Lib Dems feel the heat
With an impending (if minor) Lib Dem resignation from the government rumoured over student tuition fees, and Nick Clegg under heavy bombardment at Deputy Prime Minister's Questions this afternoon, Lib Dem MPs are really feeling the heat.
And given the number of them who come from university seats they are right to be worried. You have only to look back to the introduction of variable tuition fees in the 2004 Higher Education Bill to see the electoral price paid by Labour MPs in the general election a year later. Remember, Labour included a specific promise not to introduce any top-up fees in their 2001 election manifesto, only to execute a u-turn a few years later.
They were duly hammered at the polls by the, er, Lib Dems - and the fees factor may well account for the presence in the Commons of among others (Manchester Withington), (Cardiff Central), David Howarth (Cambridge - and now succeeded by ), (Bristol W) and (Leeds NW).
Now the student vote - which they wooed in May by publicly signing a pledge not to do what their coalition is now doing - may turn on them.
Hence the talk that Lib Dems may abstain in the Commons vote on raising the tuition fee cap to a maximum Β£9,000. The coalition agreement, the policy programme agreed after the election, was prescient enough to include a get-out clause allowing the Lib Dems to abstain on this issue, but I wonder if angry student voters will be impressed by abstentions, or even outright votes against, by individual MPs. The coalition's majority will only be threatened if a large number of Lib Dem MPs vote against, rather than abstain... and if the senior Lib Dem coalitionists vote for, that would be enough to ensure the measure goes through.
Perhaps a better hope for beleaguered Lib Dems in university seats would be for the coalition to last its planned term and go to the country in 2015 - by which time most current students would have graduated (or not) and moved elsewhere. But what of the effect on the coalition? Can Lib Dem ministers really abstain on a government policy, even with cover provided by the coalition agreement? And if they do, might Conservative ministers claim the right to abstain on constituency interest issues, such as the HS2 high speed rail project? In Lib Dem ranks, the hope is that the coalition can cope with its Lib Dem MPs voting in perhaps three different directions on tuition fees, then pick itself up, dust itself down, and move on as if nothing has happened.
They may be right. Of course, Conservative MPs won't be happy at the Lib Dems acting as if they're in the coalition when it suits them, and out of it when it is expedient. But that's showbusiness.
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
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