News values are one reason. Innovations which don’t work out (however carefully managed) will attract media attention while those which are successful often go unnoticed. Also pivotal are the incentives and performance measurement models which apply to civil servants, as the downside risk too often far outweighs any upside reward. Francis Maude has spoken throughout the Coalition’s time in office about the need to change pay and reward mechanisms in order to free civil servants to innovate.

But one factor often ignored is the vital importance of strong political leadership. Ministers have often been too quick to criticise civil servants as stale and risk-averse, but have not led by example. Encouraging innovation from officials requires political leadership based on bold, long term vision and not political pragmatism. As Fraser Nelson observes, Michael Gove has demonstrated this, although even his reforming instincts are tempered by the political climate in which he operates – most notably the peculiar demands of Coalition politics.

Both Ministers and officials are vulnerable to longstanding cultural trends which hamper innovation and reform. Pay and promotions are ill-designed for civil servants while political expediency and media values can dampen the zeal of Ministers. But for both, the economic and fiscal imperative (along with rising expectations among service users) must remain paramount. Innovation, reform and renewal are vital across government if these are to be met. The role of Ministers must not only be to re-align civil servants formal roles and objectives, but to show the bold, unrelenting leadership that is needed to drive change from the top.

It was relatively easy for the Prime Minister to look good in Tripoli last week. It was a savvy move by the No.10 press office and will certainly encourage Conservatives and, more importantly, the electorate. The risk, however, is that complacency sets in not just about Libya, but about the Government here in Britain.

In Libya, fighting is ongoing. Whilst Cameron and Sarkozy were making their speeches (vive Libya!) the once rebel-now-government forces were bombing the towns of Sirte and Bani Walid. Gaddafi’s whereabouts are still unknown. He may well still be in Libya, but there is a chance he has fled. Either way, as long as he is active and free he will be a problem. He may not pose a direct threat, but he still wields power and influence. The speeches and the adulation Cameron offered were stirring and important, but complacency and pre-emptive victory could be dangerous in the long run.

At home, the Coalition faces an important period. Things have calmed down somewhat, and the attacks from Labour have become pointedly less sharp. Ed Miliband’s reluctance to mention the economy too much of late in response to claims made by Alistair Darling in his book show how weak the opposition can be. A recent poll of Labour party members did not give much comfort, with almost 50% saying they did not think Ed Miliband was cut out to be the Prime Minister.

The brief return to Parliament after summer and before conference season has been good for the Coalition, but there is still work to be done. Every policy that has been announced has been strongly challenged and the majority have been drastically changed and adapted in order to pass. To take but on example, the proposed changes to the pensions reform have riled the unions so much that they are holding another day of strike action in November. Labour have been hitting the Government on this even though the proposals were made by Lord Hutton – a former Labour minister. The irony of the pensions issue is that the unions seem just as cross with Labour as they are with the Tories, and see Miliband as jumping on the anti-Government bandwagon rather than being a dedicated supporter.

Above all, the eurozone crisis is getting worse and worse each day. Each morning brings with it a new warning about the fragility of the economy and the chances of defaults. Greece is insolvent and looks more and more likely to default. Italy is teetering, although has been boosted by an austerity deal signed this week. Looking further afield the economy in America is disastrous, with 40% of economists polled in a recent survey predicting a return to recession.

There is a lot of work to be done for David Cameron. He is leading the country at a key time, and he must not make mistakes. He did so in his handling of the riots, and it showed. His handling of the next month is key. It is conference season and a time for the Tories to set out their next steps. It is a time for a statesman like appearance, with the gravitas and severity that the situation requires. In November there will be more protests, with murmurs of another winter of discontent.

There is a real concern among some Tories that David Cameron’s premiership will become dominated by all the wrong things – riots, a eurozone collapse, victories abroad but decline at home and policies that are so heavily attacked and changed that they bear no relevance to their original form.

Now is the time for Mr Cameron to show the party, the country and the world what he is made of. Only a year into his stay at No.10, it is quite possible that the next few months will be Cameron’s make or break moment. Time will tell how he will handle it.

