Afterwards, the differences between those involved in parliamentary politics and those involved in direct action could lead both groups to think ‘these are the times that try men’s souls.’ Such tensions are inevitable. The important lesson I think should be drawn is that this must not distract from the pressure on the coalition.

Here are ten ways to put pressure on the Coalition.

1. Fragment the Coalition, not reinforce it

A centripetal strategy, which seeks to tie the Lib Dems more tightly to the Tories risks doing the coalition whips’ jobs for them, perhaps even making a second term viable.

Weakening the coalition requires a centrifugal approach that drives its constituent elements apart. Once the need for such a strategy is understood, as it was implicitly in the run-up to the tuition fees vote, a variety of tactics, from conventional parliamentary lobbying to direct action, can contribute to the overall goal.

2. Understand the internal politics of the Lib Dems

The 2010 election handed Lib Dems a key strategic position in the current parliament. Yet beyond the opprobrium deservedly heaped on Nick Clegg, they still haven’t received the attention that position deserves.

Treating the Lib Dems as a monolith risks alienating potential allies while allowing those most responsible for the coalition to escape the scrutiny they deserve.

3. Organise across party lines

Compass has been roundly criticised for opening up its membership to non-Labour members. Yet its genuine record of dialogue with the Lib Dems means it is in as unique position to engage those progressive voices who are actually best-placed to affect the coalition’s agenda. That said, it must be at least as robust in approach to the Orange Bookers as it has been towards the right of the Labour Party. 

4. Engage with Social Liberals

The rise of the Orange Bookers has not gone without a response from within the Lib Dems, in the shape of the emergence of the Social Liberal Forum. That response may strike many in Labour as ineffectual, but it helped to make tuition fees a costly victory for the Government, and more recently has been crucial in thebattle against Andrew Lansley’s plans for the marketisation of the NHS. 

The chair of the Social Liberal Forum David Hall-Matthews recently called for the Lib Dems to engage Ed Miliband:

Instead of tarring all Labour politicians with the same brush, Mr Clegg should be welcoming the changes that Miliband is attempting to make, and highlighting how he faces internal opposition. That would do two things: remind voters that the Liberal Democrats are still a liberal party, not merely an adjunct of the Conservatives, and expose Labour’s contradictions.

Given the weak position of social liberals within the coalition, Labour can justifiably regard this analysis as an inversion of the truth. Nevertheless, Social Liberal overtures should be responded to. To his credit, it’s clear that Ed Miliband understands this.

The fact remains however, that the social liberals have yet to demonstrate they are a coherent enough force to have a real impact on the coalition’s direction. If the Tories are allowed to impose corporate oligopoly markets on Britain’s public services with Orange Booker support, the social liberals may find that their party’s shift to the right is irrevocable.

5. Oppose the Orange Bookers

It is nevertheless clear that some Liberal Democrats are ideologically committed to the coalition’s agenda. Despite their influential position, the Orange Bookers have important weaknesses. They are drawn from a remarkably narrow social spectrum, and the real circumstances of their rise without trace bear little relation to the new politics rhetoric that Clegg employed during the 2010 election. It is questionable whether Vince Cable, elevated to a virtual co-leadership position during that campaign, enjoys as much influence over the coalition’s direction as an un-elected party donor like Paul Marshall. 

6. Strengthen the Lib Dems against the Tories

On many of the issues that Labour voters care most about, the Lib Dems have signed up to a market fundamentalist agenda with striking alacrity. Yet in some key areas, notably civil liberties and the rights of minorities, the Liberal Democrats, social liberal and Orange Bookers alike, remain a genuinely progressive voice. Where its a straight fight between Clegg and Cameron, progressives need Clegg to win.

7. Divide Cameronians and Tory traditionalists

Lib Dem ’wins’ within the coalition will magnify the divisions within the Conservative Party. Cameron has made a virtue out of necessity, presenting the coalition as an opportunity to detoxify the Tory brand rather than an expedient that was forced upon him. Yet many of those tagged ‘mainstream Conservatives‘ by Tim Montgomerie, resent the implementation of Lib Dem policies and regard them as the price of Cameron’s electoral failure.

Attacks from the Tory right have proven particularly troublesome for the coalition. The Telegraph, still stirring the pot this weekend, forced the key resignation of David Laws in May last year.

