UK News

Is Clegg right to offer flexible parental leave?

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg wants to give parents the right to share and swap their statutory leave for looking after newborn babies.

That’s good news for parents, although the new arrangements have to be knocked into shape after consultation with employers and won’t come into force until 2015.

Clegg said in a speech on Monday to the Demos think tank that increasing flexibility over parental leave was a priority for him and for Prime Minister David Cameron.  Both have young families and like most fathers these days have taken time out from work following their new arrivals.

At present mothers get up to a year’s statutory leave, including 39 weeks of pay, while fathers only qualify for two weeks’ of paid leave. Clegg wants to change that so that parents can divide up this time off as it suits them, even taking the leave at the same time if that is what they want.

Unions say the proposals are long overdue, but employers are less keen. The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said Clegg’s plan might be politically popular but “fundamentally ignores” the needs of business. ”How is an employer expected to plan and arrange cover with this fully-flexible system,” asked BCC director general David Frost.

Have employers got a valid point? Or is it more important to let parents decide how they will take time off to care for their new-born infants? Tell us what you think.

Is there a Plan B for the government?

Our Reuters/Ipsos MORI poll is likely to make cheery reading for Britain’s Labour party.

For the first time since January 2008, they are level pegging with the Conservatives in terms of popular support; for the first time since May’s general election, more people are dissatisfied with the government than are pleased with it, and – perhaps most heartening of all for the opposition – three-quarters of the public would rather see slower public spending cuts than swift ones. And all that without Labour even having a leader.

Of course, it’s early days for the coalition – and no one would expect a government that’s spent almost every day since it was formed talking about cuts, austerity and tough times to be wildly popular. Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and his Liberal Democrat deputy Nick Clegg can certainly take solace, for example, from the data showing their personal approval ratings remain high. (Although interestingly – and highly unusually – Clegg remains more popular with Conservative voters than with his own party).

Professor Philip Cowley, a political scientist who is writing the definitive guide to the general election and who will be speaking at our debate on the spending review on Friday, argues government is unlikely to be too troubled by the findings. “Rather than leading to the downfall of the coalition, polls like this make its survival more likely, because they give neither partner any incentive to split away,” he told me, pointing out several historical examples – including after the May 1979 election – when Labour pulled ahead of the Conservatives following a national vote.

“No Conservative strategist will need reminding that the 1979 contest ushered in the longest period of one party-rule since Britain became a democracy,” Cowley noted.

True. But the findings of the political monitor show the government has not yet secured the buy-in for its economic policies it needs to retain popular support if things go awry in the economy. Voters are currently giving the government the benefit of the doubt. They would like to see the pace of spending cuts to be slow rather than swift, yet at the same time they believe the current government’s policies will improve the state of Britain’s economy.

from The Great Debate UK:

Will Nick Clegg’s government “suggestion box” work?

-Mark Kobayashi-Hillary is the author of several books, including ‘Who Moved my Job?’ and ‘Global Services: Moving to a Level Playing Field’.The opinions expressed are his own.-

If Thomas Paine were around today he would be a blogger, writing virtual pamphlets that shake a fist at the machinery of government.

Fortunately I am a blogger, but as I sat in a library in Whitechapel this morning listening to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg launching his ‘Your Freedom’ initiative, I couldn’t help recalling a few lines from Paine’s ‘Common Sense’:

“Some convenient tree will afford them a State House, under the branches of which the whole Colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters. It is more than probable that their first laws will have the title only of Regulations and be enforced by no other penalty than public disesteem. In this first parliament every man by natural right will have a seat.”

Paine was describing how a new society, without historical baggage, would setup and structure a system of parliament. There would be regular meetings under a tree for all locals, until the meetings got too large and unruly or we found it more convenient to outsource the attendance at the tree to a representative… something we now call parliamentary democracy.

But what happens if the parliamentary representatives get too detached from the people they represent? Regular elections are meant to provide an opportunity for the public to have a voice, but in a globally connected and constantly changing era, perhaps we need a better way of helping the public to find a voice.

Reality intrudes on new British political order

Britain’s new political order was on display in the House of Commons on Tuesday when Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg squeezed  happily between Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague  on the government front bench.

The house was packed and in an excited, start-of-term mood. Everything was going swimmingly, with former Conservative minister Peter Lilley cracking jokes as he gaves what is typically a light-hearted response to the Queen’s Speech.

Lilley played around with the apt description of the Lib Dems, settling for allies as he mused that partners might imply an inappropriate degree of intimacy.

Lilley told the house it was his wedding anniversary and was greeted by cheers. But when he turned to themore serious  issue of coalitions, he made  it clear that he regarded the current arrangement very much as a marriage of convenience.

He said he would not support changes to the voting system that makes hung parliaments the norm and would campaign vociferously against a switch to the Alternative Vote system when a referendum is held. For the Lib Dems such a change is the bare minimum.

The tensions between Conservatives and their new Lib Dem friends are bubbling below the bonhomie.

How long can the negotiations go on?

It should have been all over now. But no, we’re on day five and no one really seems to know which way things are going to go.

All over Westminster, people are looking tired. Journalists, politicians, aides and most of all the 24-hour news anchors.

You only had to watch Sky News’ Adam Boulton going at it with former Blair spin doctor Alistair Campbell live on air on Monday night too see that tempers are clearly getting frayed.

So how much longer? Nick Clegg says soon but nothing seems imminent. The LibDems are still talking with Labour. They may talk more with the Conservatives too.

“It’s too early,” said one Conservative source. “It”s finely balanced,” said a Labour one.

In the meantime, huge numbers of reporters are staking out Portcullis House, the new adjunct to the Palace of Westminster.