This seems to have had somewhat of a damaging effect on David Cameron’s leadership. There seems to be a sense, coming from Number 10 particularly, that it is better to hold back on major policy changes until 2015, when the hope is that the Conservatives will have won that much coveted majority.

There are two ways to look at this, and consequently two ways the situation could pan out. The first – the ideal situation for the Tories – is that they win a majority in 2015, shed the Lib Dems who are holding them back and push forward with serious reforms. All the policies that currently have the start date for change set for 2015 will come into force, and the party will push reforms on multiple fronts. Cameron will be hailed as a great reforming Prime Minister, and will help to reform some of the country’s most incomplete policies and systems.

The alternative is that, come 2015, the electorate have run out of patience with a Prime Minister who promises great reform but never delivers because he is tied into a Coalition, and is afraid of rocking the boat. Cameron’s five-year reign at the helm of the Coalition will be remembered as a time when he promised a lot but delivered little; when he became too tied down with Coalition debates to push on with important reform; and when he over-confidently thought he would be granted another term by the public.

It is, of course, impossible to tell at this stage which way the next election will go. There are still four years, and a lot could happen. The Coalition has promised great reforms, but to be effective it needs some of them to happen sooner rather than later. Whilst spending cuts are becoming more noticeable, the transforming reforms are still a future event, much lauded but not much seen.

The move from inside No.10 to hold out for a majority in 2015 is a gamble, and one that has a strong chance of backfiring. There are four years to go, not one. There is a lot of governing still to be done, and a lot of time for things to change. Tory backbenchers – not afraid to speak their minds – will become more and more frustrated and impatient. Rebellious votes within the Tories are already extremely high, and as frustration grows, these will become more frequent events.

David Cameron must not assume that he will win in 2015. He must make decisions and changes now. The proposals the Coalition are making are far-reaching and transforming – transforming systems that are desperately out of date, and have slipped far below where they should be. But as long as Cameron holds off on the big changes until he has a big majority, he will look weak and afraid. He is – Coalition or not – in charge. He is the Prime Minister, and he has a majority, even if it is not as strong as he would like.

For the sake of Cameron’s reputation and the Conservative Party, it is important that the next four years are a time of reform and of progress, not of stagnation and of treading water. Leaders who tread water for too long sink quicker than they expect. The time for David Cameron to act is not, not in 2015.

In fact most of politics is about this lead and reflect balance and you find that when one party tries to lead opinion in one direction the other party seeks to reflect current orthodoxy in an attempt to gain support. You also see parties with a weakness paint their approach as reflection rather than leading of opinion. You saw this latter effect most graphically in 1997 when the Labour opposition was at great pains to point out that they reflected the prevailing orthodoxy on economics. In the late 1970′s and early 1980′s the Conservatives under Thatcher went on an orgy of leading opinion into a new economic approach with mass privatisations and liberalisation of credit, deregulation and supply side reforms. Although the extent to which the government was leading opinion or merely reflecting it as it changed is something that could be debated ad infinitum.

The point is there is a balance that is struck and often a political party will lead opinion in some areas and choose the defensive option of reflecting it in others. It will usually do this after an appraisal of the priorities it wants to pursue. The times that I get most frustrated are when the reflection of current public opinion goes too far, as with the German government’s bizarre attitude to nuclear power generation. We also see it in some politician’s knee-jerk reactions on certain issues such as crime where the public seem to be considerably authoritarian and you then get a procession of politicians trying to out muscle each other in this area. The alternate view is just as dangerous as it tends to the view that public opinion is leadable in all circumstances and therefore policy is shaped that has no regard for the current situation. The Conservatives got into this rut in the early days of opposition.