On occasion some Tories have even made common cause with progressives, as a handful did over tuition fees.

8. Isolate the core of the coalition

At the core of the coalition is a small group around the party leaderships, who have more in common with each other than with their own activists and still less in common with the public who will feel the impact of their cuts.

The make-up of this group can be gauged from the membership of the Coalition 2.0 talks at CentreForum as reported by the Mail, the Guardian and ConservativeHome. There was not a single woman among the named participants, and the only non-white male was a Conservative, the Bromsgrove MP, Sajid Javid. 

There was a clear effort to achieve buy-in from the Conservative right, with the inclusion of Tim Montgomerie and Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson. By contrast there was no similar attempt to reach out to social liberals. The Lib Dem representation of David Laws, Chris Huhne, Paul Marshall, Julian Astle and Tim Leunig was a roll call of Orange Bookers, with the only conceivable exception being the equivocating Huhne.

This a narrow and unrepresentative group whose commitment to ‘big-bang’ marketisation predates the financial crisis. If anything it represents an attempt to reassert the market fundamentalism which brought that crisis about.

9. Build an alternative coalition

If Lib Dems see their long-term future in an alliance with the Conservatives, the coalition’s majority in the current parliament will be secure. However, the more Lib Dems look to an alternative alliance with Labour, the harder the job of the coalition whips will be.

Given the experiences of 1997 and 2010, both Labour and the Lib Dems know that there can be no guarantees and the parliamentary arithmetic will dictate all. Yet laying the groundwork for a new coalition is crucial for progressives in both parties.

For Labour it offers the surest way to weaken David Cameron. To the Lib Dems it offers the chance to avoid long-term co-optation by the Tories and ensure their future as an independent force.

10. Win the Alternative Vote referendum

A Yes vote in the alternative vote referendum would fulfil many of these strategic principles. It requires a progressive alliance between Labour and the Lib Dems that could foreshadow a future Miliband government. It would also weaken the Prime Minister and anger the Tory right in ways that could shorten the life of the current government.

—
This is a edited version of an article first published at Our Kingdom.

Looking at all the indications available, I concluded that the MPs fell into four loose categories. I have listed 14 likely rebels, 14 waverers, 8 of no stated position, and 3 backbenchers who are likely to support the Government.

The best source on this is the blog of Tim Starkey, a Lib Dem councillor who is co-ordinating the rebels.

Starkey wrote last Thursday:

Be in no doubt – the lobbying efforts are working. Over the next week it is vital that students, parents and all those who care about widening access to university education write to their MPs and let their feelings be known.

As I’ve said before, don’t just target Lib Dems. There are four Tories on the government benches who signed the pledge too ( Bob Blackman - Harrow East, Stephen Mosley - City of Chester, Lee Scott - Ilford South, Ben Wallace - Wye and Preston).

If one takes Michael Crick’s narrowest definition of ’26 plain backbenchers’, more than half of Lib Dem backbenchers have already said they will vote against the Government. It is still almost half if one includes spokesmen and ‘party whips’ who are not members of the government.

This in itself would be a major blow to the legitimacy of the bill.

As things stand, it would need something of the order of 42 Lib Dems to vote against the Government to defeat it, roughly the entire Lib Dem backbench, plus PPS’s. That number could be lower if Lib Dem ministers or Conservatives vote against the bill.

The most likely scenario at this stage is the one outlined by Peter Oborne:

After six months in office, far sooner than anyone could have expected, the Coalition is in crisis – and the crisis will reach a climax next Thursday, when Parliament votes on tuition fees.

While it remains highly likely that the Coalition will get its business through, victory will come at the cost of permanent ill-feeling. Many Lib Dems feel unable to go back on their very public pre-election pledge to abolish tuition fees. Last night there was talk of a ministerial resignation, with Home Office minister Lynne Featherstone favourite to quit.

Yet there are signs that the Government sees a real danger of an outright defeat. It is this that has put paid to the prospect that the Lib Dems would collectively abstain

Another sign may be the date of the vote itself, as the Times Higher Education Supplement reports.. It may be worth constituents lobbying the DUP, SNP, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, Alliance and Lady Sylvia Hermon.

