political contortionism. The proposals are more progressive, and the raising of the salary threshold at which repayment starts (from £15,000 to £21,000) is a significant move. There is a rather bizarre policy to penalise students who repay early with a 5% levy charged on higher repayments that I frankly don’t understand. It strikes me as fair to repay the education that you’ve had, much less fair to be charged extra for paying off your debt more quickly.

The rise in the threshold is to be welcomed, but £21,000 is still a wage that can be difficult to live on – especially in London – so I think there is scope for that threshold to be higher. But it is still fairer than the current system where students on £15,000 in London are being whacked as soon as they graduate. Some credit needs to go to the Lib Dems for this progressive element, but let’s not cheer too loudly – Browne himself proposed this and this recommendation is simply being adopted.

Other elements of the proposal are good – more help for part time students and an increase in some maintenance grants – but they’re being cheered rather more loudly given the government’s need for the Lib Dems to be able to claim some influence here.

What we have is a reasonable proposition for making university students contribute financially to the education they receive. The overall goal of which should be to have higher quality, better funded universities. But the government is yet to be clear about whether the hikes in fees will actually just be changing the source of funding from the Exchequer to funding by students. This reform needs to be about more than who pays for universities, and more about the level of funding they receive. The Government has so far been evasive about the level of cuts in direct funding for higher education from the Exchequer. It is fair to expect students to make a contribution to their education. It is not fair for the government then to be off the hook and for its own contribution to shrink to insignificant levels as a result. These proposals need to be accompanied by a significant and targeted government commitment to funding higher education from the Exchequer.

Onto the tactics. To the cries that the Lib Dems have sold out and signed up to a Tory policy, Clegg did rather well at PMQs. It is quite different for the second party in a coalition government (to be clear, one whose manifesto didn’t win an election) to abandon an election pledge as a result of comprise coalition politics, as opposed to a party that won an election by over a hundred seats and then ratted on its pledge. Lib Dem MPs, whatever their division on this policy, should sock it to Labour for having broken their own promises in 1997 and 2001 on university funding when it had thumping majorities. That they did so was a cast-iron breaking of a manifesto commitment by a majority government based on political calculation - a democratic betrayal. The fact that the Lib Dems cannot implement every part of their manifesto as a junior partner in coalition is of a quite different nature, and we should say so more unitedly, more often and more loudly. As the new Lib Dem President, Tim Farron, has said, the Lib Dem manifesto became a negotiating document with the Tories – not a blueprint for government that the Lib Dems could hold to.

So, what next? I think it was wrong of the Lib Dems to include the pledge to abolish fees in the 2010 manifesto – ham-fisted politically and just wrong on policy terms. In backtracking on something they should never have promised, they need to salvage what dignity they can from seriously pissing off a large proportion of their core vote. Three things need to happen.

· David Cameron needs to throw Nick Clegg a lifeline, and spell out in greater detail what coalition government is and how it works. No more vagueness on “new politics”, a country unused to the sharing of power in national politics needs to hear a clear narrative on why a coalition is different, that sacrifices need to be made on both sides as the two parties compromise and agree – and he needs to demonstrate that the Tories are taking hits as well.

· Nick Clegg needs to develop more of a Lib Dem thrust to the coalition. If it looks like the Lib Dems have just become an annex of the Tories, they will be decimated at the next election on two fronts. If the government is unpopular – they will be whacked. If they seem like Tories – they will become irrelevant (why vote for the Lib Dems if they’re “just the Tories”. And if they fail to be a distinctive progressive voice, Labour will be able to camp solidly and attractively on Lib Dem territory and pick up plenty of Lib Dem votes. Clegg himself needs to understand that coalition politics cannot be explained with vacuous phrases such as “new politics”. His key message for the next five years needs to be what the Lib Dems are adding to this Coalition Government. And once he has that message he needs to say it repeatedly.

· The Lib Dems need to cash in on the Coalition Agreement that allowed Lib Dem MPs to abstain in the Commons vote on fees. Better still, allow a free vote amongst Lib Dem MPs so they’re not seen just to be sitting on their hands (as dangerous as them voting for fees and reneging on their pledges). Allow a free vote, and let Clegg, Cable and Alexander work their socks off to persuade as many Lib Dem MPs as possible to vote for the proposals.

Six months old this week, the coalition needs to learn some lessons this week. The policy is, I believe, the right one. But the tactics of coalition government are not there yet. Both the Lib Dems and the Tories need to move fast to develop a deeper coalition narrative on how it operates and explain how the way it operates allows the Lib Dems to be a distinctive force within that coalition. Then, Nick Clegg, go on and show that distinctive force at work. If not, we risk losing not just our core vote – but the reason why we exist.

He missed his moment

For the first time since Tony Blair swept to the leadership in 1994, the Labour Party today will elect its new leader. It appears to have gone down to the wire. And in the battle of the brothers, Ed Miliband now seems most likely to snatch the crown from his brother and long-running favourite, David.