I can see therefore where people have issues around the drugs debate because it appears that too often politician’s wimp out and reflect prevailing prejudices rather than seek to change them. This often happens in other areas too where policies are pursued to maintain a quiet life for the politicians involved. The Conservatives NHS policy was supposed to do that and certainly their exemption of the NHS from cuts was blatantly an example where reflection of opinion was deemed the order of the day. In terms of international aid the contrary view is taken and despite the widespread idea that aid should be cut the government is seeking to lead opinion on it by doing something different. This shows up that in different areas different approaches are taken. No politician or political party entirely leads opinion, or entirely reflects it. It is in the balance and the areas that are chosen for leadership or reflection that defines the character and success of a politician or party.

The shrewd politician knows when to lead opinion and when to reflect it, and more importantly when to stop leading and to start reflecting. Sometimes it is necessary to go a little way to your goal and then stop and allow opinion to acclimatise before setting off again. Politics is about leadership in my opinion so the emphasis has to be on persuading people to a different frame of mind. The danger in the era of focus groups and opinion polls is that the information is used to back up a reflection of public opinion rather than as a starting point for a leading of it. That is my only concern really that with the plethora of public opinion gathering mechanisms that politics gets the balance wrong between reflection of opinion and leadership of it. Perhaps sometimes we need to take a step back and work out that politicians do have a role in shaping public opinion because as Edmund Burke observed:

“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

Martin Lewis

Firstly it’s politicians’ jobs to sell policies they support. Secondly, treating tuition fees as equivalent to the cost of “two pints and some crisps” demeans a good education and undermines it as something worth working at, striving for and paying for. And thirdly, the policy is a done deal, and it’s now up to providers, students and the government to make it work properly, with good teaching and results rewarded by being able to charge proper fees; proper fees being rewarded by better teaching; and the government eventually not actually having to pay for universities at all but them funding themselves because they are great at what they do.

Someone said to me a few weeks ago that it was ridiculous having czars at all. I instinctively agree because if a politician can’t make an argument for his policies why should anyone else, and if politicians can’t figure out a decent policy then probably they’re not a very good politician… And yet…

Martha Lane-Fox

I look at the work of Martha Lane-Fox.  I see her engaging online with anyone and everyone. I read articles about her inspiring leadership, and her easy-going pressure, and the fact that she is delivering – against all the odds – a pretty serious programme of extending digital engagement through society and through the government. She is a czar that works.

Nat Wei

I then look at Nat Wei. He recently resigned as Big Society champion, after reducing his hours earlier in the year, and is taking up a new role at the Community Foundation, focused on delivering the ends that the policies he’s been working on inside government are the means for.  He was a czar that didn’t work out (even though I think he did some great work, his role was never properly defined and I’ve also heard – though don’t know for sure – that No10 went back on all sorts of agreements that were thought to have been made).

Setting aside whether or not the Big Society is any good, there are some instructive differences between the two roles.

I don’t want to be uncouth about this, but Martha Lane Fox largely doesn’t need to earn money to live on; Nat Wei does. She was already embedded into government before May 2010; he was not. She had a very specific brief, a large team, cash, and most importantly specific deliverables. He did not.

So there are probably some lessons we can learn from a rational comparison of the two. But perhaps the most useful thing we can take is this: the government has to be serious about delivering changes. Similarly, that czars are only any good if there are actual policies to change and crucially, the government has to be willing to change them.  And finally, and perhaps most importantly, that just one person talking and evangelising is never enough. It needs sustained focus from all parties involved, it needs commitment from them all, and it needs willingness to look at things differently.

So having said I instinctively agree that czars are a bit of a waste of time, I’m actually a fan. I think they can inspire, they can force focus, they can add huge experience and they can really make governments and the rest of us sit up and listen. But they – just the same as all of us – don’t operate in a vacuum; and their appointment cannot be a substitute for action.

“We knew all along,” they say. “He was never a real Conservative, just look how much he loves this Coalition”.  They sense that the moment is ripe – and this is perhaps why rumours of a “Blue Book” have emerged.

As we can see from the Labour Party, despite all the protestations of “progressives” and fighting for the “centre ground of British politics”, the Old Labour movement never really went away, it was just sleeping. This despite the enormous efforts of the “modernisers”, an electoral landslide in 1997 and two subsequent electoral victories.