Here is a provisional list

Likely rebels
1 Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale)
2 Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) "told the Commons he could not ‘go along with this particular direction of travel’."  (4 Nov)
3 Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) – "having signed this campaign pledge, then I feel obliged to keep to it." (6 Nov)
4 Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South) " 'It's a big step in the right direction but the government hasn't done enough to make me vote for it and I won't. " (5 Nov)
5 Bob Russell (Colchester) "pledged to vote against" (28 Nov)
6 Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) - said ‘an increase in fees’ is ‘something that I cannot and will not accept’. (4 Nov)
7 John Pugh (Southport) – "I will vote against any rise in tuition fees, unless a rabbit is pulled out of the hat – and there is no sign of that." (4 Nov)
8 Mark Williams (Ceredigion)
9 Roger Williams - (Brecon and Radnorshir)
10 Julian Huppert (Cambridge) – "I made a promise to the students that I would never support a rise in tuition fees and I have reaffirmed that promise today. " (13 Oct)
11 John Leech (Manchester Withington)  - "I again publicly state that I will vote against an increase in tuition fees." (2 Dec)
12 Ian Swales (Redcar) – "I can't support raising the fee cap up to £9,000 per year. (25 November)
13 Simon Wright (Norwich South)

Waverers
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) "Mr Horwood said he would not support the bill but was weighing up the consequences of voting 'no'." (1 Dec) However, as Gareth Epps notes below, Horwood may miss the vote as he is attending the Cancún Climate summit.
Jenny Willott (Cardiff Central) "“I will not support a rise in tuition fees. I will decide whether I am going to vote against or abstain on the final vote, depending on what is in the motion." (3 Dec)
Lorely Burt (Solihull) – "told activists in Solihull yesterday that she would not vote in favour of the rise." (21 Nov)
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and Poole North) – "told the Politics Show South that she will either vote against or abstain." (28 Nov)
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) "He is expected to make a decision after the a meeting of the Lib Dem Parliamentary Party on Tuesday" (3 Dec)
Stephen Williams (Bristol West) ""I will either not vote – abstain – or I will vote against the government. I have not decided yet." (3 Dec)
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) "It is fair enough to criticise our policy, with which many of us are not entirely comfortable." (30 Nov)
Lynne Featherstone (Hornsey and Wood Green) – "Last night there was talk of a ministerial resignation, with Home Office minister Lynne Featherstone favourite to quit." (2 Dec)
Mike Crockhart (Edinburgh West) -  understood to be considering his position. (4 Nov)
Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) – Defended policy in meeting with students but added "I haven’t made my mind up about the vote." (26 Nov)
Tessa Munt (Wells)  - "I know that I couldn't vote for the Browne recommendations; what remains to be seen is the detail of what is actually proposed by the Government and to listen to the debate." (29 Nov)
Don Foster (Bath) "told the Guardian he had not yet made up his mind how he would vote on the fees issue" (16 Nov)
Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) – "would assess the position once he had seen all the government proposals – a view echoed by Alan Reid" (28 Nov)
Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) "would assess the position once he had seen all the government proposals – a view echoed by Alan Reid and by Robert Smith"  (28 Nov)
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne and Willingdon) "is also staying firmly on the fence" (28 Nov)
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) "Deliberating whether to abstain; no consideration of voting against." (5 Dec)

Note that its possible that some of those considering abstention may only do so if there is a party-wide deal.

No stated position
Stephen Gilbert (St Austell & Newquay)
Alan Beith (Berwick on Tweed)
Andrew George (St Ives)
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall)
Adrian Sanders (Torbay)
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
David Ward (Bradford East) "Ward has already voted against cuts to civil servants' pensions and the introduction of free schools" (15 Nov)

Likely Government supporters
John Hemming (Birmingham Yardley) – "I believe we have not only delivered on our pledge of a fairer system, but also delivered substantially on scrapping student tuition fees." (7 Nov)
Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) – "This is a completely different system, it's a fair system." (25 Nov)
David Laws (Yeovil) – "We really need to get it out of the way ASAP.? The sooner this is over the better!!!." (15 Nov)

