POLITICS: Clegg faces revolt as LibDem MPs’ unease turns into panic.

Liberal Democrat MP discontent with the Coalition has been gathering impetus over the weekend, the Slog has learned. Despite a Guardian survey of Lib Dem MPs showing consensus that tough action needs to be taken on the UK’s fiscal deficit, they hadn’t then seen research by ICM for the Sunday Telegraph. This showed Nick Clegg’s party down five points on 16% – its lowest rating for 18 months – but the Lib Dems’ Conservative partners thriving at 41%. Labour was also up at 35%.

“The Party is turning into the Nick Clegg show” said one, adding “It feels to some of us like a return to two-party politics, minus us”.

One has to be careful with such leaks: this has been the standard Hughesite line for some time now. But the two Ugly Former Leaders Charles Kennedy and Ming Campbell continue to stoke up fears about what’s happening.

LibDem grass roots activists remain as ever virulently critical of the Coalition per se, and Clegg’s careerism in particular. But I understand the the ‘flock of new members’ into the Labour Party was merely Lord Mandelson’s parting gift of mendacity: looking at sites like Liberal Conspiracy, there isn’t much sign of practical thinking about what the alternative to the Cleggeroons might be. Mainstream Liberal Democrat voters remain 4:1 in favour of the Osborne Budget….again showing a huge mismatch between the LibDem wonks and the real supporters.

DEVELOPING STORY: WHO SHOPPED DAVID LAWS & JAMES LUNDIE?

EXCLUSIVE: DAVID LAWS NOBBLED

BY ANTI-COALITION LEAKERS
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David Laws was targeted by ‘disgruntled LibDem leakers’ a senior House of Commons source alleged last night. Further research carried out by The Slog this morning supports the allegation’s veracity. It also suggests that James Lundie was as much a target as David Laws – and the motivation of one of the story’s authors – the Telegraph’s Robert Winnett – was equally political….despite him holding entirely different views to his source.

Our informant – who is close to these events – asserted that there was “a sort of disconnected rainbow of Coalition enemies” working overtime to destabilise the new Government. This is hardly news (Alastair Campbell does little else at the moment) but what is beginning to emerge is that for some diehards, the Laws/Lundie story has been something of a billiards cannon.

The key thing to establish would be not just who might benefit from a Laws absence in Government – that’s a long list – but more, who would know that Laws and Lundie were an item….or indeed that David Laws was gay – a secret he kept tight from all but an inner circle for many years.

James Lundie is not just a PR man – he works for lobbyists Edelman UK. And he isn’t just any old lobbyist, he is a highly active pro-Coalition LibDem…..from long before Laws’ appointment to the Treasury. He is seen by some on the LibDem left as being too much in favour of ‘new’ political alignments. Last week he penned this blog extract on the Edelman site (my italics):

“The Liberal Democrats genuinely want this coalition to work, both because it allows them to introduce policies in which they believe but also because it shows the British people that co-operative politics can not only be made to work, but actually to flourish….’

Flourishing cooperation is anathema to all those LibDems worried about the Party’s identity being swamped by the Conservatives. Chief among these is Charles Kennedy.

Two weeks ago, Kennedy wrote in The Observer:

‘I feel it is worth recalling that great statesman who split the political family and ended up as a Liberal Unionist. Several decades later and a similar trick was to lead to the emergence of the National Liberals and their subsequent assimilation within the Conservative fold…’

Another is Paddy Ashdown, whose comment on events (caught on the hop for once) after the LabLib talks broke down and the ToryDem talks steamed ahead was that this was “a rather unexpected moment”.

As The Slog revealed at the time, many senior LibDems had mentally ‘scripted’ a post-Election hung result. They saw the ‘principled Tories-first’ speech by Nick Clegg as a feint: the act of going through the motions prior to an inevitable breakdown in the talks. But they hugely underestimated the personable negotiation skills of William Hague and Oliver Letwin. Now they find themselves isolated because of a plan that went badly wrong.

The clue as to who would have been in the best position to know about Laws’ sexuality, however, comes via the Lundie connection. For as a professional and LibDem activist, he had two direct clents as a press sceretary between 2006 and 2009: Charles Kennedy and Paddy Ashdown. In two such close working relationships, it is near inconceivable that Lundie’s sexuality and/or partnership with David Laws would not have been known.

A last word from The Slog’s mole:

“You’re very warm. Of course, they wouldn’t pull the trigger. But they must’ve sanctioned it”.

Coming up: other people who make money from MPs’ expenses

ANALYSIS: As race to win Britain enters final straight…

PARTY DISCIPLINE DISINTEGRATING

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Big Beasts contradict leaders as change becomes reality

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Senior politicians throughout Britain went beyond briefing yesterday and this morning. At least half a dozen Cabinet members and former leaders variously stiffened the resolve and overruled the suggestions of Cameron, Clegg and Brown.

First out of the starting blocks was Alan Johnson, announcing yesterday morning that he did “not share the fears about PR” held by “some of my colleagues”. This was thinly veiled code for ‘Don’t worry about Gordon, you can negotiate with me and my mates’. It also came directly after Andrew Marr had got Clegg to say that “no Prime Minister could come last in the popular vote and remain in Office”.

This isn’t true actually, but even so Nick still hedged on the issue of PR. Knowing that his equivocation is infuriating the rank and file, former LibDem leader Charles Kennedy went on Radio 4 today and asserted that “PR is an absolute bottom-line for us in any negotiations”, adding that “it always has been” – a claim which is rather difficult to stand up based on the current Manifesto. This was a real Liberal ensuring that no Jimmy-come-latelies welch on the PR promise.

And as David Cameron made pacifying noises about voting reform referendums, Iain Duncan-Smith immediately removed any remaining wriggling-room from the Leader’s bed by stating categorically “acceptance of PR would not be an acceptable outcome of negotiations with the Liberal Democrats”.

The emergence of renegades to shatter Party discipline is perhaps the most fascinating and significant development of the Election so far. There seem to be a number of factors in play.

One is the sort of revolt by medium-heavyweight MPs that has been on the cards for some time. Many members have had enough of controlling leaderships, empty spin and ditched principles. In this camp are Kennedy, Duncan-Smith, David Davies, Ed Balls, former MP James Purnell, and Chris Huhne.

But most of it is a scramble for power among the two biggest Parties, as it begins to look increasingly like their leaders will be (or be seen as) losers. While Cameron has always had his Right wing with which to contend, he will probably get the biggest popular vote. Everyone in the Labour Party (including Mandy, but excluding Ed Balls and Charlie Whelan) now wants to dump Gordon at the first opportunity. This, the Slog understands, is the Party where the anarchy will be most obvious after May 6th.

One Libdem source this morning (back on speaking terms at last) suggested to us that Clegg is ‘winding Labour up’ now. Privately, Clegg shares the view held by many in Westminster that Gordon Brown is a spineless and possibly pathological liar. But having seen Labour as the easiest Coalition Party with which to work (and keep his activists under control) its decline in the polls appears to have convinced the LibDem leader that he can’t prop them up and remain credible. Our LibDem mole went on to observe that Slick Nick’s strategy now is to be the catalyst for Labour’s self-destruction – and then step in to take its place as the progressive party going forward.

Meanwhile,a new survey by the British Chambers of Commerce suggests that 65% of UK companies are either “concerned” or “very concerned” about a hung Parliament.The problem now – see Slog post of earlier – is not so much corporate anxieties about a hung Parliament as credit agency/Sovereign lender fears of legislative anarchy.