Parties are hardly ever changed by their leaders – demographics are often responsible.

We tend to forget sometimes that Thatcher was very much out of step with her parliamentary party and many activists to begin with – suspicious as they were of the market given the horror of unemployment during the Great Depression – and she was fortunate that the Winter of Discontent was able to sweep her into victory, then to buy her the time that she needed to consolidate her position.

But more importantly, her arrival as party leader came at a time when Conservatives were starting to reject the Post-War Consensus – not old enough to remember the horrors of the pre-war economic collapse – which they thought led to stagnation and strife, and in favour of a more free-market approach. They supported her and enabled her to enact her policies over the objections of some elements of her parliamentary party.

By the time she left office, you would have been nearly 80 if you had been old enough to vote in the early 1930s. With so few members left who could remember a time before the Post-War Consensus, the “new right” never had to worry about a serious challenge.

By contrast, if you were old enough to have voted for Thatcher in 1979, you only need to be around 50 now. These members and activists will be here for a while yet and for that reason, the shadow of Thatcher continues to hang over the Conservative Party.

And unfortunately between its electoral defeat in 1997 and Cameron’s victory in 2005 there was little real effort to change the party – in fact one could argue that there was a nostalgic retreat to the intellectual safety that Thatcherite fundamentalism provided – and explains the libertarian slant which features in some younger activists who joined or got interested in the party during this period.

This is why David Davis and Brian Binley’s suggested Blue Book is dangerous. It appeals to the rump of Conservative members who are suspicious of the modernising (for which, read save Conservatism) Project and still hark back to Thatcher and free-market fundamentalism. They want an alternative to Cameron’s vision and all they need is an intellectual touchstone to form around – the Blue Book could become that.

That is not to say that the wider Party has not been changed. A new generation of members and activists who do not carry the battle scars of the 1980s and which have emerged, particularly since Cameron’s victory, has given a chance to articulate an updated vision of Conservatism.

Is this new “Red Toryism” or “Compassionate Conservatism” in the minority? It certainly needs time to grow. Unlike the post-Thatcher Right, it will have to compete for the heart of the party for some time to come.

The collapse of New Labour also shows what can happen when many of your activists and base can still remember the time before the “modernisation” process begun.  Eager to pick up where they left off in the 1980s, Old Labour has once again become resurgent in the Labour Party and is just hoping that Coalition unpopularity will sweep it back into power come 2015.

So what can we do?

Unlike Thatcher, Cameron did not win the election outright and he is less strong as a consequence. Whereas she could point to her electoral mandate in times of unpopularity and struggle, Cameron does not have that base. She could say that her economic and social policies were vindicated at the ballot box, and march ahead.

The “Big Society” did not triumph at the ballot box and this is why the narrative that it is just a failed PR stunt continues to hold sway with many members.

Three things will be necessary if the centre of the Party is going to win out:

1)      It must continue to look for new blood – it cannot rest on its laurels and hope that the Coalition will be successful. New members, younger members, are necessary to dilute the influence of this loudly unreconstructed rump of the Party. New Labour’s biggest mistake during the late 1990s and early 2000s was not to capitalise on their popularity in order to bring the membership base of their party with them.

2)       It must give up the line that this “modernisation” is necessary for electoral success – This argument completely lacks credibility with much of the party now as Cameron’s change did not deliver a majority government in 2010 (though, granted, it was almost electorally impossible for him to have won a majority from such a low base). These changes need to be presented as good in themselves, as the right thing to do and not merely the path for electoral success. Again, New Labour bought off its opponents by saying that its changes were necessary for victory at the ballot box – but now it has lost, the Party is already starting to go back on some of the reforms they sought to make.

3)      It must continue the battle of ideas – There is a danger in office that the modernisers, distracted by Government, give up the intellectual battleground to their opponents. This must not happen. Fortunately through think tanks like ResPublica, ideas are still being articulated, but they need backing from the big beasts of the Party – as they did before the election – and senior figures should not leave the field now while the fight goes on.