The payroll vote
Ministers
Nick Clegg (Sheffield Hallam) – 'I''d like everyone to vote for this. We're no good in coalition if rancour, bitterness, division creep into our ranks." (5 Dec)
Danny Alexander (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) – "I hope, and I would certainly very much prefer, to vote for it. I have worked very hard on this policy." (3 Dec)
Norman Baker (Lewes)
Jeremy Browne (Taunton Deane) 
Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam)
Vince Cable (Twickenham) – “Obviously I have a duty as a minister to vote for my own policy – and that is what will happen" (3 Dec)
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) - "said he could only hold his hands up." (10 Nov)
Lynne Featherstone - see Waverers
David Heath (Somerton and Frome)
Nick Harvey (North Devon) – "Given these difficult economic circumstances, the Government's proposals represent the best solution – and reflect a real Liberal Democrat influence." (11 Nov)
Chris Huhne (Eastleigh) – As Gareth Epps notes below, Huhne may miss the vote as he is attending the Cancún climate summit.
Michael Moore (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk)
Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove)
Sarah Teather (Brent Central)
Steve Webb (Thornbury and Yate) – "unlikely to rebel since he is piloting landmark legislation."  (4 Nov)

Government whips
Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) – "trying to thrash out a deal which will see backbench Lib Dems abstain and ministers vote in favour of the reforms." (4 Nov)
Mark Hunter (Cheadle)

Parliamentary Private Secretaries
Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) – "We have improved the situation for part-time students, poorer students and poorer graduates. That’s a fairer system." (3 Nov)
Jenny Willott - see Waverers
Mike Crockart - see Waverers
Gordon Birtwistle - see Waverers
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) – "Hames was invited to attend the protests but declined to attend as he is in Parliament today." (30 Nov)

This shows that a substantial number of Lib Dem MPs have yet to declare their hand. Lobbying them is still worthwhile.

—
This piece was originally published on Tim Griffin’s blog The Green Ribbon.

Both Adams and Livingstone have alluded to the roots of the event in the dialogue which began back in 1982, shortly after Sinn Féin won its first seats in that year’s Assembly elections.

As GLC leader, Livingstone invited the party’s leaders to London only for them to be banned by Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

That invitation has played a central role in the right’s charge sheet against Livingstone ever since, but it is often forgotten that on his subsequent visit to Belfast in February 1983, he told republicans that “every time a bomb goes off in London or innocent civilians are killed in Northern Ireland it visibly puts back the cause of a united Ireland.”

The contacts established then went on to play a significant role in the peace process, with Livingstone acting as a key intermediary between Sinn Fein and Mo Mowlam in the mid-1990s.

The debates about Ireland in the 1980s raised issues that have resonated in more recent conflicts.

Controversies about the War on Terror have featured similar arguments and, not infrequently, the same players. Livingstone and Adams have both been prominent advocates of dialogue to resolve conflicts in the Middle East, while prominent unionists such as David Trimble had been more sceptical of the value of the Irish example.

However, while unionists and nationalists have sharply different views of the peace process and of its relevance elsewhere, the central fact remains that it retains majority to support in both communities.

The ongoing relationship between nationalism and unionism will be the subject of what looks likely to be the most interesting of the panel sessions on Saturday. The strength of the peace process is likely to be tested again in the coming years. While Sinn Féin is playing down the possibility, Martin McGuinness is on course to become the next First Minister of Northern Ireland.

Sinn Féin’s continuing strength in the North is in stark contrast to its poor performances in recent elections in the Republic. Saturday’s conference, along with similar events in New York and San Francisco, can be seen as an attempt at renewal in the face of those setbacks.

In that respect, there is a certain parallel with Ken Livingstone’s attempt to build a coalition that can retake the London mayoralty from the Conservatives.

That Progressive London project has been the subject of a lively debate between Dave Hill and Diane Abbott, (who is also among the speakers on Saturday). Hill is right to suggest that Livingstone needs to do more to address some of the issues that were exploited by the Boris campaign, and to avoid actions that needlessly alienate centrist voters.

However, he is wrong to argue that “Politics in a global city should be outward-looking, but discussions about Gaza, Afghanistan or the impossibility of a “progressive imperialism” belong somewhere else, and offer easy potential targets.”

For one thing, that under-estimates the real significance of such debates for London. Livingstone’s willingness to provide a political forum for today’s ‘suspect community’ of young Muslims has played an important role in countering the anti-politics of Islamist extremists.

In that respect, the success of the Irish peace process in the 28 years since Ken Livingstone first invited Gerry Adams to London is an important demonstration of what can be achieved.