This would be a remarkable turnaround. It would be a staggering psychological and political blow to David Miliband, who has been leader-in-waiting since at least 2007. And in a contest that has failed to spark and where it has been difficult to discern major policy differences between either the Milibands or their other opponents, it would reveal boldness – or the lack of it – as the decisive factor in this leadership race.

It was never clear that Ed Miliband would even run for the leadership. Although it is reported that Ed told David he would run as far back as January, it was a shock that Ed decided to run at all. It was a bold decision, and one that stands in contrast with David’s reluctance to seize many moments during Gordon Brown’s troubled premiership.

We now know that David Miliband sought Tony Blair’s advice on whether to run against Gordon Brown in 2007. He decided against it: perhaps fearing defeat, demotion and splitting the party whilst still in office - or perhaps he just thought Brown too big a giant to slay. There was also the botched banana coup the following summer, when David effectively challenged Gordon Brown in a Guardian article. It was “not a time for a novice”, and David Miliband retreated again. And, the following summer, when James Purnell explosively resigned as the local election polls closed in 2009 – Gordon Brown’s most perilous moment – David Miliband once again stepped back from the brink. And bottling it a third time brought him considerable opprobrium.

Perhaps he didn’t want to fight an election he thought was a dead loss. Perhaps (and more likely) he thought Labour would look ridiculous for installing a third leader in a single Parliament. Perhaps he heeded Michael Heseltine’s lesson that “he who wields the dagger, never seizes the crown”.

But the Heseltine lesson is not set in stone. A lack of boldness in seizing the leadership also raises serious doubts about seriousness of desire and seriousness as a politician. Are they someone who genuinely seizes the moment? And it also risks letting your moment pass you by. Ask Michael Portillo, who retreated from challenging John Major in 1995, and then was defeated early on in a contest that elected the disastrous Iain Duncan Smith back in 2001. A dead-cert leader-in-waiting saw his hopes disintegrate. The party was distrustful, of course - but the moment had passed.

We now know from Blair’s memoirs, that he realised in 1994 that Gordon Brown wasn’t bold enough or radical enough to be trusted with the Labour leadership. Until around 1994, he claims he had always been content with being the second-in-command. Perhaps Ed Miliband had a similar journey with his brother.

So, if Ed Miliband wins today, it will be a victory for boldness. It wasn’t a certainty that he would stand. It was even less certain that he would win. Labour’s electoral system is a quirky one, and one that produced a shock victory for Harriet Harman in the deputy leadership contest in 2007. But it will be the result of a considerable boldness and skill if Ed seizes the crown today. And a boldness that might just worry the Coalition Government.

The long game

Some under-reported, but significant news as we begin party conference season. Leaderless Labour and the Coalition Conservatives are neck and neck in the polls. The YouGov snapshot earlier this week shows the Tories and Labour the closest they have been since Gordon Brown called off the election that never was in 2007. Tories on 41 (respectable), Labour on 39 (impressive and yet to have its new leader bounce), Lib Dems on 12 (well into "pretend to hold your nerve but actually be quite scared " kind of stuff).

It is surprising that this poll hasn't had more coverage. It comes alongside falling approval ratings for the coalition as a whole. Back in July, it had an already low approval rating of +4%. Now it stands at -4%. Just four months in. And facing a still leaderless, yet to re-launch Labour Party. As I said in my blog before the election, Labour without Brown and its old guard figures will quickly present itself to the voters as a much re-energised, more attractive outfit. Impressive as the unity has been since Cameron and Clegg “got it together”, the Coalition is yet to face its real tests. It’s been the honeymoon period, the four months grace whilst the Opposition sorts itself out.

It is now reasonable to speculate as to the kind of lead David (or maybe, just maybe, Ed) Miliband will be able to generate once they take over next week. We'll see a few party conference poll bounces over the next few weeks, but - once the various crinkles have been ironed out - I would expect Labour to open up a fairly consistent poll lead of between three and five points over the autumn and into next year.

All of this will weigh heavily on Nick Clegg's mind at party conference this week. He is likely to face some criticism, but overall I expect Lib Dems to behave themselves. The novelty of power will keep the criticisms manageable for now. Poll ratings in the teens are fine with a general election seemingly five years away. Plenty of time to devise what Lord Steel has called an "exit strategy" from the Coalition Government, they may think.

But in terms of pure political calculation for his party’s survival, Nick Clegg may not need to worry. He has two strategies – the “annex strategy” and the “AV strategy” as he plays his long game. However committed he is to the Coalition Government and to governing, the party will be calculating its hand very carefully.

In the annex strategy, everything depends on the strength of the Labour lead. If David Miliband opens up and maintains as much as a five point lead (but no bigger) over the Tories, the UK is likely to remain in a state of flux and could, at a General Election, end up with a second Hung Parliament with Labour as the largest party. The Lib Dems get a shoe-ing, lose another 10 MPs - but (what the hell) still find themselves as king-makers. Enter Clegg and the Liberal Democrats once again as chief propper-uppers of major parties who didn't quite squeak home.

Ten years for the Lib Dems in Government? Don't rule it out.