If this rumour of a “Blue Book” is true, and if it’s actually delivered (unlike David Davis’ report on social mobility) then this could mark a real danger time for Cameron and the modernising project, and those that support it must be alert to this danger – otherwise it may be many years in the wilderness again.

“I will only vote at the next election for a candidate who publicly promises to support a binding referendum on our EU membership and to vote for it in the House of Commons”

I can’t sign the pledge. Archbishop Cranmer highlights part of the reason why it would not be possible for me to sign it.

“With the People’s Pledge, you are committing to voting for whichever candidate from whichever party has sworn to support an In/Out Referendum. Will Tories vote for a Labour candidate, with no assurance at all that this initiative will succeed? Will Socialists vote Tory? Will anyone vote Lib Dem? There is no doubt that UKIP and BNP candidates will be bending over backwards to portray themselves as the true defenders of democracy: in constituencies where the only candidate supporting the initiative is the BNP, the People’s Pledge asks voters to commit to voting for them.”

David Cameron disappointed many within the Party when he said that he does not believe it is right to have an In/Out referendum. It is perfectly correct for members to publicly disagree with this position. It is also completely acceptable to organise a group that promotes the idea of having an In/Out referendum, if you believe strongly that such a thing should happen. What does not feel right to me is threatening not to support the Party – your party – if the internal argument is not won. Mainstream political parties are broad organisations, not single issue campaign groups. If we all had this ‘do or die’ attitude then the Conservative Party will be no more.

On Twitter Douglas Carswell – one of the founders of the “Peoples Pledge” group – said, in reply to a question from Tim Montgomerie: “I’m promising to vote for a pro In/Out referendum candidate and if elected, vote for an In/Out ref.” So if the Conservative Party keeps to its current position then Douglas Carswell advocates voting for UKIP or Lib Dem candidates – or maybe even Labour candidates if they change their policy – instead of Conservative candidates who accept the collective responsibility of standing under the Party’s manifesto. This threat is similar to the tactic used by UKIP and the Referendum Party before it, though to my memory this is the first time that this tactic has been endorsed by someone within a Party against fellow colleagues. If a politician believes that membership of the EU is such a great issue that it is necessary to dismiss all other considerations when deciding who to vote for then they should follow their conviction and stand independently on this platform.

I’m not going to discuss the proposals themselves again – we’ve slightly done that to death, and the vote passed anyway. Anyway, I have always enjoyed working on process, presentation, and communication. So let’s walk it through… (and apologies that this is really long: if you get bored, the last section is the interesting one!)

Key dates and events

In September 2009, Nick Clegg warned his party conference that the Lib Dem pledge to abolish tuition fees might have to be put on hold because of the scale of the UK’s debts.  (This, much more recent article, is also an interesting read on that topic…)

In November 2009, Lord Browne (ex of BP) was asked by Labour to produce a report on the future of university funding. When it was announced, it was widely assumed that there would be an increase – of some sort – in tuition fees.

During the general election campaign, Lib Dem PPCs signed personal pledges to vote to abolish tuition fees during the 2010 parliament; the Tories pledged to listen to the Browne review and respond.

On 20 May, we finally got to read the full Coalition Agreement. Clearly someone had been doing some careful reading of the Lib Dem manifesto, and one of only two areas that are specifically mentioned for divergence between Conservative and Lib Dem whips is… tuition fees. And that’s because the drafters of the Agreement knew that that Lib Dem pre-election pledge was totemic for them – above and beyond the manifesto. So in the Agreement is the killer phrase:  “If the response of the Government to Lord Browne’s report is one that Liberal Democrats cannot accept, then arrangements will be made to enable Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain in any vote. “

A flurry of great headlines, boldness, lovely Rose Garden photos and so on over the summer, baby Florence was born… but every so often, someone would ask me, “What will break the Coalition?” Or someone would write a think piece outlining why Browne might be difficult. Or someone would propose something that probably wouldn’t end up in the report.