But it’s slim pickings. David Cameron walks through. So does George Osborne. But for now they’re just waiting too.

The big rescue package has bought the politicians some time

They promised us market meltdown if there was a hung parliament. That was the Conservative pitch before the election.

That isn’t quite what happened. The pound did fall a bit, so did gilts and stocks but most losses were made up by the end of the first day after the result became known, which had been widely expected.

Attention, anyway, had moved elsewhere. There was already mayhem in global markets when British voters were going to the polls on Thursday. One hedge fund manager described it as seven or eight out of 10 when compared with the peak of the crisis.

Things were getting even more hairy on Friday and over the weekend it became clear that the European authorities would have to act to prevent the problem in Greece and they duly did, leading to stocks and the euro rallying as risk appetite  returned.

The $1 trillion global emergency rescue package has calmed things for now and the UK story may have moved to Page 4 from  the front page for global markets.

Talks are still going on between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats over possible power-sharing but so far no end remains in sight.

Both sides keep saying they are making progress but at the moment there is precious little detail and in reality all options remain wide open.

Irish lesson for Clegg: get coalition right or face oblivion

If the Irish experience of coalition politics is anything to go by, Nick Clegg risks a lot more than unpopularity if he strikes a half-baked coalition deal with the Conservative Party. He also faces electoral oblivion should he fail to win enough concessions and power to carry his grassroots supporters with him.

Ireland’s pro-business Progressive Democrats (PDs) — relatively loyal junior coalition partners in successive administrations led by former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern — imploded at the last Irish general election, winning just two seats in parliament. They subsequently disbanded altogether.

The losses suffered by the PDs mean Ahern’s successor Brian Cowen now relies on a handful of Greens to make up the numbers but voters have also punished them for supporting an establishment party that has dominated Irish politics for decades, inflicting heavy losses on the Green Party in local elections last June.

Ireland’s Greens have subsequently enjoyed something of a recovery in opinion polls but only after standing up to Cowen, threatening to pull out of the government, issuing ultimatums and wringing concessions out of him, none of which augurs well for Britain’s oft-stated need for a strong and stable government.

Clegg can take some consolation from the fact that one junior coalition partner to strengthen its electoral position after entering into government was Germany’s Green Party. Despite winning less than 7 percent of the vote in 1998, it secured key concessions such as a policy to phase out nuclear power and three ministerial portfolios, including the high profile post of Foreign Minister for its party leader. The Greens — currently in opposition — were the big winners in regional elections at the weekend in which Germans punished Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition.

If Clegg is to enter into government with a party that many of his supporters will feel they have expressly voted against, he will need a strong deal that he can sell to them and to secure a position in government from which he can wield real influence and demonstrate leadership.

If he wants to make a go of it, Clegg is hopefully seeking counsel from Germany’s former Green foreign minister Joschka Fischer  – who, incidentally, made his political bed and his mark in a left- rather than right-of-centre administration — and learning salutary lessons from the ruins of other less fortunate coalition partners.

Gordon Brown will seek deal with LibDems

Gordon Brown is clearly looking to form a coalition government with the LibDems. It seems to be a matter of when as everyone waits for the results to come in.

Shortly before he was about to speak in Kirkcaldy, an aide briefed just that. Economic uncertainty meant that a strong coalition government was better than a minority one and signalled Labour could do a deal.

But even as that went shooting out to the world, another aide came out to say nothing had been settled. The official line — and it’s probably right — is that it is too early to say. They have to wait for all the results. There is no settled position on coalition talks. What is clear is that there will be talks at some point.

Gordon Brown is going to be thinking long and hard on his flight back to London. Somewhere Nick Clegg must be doing the same.

Twitter users still agree with Nick

One the eve of the general election, our exclusive Twitter analysis of political sentiment shows that while the latest opinion polls point to a late rally by Gordon Brown’s Labour Party, users of the micro-blogging site still favour Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats over the other two main parties.

US market research firm Crimson Hexagon (on behalf of Reuters.co.uk) has been archiving all tweets on British politics since March 22 and analysing them for positive and negative sentiment. All parties have had their ups and downs, most notably in the aftermath of the first leaders’ debate (which led to a spike in support for the LibDems and the hashtag #iagreewithnick trending on Twitter) and Gordon Brown’s “bigot” gaffe in Rochdale,which gave us the highest percentage of negative tweets for any party during the campaign.

Just hours before the nation goes to the polls and with so many voters apparently still undecided, it’s worth taking a look at the latest numbers.

The graphic below shows positive tweets for each party up to May 4. The LibDems come out top on 20 percent, with pro-Labour sentiment on 12 percent and pro-Tory lagging behind on five percent.

The next graphic shows negative tweets for each party. Again the numbers favour the LibDems; negative sentiment for Clegg’s party is on just eight percent. Negative Labour tweets are at 16 percent. Meanwhile, despite a lead in the opinion polls, David Cameron’s Tories are the least popular on 25 percent. The highest percentage of tweets we have seen (a massive 42 percent) occurred when Gordon Brown called pensioner Gillian Duffy a “bigoted woman”.

Nick Clegg’s celebrity-free hair cut

Nick Clegg went to a London barbers at the height of Cleggmania, where he might have expected to attract a bit more attention than usual.

The Liberal Democrat leader’s success in the first televised election debate had put his face on the front of nearly every newspaper and at the top of every news bulletin.

But one of the hairdressers remained blissfully unaware of the celebrity status of the head in her hands, he told reporters flying with him on his campaign trail.

“The girl who was washing my hair, she says: ‘busy day, then?’

“‘Well, yeah, fairly busy.’

“‘Going back to the office, then?’