Much of course depends on how the Conservatives fare over the course of this Parliament. Labour's gains have been at the expense of the Liberal Democrats. The Conservative poll rating has not collapsed. It is to a great extent in Nick Clegg's interests to keep it that way. I am not saying that he will be glad to lose support from his own party to Labour - or that the Lib Dems should forfeit their identity and define their existence by the extent to which they can flit from being the annex of one party to another. But with the risk that he has taken, the Lib Dems are safer if the Tory vote continues to hold up against Labour's - that the gap between the two major parties remains tight. And that an overall majority for either party is impossible. An "annex strategy", you might call it. And it is a strategy that, if followed, keeps the Lib Dems riding the bucking bronco of the polls - feeling every kick, rise, fall... and wondering when it's best just to give up and fall off.

The “annex strategy” assumes that the number of seats you have in power in Cabinet are more important than number of seats you have influencing Parliament. The AV strategy places all hope and the future of the Coalition Government on next month’s referendum on changing the voting system. The Lib Dems would have won 22 more seats had the 2010 election been fought under the voting system they'll be campaigning for at the referendum next summer. And it's why the AV campaign matters so much next summer. It will be the crunch point. Lose it, and the usefulness of the Coalition to Lib Dems becomes less obvious. (You already feel as though many Lib Dems are willing to sacrifice coalition with the Tories only for the prize of securing electoral reform). Lose it, and the annex strategy becomes less short-termist, more the harsh reality that you have to face up to. You can't ask the country for electoral reform again. And you’re facing up to your party becoming an irrelevance, defined by its collaboration and not by the values it stands for in its own right. Win it, and you will have demonstrated your seriousness in being a coalition partner and will fight future on elections under a system that will give you what first-past-the-post lacked: Cabinet seats but not at the expense of seats in Parliament. The Holy Grail.

Of course, the Lib Dems will currently be following a mixture of the two strategies. Play the annex strategy, whilst you wait and see how the AV strategy pans out. Which is why, whatever the polls are saying now, the key strain for the coalition will come when the AV referendum result is known next May. Lose it, and the AV strategy is dead. You could be noble, grown-up and hang on – but not if Miliband kills of the annex strategy by opening up a poll lead that suggests Labour is on course for governing without the need for another Brokeback Coalition. More likely, the Lib Dems will withdraw from the coalition at the moment when its usefulness has evapourated but in a way that presents itself as the re-awakening of the Liberal Democrats in disagreement with the Tories - and not as withdrawal through self-interest. It may be so risky in itself, that they don't do it - no matter how bad the polls look. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It will all depend on the mood at the time.

AV and DM. Surely four letters that will define the long game that the Liberal Democrats must play.

Return of the Return of Politics?

I haven't blogged since the General Election. I fear too that I haven't properly commented since I was mistaken in believing that the Liberal Democrats wouldn't go into a full blown coalition with the Conservatives. I thought they would plump for a government of national unity, supporting the Tories piecemeal on vital economic reforms, and keep their own counsel on the rest of the agenda. I couldn't see enough common ground. The divisions and name-calling of the election seemed too raw and too real to make a coalition possible.

That it happened was down to the sheer desire and determination of Cameron and Clegg to make workable government happen. Cameron desperately wanted stable government. Clegg desperately wanted a stake in government. So, over a hundred days into the coalition, it seems strange to think of any other outcome. But hung parliaments are rare in this country, and we were in uncharted waters. And even now, although the transformation and sense of shared unity and purpose has been impressive, it will clearly be a massive task to keep this coalition together and effective.

So, we've had some return of politics. But the politics we have today is also unrecognisable for my generation. A coalition for the Conservatives for the first time in their modern history. A gigantic leg-up for the Lib Dems after an intially disappointing showing at the polls. And a Labour Party shorn of its old guard and about to conclude its first leadership election since Tony Blair swept to power in 1994. It's a return to politics, but not as we know it.

My blog title was initally conceived of as a plea - a plea for the return of politics in the sense of genuine engagement, debate, opposition and connection with the voters. I believed that the large majorities of the Labour governments of 1997, 2001 and even 2005 had the effect of creating impotent opposition and a sense that government could do what it liked. A sense that an initially unbalanced electoral system - itself a process that discourages engagement - delivered a government that was even more distant from the people. I also felt that the fag end of Gordon Brown's government was distant from the people through its irrelevance, its lack of ideas and its dwindling public support.

So now, our politics is ground level again. The issues are stark: tough decisions on the economy, on cuts, on the state versus society, on conservatism versus progressive politics. The coalition government will always be on a knife edge. It has harsh critics both within its main parties and without. This is now a five year bare knuckle fight.

And it's a fight that will only begin properly next week, when Labour elects its new leader. David Miliband, who will be elected on Wednesday, will be the final point in the return of politics for this Parliament. We've had the stunning shock of a coalition government being successfully assembled in a week. We've had the honeymoon. Now it's down to the real business of street fighting politics. And Party Conference season. Story of this Parliament? The Tories will have their sights set on seeking a mandate to govern alone. The Lib Dems want to define themselves within this coalition, and avoid becoming an irrelevant annex to another party. And Labour, defeated as it was, has nevertheless lived to fight another day.

So, politics is back. But it's all very different. Phew.