But everything just bumbled on happily, and Lord Browne published in October as planned. The government was supposed to respond on 20 October, in time for the CSR, but pushed this back to 3 November to give them more time to come to an agreed response – which, to be fair, seems entirely reasonable as it was acknowledged as a difficult issue, and of course the ideal would be to have all Coalition members of parliament voting in favour.

They (rightly) discussed with ministers, backbenchers, practitioners and so on, and came forward with revisions right up until the last minute – which is, frankly, more or less as policy should be made, with discussion, negotiation, weighing up of options, then parliamentary debate, some more adjustments -  and then a decision.

Two points on the Lib Dems’ participation – or not – in the vote

We can set aside, for now, whether or not signing the pledges or having unaffordable promises in your manifesto is a good idea. But what is key is what the Coalition Agreement means. In this case, it meant that if the Cabinet could not come to full agreement on the Government response, then Lib Dem MPs could abstain in any vote.

But the Cabinet did come to agreement. Vince Cable and Nick Clegg have been bravely and rightly making the case for the proposals, and indeed have trumpeted the more progressive nature of the proposals compared to Lord Browne’s ideas.

I’ve argued before that, having negotiated (rightly) to make these proposals the best they can be, Lib Dem ministers really did have a duty to vote for them, and I’m very glad that they saw that governing is about making hard and possibly unpopular choices in the national interest. They and their backbench colleagues who voted yes are going up in my estimation every day.

Terrible, terrible, terrible PR…

But – and here is the main point of my post, if you’re still with me – the way that this has been handled has been dreadful.

From the moment that the possibility of abstention was mooted in the Agreement, the government should have been working to minimise the potential to destabilise that the Browne response could bring. Yes, they altered some of the proposals; yes, they came out fighting on this week with a speech from David Cameron, articles from Nick Clegg and David Willetts, a new website of facts and a blizzard of masochism strategy interviews also from Nick Clegg; and yes, they won the vote eventually.

The problem is that this was very little, very late. They should have been ready with a proper briefing pack on the proposals; they should have been ready to go with websites, Facebook, Twitter, Conservative Future spokesmen; and they should have been able to articulate a case without saying ‘But Labour broke their promises on tuition fees too’.

Even if they had been caught on the hop by the protests at Millbank in November, it still took them nearly a month to produce anything.

I like the Coalition. I like that No 10 is trying so hard to make individual departments responsible and accountable for their policies, that they discuss, that they are radical, that they are able to look beyond tomorrow’s headlines and plan five or ten years into the future. I thank my stars every day that Gordon Brown is no longer Prime Minister. But it is so disappointing when the government gets this badly hammered on something that they seem to have been so unprepared for.

I have no idea who is responsible for not planning this properly – I actually doubt it was one single person; and that is part of the problem. There doesn’t seem to be a coherent narrative-shaper around to problem-spot, trouble-shoot, co-ordinate and generally make sure things are fitting together. And that is not going to make things easier over the coming few years. Hopefully they will learn from this and include someone to do this job in the upcoming adjustments to the policy unit in No 10.

That the system of Higher Education finance was in need of reform is beyond doubt.  That is why the Browne Report was established, and supported by both the Conservative and Labour parties before the election.  A system that places more emphasis upon the student experience and allows money to follow the student, rather than going straight to the institution will surely be a marked improvement to the existing system.

There is also widespread agreement in the HE community that universities must adapt in order to compete and remain global players, as well as providing the highly skilled workforce that is necessary in a skills based global economy.  Universities are facing new pressure from rising institutions in places such as India and China, as well as the continued strong performance of US institutions, which account for 17 of the top 20 research institutions in the world (note the link to a proper fee based structure).

To meet this challenge, many universities will need to rethink how they deliver services and how they are funded.  There is no reason that universities shouldn’t take advantage of their expertise in order to raise money from the private sector.  Continuing over-dependence on Government funding will not create the kind of institutions ready to prosper in a competitive, global HE environment.  It is utterly maddening that some elements of the media and the left seem to think that slavishly following the knee-jerk views of the aspirant Labour politicians in the NUS will help create a world beating HE sector.

