Party Lines: December 8th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Ahead of tomorrow’s tuition fees vote, John Denham reacted to Alan Johnson’s conversion to supporting a graduate tax in an interview with Sky News:

“Alan Johnson is, firstly, absolutely at one with everybody else in the Labour Party.”

“We would not have ended the public funding of the vast majority of university degrees. That is what is pushing such a huge debt on to students.”

“Alan Johnson also agrees that the way the coalition have treated the fees system that he introduced is desperately unfair and that actually a progressive system, moving towards a graduate tax, is a better way of dealing with the graduation contribution in the future.”

Jack Straw said that he didn’t believe that the Wikileaks cables revealed any new information about the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi:

“I don’t actually think they add anything to what was already there. It is a matter of record that Libya wanted al-Megrahi released.”

“Of course the Scottish executive along with everyone else in Scotland was fully aware of Britain’s commercial interests with Libya. I talked about that in correspondance and in conversations with Alex Salmond.”

“That was all put on the record in September and October of last year. As I say, this set of breathless leaks, I don’t think has added anything at all.”

An in an interview with Radio 4 this afternoon, Tessa Jowell defended Ed Miliband’s Bullingdon Club jibe at PMQs:

“David Cameron invited that response. When David Cameron gets his back to the wall in Prime Minister’s Questions, he does tend to become rather nasty and personal, and I think that Ed Miliband’s response was absolutely fair game within the context of Prime Minister’s Questions.”