It’s a very good question just how many terrorism stories (especially ones that have the “Internet” flag set – it means “stuff I don’t understand” to a lot of editors) are the work of these people, whether the upscale, Decent version or Jenvey’s Comedy Gladio.

There are indeed some interesting connections between the kind of right-wing “CounterJihad” networks represented by Jenvey and the so-called “decent left“.

But before that, all this reminds me of a quote from former Pentagon Neocon Abram Shulsky:

Soviet front groups might have been more effective, but Stalinist paranoia made impossible the operational autonomy needed to succeed. To the extent that future practitioners of this type of propaganda have learned lessons from the Soviet experience, we may expect that the nonstate groups will be controlled in a more sophisticated manner and their ties to a given state will be less obvious.

New methods of spreading propaganda (such as via Internet web sites of Non-governmental organizations [NGOs], or specialized email lists) allow a deceiver to reach target audiences via multiple channels. Many of these channels may remain relatively invisible to the public at large. (Elements of Strategic Denial and Deception by Abram Shulsky in Strategic Denial and Deception: The Twenty-First Century Challenge, edited by Roy Godson and James J. Wirtz, Transaction books, 2002, p23.)

Shulsky went on to note that “Despite the media’s self-image of hardheaded cynicism, it is relatively vulnerable to this type of manipulation.” (p24.)

The Sun’s story, which claimed that British Muslims were preparing a ‘hit-list’ against prominent British Jews, and is now being sued by Alan Sugar over it, seems to bear this theory out.

Would this apply to the ‘decent left’ too? Note, for example:

- Glen Jenvey’s ally Paul Ray AKA Lionheart was interviewed by Phyllis Chesler, who also hosted a party in New York for Democratiya editor Alan Johnson.

- The notionally left-wing Democratiya recently featured an interview with Andrew Bostom, a member of the CounterJihad Europa network. This extreme right grouping was created with the help of Christine Brim, who also happens to be a senior figure in a Washington neoconservative think-tank, the Center for Security Policy (CSP).

- The CSP advocates ‘political warfare‘ against Islam, and its head, Frank Gaffney, is at the center of a number of Islamophobic networks in Europe and the US. Most recently, he hosted Geert Wilders during his recent trip to Washington. (Chesler and Bostom were in attendance on the New York leg of Wilders’ US tour).

- CSP legal counsel David Yerushalmi heads the Society of Americans for National Existence, which produced some of the material which ended up in Policy Exchange’s controversial briefing against the Global Peace and Unity event in London.

- Frank Gaffney’s sister Devon Gaffney Cross runs the Policy Forum on International Security Affairs, a neocon propaganda outfit, partly funded by the Pentagon, which has targeted the European media in recent years.

- In 2004, the FT’s Christopher Caldwell noted that Cross planned to bring to London, “the widest possible variety of foreign-policy voices, from Bush Republicans (she has invited the under secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, to participate) to Clinton Democrats (such as the former CIA director James Woolsey) to the human-rights activists of the Democratic left (who cluster around the Freedom House Foundation and American organised labour).”

In reality, all the elements of this ‘varied coalition’ were identifiably neoconservative. According to the Forum’s website:

The response to our efforts, among the media, has been both prompt and enthusiastic. Editors of The Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, The London Times, The Economist, The Sun and The Spectator have all participated in our discussions.

- I wonder whether the Policy Forum had something to do with the occasion at Annabel’s recounted by Cristina Odone?

It was here that Thatcher’s makeover was plotted; here that, when Paul Wolfowitz asked to meet some of Britain’s leading journalists, The Observer’s Nick Cohen found himself sitting next to John Lloyd and Charles Moore, drinking champagne.

More recently, I raised the same question last week over at the Next Left blog in the context of the Fabians’ dispute with Nick Cohen about the best way to engage moderate Muslims.

It was also highlighted by Sunny at Pickled Politics:

Who was the “pleasant American” lady who invited [Cohen] to meet Paul Wolfowitz at Annabel’s? (Nick Cohen, Evening Standard, 21 June 2005).

Is she by any chance related to the lady who’s been running “cozy, off-the-record briefings by senior Pentagon officials, fellow-neo-cons and fellow members of the Defense Policy Board (DPB) for select British and European reporters in exclusive clubs and cafes in London and Paris”. (http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=176).

Some answers would be nice.