And then there are the fees proposals themselves.  They have been utterly misunderstood and misreported in some circles, but I strongly believe that they are fairer and more progressive than the present system.  No fees will be paid up front and students will not have to pay anything back until they are earning £21,000 a year (at the moment it is £15,000 a year salaries that trigger repayments).  Monthly repayments will also be around £45 a month cheaper than is the case under the existing system.  Repayments will also be linked to ability to pay – a thoroughly progressive principle.

I have made the case many times for this to be a Government thoroughly committed to social mobility.  And these changes will enable more focus to be placed on ensuring that more young people from underprivileged backgrounds can go to university.  A £150 million National Scholarship scheme will be established and the universities themselves will have to make considerably greater efforts to broaden access than is the case at the moment if they are to charge the full £9,000.  At the same time, the level of the maintenance grant will also increase.  These reforms go hand in hand with a focused attempt to widen participation and improve social mobility – a thoroughly progressive principle.

Critics of the changes would do well to suggest what the alternative is, in times of stretched public finances, when universities are in real need of enhanced income.  For those who campaign for free HE funded out of general taxation – do you really believe that a check out operator in Tesco should be paying her taxes to fund middle class people to go to university?  There is no way an HE system with 40% + participation can be funded out of general taxation.  It is an unaffordable pipe dream.  And then there is Labour’s ludicrous graduate tax – a proposal that is far less progressive than the coalition’s plans.  Whereas, under the Government’s proposals, repayment would start at £21,000, under Labour’s plans people earning minimum wage would pay – with no real consideration of ability to pay.  No wonder Alan Johnson, before his Damascene conversion yesterday, dismissed the idea as unworkable.

Indeed, Labour’s actions on this matter have been shabby, opportunistic and based on the easy answers of student politics, not the tough decisions of the real world.  It is yet another example of Ed Miliband shifting Labour away from the legacy of their most successful ever leader towards an electoral no-man’s land.  Maybe Labour might answer the question of which party introduced tuition fees, introduced top-up fees and commissioned the Browne Report.  It is a shame that Ed Miliband has decided to abandon grown up politics on this matter.  Then again, as JFK once said, the student leaders of today are the student leaders of tomorrow.  It shouldn’t be surprising that a man whose leadership reeks of the simple choices of student unions should thrown in his lot with the simplistic nonsense of the NUS.

Fee rises are not an easy decision to make.  But they are necessary.  They are necessary to widen participation, give universities a sustainable funding stream and allow our HE sector to compete.

Liberals like us have to accept that the liberal social and economic values that we believe in have contributed to the broken society in which we undoubtedly live. David Cameron is clearly grappling with those consequences and seeking the answer to them, and he deserves credit for that. But the picture that his speech drew of the society that he wishes to create, looked a little too much like the 1950s, like the society that existed before the two liberal whirlwinds of the 60s and the 80s changed Britain forever.

There were times when, although certainly more sophisticated, he was not too far away from describing  John Major’s cycling spinsters and cricket on the village green. I began to wonder, is the Big Society a 21^st Century response to the turmoil of the late 20^th Century or is it simply a pang of nostalgia for a bygone age? Nostalgia for a society that Harry would recognise.

The changes which he described to the way in which the state should operate were changes that I approved of, but they remained methodological and not ideological. He admitted himself that by the end of this Parliament the government would be the same size as in 2006; power might have been devolved to local authorities and people might be more involved in decision making, but the state will not have shrunk.

He convinced me that over the next 5 years, this government will do many things that will chime with liberal Conservative ideologies, things I will be proud of and enthusiastic about. He listed many achievements in these first 5 months, which are ideologically sound and genuinely significant. But he made me wonder whether these things are happening only because of the financial crisis. Debt and necessity have become the mothers of invention, but without them, would the government really be so radical?